It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

This song, which dates back to 1967 and still makes it into the annual top ten of the Global Billboards, refers to the Christmas holidays.

From our point of view, there is only one time that is even more beautiful: the time between the years.

The old year’s date is still on the calendar and in the usually quieter days there is time to think about how to make the new year, which is promisingly just around the corner, one of the best years yet.

Instead of higher, faster, further

Stop&Go offers the chance to pause and change something at every stop. The new year can be lighter, quieter and louder instead of higher, faster and further.

“Life is only possible reinvented“

says the Brazilian poet Cecília Beneide de Carvalho Meireles.

Stop&Go mode

We are delighted with the skills of our tailoring department: Insert a new lining into a coat? Alter complicated dresses? Tears in trouser seams? No problem at all.

Sometimes, however, a new piece is required. Since exceptional style combined with the highest fabric quality is important to us and luxury fashion is booming to such an extent that the price of a simple skirt can easily reach the level of a used small car and/or be made of one hundred percent polyester, bespoke tailoring will be the order of the day in the coming year.

There are tailors and dressmakers in every city who have access to good fabrics and we are already looking forward to saving a lot of time that we would otherwise have spent on various websites in times of sales.

As with any project, a precise briefing is important for success. With the outstanding exhibitions of Alexander McQueen and Yohji Yamamoto at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in mind and in the exhibition catalogs respectively, as well as the plan to see the Christian Dior exhibition in Paris and Tokyo, there is no shortage of excellent templates.

Stop&Go nutrition

We love to garden, but in many nurseries there is only a small selection of seedlings for vegetables. Most of it seems to come from a few large farms and is tried and tested, but also square, practical and a bit boring.

Hence the plan for the new year to not only have the Michelin Guide in my luggage on my next trip to Switzerland, but also to visit two or three addresses on the return journey that are listed on the pro specie rara homepage.

Pro specie rara is the Swiss foundation for the cultural-historical and genetic diversity of plants and animals.

Their homepage lists many nurseries, some of them picturesque castle gardens that would be worth a trip on their own, and the dates of markets in cities such as Zurich, Lucerne, Basel or Winterthur where you can buy seedlings of old vegetable varieties.

Variety of cabbages © ProSpecieRara

Amish Pasta, for example, an aromatic tomato variety that Amish people brought from Switzerland to the USA in the 18th century, and which returned to Switzerland to Pro specie rara in 1995. An aromatic but pressure-sensitive tomato variety that doesn’t stand a chance in the trade, but does in our garden.

Together with homemade pasta, a highly promising culinary year is just around the corner. Pasta Grannies, the book of Italian grandmothers’ recipes that we reported on, has now been published as a second volume.

This time, there are also a few grandfathers sharing their recipes. The second volume also makes you want to try it yourself just by leafing through it.

Stop&Go Travel

The ICE is our second home and is usually unbeatable for business trips, despite all the breakdowns and urgently needed improvements.

We don’t rave about rail travel in Germany. But when we think of rail travel in Portugal, Scotland, Japan, Sri Lanka and Switzerland, our hearts beat faster: punctual, spotlessly clean, often with an interesting gastronomic offer that is not a “last alternative” but a pleasure, with comfortable seats and with charming historical or fantastic new buildings at stations.

Swapping cars or planes for unique rail journeys, such as the Gornergratbahn, which takes you up to the Riffelhaus at an altitude of 2,548 meters, is a good way forward.

If you fancy traveling by train and would like to browse through the pages, you will find plenty of inspiration in Der Passagier, a new magazine about train travel.

And while the first snowflakes usually make us think of Austria or Switzerland, we can no longer resist the many fantastic pictures we have seen this year of the wintry places in Latvia and Estonia: Advent 2023 in the Baltics.

Stop&Go Fitness

The old fitness trail is now called the exercise trail, as we discovered on our walks over the Christmas holidays.

But it’s not just the name that has changed, many of the pretty machines in the most beautiful landscape make you want to try them out and combine running with exercises on them.

Some municipalities have invested here in recent years and it would be a shame to let this go to waste.

Stop&Go culture

Our archive is stacked with program booklets from operas, concerts, oratorios and theater productions.

When we look back on the year that is drawing to a close, the cultural events we remember best are those that we experienced together with friends.

It often only takes an initiative, the arrangement of a date and a shared interest in jazz, rock or madrigals. As soon as the tickets for Glyndebourne, the Baloise Session or the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival are reserved, everything else will fall into place.

Stop&Go Ukraine

Even if we are sometimes criticized for our uncompromising stance on this point. We see only one option on this important issue: Russia go home.

We are delighted about the media attention that President Volodymyr Zelensky is receiving for his tireless global activities on behalf of his country at the end of the year, such as being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2022.

But the media caravan is moving on quickly, while our friends from Neuss hilft e.V., for example, are still tirelessly sending generators and sleeping bags to Ukraine. The people in and from Ukraine urgently need our support in many ways.

In the medium term, Ukraine fatigue and a halt to the delivery of aid of all kinds would also mean the end of opportunities in Europe to think about topics such as cultural festivals, rare vegetable varieties or fitness equipment in the park.

We wish you a happy end to the old year and all the best for the coming new year.

Photographs & illustrations © GloriousMe