EU trip 2025

7 countries, 10 days. Work trip. Late-Oct, early Nov timeframe. Not the ideal time to visit

Itinerary - 

• Sat, 25 Oct - Land in Helsinki, Finland  
• Sun, 26 Oct  - Day trip to Tailin, Estonia via Ferry
• Mon, 27 Oct - At Helsinki. Evening - leave for Oslo
• Tue, 28 Oct -  At Oslo. Evening - train to Stockholm Sweden 
• Wed, 29 Oct - At Stockholm, Evening - Flight to Frankfurt, Germany
• Thu, 30 Oct -  At Frankfurt. Evening - train to Amsterdam
• Fri, 31 Oct -   At Amsterdam
• Sat, 1 Nov -    At Amsterdam. Evening - Train to Paris, France
• Sun, 2 Nov -   At Paris
• Mon, 3 Nov -  At Paris. Evening - Flight to BKR

Interesting points -

Helsinki - 

Not much to do in the main city. Though city walks are lovely. Did not explore much. Our hotel - Hotel Hobo, was really good! Visited cafe Fraser, just opposite the hotel which has been there for close to 150 years. Walked a lot in the city. Great city to walk ! 

The above is inside the main cathedral at Helsiniki. The round sphere is a replica of planet Mars, where each cm represents 10 km of Mars surface. They had hosted this within the cathedral which was interesting. 

Tailin, Estonia 

Lovely day trip from Helsinki. The ferry ride was awesome. Barely missed the ferry ride, one has to be 30 mins before the departure gate closes. Tailin is a old-style European city. Hugely hit by war, but not reconstructed to have the old city feeling. We did a old-city walking tour and did a quick stop at Museum of Torture - the highlight of the trip. The city is a great one to walk on. The walk was informative. 

Would recommend visiting here!! 

Oslo and Stockholm - No sightseeing and no photos. It was pure work

Frankfurt, Germany 

We had about 90 mins before our train to Amsterdam. 90 mins are good to enjoy a quick walk of the city

No Frankfurt trip is complete without this iconic place :)

Our train to Amsterdam was cancelled. We ended up going from Frankfurt HBF to Frankfurt-Airport station -> Koln (Cologne) Germany -> Amsterdam (via Rotterdam). We got a fellow passenger who was also taking the same route. It was good for strangers to interact.

Amsterdam - 

Once the work was over, we went to the downtown and explored the market there. The market was lively. Christmas lights were on, a pianist was playing at the square, people were happy. Seemed good to see explore this. We just walked and ate. Had Dutch pancakes, stroopwaffle, bought souvenirs, cheese. 

Next day, we took a day trip to country side to see windmills, cheese making store and show making workshop. Good fun day trip. 

We got a scare in our return to catch the train to Paris. The taxi driver was really smart and we had to run to catch the train. I was almost convinced at a point in time that we would miss it. 

Paris, France

We had a day and we did the walking tour along with just walk to Eiffel Tower. Walking tour was good, it was raining. Walking Paris was fun! We also saw the place where Princess Diana died. Also, visited a museum which was free of cost and saw Mattise's famous Dance painting. Had lunch at a bakery. Dinner was at a vegan restaurant called Maslow (interesting but okayish).  

Book Review - One day everyone will have always been against this

One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will always have been against this.

By Omar El Akkad

This book review will be a series of quotes from the book

To be outside at night requires a formal reason or else one risked harassment by the soldiers who seemed to make a military checkpoint out of every intersection. It is a hallmark of failing societies. I've learned, this requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist

Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power. Otherwise, they, like all else, are expendable. 

The moral component of history, the most necessary component, is simply a single question, asked over and over again: When it mattered, who sided with justice who sided with power? What makes moments such as this one so dangerous, so clarifying, is that one way or another everyone is forced to answer. 

On Western liberalism -  

One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption, in hindsight, of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. When the terrible thing is happening - while land is still being stolen and the natives still being killed - any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of natives being killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight

 

 On language - 

It may well be the case that there exists two entirely different languages for the depiction of violence against the victims of empire and victims of empire. 

On death of soul - 

No, there is no terrible coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. ... Who cares if great distance from bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the the dead if you must, but atleast fight against the death of your soul.  

A world that shrugs at one kind of slaughter has developed a terrible immunity. No atrocity is too great to shrug away now, the muscles of indifference  having been sufficiently conditioned. 

On Democrats in US

The problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's opponent has descended  while simultaneously digging one's own is that, eventually, it gets too dark to tell the difference

----

As a matter ofcourse, , Western officials are generally untroubled when they say things like this, that a ceasefire resolution represents a greater threat to lasting peace than the ongoing obliteration of entire people

----

The work of leaving, of aiming to challenge power on the field where it maintains the least glaring asymmetry, demands one answer the question: What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else's suffering? It makes it impossible for one so engaged to understand, with terrible clarity that under the auspices of this machine, the prevailing answer echoing from the mouths of so many of one's own neighbors is Nothing at all. 

----

When the time come to assign blame, most of those to blame will be long gone. There will always be feigned shock at how bad things really were, how we couldn't have possibly known. There will be those who say it was all work of a few bad actors, people who misled the rest of us well-meaning folks. Anything to avoid contending with the possibility that all this killing was not the result of a system abused, but a system functioning exactly as intended. 

This book is a scream. It puts in words the feelings that one has. It is the the voice of helplessness, a cry, a prayer.  As the book says, it is an account of the ending. 

It is a must-read!