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Hope you enjoy!  Merci for reading!

Hello blogging public!! Since I have taken up residence in the maison Decorvet, I am earning my keep as a guest blogger for this prestigious publication.

A little background: my name is Julia, and I am stranded in Europe because of a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland. There’s a sentence I never thought I would be writing. My husband, Blake, and I were on our way from Morocco to England, and we had planned to stop in and see the new Mrs. D for a couple of days. Thank the Lord we aren’t headed to Manchester until Saturday, we thought when we got to the Marrakech airport Thursday. All flights to the UK were cancelled. A British woman asked me what was happening, and I explained what I had seen on the EasyJet website about a volcano. She had heard the same—a text message from a friend that she had dismissed as a joke. Because, really, a volcano?

And then the ash spread. Thanks to email and Twitter, the BBC had no lack of material on stranded fiancés who would miss their own weddings, PhD students who couldn’t make their dissertation defenses and would fail to graduate, elderly British travelers marooned in Europe with only a two day supply of their prescription medication. I was in a relatively good spot: Yverdon-les-Bains, Suisse with an old friend who spoke English. After our flight to Manchester was officially cancelled on Saturday, we moved out of the fancy hotel that was no longer offering the Internet deal we had booked it for…and into Sarah and Jean’s living room.

True to form, I panicked. As early as Friday, I became convinced that we would never get home. The last time this volcano erupted, it was continuous for two years. Of course, then, it didn’t make a difference; Europe remained unconcerned. I had visions of myself as Leonardo DiCaprio, trying to win a poker game for a ticket on an [ultimately doomed] ocean liner back to the states and losing my job, of course, for taking a month off. But there was nothing I could do but wait…and marvel at Sarah’s life.

I am currently sitting on Sarah’s white leather Ikea couch (our bed for the past four nights) looking out at red tile roofs and blue mountains. I can see the edge of the façade of the eighteenth century church where Jean preaches on Sundays, and there is a thirteenth century clock tower that is lit at night. Sarah does not wear a watch or carry a cell phone, and there are no clocks in the living room—when she wants to know what time it is, she looks out the window. Blake and Jean just got back from the local bakery with croissants for our breakfast, and Jean is making espresso for me, tea for Blake. It’s not entirely idyllic—Sarah does have to hang her clothes out to dry and do without a disposal—but it’s a life that I think we’ve all dreamed of living but never thought we actually would.

After a long conversation with the Delta agent last night, we got ourselves on a flight out of Paris on Saturday. It was the first flight available from any southern European city, so we are praying there will be no more ash by then. Blake and I were reading through James last week completely by chance, and we came to James 4 on Saturday night, the day our flight got cancelled:

13Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Well, I felt very small after reading that. Maybe I’ll go to Paris today; maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll fly home on Saturday; maybe I won’t. The volcano is just a reminder that one relatively minor act of God can paralyze an entire continent for a week. A little perspective is never a bad thing, even if it leads to a few nights of panic on a pullout couch in Switzerland.

As for Sarah and Jean, I really can’t express how wonderful they have been. For those of you who, like me, have never spent time with Jean, rest assured that he is completely adorable and unfazed (or pretends to be) by two huge suitcases and two oversized humans in his living room for six days. Sarah and Jean have been our hosts, cooks, travel agents, personal shoppers, technology consultants and cultural commentators, and they have put their lives on hold for us for the past week. They live in a charming apartment in a charming town in a charming country, and you should all be fortunate enough to get stuck with them.

So we’re off to Paris (if it is the Lord’s will)! Wish us luck…

I can’t help but relish the sheer impracticality of it—a sinking island whose decaying grandeur whispers stories of an illustrious era when a thriving metropolis was poised at the door between the Orient and Europe.  While the rest of the Continent was culturally fumbling through the Middle Ages, Venice was painting the ceilings of its Doges’ Palace with 24 carat gold and peacefully functioning under the political rule of a merchant-class oligarchy.  If the world lasts another thousand years, I think the name, Venice, will be mythical as the city, which one day, disappeared into the sea.

I love cracks, crevices and hidden passageways.  I love when trees manage to find a way to grow out of walls and when cobblestones give way to ripples. 

As with a beautiful woman made more beautiful by the marks of time, Venice’s curious visual delights are of a different kind of beauty than the aesthetic perfection we’ve come to expect in others and in ourselves—it’s a beauty that is weathered and wise and above all, confidently mortal knowing that the soul and the stories will last forever.

We’re going to Venice for a week!!!!!

Jean has helped organize and will be teaching at a theology conference, and I’m tagging along.  Sweet, huh?  Maybe life as a frustrated, unemployed, European housewife isn’t so bad after all.

Thanks so much to all of you who stop by the blog a few times a week!  I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be on a gelato-licking, pasta-slurping, San-Marcos-Square-meandering, pigeon-chasing hiatus for the next 7 days.

Or maybe I just wanted to rub it in…

Love y’all! Ciao!
Sarah

I’m not alone.  Switzerland is full of well-integrated expatriates.  They work in Swiss companies, their bilingual children go to Swiss schools, they hang out with Swiss friends and many confess they’ve begun to think Swiss thoughts like how about we eat melted cheese for dinner (only cheese, no salad, no vegetable, just cheese…and maybe some potatoes) and you only speak one language, how interesting… However, even if integration is my goal, I never really want to achieve it in the fullest sense of the word.

Nothing makes me want to wrap myself in Old Glory and line dance all the way to the Geneva airport for a westbound flight while eating a hamburger and singing Yankee Doodle than a well-meaning expat assuring me that before too long I’ll be so comfortable in “my new country” that America “won’t even feel like home anymore.”

NO merci.  I’ll remain decidedly American if you don’t mind.

In my short stints abroad, I’ve met many Americans who constantly try to shed themselves of the burden of American identity, and it has always saddened me.  They feel that they must apologize to for the war in Iraq, our arrogant sense of exceptionalism, fast food, Britney Spears and SUVs.  They must assure every European they meet that they are not like those Americans who eat at McDonalds, or those Americans who can’t locate France on a map, or those Americans who eat potato chips and watch TV until they contribute to the obesity statistics horrifying the world.  Americans, they acknowledge, are fat, stupid and selfish.

I can’t help but think that this is born out of the same sense of inferiority we’ve been feeling toward Europe since we got our own thing going in the New World.  We have felt judged by the big brother across the ocean casting disapproving glances our way since 1776.  Some of us feel the need to apologize and beg for approval (a typical expat breed), some decide to reject the country’s European roots all together by buying “Texas is bigger than France” t-shirts and mocking Europe’s more centralized economies (I love you Texas, but this one’s for you), others want to stand with Europe as partners in an ever-changing global society.  Not surprisingly, I want to be part of this third group.  And I’m in the unique, often-uncomfortable position of trying to understand my American identity as it relates to Europe from the Continent rather than the self-affirming comfort of home.

Admittedly, it’s hard.  Europeans are sometimes judgemental or simply ignorant of life in America (although the reverse is certainly true as well), and it’s not in my nature to confront, argue and defend.  But I’m really proud of who I am, and who I am is much to the credit of where I come from.

How will my “american-ness” manifest itself so far from home?  I’m still unsure.  Right now, it’s not much of a problem seeing as my accent and strange ways speak on behalf of my heritage more than my existential questions.  But as I “integrate” how can I maintain my identity?  Is it really possible to be American, Swiss and French?

One thing is for sure.  I will not be “maintaining my identity” in the same way as the displaced American who decided to do this to his house in the Swiss countryside.  When driving on a little country road in Fribourg last night, we came upon this spectacle.  At once delighted to see my flag and horrified to think about the poor Swiss neighbors that must live with it each day, I had to take a picture.

There’s only one way to respond to this: roll one’s eyes and mutter “oh là là…”

Can you believe this?

Enjoy!

As soon as I got home, I whipped out a baguette and the olive wood cheese knives we received as a wedding gift and cut into that beautiful wheel of soft irresistable cheese.  However, moments later it hit me like a mac truck in a hurry:  the most putrid, unappetizing, sewer-on-a-hot-summer-day smell.  It’s awful!  How something so delicious can smell so rotten is beyond me.  And I’ve lived in France, I’ve shopped at Whole Foods, I’ve eaten some smelly cheese in my day, but this is by far the worst.   Each time we opened the door to the refrigerator, the smell would smack us in the face and would gently waft its way through our entire apartment.  I tried confining it to a tupperware container but to no avail.  Now finally it is at home outside on our windowsill.

One of the best things about being almost-swiss and living in this beautiful country is uninhibited access to Mövenpick Ice Cream.  As a committed Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla supporter, I find this difficult to admit:  But Mövenpick is the best ice cream in. the. world. period.  Right now, I’m hooked on their Sumatra Coconut and Toasted Sesame Seed.  Jean prefers Tiramisu.  Crème Brûlée will change your life.

The catch here is that it also might  be the most expensive ice cream in the world.  A pint of Sumatra Coconut and Toasted Sesame Seed is almost 13CHF (12ish dollars) and their speciality flavor, Pink Champagne, is 17CHF (!!!).  Perhaps, it’s a blessing in disguise considering I would happily consume the entire container in a single sitting if it weren’t for the expense…It’s just that the taste is so nuanced…the flavor of the first moment when you put the bite in your mouth changes completely by the time you swallow.

I’d compare it to tasting a nice Bordeaux, but that would just annoy my very-French husband.

If you find yourself in Switzerland, you must taste this local masterpiece.  You won’t be sorry.  Just maybe a little poor.