Octoturtle Sabbatical

Wow, we’re back in San Francisco! We landed exactly one week ago. For me, it’s been a whirlwind roller coaster of happily seeing friends and family, missing Berlin and my friends there, basking in the beautiful California sunlight and nature, frustration at the terrible public transit and lack of density,…

<Post written by Bryan & Joanna> As 2020 begins, we’re looking ahead to the next chapter, after our wandering sabbatical year in Berlin. One of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves is where to call home. We acknowledge how incredibly lucky and privileged we are to have the opportunity to…

<This post is by Joanna.> Before we came to Berlin, I told Bryan all about how cold it was, and how it might never get more than a degree or two above freezing in January or February. And yet, here we are in mid-January, and it’s been so warm I…

The Bundesrat is Germany’s Senate, and it’s different from the US Senate in a number of significant ways. Like the US Senate however, it has a couple of very important purposes: The US has slightly weakened item #2, as Senators are now directly elected (they weren’t originally). But they still…

Having lived in both the US and Germany, I’ve felt that the German government just functions better. Some of that is likely due to Germany being a smaller and more homogeneous country. But I think they also have a better constitution (sorry, U.S. founders…). Let’s start with the German equivalent…

<Bryan rant on> Let me start by giving an unconventional answer. As I travel, I hear many people talk about how places are very different. Germans are efficient and socialist or Americans are materialistic and capitalist. They give supporting anecdotes and stories. This kind of answer doesn’t represent how I…

While we travel this year, we hope to experience communities that have not been a part of our life in San Francisco. We hope you have a chance to travel with us as we try to find ways to share our experience with you from afar. Back in January, as…

Long time no see! Sorry we haven’t been very good about posting here… But I really do plan to post again soon!! In the meantime… We are very very briefly in the bay area for a friend’s wedding over the weekend. While we’re there, I’m planning to join the climate…

With all of our traveling, I sometimes get an environmentalist’s guilty conscience. We’re renting a Jeep SUV! And taking so many plane flights! And I still eat red meat!! This is against everything I supposedly stand for!!! I personally define values not as what we profess to care about, but…