Well, here we are, another year is drawing to a close, and it’s time to take stock. We really like this little tradition because it lets us hit the pause button to gain a bit of perspective, reflect on the year, and set ourselves new goals for the year to come. By the way, if you’re interested, you can read the 10 previous year-end reviews here (heads up, it’s a bit long ;)).
Since we started our mountain coliving project, our quiet life as travel bloggers has changed quite a lot. Gone are the days of working behind a computer, 100% flexibility, traveling whenever we feel like it, and so on… We’ve turned into renovation pros (well, seasoned amateurs), community managers, building a new business, and surrounding ourselves with new people, and so on.
2025 was once again mostly focused on Alpiness Coliving, with a fantastic winter season, five months of intense renovations, and a reopening for the autumn–winter season. But I believe that for the first time, we can say we’re where we had imagined we’d be when we bought this former hotel in 2023… Let’s get on with our 2025 recap:
Our year 2025 in images
January till end of March: Winter in Val d’Hérens
This year we tried for the first time not to close the coliving for the holidays. So it was great (we even had a wild New Year’s Eve party!) but we probably won’t repeat the experience because it was a bit too intense. One thing we’ve learned in three years is that we also need to build in periods of “social rest” to be the best versions of ourselves when the coliving is open. So from now on we’ll take at least two weeks off every Christmas–New Year.
The rest of winter was pretty perfect in our beautiful Val d’Hérens! We again had an awesome team in the coliving, a lot of POW, a generous sun, and lots of good vibes 🙂 . My highlights from last winter will have been:
- The crazy New Year’s Eve party
- An introduction to biathlon with the whole coliving crew
- The local cross-country ski race, with almost everyone from the coliving taking part
- Evenings spent chilling out together in the living room
- Ski touring outings, each one more incredible than the last
April to the end of August: 3rd round of renovations at Alpiness and moving out.
From April through the end of August we closed the coliving space for our third round of renovations (we really hope it’s the last for a good while). This time, we called in professionals to redo the entire roof, fully insulate the outside of the building, and replace all the windows (we’re not quite pros enough to do all that yet, lol).
On our end, we took care of the renovation management (it’s not as easy as it sounds), renovated two bathrooms, redid the interior window casings, sanded and varnished all the balcony railings, built a few new pieces of furniture, and gave a fresh coat of paint to quite a few spots…
As with our first two renovation phases, we’ve again invited people to stay for free at the coliving space in exchange for a bit of help with the renovations. We really like this collaborative way of working, and it always make us meet new, amazing people.
Honestly, we didn’t run into any major problems, but renovations are still periods that feel very intense and energy-draining… But we’re really happy with the result! From the outside, our building looks brand-new, and the interior is much more comfortable thanks to the insulation and the new windows.
Oh yes, during this period we also found a fantastic apartment 100 meters away from the coliving (with an incredible view of the Dent Blanche from the balcony). Since one of our main goals for 2025 was to find a better balance between our private life and the coliving, we jumped at the opportunity and moved in during the renovations. In hindsight, we’re really happy to have our own apartment, and it’s been a very positive change! It also allowed us to make our old apartment available to our volunteers (in the same building as the coliving), which also improves our volunteers’ quality of life.
And not to mention, we’ve got an insane view from our balcony over the village and the Dent-Blanche… the perfect spot for summer aperitivo 🙂
I’ll also treasure a wonderful memory of our week volunteering at the CIME festival, where we guided for a few days an entire tribe from Papua New Guinea with our friend Patricia. During this festival, we also had the honor of being invited to parade for the first time in the traditional Evolène costume. It was great because my family came to the event, and my cousins on my father’s side were also parading in the traditional costume of a neighboring valley.
Finally, two more days that come back to my mind:
- Hiking up to the Tsaté mountain pasture for our neighbor Pierre’s Inalpe celebration. It was just a beautiful day, sharing a meal with them, seeing the mix of cows, the cow fights. Thank you so much for the invitation, Pierre!
- The post-renovation party with all the builders and neighbours. An evening that marked the end of an intense period of renovation and the beginning of a new chapter for Alpiness.
September – October: Alpiness reopening and roadtrip to Portugal
Literally two days after the scaffolding was removed (thankfully we had planned for a month’s buffer in the renovation schedule), we reopened the coliving for the autumn season. Just enough time to welcome our colivers and kick off the season properly with our dream team (Louis, Lucie, Carmen, Austris), before loading up the van and Winchy for three weeks of well-deserved holidays in Portugal.
This vacation felt so good! We got a bit of a heat shock when we arrived in the Algarve (it was 37°C when we arrived), but the temperatures cooled off quickly, making us very happy. We started by exploring the south, slowly making our way up toward Lisbon (not really visiting the capital… with Winchy and the van it’s never that easy to do cities). Then we continued toward the Douro Valley and Peneda-Gerês National Park, our two highlights of this trip.
You can find all of our blog posts about our road trip in Portugal on the page below. We haven’t published everything yet, but it shouldn’t take us too long until we finish.
November – December: From autumn to winter in our mountains
After three weeks on the road, we were happy to come back to our valley at its most beautiful: during autumn, when the larch trees turn completely orange. At the coliving we meet people we know well (some returning for the third or fourth time) as well as some new faces. Anyway, we’re taking advantage of the nice weather to hike, climb, trail run, or just enjoy the incredible scenery… life at Alpiness, you know!
Then slowly the cold settles in and the first snows begin to fall (to be honest, I strapped on skis for the first time this year on November 3rd, lol). We don’t have time to get bored at the coliving space because there’s always something going on: Thanksgiving, Halloween party, skiing, climbing, via ferrata, Lausanne half marathon, game nights or movie nights… and boom, it’s already the end of the year 😉
Our 3rd year of coliving in review
Let’s not sugarcoat it, our third year of coliving has been incredible. It was a potentially tricky year, with renovations that forced us to close Alpiness for five months (instead of the three initially planned), including July and August, which are high season months for us.
But aside from the weeks before the coliving opened and before it closed, we came close to 100% occupancy in every month we were open. We weren’t particularly surprised by the winter months or September–October, but we didn’t expect to have so many people in November or December (it’s pretty crazy and well beyond our expectations).
Obviously we were a little afraid of the renovations, of the potential problems we could encounter, of losing a lot, both financially and energy-wise, by the time the coliving opened, burned out by the renovations… But in the end, almost everything went as planned!
Let’s do a quick point-by-point assessment:
The dream team without whom nothing would be possible.
A project like Alpiness only works thanks to a few invaluable people who are fully committed and who find meaning through their involvement.
Louis & Lucie
Our rocks! When they’re in the house, everything runs like clockwork, and we trust them 2000%. In 2025, they were already there at the start of the year, then joined us during the renovations to take over starting with the coliving opening in September through the end of the year. They are top-notch people who take care of others, of the house, who get involved, and we can always count on them.
At this point, we consider them family, true friends you meet rarely in life. To be honest, I have a bit of a hard time imagining Alpiness without them, and we often tease them about their plan to move to Canada. But no matter what happens, we’re so grateful for their involvement and we make the most of every moment by their side.
Obviously we hope they will settle in the valley someday, that they become part of the wider community in the long run, that we can work with them in one way or another in the future. But in any case, we wish them to realize their wildest dreams and we thank them for all they’ve done for us.
Austris
Still as positive and passionate about mountains as ever, he has now found an apartment a five-minute drive from the coliving, in Evolène. It’s hard for us to imagine Alpiness without him, either! He’s been there since the beginning of the adventure, and he brings a lot to the coliving with his incredible energy, his sense of community, and his desire to share his passion for mountain activities.
Just like Louis and Lucie, he’s part of the family, and we’re so grateful to be able to count on a friend like him. Obviously, we hope that he’ll stay in our beautiful valley for a long time to come, and that he will help build the future of Alpiness with us.
From a more personal point of view, Austris and Louis are also incredible adventure partners. And I’m very grateful to have them by my side to go explore our beautiful mountains, both in winter and in summer! We have some really great goals we’d love to achieve together, and I’m so excited to share these moments with them 🙂
Carmen
It’s already the third time she’s come back to help us at the coliving after the first two winters. This time she really impressed us with her willingness to learn French and to meet people from the village. She started making French coffee every week with one of our retired neighbors and launched a WhatsApp group with locals… She really blew us away!
She may no longer be a volunteer at Alpiness, because her graphic design business has really taken off (Big up Carmen!). But something tells me we’ll certainly see her again in LH (Les Haudères, for the insiders), and perhaps she’ll even settle around here to become part of the broader coliving community. We’re rooting for you, Carmenita!
And all the others
Obviously I haven’t forgotten all the other people who came to help us during the renovations: Giulia, Sophia, Tracy, Alberto, Cso, Yanzhu, Alina, Nolwenn, Manu, Jaume… But also Olivier, our renovation coach, the various companies that renovated our building (Pralong-Moix, Ed-Bovier, Zanacolor, Métrailler), Nicolas who helped us with the building permits… Without you, none of this would have been possible!
Our renovations in review
As for the renovations, everything went pretty smoothly, to be honest! I mean, we didn’t have too many unforeseen issues, the constructions finished just before the reopening (we’d allowed ourselves a month’s margin 😉 ), and we’re super happy with the result! Obviously it was a stressful and draining period, but we managed it pretty well with Fabienne. On my end I was supervising the renovations, while Fabienne was handling the schedules, making the most precise planning documents in the world. There’s nothing like good teamwork to see a project like this through.
I think the key points of these successful renovations have been:
- Choosing reliable companies: Before this round of major work, we had already hired a few contractors for smaller jobs. These experiences (in addition to feedback from acquaintances in the valley) helped us choose companies that gave us the impression they could meet deadlines and do good work. We would like to thank Ed-Bovier, Pralong-Moix, Zana Color, and Philippe Métrailler for their excellent work.
- Excellent planning of the work thanks to our friend Nico, who helped us enormously with the permit applications and was always available to answer our questions.
- Intense follow-up of the construction site: Even with carefully selected contractors, miracles don’t happen, and you have to constantly check in with the workers, make phone calls, ask questions, understand, update schedules, provide precise plans, communicate, etc.
There you have it, you know the secret to successful renovations 😉
As for the work we’ve done ourselves, we’re starting to get the hang of it. All the plastering, painting, building small pieces of furniture, sanding, varnishing… we can handle. And whenever there’s something we’re not 100% sure how to do, we call on Olivier, our renovation coach, who trains us and teaches us the necessary skills (this time, renovate two bathrooms and the plumbing that goes with them ;)).
What about our colivers?
I believe that, with only a few rare exceptions, we continue to attract the right people to coliving. All different people of course, but mostly open-minded, who work remote, who are looking to meet new people, who love nature, outdoor activities, evenings spent chatting in the living room… And that’s pretty cool, because those people have many things in common, connect naturally with each other, and that makes it much easier for us to build a tight-knit community.
For the moment we’re also lucky not to have any trouble filling up the coliving (I think we are a around 95% occupancy… let’s hope that lasts). That frees our minds to focus on the things that really matter, such as facilitating the community within the coliving, improving our processes as a team, or getting involved in broader projects like the Trava coworking space or the Evolène cinema.
We were talking about it already last year, but we still have clients who came back three to four times, some even thinking about settling in our beautiful valley. After Tobias, Lore, Marta… Robert took the plunge, moving in for now with Austris. But if the planets align, others could join them as well (isn’t that right, Carmen, Jorien, Annie?).
It’s obviously one of our dreams: to convince enough people to live in our beautiful valley on the long term. It would be good for our village, which would see new “young people” settle in, and for us, because it would give us a circle of stable coliving people who are there most of the year.
Our region already has a lot to offer, but what will make people stay in the long term is the presence of a dynamic community on site with whom these people could form connections. for this to happen, we need to convince a small group of “pioneers” (8-10 people) to get the ball rolling. Believe it or not, we’re not far from it since there are Fabienne, me, Austris, Marta, Robert, Tobias, Lore… and perhaps Jorien, Carmen or Annie (Louis, Lucie? 😉 ).
Anyway, we keep this idea in mind as a long-term goal… and if you have any suggestions to help us make it happen, we’re all ears.
Our Public Coworking Space Trava
The Trava Coworking space has existed for a year now. To remind you of the concept, the idea was to create a public coworking space (and also to people from the coliving community) but also a third place in the center of our village where anyone can easily organize events. For us, one of the goals of this space is not to create a bubble with our colivers but to also have a space where locals, tourists, colivers… could organize things together but also work during the day.
For now, I would say that where we stand with Trava is positive, but we still have a lot of work to do to energize this space. The positive points are the following:
- The association’s finances are healthy thanks to the support of the municipality, which allows us to use this space free of charge.
- We have a few local members who come to work regularly at the coworking space.
- During vacation periods, there are regularly people from the camping or other tourists who come to work.
- We organized 6-7 events during this first year (considering that we had 5 months of intense work at the coliving space, that’s not bad).
- The space has been rented by other people for avalanche courses, yoga classes, etc.
- Our colivers regularly use this space to work.
For the more negative points:
- For the moment, people involved in co-living are the main users of the space… we haven’t really managed to attract other people yet.
- We have room for a lot more people in the coworking space and we need to think about ways to promote the space (local businesses, coworking platforms, universities).
But we have a few ideas for dynamise the space a bit. We’ve started organizing a monthly board game night with a few locals from the village. The great thing about board games is that anyone can participate (even the folks living in the coliving who don’t necessarily speak French), it’s easy to organize, and it helps you meet new people without any hassle.
But if you have ideas for livening up a space like that, don’t hesitate to let loose in the comments.
Fabienne is trying to revive Evolène’s cinema.
This year, Fabienne has also embarked on a new project with a few other people from our village: to bring Evolène’s cinema back to life. Yes, yes, you read that right, we really do have a modern, fully equipped movie theater in the village of Evolène, an infrastructure that had been barely used.
That’s how Andres, Fabienne, Margaux, and Benjamin rolled up their sleeves to create an association, learn how to use the cinema, and forge connections with movie distributors to offer a varied program three times a week to the residents of the region. From now on, we can see the latest blockbusters (Marvels, Disney and the like), arthouse films, children’s films, documentaries… all of it right in Evolène with fresh popcorn 🙂 … If that isn’t cool!
The project was launched this fall and, for now, is a pretty nice success. There are certainly flops, as in all cinemas (but also some great successes)… But since our cinema operates thanks to the help of many volunteers, there is no need to sell out every movie to break even 😉 For more information, you can take a look at the Evolène cinema’s website (made by me, I’m the association’s webmaster 😉 ).
And what about us in all this?
Well, I think we’re doing pretty well! With the move to our new apartment, the Sunday evenings we keep for just the two of us, I think we’ve taken a big step toward a better balance between our couple and the coliving life. We’ve also managed to take real vacations thanks to the awesome team around us, but we’re still as happy as ever to come back to our beautiful valley and the coliving life.
To avoid repeating ourselves and turning this into a long-winded article, I’ll let you read our personal thoughts with Fabienne and me a bit further down in the article, where we talk about all of this in more detail 😉
Our blogging year in review
Aside from our five months of renovations where we were really focused on that, we managed to devote more time to the blog again this year. We wrote more than 20 new articles (our goal was to write about two per month) and updated a lot of old content (with the help of Hélène, of course!).
This year we treated ourselves to a great road trip in Portugal, and Fabienne has already shared quite a few articles on it. On my end, I’ve started writing more and more about ski touring (an activity I’m passionate about), and I’ve been working quite a bit with Hélène to update our travel insurance posts (work in progress).
It’s been 13 years now since we started sharing our adventures with you on the blog… and we have no plans to stop anytime soon. Both the coliving and the travel blog are passion projects, and money has never been our main motivation. What motivates us above all is to deliver value, to create things that have meaning (and usually revenue follows as well).
With this mindset, what motivates us with the blog is sharing our passion for travel and outdoor activities. It’s about creating articles packed with practical information to inspire you and help you plan your projects (and also to keep a record of our own travels). Juggling these two projects has pushed us to make choices, eliminating what made less sense to us (like social media) in order to focus on what, in our view, brings you the most value.
Novo-monde figures for 2025
As we spend the majority of our energy to creating content on the blog (and not on social media), most people visit our site when they do searches on sites like Google, but also now via AI tools. 85% of Novomonde’s traffic arrive via search engines, and 14% come to the site directly by clicking on links from other websites.
Compared with 2024, the downward trend unfortunately continues. We have again seen a 15% decrease in the number of visitors (1,100,000), even though the number of views remains more or less stable (-3% for 2,400,000 views).
Another observation this year is that our english traffic (orange line) is closing in strongly on our french traffic (46% for En and 54% for Fr). The decline in our site’s traffic is mainly due to a substantial decrease in french traffic (-30%), while the En side has risen by 20%.
Who knows why our French-speaking traffic is more affected by Google’s algorithm updates… Like last year, let’s be honest: we don’t really understand Google’s numerous updates or their guidelines anymore.
As far as we’re concerned, we’re not shocked to see our traffic drop a bit, since with the coliving we indeed have less time to spend on the blog. We do our best, but we post less on social media, we travel less, and we’re certainly less cited than before by other sites (since we’re less present).
But all the same, I get the sense we’re not doing that badly. I recently came across this ranking that lists travel blogs according to Similarweb’s traffic estimates (it’s a valid way to compare sites). The thing that struck me the most is that many of the blogs that had very high traffic 3-4 years ago have completely disappeared from the top of the ranking… and there are relatively few sites that still manage to have a substantial audience.
Anyway, these observations don’t demotivate us all the same, and on Novo-monde you can still expect firsthand, authentic experiences, blog posts written with 0% AI and 100% by our own hands, van life, hikes, mountains… always with simplicity and good cheer. There you go 😉
Hélène is helping us more than ever
For the third year in a row, one can say without a doubt that the team member who has worked the most on the blog is, once again, Hélène. I think it’s largely thanks to her that our audience hasn’t collapsed. She does a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and this year she has:
- updated all our posts about Argentina
- updated all our posts about China (which was no small feat)
- wrote a post about zero-waste travel
- tackled the big task of travel insurance with me
- and lots more…
Together with her partner Xavier, they came back to visit us this summer at the coliving for two months (the month before the end of the renovations and the opening month). It’s always a real pleasure to welcome them in our mountains, and it gives us the opportunity to discuss and work on our projects in person.
Even though I think we kept our promise to take the blog more seriously again in 2025 (especially in the second half of the year), in 2026 we should increase the pace even more. No more coliving renovations, which should give us the chance to set new projects and goals for the blog.
Thanks again for the quality of your work, your suggestions, our discussions, Hélène… somehow it’s already been three and a half years since we started collaborating, and it’s still as much of a pleasure! (it’s a bit hard to imagine Novo-monde without you on the team now 😉 )
Blog financial review in 2025
On the financial side, we haven’t changed the way we work. There are still no ads displayed on our blog, and we don’t partner with destinations (things like blog trips and press trips). All of our revenue comes from affiliate marketing and the sale of our print and digital books (which gives us complete editorial freedom).
On the paper book side, we’ve seen a small 12% drop in sales… which is actually pretty good since we haven’t published new books in a while. Beer hiking in France continues to sell super well despite its seven years of life, and Beer hiking in Brittany isn’t bad either. On the ebooks side, Fabienne has released a new one about traveling smart in Switzerland, and our other ebooks continue on their way:
- Beer hiking in France: 4,735 copies sold (total 42,800)
- Beer hiking in Brittany: 1,470 copies sold (total 6,560)
- Destination tour du monde: 325 copies sold (total 8,600)
- Guide to the Dents du Midi tour: 150 copies sold (total 700)
- The savvy travel guide to Switzerland: 50 copies sold
- Via Alpina: the complete guide: 34 copies sold (total 550)
- Our guide to hikes in the Chablais: 14 copies sold (total 215)
On the affiliate side, we’ve experienced an overall 20% decline. This result mainly comes from a drop in travel insurance sales and, to a lesser extent, from sales on Snowleader’s site or AllTrails. But we’re working on it, and we’ll see what next year brings.
Goals for our blog in 2026
For the travel blog, here are a few goals we have for 2026:
- Go on a two-month road trip in Norway (mid-April to mid-June) and tell you all about it on the blog. If you have any recommendations, we’d love to hear them 😉
- Start translating our website into German. It’s going to take a lot of work, but it makes a lot of sense since we have a lot of content about Switzerland (and Europe in general) and Fabienne is perfectly bilingual.
- Finish updating all our content on travel insurance.
- Continue to publish an average of two new posts per month.
Carbon footprint
I must admit I no longer quite know what to write in this section of the report, given how much our era scares me on this front. We still continue to do our part from an individual perspective (no flying in 2025, a 99% vegetarian diet, buying second-hand when possible, thermally renovate the coliving building) because it simply doesn’t make sense to us to live without taking care of this common that is our beautiful planet.
Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that the world as a whole has largely decided to do the opposite. There are openly climate-skeptical presidents, democracy retreating in countries like the United States or France (to name just a few), record numbers of people flying for the holidays, divided societies where it is impossible to engage in normal discussion anymore… The “big picture” is really disheartening to behold!
To avoid blowing a fuse like during COVID, I pay far less attention to all international news, which is absolutely depressing (or insane, you choose). I prefer to devote most of my energy to building this community in our mountain village. For me, it’s a life saver to fully invest myself in a project that makes sense, to the point where I no longer pay too much attention to the nth latest crazy news of the day.
Ben’s personal review
It’s been almost three years now since we moved to the small village of Les Haudères in Val d’Hérens (we bought our building in April 2023) and since we launched into the crazy Alpiness coliving adventure. At that moment, we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to create on paper, but it still had to be done! So if someone had told me that by the end of 2025 our building would be completely renovated, that the coliving would boast an occupancy rate of over 90%, that we would be surrounded by incredible people to take care of Alpiness, that we would already have created our shared workspace outside of the coliving… I would have obviously signed right away!
It’s also the first time in three years that we don’t have any big renovation projects on the horizon. Sure, we’ve learned a ton of things by renovating our building ourselves, and it’s incredibly satisfying… but renovations are also very energy-draining and stressful. So I’m not unhappy about being able to leave the tools in the basement for a while and focus on other things 😉
Let’s talk about the other things 😉
One area I had already wanted to work on over the past two years was finding a better balance between life at the coliving, our life as a couple with Fabienne, work on the blog, and travel. On this point, I think we took a step forward this year by moving into a separate apartment right next to the coliving (and Austris did the same by finding an apartment in Evolène). We were incredibly lucky because it’s really the perfect apartment for us, with a nice living room and a fireplace to chill by in the winter and an incredible balcony with a view of the Dent-Blanche for summer aperitifs.
We don’t necessarily spend a lot less time at Alpiness, but it allows us to have a quiet place to recharge our social batteries and spend time just the two of us (well, the three of us with Winchy)… which is obviously essential for us but also to be the best versions of ourselves when we’re at the coliving. So I won’t go so far as to say we’ve already found the ideal balance (I still sometimes fall asleep at 8 p.m. on Sunday nights during my date nights with Fabienne)… but I think we’ve already taken a big step in the right direction. Which is super important for making long-term community living sustainable.
Another point that seems important to me is that we keep surrounding ourselves with people like Louis, Lucie, and Austris, who are full-fledged members of the Alpiness family and who take care of this project as much as we do. We noticed it clearly when we came back from vacation with Fabienne, we were re-energized and once again motivated to get 100% involved in the house. We should be able to provide that balance to all members of the team. I think that if we can find a few more people who want to get involved in the project long-term (not necessarily 100%, but part of the year), it can only be beneficial for everyone (we have potential leads with Carmen, Annabelle, or Giulia 😉 ).
Inside the house, there’s also a topic that interests me: how to encourage our colivers to get involved in organizing activities, to take care of the spaces, and to be active members of the community. In my view, the Alpiness team’s role isn’t to organize everything for the colivers (of course we’ll continue to propose things), but rather to facilitate, to support initiatives, and to put in place a framework that encourages people to be proactive and to organize activities among themselves.
For example, our Thursday night family meeting (the time we all sit down together on Thursday night after dinner to organize our week) is a key moment. During this time, everyone has the opportunity to voice their expectations for the coming week, to suggest things, and it’s during this meeting that the bulk of our weekly planning is organized. But I’m sure there are other things we could put in place to improve these behaviors (if you have any suggestions I’m all ears).
And outside the home, there are two areas where I’d like to be more active in the coming months and years:
- How can we expand the wider coliving community (i.e., colivers who decide to settle in our valley for at least part of the year)? One of the goals of our space is to make a small mountain village like Les Haudères interesting enough for “young people” like us to settle there long-term. And for that to happen, we need enough “pioneers” like Austris, Tobias, Laure, Marta, and Robert to take the plunge. What will encourage other people to settle in our valley (in addition to the beautiful scenery, outdoor activities, etc.) is above all the quality of the community they will find here. That’s why we’ve set up a “social pass” that allows people living here to access our public coworking space, the coliving common areas, our gym, and the events we organize.
- Organizing more events aimed primarily at local people, to better integrate into the village and “break the bubble” of the coliving. Projects like the Evolène cinema really help us do this and allow us to meet people we didn’t know before, outside the coliving sphere. We have also started organizing board game nights in French (because yes, in the coliving we always speak English) at the public coworking space. For now, we are still a small group with a few acquaintances from the village, but we hope that by being regular, this circle will grow over time.
As for the blog, I must say I’m excited to publish more regularly again. I must admit I was a bit frustrated over the last three years by not having enough mental space to work on Novo-monde. But the bulk of the renovations is now finished, and we’ll have more time for the blog. I’m particularly looking forward to sharing more content about my current passions, which are ski touring, climbing, and mountaineering in general. And if we head to Norway for two months in the spring, we should have quite a bit to tell you about 😉
Finally, to wrap up my assessment of a few more personal goals for 2026, I would like to:
- Climb Dent-Blanche next summer with Austris, Louis, and David on our own. If I keep doing so much trail running, climbing, etc., it’s also to get in shape for this kind of mission. And since Dent-Blanche (4,357 m) is truly the iconic peak of our valley, it’s a great goal to have. Also, to prepare for a goal like this, we’ll definitely be doing a lot of other outings beforehand, which will give us the opportunity to share even more moments in the mountains 🙂
- Continue to have a morning exercise routine when I wake up. I started doing stretches and strength training every day because of a (hopefully) minor issue with my lower back… And I think that if I want to continue enjoying all my hobbies for as long as possible, I should keep with this habit.
- To improve the weekly organization of my work. Over the past three years, I’ve noticed that with the increasing number of projects, I’m finding it difficult to switch quickly from one task to another without wasting time (especially since the context between coliving and blogging is quite different). My goal is to find a system that allows me to easily organize my tasks while leaving me some flexibility for the unpredictable nature of coliving 😉 . If you have any suggestions…
- Continue to enjoy our beautiful valley with Fabienne and all the other people who surround us every day. We have created an incredible life for ourselves in our mountains, and we shouldn’t forget to enjoy it 😉
Fabienne’s personal review
Hello hello,
And there we go again, as every year, I’m slipping my two cents into Ben’s yearly review post to share a bit more of my personal take on the past year. 🙂
2025 has once again been quite a year! To be honest, I am absolutely relieved that this year has marked the end of our renovations. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve taken a lot of pleasure in becoming a sort of MacGyver by learning a ton of new renovation skills over the last few years, but I also admit I’ve had enough with the sounds of tools, dust everywhere, and the financial uncertainty tied to the final budget. Yes, yes, the years have passed and I’m still the budget person in our relationship, whether it’s for trips or renovations. Well, the “good news” is that on the travel front I haven’t had to worry too much about our expenses, since we haven’t traveled a lot. 😉
Anyway, for me, 2026 feels a bit like the year of balance. As Ben said earlier, with renovations finished and a great team in place, we’re starting to get our heads above water and to focus more on our daily balance in the mountains. By the way, speaking of balance, I still have trouble defining it precisely, but one thing is certain: there will be some coliving, a sense of community, plenty of outdoor activities, more travel, time for two, a network of friends in the village, and projects aimed at settling permanently in our little valley.
As for the blog, I’m really happy to see that I’ve, so to speak, regained my mojo. I hinted at it in 2023, but the blog had somewhat become the “extra” thing in our life, which was already pretty chaotic. Deep down, I knew perfectly well it was a passing feeling, but I have to admit it feels good that my urge to write and share content has returned. Let’s not fool ourselves: the prospect of translating nearly 600 articles and pages into German is scary, but as one of our little Swiss politicians used to say back in the covid era: “we’ll do this as fast as possible, but as slowly as necessary” (a line to be read with a razor-sharp Swiss accent).
In 2026, I will also reach the 40-year mark. Not particularly sensitive to the idea of aging, this number still amuses me a little. I don’t know… an impression that at this ‘age’ you’re officially in the category of real adults, haha. Well, the good news is that since Ben is two years ahead of me, I can get an idea of what’s coming (and let’s be reassured, apparently the number 4 in age doesn’t instantly turn you into an old man). But I also think we can say that our life choices over these past twenty years have been pretty good. At (almost) 40, I’m in better shape than at 20 (thanks to all the mountain sports), less stressed than at 30 (city life is behind me), and probably still as full of ambitions and dreams as I was at 10.
Anyway, all that to say that 2025 will have been a wonderful year, and I’m super excited for what’s to come in the rest of the adventure. I’m also really eager to head off again on a bigger trip! This time, not so much because I want to leave home, but because I’m keen to rediscover a bit of the euphoria of adventure and nomadic life (and the little misadventures that come with it).
That said, all that’s left for us is to wish you a wonderful holiday season and, above all, a 2026 filled with adventures, laughter, and projects… and also balance (and kudos to those who have read this far ;))
And of course, please feel free to share your thoughts on this update in the comments. If we share all these things with you, it’s because your opinion matters to us and it helps us enormously to move forward with our projects 😉
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