France
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Strasbourg
Last July, I visited Strasbourg for the first time in the context of a work trip. While the weather wasn’t great, Strasbourg was the perfect context for a meetup with my team: very walkable, great food options, and a hotel that had the coziness of a bnb with the advantages of a hotel. The city
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Paris
On the way back from Italy, we needed to go via Paris for an admin issue. During the 2024 Olympics … 😱 We were prepared for the worst, but it was actually the calmest we’d ever seen the city. It seemed that everyone avoided the city unless they were planning to see the Olympics. After
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Mâcon & Pierrelongue
A few months ago, we were in Europe for a bit. We spent about a month in Ypres, but my favourite part was a camping trip with my parents, and two of my siblings and their families. Because of the long drive and not knowing how Luca would handle it, we stopped in Mâcon, a
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Recap of my sabbatical
As I’m writing this first draft on 4 September, it is the last day of my sabbatical, a three-month paid leave Automattic give its employees every five years. Before I started my sabbatical, I asked several colleagues about their experiences. One of the most frequently recurring tips I heard was to not plan too much.
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Geneva and Clairvaux-Les-Lacs
After our camping trip, we wanted to break up the drive home. We found out my sister was staying near the Swiss Alps, so decided to drive through Geneva to Clairvaux-Les-Lacs. Next to strolling around the city and having some fondue, we enjoyed a refreshing dive in the lake.
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Camping en Provence
When I turned 16, I didn’t join on our family holiday, so I could work a student job over the summer. That year, my parents went to a camp site near the village of Pierrelongue for the first time. It’s the only camping they have been back to almost annually in the last years. Kim
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Marseille
Shortly after our visit to Avignon, we wanted to do another city trip. Neither Kim nor I had seen the Mediterranean Sea in France*, so we drove for a few hours to visit Marseille for the day. While the city looked amazing, it was just as hot as in Avignon, and we ended up only
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Avignon
After our short stop in Reims, we arrived in Pierrelongue for our camping trip. The closest big city to where we were camping, next to Orange, is Avignon. Next to being the city that has been the residence of the pope for about 70 years in the 14th Century, it each year hosts a theatre
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Reims
During my sabbatical, we were in Europe for three months. During those months, we went camping in the Provence with my parents and my brother’s family. In the next few posts, I’ll share some pics of the trips we made during those weeks. First off, on the drive to the South of France, we stopped
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Belgium, France and England
One of the big advantages of both Kim and me working remotely is that we aren’t tied to a single location. A few months ago, that meant that we were able to spend almost seven weeks in Europe without taking much leave. Itinerary I love living in South Africa, but at the same time, I do
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Syrian refugees & selective memory loss
There I was, sitting at a B&B, having breakfast. The other guests were a French elderly couple living in Durban. So the host and the guests started talking about Syrian refugees. “I had a chat with someone high up the ranks in the South African government,” our host explained to them. “We were supposed to have