23 August 2012

It's come to an end

Our awesome Euro-adventure has come to and end after two amazing years. We had our ups and our downs and many amazing experiences. We learned a fair amount of french and some key phrases of the surrounding languages. We met some fantastic people who we will miss a lot. We ate and drank our way through our little part of Europe. We drove many kilometres and crossed many borders. We had our fair share of chocolate and cheese. We said hello to many a alpine cow. We had visitors and we visited. Admired the mountains. Played in the snow and sun. Ate wild strawberries. Watched the seasons change. Swam in the mediterranean sea. Too many great things to mention.

It was a bit of an effort tying up loose ends in Switzerland before we left - I won't go into the boring details but just say that repatriating is hard work. Switzerland is well known among expats as being overly bureaucratic and we had our fair share of hoops to jump through. But we jumped and now we're back home in Brisbane jumping through it's hoops. We had a lot of help from some good friends in Switzerland during our final race to the finish line and without them it would have been a lot harder.

We were lucky to have had fantastic weather for our remaining weeks in Martigny. There were summer parties happening everywhere and the atmosphere was just generally pleasant. A very nice way to end our grand adventure.

It's nice to be home in Brisbane and to be able to speak the language comfortably and confidently - it makes finding an apartment and buying a car MUCH easier when you can speak the language. I will always look back on our time in Switzerland and Europe fondly and will probably bore my grandchildren with anecdotes of the times we lived amongst the Swiss Alps. I have a feeling we will return there one day when we're old and grey.

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