As I settled into my morning mug of hot tea on the flybridge of our boat, I watched the frustrated parent geese take turns hopping from the water up to the top of the breakwater, a distance of about two-thirds of a meter (about 2 ft), obviously trying to teach the goslings how to exit the lake. Once on the wooden beam, a parent goose would honk as if to say, “You see, just do it like that.” Eleven earnest babies were paddling frantically, trying to do as they were instructed, but to no avail. “They are too tiny today,” I mused, “But next week one of them may shock the whole family by actually hopping out.”

This feathered brood is no casual family unit. In fact, they are apt to stay together for at least a year until they return together to this breeding ground, where the young will seek to mate and start their own families. Faithful to the end, Canada geese are known to mate for life and can live as long as thirty years.

Since I am also from North America, this avian family looked very familiar to me. However, seeing them in Europe was disorienting, so I surmised it must be a Scandinavian branch of the Canada goose family. My research proved I was wrong—the Canada goose is known to have arrived in Europe naturally. They migrate as many as 4,025 kilometers (2,500 mi) per season or 8,050 kilometers (5,000 mi) per year. Their usual migration altitude is 915 meters  (3,000 ft), but they have been observed as high as 8,850 meters (29,000 ft), where the temperature can be as low as -51º C (-60º F). Some ornithologists suggest that changes in the polar ice cap have made such transatlantic migration more possible.

I always get the shivers when these birds honk at me from above as they ply the silvery dawn sky in V formation. While bird-watching from the boat that morning, I knew I was watching something very special from my privileged perch.  But what I hadn’t realized is that all of us, except the goslings, had flown so far to get there!

After a nutritious breakfast of shredded apples, yogurt, and muesli, we wandered among the wildflowers and dairy cows to the hut next door. Cords and cords of perfectly cut firewood were artistically stacked against the rustic wood exterior, and cheesecloth hung on a line like laundry drying in the alpine sunshine. When we stepped inside, we felt as if we journeyed back 150 years in a time machine.

As if my childhood fantasy from reading Heidi (Johanna Spyri, 1880) had come true, inside the hut Heidi and Peter were making cheese together. This spunky young couple had not only milked the cows, they had poured the milk into a huge copper kettle and added bacterial cheese starter to form the curds (solids) and whey (liquid). By the time we arrived, Peter was using a large stringed utensil to carefully stir the pot filled with what looked like thick yogurt. Then he quickly placed logs on the fire, creating an intense blaze before swinging the large cauldron directly over the flame.

Heidi was working on a small batch of her own. We were enchanted as we watched her scoop out the curds with a swish of the cheesecloth, then drain and place them in round forms. Both cheese makers moved at a tireless pace that was only to increase in intensity as the summer wore on. They told us this was the first of many cheese huts they would be working throughout the season. In traditional fashion, they planned to move up the mountain with the herd as the snow melted and provided the necessary pasture. Heidi and Peter planned to be working as many as five huts by the end of the summer, and in addition to cheese making, Peter would be traveling to every hut twice a day to turn each precious round of Swiss cheese.

Traveling provides the most fabulous human connections. Their real names aren’t Heidi and Peter, but aren’t they absolutely adorable?

Christopher Columbus brought chocolate back to Spain from the New World in 1502, and Switzerland didn’t even open its first chocolate factory until 1819. Chocolate comes from our side of the Atlantic in the first place, and Americans have had some 200 years to get with the program. So I’m grieving those Swiss frogs every time I open a plain old bar of zebra-striped, orange-flavored, American milk chocolate or eat another chocolate rose. I can’t even bring myself to look at one more foil-wrapped chocolate Santa or another chocolate bunny. Yawn.

Well, it’s clear to me the Swiss have their priorities in order. Even though they didn’t give women the vote until 1971 and they have questionable banking practices for handling the money of the world’s rich and infamous, they know their chocolate. The Swiss consume 54 percent of the chocolate they produce with a per capita consumption of a whopping 11.5 kilograms (25.4 lbs) per person per year. I’ll just betcha every Swiss person eats at least one of those frogs every year. That does it—I’m applying for Swiss citizenship.

Trying to find our way to Sancerre on bicycles, my husband and I stopped to ask an elderly French woman for directions. With a twinkle in her eye, she pointed straight up to the sky and laughed before she indicated the correct route. By the time we arrived sweaty and breathless in the village square, up 312 meters (1,024 ft) from the Loire Valley, we understood her levity. Up on its own rocky little mountain, Sancerre was one of France’s best naturally fortified castle villages during the Middle Ages.

Sancerre’s central square includes a few cafes, two fine restaurants, many bulk French wine purveyors, and two bakeries that feature the town specialty, croquets de Sancerre. After entering one of the bakeries, I wanted the family-size, one-kilo (35.3-oz.) bag, but controlled myself and bought the 300-gram (10.6-oz.) bag for just €10. Because the cookies were far too fragile to carry all the way home, I fully intended to eat them all that night.

At dinner my husband was horrified by the thought of mucking up his beautiful glass of French wine by dipping a biscuit in it. Since I have always believed that cookies improve every meal, I enjoyed an appetizer of croquets de Sancerre dunked in Pouilly-Fumé. That night again proved my theory correct—cookies improve the appetite. After eating the entire bag of cookies, drinking half a bottle of wine, and enjoying a three-course dinner, I still had room for the cheese course before we careened back down the mountain on our bicycles. It goes to show that French wine with cookies does indeed improve the appetite.

The windmill creaked as the large blades swung around near a small door with a handwritten sign propped against the doorjamb. “Come up” was all it said in English.

I grabbed the handrails of what was more like a ladder than a staircase, and climbed up three stories until I came upon a miller smiling broadly and covered in flour. Happy to have visitors, he educated us about his 30-year contract on the municipally owned mill where he made his livelihood grinding wheat, barley, and hops for local breweries and bakeries.

The technology for windmills may have been brought to the Netherlands from the Middle East by the Crusaders in the 13th century. While that can’t be proven, it is clear that the Dutch fully developed the windmill. They built their economy and their lives with the help of the wind, making the Netherlands a major world power in the 17th and 18th centuries. Believe me, their lives still benefit from the wind. When we left the mill, we went to a flowerbox café for some local brew—and we could taste the wind in our beer.

Four enthusiastic and friendly yodelers from the next table treated us to an unexpected demonstration. Two happy couples were on their way to the town of Interlaken to enjoy the 28th annual Swiss Yodeling Festival.

Yodeling was originally a form of communication between Alpine residents in neighboring villages. Yodelers used their voices in an extended note, dropping from a falsetto voice to a chest register. This high-low kind of vocalizing was a melodious and joyous sound that eventually became appreciated as music in addition to a method of communication. Yodeling as communication sounded impossible to me, until on our hikes, I realized that yodelers had the help of echoes. Plus, some of the villages are on cliffs less than 500 meters (1,600 ft) above the neighboring burg.

Although today yodeling is appreciated more as an art form, I guess we are still yodeling for each other. These days, however, we use social media instead of singsong voices. Never mind the method—we humans just love to communicate.

Vintage maps, including panoramic (bird’s-eye) views, are elegant and historic pieces of art found in many of the country’s best museum collections. These vintage art prints are high-quality digital scans of the actual antique maps.

The early days of mapmaking highlighted the pioneering spirit of a bygone era. Capturing the romance and wonder of the newly explored world, these classic maps represent the unbridled ambition, optimism, and excitement of the time.

Business leaders, politicians, and the military have used maps to exert their influence and define their ambitions. Newly established frontier towns in America used panoramic maps to attract settlers, and now you can purchase these vintage art reproductions to add to your decor, show a historic sensibility, or simply start a conversation.

1690 Map of the World

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My body was still tingling from the thunderous conclusion of the final piece, which seemed to vibrate my cells toward spiritual transcendence. The musician had certainly pulled out all the stops and played that magnificent, historic instrument perfectly. The sound was huge and the music compelling. I was weeping.

As tears spilled off my cheeks, I thought about the generations of talented women who have been denied audience and venue for their creative expressions. I thought specifically of the Asian people who have been brutally discriminated against in Western culture. For me, in that moment, that young woman symbolized an enormous amount of cultural evolution and I felt immense gratitude. In the last 40 to 50 years, women and minorities in the West have broken through many barriers in culture and the arts.

After the concert, I met this inspiring musician on the historic front steps of that famous church. I tried to thank her in English, but this being Geneva, she only spoke French.