Category: travel

Helsinki

I was in Helsinki for only one and a half days. On the first (half) of the day, I visited Natasha at her home and met with the whole family – the last time I saw everybody was in March!
This time, the situation in the world (and on the war front) was different, so our conversation was much happier, even in view of the European energy crisis.

On the second day, I did some work, mostly interacting with our London-based team, and then Boris and I biked to IKEA – something he had wanted to do for a while. He already made a couple of solo biking tips there, and he wanted to do it with me as well. We declared a late lunch to be our primary purpose, but it is impossible not to browse what’s out there!

On Tuesday, we had a very early flight to Amsterdam. Since Boris has Finnair Gold, we could hang out in the Finnair lounge and have breakfast there (and I forgot to take pictures :)).

Also, I upgraded us to Finnair Plus, so we had these cool seats with lights and elevated leg rests 🙂

Historic Homes in Greenfield Village

Henry Ford moved several historic homes to the Greenfield village, including his own childhood home:

Then there was the Wright brothers’ childhood home and their bicycle shop. Just a couple of months ago, I read a book The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. And now I remember that the author visited Greenfield village, but when I read the book, I didn’t pay attenention.

This bike is one of the actual bikes from the Wright brothers’ shop
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Greenfield Village: Eagle Tavern

Today is Thursday, and my Michicgan visit already seems far away. However, I have at least two hundred pictures which I didn’t show yet, and I want to share at least some of them.

Here are more pictures from the Greenfield Village – the place where we had lunch.

The name of the place is Eagle Tavern, and it was operating in Clinton, MI in 1850. The tavern owner were also farmers, and they served pretty much what they grown on their farm.

We liked that the tavern preserved the atmosphere of 1850s, but at the same time, it’s not a theater, it’s the place where you can have a simple good meal. Both Lena and I agreed, that although our meals were very non-pretentious, they tasted great!

The tavern was large enough to have a separate room for women. However, these days, everybody eat together
Locally produces bread and butter
Pimm’s cup
Lena’s meal with trout.
Peach pie
Coffee

Model T Ride

The only thing which was not perfect with this trip was the weather: it was bare 70F, and it rained on Saturday evening, but honestly, the weather did not stop us from having fun.

We spent the whole Sunday in the Henry Ford village and museum; we arrived 15 minutes after it was open and left 15 minutes before it closed. We hardly saw a half of everything, and my brain was exploding with all the new information! I won’t have time to blog about everything, so there will probably be bits and pieces, not necessarily in order of importance.

Speaking about Henry Ford and Model T, you can’t stop feeling the mixture of amazement with the greatest human mind achievements and, at the same time, the realization of all nowadays environmental problems starting back then.

That’s where it all began!
Waiting in line for Model T rides
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Detroit

This weekend, I am visiting my friend Lena in Ann Arbor. This time, however, it’s not just an Ann Arbor visit. Today, we spent the whole day in Detroit. It was my first ever visit to this city with a rich history and multiple ups and downs. We started the day by visiting Detroit Art Institute.

Rivera Court

Then we had lunch in a hidden in a basement cafe with incredible food for half of Chicago’s prices.

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Pictures From The Swiss PG Day (English Track)

Stefan Keller
Pavlo Golub
Franck Pachot
Laetitia Avrot
Magnus Hagander
Ads Scherbaum
Vik Fearing
Hettie Dombrovskaya
All speakers from both tracks

Smells Can’t Be Captured

Since early May, I meant to blog about the smells which follow me on my bike rides in Chicago, how the lilacs were heavenly, and how now they are gone and everything smells with linden. In Helsinki, lilacs were still in bloom when I arrived, but in the past two days they were almost gone and the strong smell of jasmine started to dominate. It’s one of my childhood smells, strongly associated with July. That’s how the second session of the pioneer camp smelled :).

More Helsinki

What else is there in summer? The strawberries that can’t be matched, forty flavors of ice cream, pride festivities, 86F weather for two weeks in a row.

Oodi deck – it’s almost impossible to stay there at 87F!

And also – Helsinki’s IKEA.

IKEA always gives me a sense of stability and an “all is right” feeling. Now, it is almost impossible for me to go to the Schaumburg IKEA, so most of my orders are online (which means, that IKEA food is out of reach for me). We decided to go to IKEA “just for window shopping,” but then we found these coffee cups of that perfect pale turquoise which was gone several years ago. The cups were not rectangular as Boris likes them, but they were still near perfect. We didn’t buy them because I wanted to check online first, and for some reason, my internet went down. When I checked at home, it turned out that 1) this was a new product and 2) this color was sold out in all of the IKEA stores in the US!

The next day, when I was at the Swiss PG Day, Boris went there again and got two boxes of coffee cups with saucers, and a box of espresso cups. I only managed to get one box in my luggage, and he should bring the other two when he comes to Chicago next time.

All Things In Switzerland

I was never asked for a passport – neither on my way to Zurich nor on my way back, I only had to scan the respective boarding passes, and no human ever saw it. So technically speaking, 1) it could be another person, not me, traveling 2) a person who returned might not have been a person who left. Just saying:).

Somr pictures from Zurich:

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Seen On The Streets Of Helsinki

if a scarecrow should scare crows, these “black birds” should be called “scareseagull,” because their purpose is to keep the seagulls away from the open-air dining. However, I saw a couple of very brave seagulls making their way through, trying very carefully to avoid the black scare 🙂