Boris and I spent the whole day yesterday entertaining one of my European colleagues: we went to Suomenlinna, walked around the city, ate a salmon soup for lunch, and finally made a reservation for a group dinner when other participants started to come.
The weather is just unbelievably sunny and there is almost no wind, even on Suomenlinna!
I can’t say that I forgot about the war yesterday – it’s impossible to forget, and we talked about it with everybody. However, this morning I received an unexpected email: the DevDays Europe conference in Vilnius, which we were going to attend in April, was converted to a virtual event due to all kinds of concerns, including the closeness to the conflict, even though Lithuania is in NATO.
I am not sure what I will do with this, from whether I am still going to present at the virtual event to whether I am going to fly to Helsinki anyway, or we will swap the trips with Boris. I know it’s a very small thing that has nothing even close to people getting killed, but I was like – how I am letting Putin disturb my life!
Even before that, we talked with Boris about how we see our future and the future of Russia. His point of view is even grimmer than mine, but I am starting to agree with him that unfortunately, no matter how and when this war will end, it won’t be the end of the current regime, same as the Winter War and the defeat of the USSR in it changed nothing. So we are thinking that he would be a “German scientist in exile” during WWII, until… I am still not ready to agree with him on what exactly this “until” is going to be but…
Hettie's Reflections 