I love little airports with ingenious designs. Such as Lukla airport in Nepal. Or here, where planes pocket-park by the gate, a runway shares a stretch with the taxiway in a hairpin loop, and where access to the city is fast and by tube. London City airport is the handiest little airport. Never mind that the terminal looks like a bees’ nest and there is no place to sit down. No lounges and no priority security either – because being near the financial district, of course everybody here is priority and elite flyer. It is the small things that count – and LCY will make my commute from my new hometown so much smoother.
But tonight I am en route from hot sunny London to rainy, chilly Stavanger, Norway.
(London City Airport, London, United Kingdom; May 2018)
Dear Cambridge, you’re supposed to look the same every time I visit you. You are one of the oldest university cities in the world. Your colleges, chapels, greens, and squiggly side-streets are supposed to look just like they did 2 years ago – or 200 years ago, no difference.
And why on earth is Ryder & Amies only selling official English university apparel with a huge American college style font, in worst case embossed in a fluffy fabric? It was bad enough that a fudge shop opened on King’s Parade when I lived in Cambridge (the shock was softened by the fact that it was fresh artisan fudge, after all).
Thankfully, lining up for a taxi cab at the train station is still as difficult as ever (I try to ignore that there now is an official Uber pickup spot as well, next to a brand new hotel). I was also delighted to note that the train traffic was as non-functional as possible: instead of 5 services to Cambridge per hour there was 1 (and half an hour late), due to a train company timetable change that needed several months to optimize, causing trains to miss drivers and drivers miss trains. Good old England.
(Cambridge, United Kingdom; May 2018)
Out of all these people crowding to take a photo of the luggage trolley crossing the wall into platform 9 3/4, only very very few actually try to run through the wall. I think the newspapers once wrote about one who tried and bashed his head quite badly. Probably a Cambridge student (nobody else has that kind of humor). Perhaps just as good, as ever since I lived in the UK, tourists have flocked around the entrance to Harry Potter’s school “bus”, Hogwarts Express.
Who is the turn-of-the-century couple peeking out through the window? And why is the street sign first in Russian and only then in Finnish and finally in Swedish? Uusikaupunki is filled with old wooden houses containing many mysteries. And so many stories, if only they could even whisper of half of what they know.
(Uusikaupunki, Finland; June 2018)
I thought I agreed to give a keynote talk in Copenhagen. It turned out to be in Utrecht. Glad I noticed it in time to book my flights. But I lost two days of work and I had to again travel to my absolute un-favorite country in Europe. After 15 years, I could barely recognize much of Utrecht. Perhaps it is just as good.
Another late night flight. How late? I would not know. The Nordic summer is deceiving in its nightless night.
With its brackish water, its smattering of islands between Finland and Sweden, and limited and slightly altered flora and fauna, the Baltic Sea is an inland sea and far from an ocean. Every seven years a huge saltwater swell pushes up the salinity gradient a notch, and slowly the rivers trickling down into the sea change it back towards sweet.
(Denmark, May 2018)
Steaming across the Great Belt Bridge, I cannot help but think of how progressive and practical the Danes must be. And that they love bridges. There is the Øresund bridge (the one featured in the TV show; nearly 8 km long), the two Great Belt Bridges (each nearly 7 km long), the Storstrøm Bridge (over 3 km long), and 7 other bridges each spanning more than one kilometer in length.
Tens of thousands of baby chickens died last night. Each Balinese house sacrificed one along with a 
This blue marble 