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We are in DC, visiting Vlad and Dylon and staying at the Riggs hotel: second time for me, first time for Boris, and also, that’s his first visit to DC in general. Unfortunately, it’s the worst possible weather, so our today’s plans were already altered, but it’s still great to be there!
On our trip to Antwerp and Ghent, we had a photo stop at Atomium, and our tour guide told us about the Human Zoo which was open during the 1958 World Fair. I had not idea that they still existed in the 20th century, yet along that recently, so I rushed to read more about it. I am sure that everyone less ignorant than me saw that picture, but I saw it for the first time, and frankly, whatever else you read about Human Zoos wouldn’t make the same impression as that one photo. Shocking is not enough of a word.
It’s easy to Google more details about human zoos; I do not want to put any more links here. I can’t imagine people tossing bananas and other food in the direction of humans which are literally “on display.” Just can’t imagine.
Flying back from Brussels was equally interesting. Since I had three separate reservations, I still had to fly back through Helsinki, but I also could not have a short connection in London because the next flight wouldn’t wait for me, and I didn’t want to lose one more day in transit. We took the last Sunday flight from Brussels, which arrived in Helsinki at 10:30 PM, which meant going to bed at midnight and getting up at 4 AM to get to the first flight to London.
It turned out that the border control in the Helsinki airport didn’t open till 6 AM, so I had to wait for about 20 min, which I could spend sleeping :). Also, British Airways didn’t issue me a boarding pass online, which meant I had to get it in Terminal 5 at Heathrow, just before the security checkpoint, and then I had to wait for my flight to Chicago for six hours.
Fortunately, the lounges in Heathrow are great, so that was not a problem. That was the first time I took a shower in the airport., and I found out that they had absolutely everything; there was no need to unpack. I will know for the next time!
Now, a short review of what was going on during the last four days. My flight landed ahead of time, but then we couldn’t get to the gate for 40 minutes, and the line for passport control was very long, so I ended up coming home at 9-30 PM, and I had to get my mail from my neighbor, unpack, and on Tuesday at 7-30 AM I was already in the office. On Tuesday evening, I was at the Opera (I will write about this performance separately), and my neighbor and I had dinner before the opera to celebrate her birthday. So once again, at home at 10-45 PM.
On Wednesday, I attended a meetup after work (good, productive, great networking, but once again … late night). On Thursday, I finally went to see my mom after work, attended an online yoga class, and made a couple of phone calls. And on Friday – a Valentine’s Day musical, “Twisted Love,” at Above the Law Theater.
Don’t take me wrong, it’s all great; just trying to catch up with life! Oh, and also, I am about to leave to another opera!
Ghent was our second stop on this bus tour. Many people told me I should visit Ghent when I am in Belgium next time, and that’s what we did. Now I know that a couple of hours is not enough, and I hope that sometime in my next life, I will be able to come to Belgium at a minimum for a week and spend more time in each of the cities visiting all the castles and museums.
Ghent is amazing and impossibly charming, even in the weather like it was!
It was our second time in Belgium, and so far, Belgium was good to us. When we were there for the first time in 2015, it was summer, and the weather was beautiful. We had a great tour guide, Mik, with whom we went for a three-hour walking tour of Brussels and then went for a one-day trip to Brugge. I remember how Mik was walking very fast, and some of the people in the group complained, but Boris and I were happy that it was the right speed for us. That was before my back problems started, and then for many years, I was thinking about this trip as “how I want things to be” – I wanted to be able to explore a city on foot again and to be able to walk as long as I want. In this respect, I “closed the circle” – we walked a lot, and nothing hurt.
This time, we took a one-day bus trip to Antwerp and Ghent, and It exceeded expectations. First, when I asked Boris whether he wanted to go on a day trip, he said he didn’t mind but expected that we would be on the bus for most of the day with some stops and a little bit of walking, but it ended up being a lot of walking! I was a little bit suspicious when they put both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking groups on one bus, so during the ride, the tour guides switched, and in each of the cities, we went on separate walking tours. It felt like too much of “optimization,” but fortunately, I was wrong.
Our tour guide, Marko, started by commenting on people taking pictures before even knowing what is in front of them, and he reminded us that the most important thing is our experience, not the Instagram posts. There is nothing especially new and groundbreaking in this statement, but somehow this changed my reception mode, and I took way less pictures than I usually do. He told us a lot of interesting facts (some of them didn’t seem true for me, and I searched for more information; some were completely new, and I also searched for more information, overall, a lot of bookmarks are sitting there waiting for more research to be done). Although he was entertaining, he was not one of these joke-telling-tereotypes-promoting tour guides, he knew in-depth what he was talking about.
Antwerp
Boris and I visited this museum when we were in Brussels for the first time. It was our favorite then, and this time, Boris voted to spend as much time in this museum as we could. The best part of this museum is that you can listen to the recordings of almost all of the instruments that are on display. It’s overwhelming :). At some point, you simply can’t take in more, but you also can’t stop.
The thing that impressed me most is how many different kinds of music and musical instruments exist in the world and how little we know outside of our European experience.
Since there is no way to reproduce all the sounds we heard, tons of pictures.
There was no way I would miss this attraction!
So many things about chocolate I didn’t know before!
On Monday, I was in London, working for the whole day, not leaving the office. Then on Tuesday morning, I flew to Helsinki, and then I found out about the strike and about our flight cancellation and our new flight. Now we are in Brussels, and we have a great time here, but I find it very difficult to detach from work entirely. It was fine for most of the day today, but then we rerutrend to the hotel, and there were some conference-related things, and then something not-really-ork-but-sort-of. So…
That’s our second time in Brussels, and we like it again. Brussels has been good to us 🙂
That was the first time I booked Economy Premium. I fly business class occasionally when it is company-paid, or when I get an upgrade, but the latter one mostly happen when I travel within Europe. This time I knew I would have to work immediately upon arrival, so I needed some decent sleeping conditions, but I was not ready to purchase business class on my own.
Economy Premium is indeed right between Economy and Business class. In Economy, you sleep almost vertical, in Business, you sleep horizontally, and in Economy Premium, you sleep diagonally. My initial feeling was that it’s still not comfortable enough, but I ended up working for the whole day with no problem, so I guess it was not that bad. The seats are definitely more comfortable, however, the foot rest prevents from placing your backpack under the seat in front of you, so I had to put everything into the overhead.
The food is still bad. Since last year’s sharp decline in the quality of the in-flight food, the only decent meals are in business class. When I fly economy and it’s BA or AA, I try to eat in the lonuge and then sleep through the in-flight dinner. If I fly Finnair, it’s not an option, because the Finnair lounge in ORD is really bad and has virtually no amenities. This time, it was BA, but since the departure was at 5 PM, I had to leave the lounge by 4 PM, sort of too early for dinner. Besides, I was hoping that the food in Economy Premium will be better.
It was not, and also, they asked everyone to lift up their seat during the dinner service, so I won’t be able to sleep anyway. The only thing which was better than in the Economy was that there was a choice of meals, but by the time they got to my row they were out of chicken, and I didn’t like much the other two choices. We’ll see how things will turn out on my flight back!
One shocking thing on this flight was that there was a young woman on the left of me who spoke on the phone all the the time since she sat down, and through al of the safety instructions, and takeoff, until she lost connection and some point. Over an hour total!
While I was typing this post, I got a notification that our flight to Brussels was rebooked for a day earlier. I guess that’s the Universe’s response to my over-scheduled life!
The number of things I hav forgotten recently tells me that I am trying to do too many things. And that’s to what Boris reminded me about recently, and what I resolved to address.
The most recent things:
One more time, the FindMy app saved me: I spend some time wondering around in the duty free zone, then I went to the lounge, and when I got my breakfast and set down, I noticed the notification, that I left iPad behind. At first, I thought that it was one of those “I moved away from my bag,” but them I looked closer and saw the notification time was just ten minutes earlier, so I realized what had happened.
It was not so easy to find the way back to the security, and when I got there, I asked the personnel for assistance. Thankfully, they found my iPad and when I demonstrated that I could unlock it, they happily gave it back to me.
But it not for FindMy, I won’t realize that I do not have my iPad until I would be inside the aircraft!
Also, just learned that our flight to Brussels is cancelled due to the strike – we were hoping for th better, but unfortunately, that’s the case, and we still didn’t hear from Finnair what they can offer instead.
my experiences with data, coding, reading and other life musings...
Foto, travel, St.Petersburg, Stokholm, Tallin
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