On family history, parenting, education, social issues and more
I am in NYC, attending one of the most important conferences of the year. I have a talk, and I am a room host for several sessions. And everything that happens at the war front is a dark background.
I can’t be fully involved in this spectacular professional celebration, and I feel so weird feeling like I am the only person among these 200 people with this dark background… and I still have to do all the conference-related social media.
I wrote this post yesterday and forgot to post it. I am not pretending I didn’t suspect what was going to happen, but still, what happened today, didn’t happen yet….
A very disturbing thing happened when I went through the border control in Helsinki on my way back. First, I was happy to see they now have the same machines as in London, where you can scan your chipped passport. Then I saw that I still had to present the passport to the officer. On my way back, I never ever encountered any questions. This time, the office started to scroll through my passport pages and asked me which countries I had visited and whether I was in Russia. Just to be clear, since I am a naturalized citizen, my country of origin is indicated in my US passport, but still!
The office kept scrolling, found the stamps from 2019, and looked at me inquisitively. I said – I haven’t been there since 2019. He kept scrolling and finally said: good; I see your entrance stamp. Because if you visited Russia at that time, we would have to question you (and he waved in an unspecified direction).
It was very disturbing but understandable. I know I have my share of guilt with everything happening, and it’s in Finland where I feel it even more.
And since I am posting it today, not yesterday, I want to reiterate – we stand with Ukraine! I saw these flags in the Southern part of State Street, quite unexpectedly:
We toured the Schonbrunn Castle (and decided not to tour the gardens). Any photography inside is strictly prohibited, which felt surprisingly good 🙂 – we could focus on looking at the rooms!
Thinking about this week in Spring when we had both Nordic PG Day and PG Day Paris, I can feel the difference – there was too much travel for me this time! I didn’t need to travel anywhere for Nordic because I was already in Helsinki, and there was a one-day gap between Nordic and Paris. And now, I had to travel to Amsterdam and then skip a part of Uptime to travel to Vienna. And I was so tired! I will never do it again! Probably, I should have just traveled to Amsterdam directly from Chicago.
The PG Day Austria went really well. Although there was no emerging dessert table, the conference venue was splendid, and the talks were great.
Both conferences’ schedules were packed, and there was not enough time to see the cities where the conferences took place. It was fine for Amsterdam because we visited it more than once, and also, we had several free hours on the day of arrival. We walked around, bought some souvenirs, and tried to find where we stayed in July 2019. I can’t believe it was a little bit over two years ago – it feels like another epoch.
For this conference, the organizers booked the rooms for speakers at Hotel Jakarta, which is located very close to the conference venue. It’s the most unusual hotel I ever stayed!
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 🙂
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.
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 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.
my experiences with data, coding, reading and other life musings...
Foto, travel, St.Petersburg, Stokholm, Tallin
Data Platforms, Built on Trust, PostgreSQL, AI-Ready Architecture, and Enterprise Trust
Jeremy Schneider
A journey of curiosity and unfinished thoughts
Shaken, not stirred
Information about SQL (PostgreSQL & SQL Server) from the Asylum.
Chasing Wellness
Curiosity to Infinity
SQL help, examples, tips
Musician and Network Engineer
Living life to the fullest
Life in Copenhagen, Denmark, after moving during Covid-19.
Spontaneous Blogger! Doze on Sunday @7 PM IST
a written collection of souvenirs
ramblings of a crazy lady living with MS
Every Family has a story to tell..........Welcome to mine
Travelling without Limits
Hettie's Reflections 