My original plan was to work my way southwest from the Baltics through Poland and Slovakia before ending in Budapest to meet my mom for our big belated birthday river cruise on the Danube. Fortunately I realized in Lithuania that I’d never make the cruise with this plan due to visa limitations; I’d have to [...]
I'm in the little-known town of Rakvere, Estonia, about an hour east of Tallinn. With four hours until my bus to Kärde, I've already walked around the castle, eaten a dill-laced lunch on a sunny patio, and played FreeCell on my phone in the bus station to kill time. So in case you're wondering, no, [...]
Resistance is my inner donkey digging her heels into the dirt; a refusal of any forward motion towards whatever it is I think I should do. Sometimes I can successfully lure the donkey into movement by holding out an apple: c'mon, yes, one more step, and pretty soon the donkey has forgotten its resistance and [...]
My biggest problem is that I look too normal. If you didn’t know me -- heck, even if you do -- my appearance would lead you to a pile of incorrect assumptions: that this tall, slender, blue-eyed blonde has always been popular, probably a cheerleader in high school, successful in career and in love, and [...]
After nearly three months in busy Tel Aviv, I decided to make a short detour to Cyprus on my way back to Geneva. This was back in early July, and it's now September; I've felt a puzzling resistance to writing about my time there: puzzling because this short Cypriot time-out is where I decided that [...]
Dateline: Birky, Ukraine I’ve been quiet lately, I know. Since I last wrote, I’ve been to Karde, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; and a little town called Nida on the coast of Lithuania. I spent two weeks immersed in Russian language classes in Kiev, and I’m currently nestled into my DIY writer’s retreat in the countryside of [...]
I am at home where the sea shimmers, mountains scrape the sky or sand dunes shift across the earth. – My soul was a bird once do birds have homes like we do? a fixed sense of place perhaps an aroma, a memory, a history. – Could "home" also rest in movement, the breeze on [...]
Helsinki is an easy day trip via ferry from Tallinn. But… honestly, it’s just a big city. Within 15 minutes I was pretty much done and ready to move on. Fortunately, I’d done my homework and knew about the opportunity to explore the islands within easy reach of Helsinki’s harbor. My token photo of Helsinki [...]
Four days was definitely not enough time to spend in this charming Baltic city. Built in the 14th century, the medieval old town is extraordinarily well preserved and ranks as one of the most aesthetically delightful places I’ve been so far. Sadly, everyone else thinks so too; a plague of cruise-ship vacationers descends on the [...]
My entire life has been characterized by a yearning for wholeness. My career in strategy and all my business writings have focused on this idea of moving from fragmentation to coherence within organizations. And now I am seeing how much that external narrative characterized what I needed to do inside myself. The world "out there" [...]
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