Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Antwerp

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

Antwerp Castle
The Town Hall
The Grote Markt Square
Each pf the buildings was a home of one of the professional guilds, and the figures on top represent the saint partons of these guilds or other guild symbols.
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Tribune’s Strike

I wanted to share Igor’s Instagram post about the unprecedented Chicago Tribune News Room strike that took place on February 1. As I often remind people, there were only three days in the whole Chicago Tribune’s history when it didn’t come out of print. February 1 can be considered a “thrid and a half” time, since the newspaper came out with only five pages instead of fifty:).

Musical Instruments Museum

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.

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Homelessness

I am on my way back to Chicago, and that means I am back to facing (literally) people experiencing homelessness. Yesterday, I signed up for a WTTW kickstart of a year-long initiative exploring homelessness in Chicago.


Last week, the city conducted an annual “point-in-time” count of homeless in the shelters and on the streets, which is often criticized for showing a lesser number of people than other surveys indicate. I still say it’s better to count that way than not count at all – see this article.

During the extreme cold of the second half of January, the Night Ministry doubled the effort to protect people from severe weather conditions, but I know that that was only that many people one organization could reach. And although the weather is way milder now, it’s still dangerous to be outside for extended periods of time.

My usual thoughts when I am anywhere in Europe – why are there so fewer people on the streets there?

The Chocolate Museum in Brussels

There was no way I would miss this attraction!

So many things about chocolate I didn’t know before!

Mayan chocolate vessles
Sugar Hammers
Chocolate-making pots
Spanish chocolate cups
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Fast Forward

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 🙂

Other Travel Matters

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!

Forgetting Things

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:

  • I signed up my mom for her COVID shot for the wrong location, and I had to find a new place right there on the spot.
  • I forgot the departure time of my flight to London, and only realized it the night before (and thanks goodness, I realized it not right before departure, but the night before, because it was 1.5 hours earlier than I thought!
  • And the last thing which prompted me to write this post: today, I forgot my iPad at the security checkpoint (yes, I had two laptops, an iPad, an iPhone and Apple watch, but still!

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.

Weekend Working

I am leaving to ORD in less than 30 minutes, and all my weekend was work – all the things I didn’t have time to finish during the workdays. That’ not like somebody asked me, that’s what I felt I needed to finish, because it was important to show this work to others.

I think I am hopeless like this, and also, I can’t work as fast as I could before.

On Monday, my workday will start at 8-30 AM London time, so my weekend is gone entirely. And most likely, I will need to sleep on the plane, otherwise, I won’t be able to work. I actually feel better than it might seem from that post, because I was able to tight most of the loose ends both at work and otherwise, and I knew I won’t be able to address all of the outstanding things.

My New Year Resolution is not working 🙂

Walking On Ice

That happened on Tuesday. It was a horrible morning, in terms that it started to melt the night before, and then it was sharply cold during the night, and when I left the house, there was ice everywhere. Since I had to go to Milwaukee after work, I still needed to get to the Rogers Park train station, and I didn’t think it would be much better later, so I left my house at the time when I usually leave for work.

Just one fun fact that would be the best characterization of how icy it was. I walk fast, so usually, about 10 minutes into my walk, my Alle Watch asks me: are you doing an outdoor walk workout? Let me know if you want to record it! On Tuesday, it asked me: are you doing an elliptical workout?

😂