Posts
Welcome to a world of limitless possibilities, where the journey is as exhilarating as the destination, and where every moment is an opportunity to make your mark.
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Happy New Year greetings from Dijon. We started our trip with an overnight stay at our friends Joachim & Antje in Weilburg. It is always enjoyable to visit with them! From there we drove further east, and after less than two hours, we crossed the former border that separated Germany into east and west. After…
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When we left for the US at the beginning of September, the wine harvest season had just started. Four weeks later, when we came back at the beginning of October, the harvest was almost completely finished, the grapes picked and most of the migrant workers moved on. With cooling nights under still mostly sunny and…
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From our Spain/Portugal return in mid May to the end of August, our summer consisted of a multitude of smaller trips and visits. First, my long time college/forestry friend Andreas Graebeldinger came to visit us. Naturally, as forestry nerds, we toured the famous “Plenterwald” in the Jura together, which is an uneven-aged, single tree harvest…
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We covered a lot of sites during our 3 week loop of the Iberian Peninsula, so just like our Italy post from last year, this is a long post with lots of photos that you might want to digest in more than one sitting. Here a little tip that might help: The blog posts are…
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This is a short post before we leave for a 3 week trip to Spain and Portugal on April 27. It’s been hard not to write about the political situation in the US, and with the recent fallout of the current US administration with Europe, it has become personal for Lauri and me, so yes,…
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Last November we thought that it would be nice to travel south in search of some warm sunshine during January or February, however, spending the time just sitting at a Mediterranean beach or hotel pool didn’t sound too appealing to us. Looking at the map I recalled that my parents and sisters visited Marrakesh in…
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Late summer/fall was beautiful around here. We took a couple of day trips into the Jura Mountains for sightseeing and hiking, which are within a 2 hour drive SE of Dijon. I partly found out about the specific locations through some organized bike rides we did there with my local cycling group. The Jura Mountains…
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In the second half of September, while we we were getting ready for our trip to Italy, the grape harvest here in Burgundy was in full swing. Ravenna After meeting up with our daughter Anna in the French Alps, we put in a long day of driving, crossing northern Italy from west to east, all…
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This post will cover our first summer in France, from early June until we leave for Italy at the end of September. Chronologically I will cover a lot of short subjects with lots of pictures: Hurray, hurray, after the minimum of 5 required driving lessons, I passed my French drivers license test on June 7th.…
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We’re just back from a 9 day road trip to the Dordogne, an area in SW France we’ve been wanting to visit for a long time. Starting from the west, we spent our first night in Bordeaux and just managed to reach our hotel before the roads were closed for the Olympic flame parade. The…
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Our daughter Anna visited us for a week here in Dijon. She was lucky enough to combine her visit with a conference in Konstanz, Germany she attended for work. Together we visited Annecy, the center of the former, until 1860, independent Duchy of Savoy. Annecy’s location close to the Swiss and Italian borders is reflected…
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Happy spring greetings from Burgundy! It’s been over two month since my last post, time for an update. First, a not so fun part. I thought I had prepared ourselves well and had everything researched and lined up for our life here, and then, at the end of January, our car insurance told me that…
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We’d only visited Paris 24 years ago for two days when the kids were young and for a while we’d been hoping to revisit the capital of our new home country and most visited city in the world. According to some sources, Paris had 44 Million visitors in 2022! With nothing on our calendar, this…
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Last week we took two days and basically counter clockwise cicumnavigated the entire Morvan, the roughly 60 by 30 miles, granitic, forested hills, nature preserve, west of Dijon. We wanted to explore some new towns and territory. Avallon, our first stop, has a nice, well kept up, typical Burgundian historic downtown with ramparts, and made…
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Lauri & I have enjoyed traveling to France since the 80s. Ten years ago, after our 2013 trip to Provence, Lyon, and Burgundy, the idea to live in France for retirement germinated. We knew we loved France, yet we didn’t want to be too far away from family and friends in Germany, nor did we…
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We received our keys on November 15th, and spent the first night in our apartment on November 17th. WOOHOO!!! It took longer then anticipated, yet as I have learned to say: Chaque jour, nous apprenons quelque chose de nouveau = Every day we are learning something new about living in France! On Tues November 7th,…
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Just a couple days left, and Lauri and I will be taking off with a one way ticket to Paris. What we know is that there should be a Peugeot waiting for us at the airport, – I am excited about our new French car! After a couple days with Werner & Nathalie in a…
Barney & Lauri's Burgundy & Beyond Adventure 