Still here, but at a different "here"
Explaining the summer silence
Yes, I’m still here, but the “here” changed. The writing here took a backseat – no, it was kicked out of the proverbial car – due to changes at home. After living in Europe for the past ten years, we completed our return to the US three days ago, Friday, 21 July. Well, sort of. A lot of our stuff is probably already at Antwerp, having been hauled by truck (perhaps if the Rhine weren’t low, it would have moved by barge) to Belgian port for the journey to Boston, my new home. (Including customs clearance, we should get our stuff at the end of August.) It is “my” new home because my wife and daughter moved to Boston two years ago while the boys – our son and me – stayed in Switzerland until he graduated high school. He did, and now we’re here, at least until the kids go to their schools at the end of summer.
Since my wife and daughter have been here for two years, the place in Boston is already fully furnished, so a lot of the furniture and stuff from our Swiss apartment wasn’t coming over. This meant selling stuff, giving away loads of things (to friends, to refugees), and donating stuff (the Salvation Army store in Baar, Zug, is a great shopping experience if you’re ever in the area), and, of course, taking stuff to the trash depot. This was car loads at first, then, in the end, hiring a firm to haul the large items & quantities that I couldn’t fit into the car the day before the final pack up. Here, erm, there, the local trash place is a municipal site that recycles and generates district heating and electricity. Selling the car was more difficult than expected as the used market for our car stagnated big time. Plus, there is the attention required of the general detritus of living in the same place for seven years, and in Europe for ten years, that took up energies that might otherwise have been spent on this writing. The PhD was also put on pause – an “interruption” – as I don’t have the time for that either.
If you’re wondering, the biggest “culture shock” of returning to the US is the need for and receipt of paper checks. Absolutely primitive and a waste of time, resources, and energy! When I share this reality with Europeans, they are aghast. And, no, Zelle or PayPal or whatever do not make for the equivalent of the ease with which you can pay bills (utility, credit card, etc.), friends, stores, street vendors, and so on as you can in Europe where electronic transfers are baked into the system with far greater security than in the US. Moving on…
As we go on vacation next week, I’ll likely be quiet for a while longer. I have a post I started to write in May that returns to the problematic mythology around Fulbright, something I wrote about before but requires a deeper and more focused discussion. Finishing this is at the top of my list.
Some pictures from my last days of riding and running in Switzerland, plus Paisley’s last moments there and first moments here…
Stay well. We’ll talk soon.