Today is the one-year anniversary of our departure from Switzerland.

We moved to Zurich in February 2005 for what turned out to be a 6.5 year adventure that started as a twosome and ended as a family of three. Those first weeks were marked with daily dustings of snow, something that I will never see in San Francisco, and dark evenings because the wiring for the apartment’s light fixtures, which we had to buy at Ikea, did not work. You should have seen me try to explain this to an electrician in broken German.

And now we are in San Francisco, a city where it never snows, living in an apartment where each room came with a light fixture that turned on as soon as we flipped the switch. Instead of a lake and clock towers, we have ocean-access and iconic bridges. Not surprisingly, I am quite choked up as I think about all the changes, like all the amazing people we left behind, but those reflections are for another post when the emotions feel less raw.

In the meantime, Niko and I are starting the day in a cafe like we often used to do in Zurich.

And then, on this spectacularly sunny fog-free Labor Day, we are going to take the Vachette to play at Ocean Beach and stare at the Pacific, something we can only do in San Francisco.