Category: Life in Switzerland

  • Coming soon in feel-good fiction… #travel #Switzerland

    A holiday in Switzerland… that was something I’d never experienced when I arrived at Basle Airport on a cold January afternoon in the 1980s. That day, I was all set to work for a year, see something of Europe, learn a new language – and then go home to Scotland. My year turned into decades,…

  • Winter in Switzerland (almost) #SilentSunday #travel

    In just a few weeks, Saving the Lakeside Hotel will be out and I’ll be sharing lots of scenic spring photos of Switzerland, as Stacy and Emily arrive at the hotel and realise it’s not quite what they’d expected… Meanwhile, though, let’s have some snow pics, all taken from my flat (in the same area…

  • 1989, or: the Trabi in the supermarket car park… #memories #Berlin

    My Christmas read this time was Val McDermid’s 1989, a great book and a year I remember very well. In 1989 we were living in the same town in N.E. Switzerland, a little further from Lake Constance than we are now, but you could still see it between the houses. Blue lake, and Germany on…

  • 2022… The best of times and the worst of times #NewYear

    If anything taught us that nothing lasts forever, it was 2022. The moment we got used to the covid numbers going down, up they went again. As soon as we were accustomed to calling one person ‘the prime minister’, someone else was moving into 10 Downing Street. We won’t even mention Twitter. And the Queen,…

  • After the Christmas market… #SilentSunday #travel

    It was a snowy Saturday night in St Gallen. This is the last post now until January. After nine years, my blog is in dire need of a good clear-out, and I suspect that might not be as easy as it sounds… wish me luck!I’ll “see” you all in the New Year, and meanwhile, all…

  • #SilentSunday #sledges

    I was at the Swiss National Museum last week, and found these… See you next week!

  • Fountains… #travel #water

    For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking photos of fountains in our local area here in N.E. Switzerland, some in our little town, others in St Gallen, our nearest city. There’s quite a variety… First up – our town’s version of the Jet d’Eau in Geneva. A little closer to the harbour is the…

  • A walk in Swiss woods… #travel (almost) #SilentSunday

    After all the rain we’ve had recently, it was good to have some sunshine last week. I thought I’d walk through the woods and see how the beaver dams (there are three) were getting on. I tried to go on to the second dam, but it was so wet and muddy underfoot I gave up,…

  • Sunshine in Switzerland… #SilentSunday #travel

    Water… a weekend walk to the lake. It makes such a difference where the sun is – the two last photos were taken less than a minute apart, but looking in different directions.

  • #Wildlife in Switzerland… #nature #birds

    Our flat here in N.E. Switzerland is metres away from a belt of woodland. In winter, the view to the north is tall tree trunks with Lake Constance and Germany beyond, and in summer we have peaceful shades of leafiness on the other side of the balcony railing. One effect of this is we get…