A blessing of living by the lake.
Early Morning Biking
A blessing of living by the lake.
Author: Hettie D.
My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996.
I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future.
I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life.
As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.
Pride Month
Pride Month is over. I saw a little bit of the Pride Parade in Helsinki (it happened despite the rain, but I didn’t want to stay around for long in the rain).
It looks like Chicago’s Pride parade was great, and as many commentators mentioned, “more defensive.”
All the right people were there and calling for resistance:
While I was away, my Immigration Equality t-shirt had arrived, and when I came to work on Monday, I found a Pride t-shirt from our Pride Employee Resource Group. I like them both and hope to wear them next summer, but I am especially proud of my firm, which supports LGBTQ+ employees.
Haymarket Opera
When you live in Chicago, you never stop discovering new cultural institutions and new activities. I don’t remember where I learned about the Haymarket Opera Company, but when I read about them, I knew immediately that I wanted to see their performance at least once.
Today it finally happened – I attended the last performance of Artaserse – an opera written by Leonardo Vinci (no, the other one!) In today’s performance, all roles except for one (Mandane) were cast by male singers. The opera was four hours long! (Good thing it started at 6 PM!)
The venue is very close to where I live (on the Fullerton Campus of DePaul), so it’s just over 30 minutes door-to-door.
The concert hall is small and extremely convenient, with a perfect view of the stage from any seat.
The production was very true to history in terms of acting, set, and costumes – everything was like the operas were produced in the 18th century, and that’s what Haymarket Opera is famous for.
Another thing I noticed was that the audience felt like a very close community, with “their usual seats” and such, and people were greeting each other before taking their places. Still, I was not miserable about being an outsider (and I survived a four-hour opera – some patrons left during the second intermission!)
Flying Back
My last day in Helsinki was marked by a massive thunderstorm, so I wasn’t even able to take a picture of myself on the rock (my other traditional picture, which I was not able to take). In fact, it was probably the worst day of the whole vacation, weather-wise.
I was packing until the “one after last” minute, and we made it to the airport technically on time, but later than I planned. The airport was super-crowded (but we knew that would be the case). What I didn’t expect was a substantial line to the Priority desk (I was checking in one luggage). Fortunately, I am not just a Priority but Platinum, so I could go to another line with just two people in front of me.
The security check was fast and without issues. The passport control was new: there was a separate line for US, UK, Japan, and some other passports. They scanned the passports and took pictures, and after that, the border control officer still looked at me and my passport.
But the most interesting thing was arrival: same as in April, nobody asked for my passport! They just took a picture of me, and said it was good, and I am good to go. I think that they somehow match the picture taken before departure with arrival pictures, but that’s just a guess. Overall, all quiet, no lines, no crowds, no nothing.
Gender Disbalance
I wouldn’t think about it, but Boris pointed it out, and I thought I should mention it: note the difference between the sign indicating the pedestrian side of the path in Tallinn and in Helsinki:
The Rest Of Vacation
The rest of my time in Helsinki was spent biking with Boris and supporting the Finnish economy by shopping for chocolate, marmalade, and both kids’ and adults’ clothes. Also, I was still doing tons of conference-related things, and I also had to dial in to work several times. One might argue that I should have disconnected entirely, but I was afraid that if I left things as they were, there would be too many things to fix when I returned, and it would take way longer.
Unfortunately, it was raining almost every day, and between the rains and the necessity to do some community work, the bike rides were less frequent and shorter than they would be otherwise. Also, I didn’t have a chance to go to Soumenlinna. The good thing is that I finally broke Boris’s resistance to going to the Regatta, and in addition to my going there alone on the first day, we went there twice together, including today.
Also, we witnessed something really special: two Asian ladies trying a cinnamon bun and a blueberry pie with vanilla sauce for the first time! They asked to sit at our table, since it started raining again, and it was pretty crowded inside the Regatta. And when I saw (and head :)) their reaction at the first bite, I asked them whether it was their first time, and they confirmed. I told them that Regatta was the perfect place to do it for the first time!
On The Streets Of Tallinn
The last post about our visit to Tallinn, which is about “everything else.” No matter how many new places we visited, Tallinn is all about walking its streets. As I mentioned, we started at the “back” of Kadriorg:
And that’s it about this last visit!
The Power Of Canvassing
Not sure whether this article is available for non-subscribers, but leaving a link just in case, and copying the article, because I couldn’t agree more! That’s how it works! And always worked, and will always work!
Continue reading “The Power Of Canvassing”Tallinn: The City Museum
I love that more and more city towers are being restored and used as exhibition spaces. We had already visited many of these new museums, and the next one on our list was the one opened in the Kiek-in-de-Kok (Peek into the kitchen) tower. Museum information can be found here.
There are tons of kids’/family activities offered in this museum, and the museum itself is way more than a fortification museum, although a large portion of it is about war and weapons.
Tallinn Like Never Before
We visit Tallinn at least twice a year, but most times, we walk the familiar routes. This time, we agreed to do something different, at least partially.
I neglected to mention earlier that when we visited Zoya, she told us that her village was a part of the Soviet Union for eleven years after the WWII: the Soviet Union leased a big chunk of land for it’s Navy base, and there were actual border control crossing points, and when a passenger train had to pass through this territory, the windows would be boarded for that stretch. She also explained how pretty much everything had to be restored when the Soviet Union abandoned the lease. In Tallinn, Boris wanted to explore one area which he said was closed when he was a child, for a similar reason: it was a Soviet navy base. That being said, when we disembarked, we turned in a direction opposite to how we normally walk from the terminal to the city center.
Hettie's Reflections 