The last time we visited Montepulciano, I had some really good pasta with meat sauce, along with a plate of salami and cheese served with honey and jam. I really enjoyed the combination of the salty cheese with the sweet toppings, and it made me quite interested in Tuscan food. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t very good on that trip, so we gave up on exploring more of the area. ...

Yesterday, after finishing our hike, we drove from Bozen to Verona and stayed there for the night. Today, we continued south towards Tuscany. We didn’t really have a detailed plan for Tuscany. We just wanted to drive around, eat good food, see some countryside, and visit a few cities along the way. But even before reaching Tuscany, Verona already felt quite different from Bozen. The way people talked felt more lively and expressive, and the food had changed too. We were no longer eating things like schnitzel. Pizza and pasta had taken over. ...

Yesterday, we saw Rosengarten from a distance while driving to Sassolungo. It looked quite impressive, and since it was also close to our hotel, we decided to go and have a closer look today. The night before, I checked the Carezza website and found that a day pass was only €39. It covered all the lifts in the area, so it seemed like a good deal. There was also free parking at the Welschnofen cable car station. ...

Today we went to Forcella del Sassolungo to try the small cable cars, which are nicknamed “coffin cable cars.” We were staying at a hotel in Nova Levante, so getting there meant quite a lot of driving through the mountains. The road was beautiful, especially on the way to Canazei. I turned on my camera and started recording the winding roads. When we finally reached the top, I thought I had recorded enough, so I turned it off. ...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my decision to take German more seriously and attend intensive courses at a language school. Read more about that decision → Before starting the course, I also wanted to build a small tool to help me practice speaking German more regularly. The Problem I found two main problems while learning German. Speaking is difficult without enough practice Most of my German speaking is still limited to everyday situations. I don’t often have the chance to speak at length or express my opinion about a particular topic. ...

Before this trip, most of our trips in Switzerland were about hiking and mountains. We would drive to a place, park the car, and then continue by cable car or on foot. This time, we wanted to try something different. While looking around on Google Maps, we noticed several mountain roads south of Lucerne. Routes 2, 19, 6 and 11 formed a big loop through the mountains, starting and ending around Wassen. ...

We went hiking in Switzerland again last weekend. This time, we chose the hike from Grütschalp to Mürren. He had done this hike before when he was on a business trip. He wanted to do it with me, so we planned to go together. We had planned this hike a few times this year, but the cable car from Lauterbrunnen to Grütschalp was under maintenance. Walking from Lauterbrunnen to Grütschalp would have been too tiring, so we gave up each time. ...

Since moving to Germany, I have spent a lot of time doing things I enjoy. Alongside exploring AI applications and machine learning on my own, I have traveled a lot and visited most of the Schengen countries, experiencing a way of life very different from the one I knew in Shanghai. Looking back, though, there is one thing I did not take seriously enough: learning German. For the most part, my German was good enough to get by. I could handle everyday situations, make appointments, and deal with basic paperwork. So I never felt a strong need to study it in a structured way. ...

We spent a week in northern France. Before the trip, our image of northern France came partly from movies: white cliffs, the sea, and small seaside towns with restaurants and hotels. Our first hotel was in Le Havre, near Étretat. On the way there, we talked a lot about a story we both knew from school, My Uncle Jules by Guy de Maupassant. I had always thought of Le Havre as the place in the story, or the place where the ship left from. ...

One weekend in June, we went to Grindelwald. We parked at Grindelwald Terminal and took the Eiger Express up. From there, we started walking towards the top of Männlichen. The three famous mountains — Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau — were behind us almost the whole way. Because of that, we kept turning around to look at them while walking. When we reached the viewpoint at the top of Männlichen, the three mountains were right in front of us. They looked huge and beautiful. The view was really impressive. ...