Day 292 - Swiss Miss

A few months after graduating from college Doug and I packed up all of our belongings, drove them to Portland, and dropped them into a storage space.

The next day we jumped on a plane, and headed to Switzerland, where I would be paid to play volleyball, and Doug would coach and play basketball.

For the next 8 months we lived a dream life.  Spent our mornings wandering around Bern, evenings at practice, and one night a week we had a match.

We had a small television, that had two stations in English, CNN, and some other channel that played Bonanza re-runs.  Our evenings were spent watching a little TV, and then playing a ton of backgammon.

A few times a week my teammates would throw hours long fondue parties.  We would drink red wine, each a lot of bread and cheese, and try to understand each others various languages.

Our time in Switzerland was pre-internet, cell phones, Facebook.  If we wanted to communicate with loved ones it was either through letters or on the phone.

So basically we had each other.  It was a great way to spend our first year of marriage.

When our time in Switzerland was up, we moved to New York, for what we thought was the summer.  Doug and I were going to get internships, and then head back to France where I had a contract to play with another team.

Within a few weeks Doug had landed a job he had always dreamed of, working on the trading floor of the Stock Exchange.  And somehow I ended up with a job at Ralph Lauren (that is a story for another day).

Three months later we had to decide what we were going to walk away from.  My athletic career, or the first break in our new careers.

Doug left the decision up to me - completely.  When I would try to get him to weigh in, he would refuse.  His thinking was he did not want me to ever feel that he made me give up my athletic dreams.

We will never know what would have happened if we had walked away from New York and all its possibilities, to go spend another year in Europe.  It is interesting to contemplate.

I know either life would have been amazing.