I will show more pictures shortly, but for now, just one. I am trying to spend my birthday in a new country every year, at least for another couple of years 🙂
Vienna Holidays
Tag: birthday
Last Christmas/First Birthday Gifs
During the past week, two more gifts arrived by mail. The first one was presumably the last Christmas gift from one of my German friends:
The reason I didn’t post it right away was that I forgot to take a picture of the cookies, and then I kept forgetting, and the cookies kept disappearing :). I still have some left back home, but now I am traveling, and I thought it was not fair to wait till February :).
And on Friday, just a couple of hours before I headed to the airport, I received a package from my friend Lena form Ann Arbor:
And I am sure you guessed which one was my favorite: a kolacki ornament!
My Mom’s 91 Birthday
My mom turned 91 yesterday, and we had a small celebration at Anto Pizza by Jarvis Square. This place never fails us; it’s perfect for any small family-style celebrations. They are officially BYOB and happy to provide glasses and bottle openers. I stopped by them last week and asked whether we could also bring our own dessert. They were surprised by request but said: sure!
Anna ordered a cake at a bakery just outside the border of Chicago, Sweet Temptations Bake Shop, and it was excellent! They used raspberry mousse instead of icing inside, and fresh raspberries for decoration.
My mom liked that the celebration was so small and cosy, and I think she also liked that John drove her both ways. At least, she didn’t complain about anything, neither at the restaurant, nor later in the evening when I called her.
The logistics for both Friday and Saturday were exceptionally complicated, because Friday night was my gift night for John and Anna: they had tickets for Phantom of the Opera and a night at Palmer House hotel, and I had the girls, and in the morning, the girls had a CSO for Kids concert, and then we had to pick up the cake, to pick up mom, and get my gift for her from my house.
I opened the Armenian pomegranate wine, which I bought on my recent trip, and it was also exceptionally good! Now I regret I got only one bottle!
Early Birthday Gift
My friend from Kenya was in the US over the holidays, visiting her friends in Pittsburgh. I mailed her cookies to her friends’ address, and she mailed me the gift she brought from Kenya. It was a really bright spot in my challenging week.
Past Birthdays
August 23 was Vlad’s and Anna’s 34th birthday, and I had plans to publish a historical post about this actual date (I already have one on my timeline, but without many details). However, I had too much life for a lengthy historical post (it might come at some point in the future, maybe next year when they will be 35 :)).
For the past month, I tried to arrange Vlad’s visit to Chicago, which is as challenging as you could imagine, given his work schedule and his ambitions. I am very thankful that he was able to make it, even though it was for less than 24 hours. Boris and I haven’t seen him for over a year, so I tried to make it happen when Boris is here. When we were discussing the schedule, I said that any day except for Tuesday would work, and of course, the only day Vlad could make was Tuesday!
Anyway, we met for an early dinner at the Gage to celebrate Boris’ 75th and their 34th birthdays, and I presented the T-shirts designed by Boris for the occasion:
Tallinn: Afternoon Activities
We went to the Estonian National Opera to hear an unlikely “My Fair Lady” in Estonian. The alternative would be to go there on another day, but it was way better to go on the actual birthday. Also, since today is a US holiday, I didn’t have to work, so we could plan a no-rush return to Helsinki.
There are several photos and videos on the Opera website, but almost all of them are with different artists than the ones we heard yesterday (the ones below look like the right ones :))
Continue reading “Tallinn: Afternoon Activities”Tallinn
After our last time experience with a Medieval hotel we decided on slightly more modern option and chose My City Hotel which is located in a 20th century building and decorated in the 18th century style. We loved it.
At reception they asked me whether it was my birthday, and presented mw with a cute little box of local chocolate:
The room had a normal desk, which is a rarity as we found the hard way 🙂
Pre-birthday
My economy premium was completely useless because, as I mentioned, I skipped dinner in favor of longer sleep and could not sleep because of the pain. There was no breakfast in the morning because the arrival time was lunchtime, so there was just a sandwich (and who cares about a sandwich!) Enough about misery. I arrived on time, with no lines at the border control and no questions about protein powder in my luggage.
It was sunny and way warmer than in Chicago. We went to Kmarket to get some food, and Boris said we should get some ice cream, which we unwrapped right after we exited the store and ate while walking home. I chose a Geisha cone, and it had the whole geisha candy inside 🙂
At home, we had salad and runebergs, and I went straight to bed to compensate for a sleepless night.
I slept for 11 hours straight (Boris didn’t believe me when I told him that’s what I needed, but I actually slept from 7-30 PM to 6-30 AM). I am still a little bit lightheaded, but now I think I will survive the day of adventures.
Mom’s Birthday Celebration
Everything went great, even with all the things I mentioned yesterday, plus today’s problems on the Red Line that made Igor and my mom being 30 minutes late to her party, and some guests as well :). There were a couple of times in the past when my mom got really upset about us not letting her know in advance that somebody was going to visit, that’s why we tried to plan it being a surprise, but not a complete surprise :).
I invited those with whom my mom interacted through all these seven years she has been in the USA, with the hope that she will remember. I was pleasantly surprised that she recognized everyone and addressed everyone by name, even those she hadn’t seen for a long time. About half an hour later, however, she started to ask me again who was who and how she knew them. When I shared this observation with Anna and John, they suggested that she got tired, and they must be right. I am going to focus on the positive side of things 🙂
Everyone whom I asked came, and the food was delicious, and Vanille’s cake was awesome.
Mom’s Birthday
My mom turned 90 today. We are giving her a “semi-surprise party” tomorrow, and we have already had enough of disasters: Vlad couldn’t come because the earlier snowstorm in DC pushed the training he had to conduct to the weekend; both Anna and I had a work crisis (and Igor was super busy, too). We had to move to another venue two days before the party. Anna forgot the frame for our collective present at home; all the printing is done not at the last minute but one after the last, and so on.
After disassembling my Christmas tree, I realized I needed new boxes for ornaments. I ordered them, and they arrived, but I didn’t have time even to unpack them until today, so i was repacking ornaments when Anna’s family arrived.
BTW the boxes are great, and I feel like I always feel when I replace something old with a newer model – why didn’t I do it earlier?! It’s so much better!
Hettie's Reflections 