80 days have passed now since my bike crash on June 8. A lot happened in between. We have now left Vienna behind, the international furniture removal is now behind us, a large part of the administrative work related to expatriation is now done. Today is the first day, during which, Isa and I truly feel on vacation… and there are good reasons to let these feelings invade us.
It is June 27th, the 4th day we spend at the farm in the French Jura. Not a cloud in sight and we decide to discover the surroundings. We find a few kilometers away from our place a a small quiet river. We decide to picnic there but do not find immediately a convenient place to park the car and sit comfortably next to the river . We suddenly see a rather idyllic garden at the river. The only issue: a big sign marked “PRIVATE”. Fortunately the owner is mowing the grass and we ask him whether we could stay there. To our surprise he answers that he likes Swiss people and that we should sit at his table by the river. We spend a great 2 hours there, kids playing along the river while we rest on the blankets.
We decide in the afternoon to explore a bit further and discover a lovely small city called Saint-Hipployte . We stop to take an ice-cream on the terrasse of one of the restaurants of the main square and just love it. This square is for boh fo us the stereotype of a traditional French square, with a bakery, a florist, a traditional deli, a couple of terrasses with people drinking Pastis and of course people walking across the square carrying their baguette under the arm pit.
We travel back to our spartan farmhouse at the end of the day and have some second thoughts about the level of comfort there.
