Tag: Personal

4 years later…

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So… it’s been over 4 years since I posted anything here. Let’s do a quick catch up.

TLDR: Luxembourg –> California –> COVID nomad –> New York –> London

At the start of 2019, I moved from Luxembourg to San Francisco to attend a data science bootcamp. After I finished that, I found a job in Oakland and decided to stay in the Bay Area. At the end of 2019, Nico and I split up.

To give myself some space and distraction, I decided to do travel and work remotely for 6 months. We were meant to spend every month in a different country, starting in February 2020. The itinerary was going to be Medellín, Mexico City, Santiago, Lisbon, Valencia, and Cape Town. After a super memorable time in Medellín, I was in Mexico City when the world fell apart.

Medellín
Guatapé
Cartagena

I flew home to Texas and spent 4 months living in my childhood home with my parents. I was fortunate to spend quality time with them and our dog & cat, but I also found that I needed space from them eventually. I was able to travel to Arizona as well as all over the UK and Ireland. During that summer, my company in California shut down, and I found another job that moved me to New York.

Arizona
Scotland
Northern Ireland

I spent 2021 and 2022 living in New York, and I squeezed in plenty of travel as well. The new places for me were: Iceland, Belize, Poland, Maine, Estonia, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo, Sint Maarten & Saint Martin, Latvia, Hawaii, Saint Lucia, and Martinique. I hope to get my sh*t together and blog about at least a couple of these 😅.

New York
New York
Grand Central

New York
Maine
Kosovo
Latvia
Sint Maarten
Iceland
Iceland
Belize
Hawaii
Saint Lucia

At the end of 2022, I was given the opportunity to move to my company’s headquarters in London. So a couple months later, here I am, an expat again!

London

Leaving Luxembourg

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I didn’t think this time would come so soon.  Nico and I have left Luxembourg to begin the next chapter of our adventure back in the US.  For the next few months, I am in San Francisco attending Metis, a data science bootcamp.  We’re both super excited for what comes next, but will never forget the hospitality we experienced in Luxembourg.  This tiny country welcomed us in with jobs, social security, and many new friends.  It gave me the chance to experience a new way of living and provided a home base to explore a diverse continent.

I loved living in Luxembourg and getting to know the area, the people, and the culture.  I’ll definitely miss the quiet and calm evenings, having both a city and a forest within a quick walk, the beautiful winter lights and Christmas markets with steaming gluhwein, the summer Schueberfouer and delicious, greasy gromperekichelcher, the warm, kind, and multilingual people, the beautiful nature and climbing areas, the ease of traveling to a different country, and most of all, all the amazing friends that I’ve made.  I’ll even miss the insane bus drivers, the struggle of finding a restaurant that’s open on Sunday evenings, and the challenge of communicating with a combination of hand signals and Google Translate.  The only thing I won’t miss is our loud neighborhood rooster yelling all day starting at 5:00 am.

This year, I’ll be posting about my data science projects, some recommendations for Luxembourg, and the remaining backlog of trips I went on last year.  Now however, I’d like to share a smattering of other things and places I visited around Europe the last two years that won’t have their own dedicated post.

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Money Diary – Lux Edition

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What’s it like to live and work in Luxembourg?  I got inspiration from reading Refinery29’s Money Diaries, which I think is a great way to expand on the sometimes taboo topic of money.  I decided to write my own money diary for a week and present it here, excluding my salary information.  Everything that was in Euros has been converted to USD at a rate of 1.23, which is where it’s been around for the last 3 months.

Occupation: Business Analyst
Industry: Operations and Transportation
Age: 28
Location: Luxembourg

Monthly Expenses
Rent: $879.45  (Monthly total of €1,430 including water, trash, and heating is split in half with my boyfriend)
Student Loan Payment: $0  (I am extremely lucky to have generous parents)
Cell Phone Bill: $40.58
Internet: $23.92  (Monthly total of $47.85, split in half with my boyfriend)
Electricity: $19.47  (Monthly total of $38.94, split in half with my boyfriend)
Public Transportation: $22.79  (My company subsidizes roughly 50% of an annual pass that allows for unlimited travel throughout the country)
Spotify, Netflix, Adobe, iCloud: $26.41
Gym: $25.82
Charity: ~$50, to various organizations

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Luxembourg – 1 Year & Counting

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I cannot believe that it’s already been a year since I moved to Luxembourg!  I came with a heart full of hope, love, and excitement for things to come, and none of that has diminished.

How It All Started

My first blog entry was about how I met Nico and wound up in Luxembourg, but it was very personal and I was hesitant to publish it publicly until now.  In short, I met him at a hostel in Peru while I was solo traveling after a breakup.  We spent a year cross-Atlantic long distance dating, until we moved to Luxembourg together.

Reflecting on that first post, I’m baffled by the amount of time that has flown by.  I still miss Austin here and there, but I’m really enjoying being in Luxembourg.  As part of that, and cause now I’m an “expert”, I’ll be posting more about what life is like here, as well as what to do around these parts 🙂

Luxembourg – 6 Month Recap & ACL Surgery

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It’s been a little over 6 months since I moved across the pond.  I had a blast being unemployed for most of that time, as you can probably tell from all my previous travel posts 🙂  But now I’m settling back into being a real adult.

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The Alzette River in the Grund

Did I do anything other than travel during my time off?

I took an intensive French class.  I’m still terrible at French.  As a native English speaker, there is not enough incentive to learn French, German, or Luxembourgish because most people in the city speak English as a second (or third or fourth or fifth!) language.  Even if I attempt to speak French, I either leave the conversation not quite understanding everything that was said, or I end up slipping back into English.  Thankfully, everyone is usually quite friendly, and they accommodate my lacking language skills.  Here, English is the lingua franca where 47% of residents in the country and 70% of residents in the capital city are foreign nationals coming from 170 different countries.

I learned how to drive stick.  In Europe, most people drive stick.  If you want to rent a car, it’s at least twice as expensive to rent an automatic car than a manual car.  And that’s if they even have an automatic available.  I know like 4 people total in the US who own a manual car.  Poor N had been responsible for driving both of us everywhere we went, until I rented a car for a week and asked him to teach me.  That wasn’t fun either.  I might have cried after stalling in the middle of an intersection and getting honked at by a bus driver…   Aaanyway, it took me a good few days to get the hang of it, but now I’m capable of driving stick on the left as well!  I still stall here and there, but at least I don’t freak out anymore.

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Hints of fall in the Grand Duchy

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Vienna, Bratislava, Feldkirch, Liechtenstein

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and Zurich too!  Yea, it was a lot for one week.  My main purpose for this trip was to visit family and check out some spots along the way.  My favorite aunt and uncle (who is Austrian), were spending a few weeks in Austria, and I wanted to see them since I was so close.  The last time I saw them was 9 years ago in Beijing, right after I graduated high school.  My uncle currently works for the Austrian embassy in Lima, Peru.  In the past, they have lived in Beijing, Vietnam, Slovenia, New York, and other places, with a home base in Vienna.

My aunt and uncle live in the 21st district of Vienna called Floridsdorf, in the northernmost part of the city limits.  They are for sure an interesting pair!  My uncle started learning Mandarin at university, and he went to Shanghai in the early 80s to continue studying Chinese.  Back then, he was probably the only Western looking guy for miles around, much less one that could speak the language.  He found a job at the Austrian embassy in Beijing, and then met my aunt shortly after.  My mom (her sister) had moved to the US with my dad around that time.  After marrying him, my aunt moved to Austria without knowing a lick of German, and now she and my uncle speak a combination of Mandarin and German with some English and Spanish thrown in for good measure.  It’s quite confusing at times!

So this was my rough and rushed itinerary:  Vienna > Bratislava > Vienna > Feldkirch > Liechtenstein > Feldkirch > Zurich > Luxembourg.  Given how quick each stop was, I’ll just share pics with a few notes.

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Michaelerplatz

Vienna / Wien

  • Food
    • I did a free walking tour and then ate schnitzel at the 3rd gen Figlmüller because the OG and 2nd gen locations were full or closed (respectively).  Was delicious but slightly touristy.
    • I waited in line to have the Sachertorte at the Sacher Hotel Cafe.  Was very delicious, but very touristy and not worth the wait in the hot sun.
  • Sightseeing
    • St Stephen’s Cathedral: lovely square, beautiful roof, crowded
    • St Peter’s Church: gilded and ornate interior, not as crowded as St Stephen’s
    • Austrian National Library: pretty interesting Free Mason exhibit, beautiful old globes, statues, and painted ceilings
    • Belvedere Palace and museum: looove Gustav Klimt, paid €15 for just the Upper Belvedere, then took a stroll around the palace grounds for free

St Stephen’s Cathedral
St Stephen’s Cathedral

St Peter’s Church
St Peter’s Church

Austrian National Library
Austrian National Library
Austrian National Library
Austrian National Library

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Luxembourg – 60 Days In

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Moien!  So it’s been 60 days since I moved to Luxembourg.  It’s flown by so quickly!  Here’s the lowdown of what it’s been like so far.

Luxembourg Fast Facts

  • Official languages are French, German, and Luxemourgish, but most people speak English, as they learn all four in schools
  • Luxembourg is one of the founding members of the EU and the world’s only Grand Duchy, but wait, what is that?  According to Wikipedia, “a grand duchy is a country or territory whose official head of state or ruler is a monarch bearing the title of grand duke or grand duchess.”  So there you go.  Meet Henri.
  • Yes, Luxembourg has an airport AND its own airline.  Luxair flies to 64 destinations across Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean and Middle East with a fleet size of just 17.  That’s efficiency.
  • Things aren’t as expensive as I thought it would be, what with Lux having the highest GDP per capita in the world.  I think it’s quite comparable to Austin, except that on every corner, there are Ferraris, Maseratis, and other fancy cars that I don’t know the names of.

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