I am out travelling again. This time to my close to part -time home countries these past few years, Montenegro and Macedonia. It is a short business trip of little over two weeks, with two stops in Vienna as a consequence of tricky connections. The weather is wonderful, the food is great, and most importantly, the work is incredibly rewarding! So I am enjoying my travelling as always!

As I wrote earlier, I am now in cold, cold France. I am not really sure what happened but for the past five days, the temperature has not managed to climb above 20 centigrade. It is cold. Really cold! I arrived last Monday and went directly to Tours and the Loire Valley where E had rented a house for her birthday and invited all her friends. Or in fairness, it was J who arranged it all and the house was in fact an old monastery dating back to the 12th century. It was beautiful and very relaxing, and I spent five wonderful days there. E (who I know from Rome but who has lived in New York for the past years) is without doubt one of my most inspiring friends and it was nice to get to know her friends from other periods of her life better (all very nice of course!).

After five days in Loire I continued to Saint Jean d’Angely in the Cognac region, where my brother in law’s parents have a house. I have been here before but I am still amazed by their very peculiar house, which dates back to the 1840s. Saint Jean d’Angely is also a lovely little town, and only an hour from Bordeaux and an hour from La Rochelle. So everything is kind of perfect except that it is so very cold this year! But we try to make day excursions instead, and when we are home, we spend a lot of time eating, reading, and just talking. I haven’t seen my sister and her family in over a year so there is a lot of catching up to do. And so despite the weather, it is kind of nice anyway!

I am now in France since about a week and a half and with the exception of the first four days or so, the weather has turned into something that reminds me more of Swedish autumn than French summer. It is cold, windy, and cloudy, with rainfalls every other day or so. I have to admit that this weather makes me feel a little nostalgic over those lovely warm days in NY and especially the long mornings we spent on the terrace in E’s and J’s amazing apartment, from where there is a view over Manhattan’s skyline. Or the other days when we went out for long and slow brunches in Williamsburg. Or when we just walked around in the different neighborhoods in the warm, sunny weather, or sat in the parks or at outdoor restaurants. I miss summer…

Breakfast at the terrace. Therese recommended me some appropriate reading for our Brooklyn vacation.

I’ve said it many times before and I keep saying it: I wish my job was located in NYC instead of in DC! I really LOVE this place! We arrived yesterday and are staying in E’s and J’s wonderful apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and already after a day here, I am completely in love with this neighborhood. The atmosphere is great and it feels like I could spend the entire week here just sitting on the sidewalk, watching people. Which is exactly what many old people here seem to do! Our plan for this week is however to visit different beaches, walk around on Manhattan, go to museums, do a little shopping, visit different neighborhoods in the Boroughs, meet up with people we know here, and spend lots and lots of time at cafes, restaurants, and on E’s and J’s terrace.

Here are some picture from Bedford Ave, outside the cafe where I am sitting.

I think I ned to make my life a little lighter. And no, I am not speaking metaphorically. I am on the bus on my way to New York now, and when packing yesterday and this morning for my two-month long trip, I realized that I depend on way too many things. I have to admit that most of the weight is books and other type of reading materials. My much senior collegue is always saying that he assumes that while he likes to print articles and reports to read them, he assumes that my generation reads everything on the screen. But even though I wish I was born in the 90s, I am not and henxe I grew up in a world where we still read things on paper. And so, I like reading especially books and long reports in printed format, which is not exactly convenient for a travelaholic like myself. (I really need to practice reading books on my i-pad!) Of course, the new luggage restrictions on trans-atlantic flights doesn’t exactly help. Except the environment perhaps, since I won’t really be able to do any shopping on this trip!

Going back to DC I ended up waiting in line for a while to the restroom, and I came to think of something that happened to me a few years ago between Rome and Stockholm. I can’t remember in what direction I was flying but it was either with Sterling Airlines or with Ryan Air. I had waited until last minute with going to the restroom and felt like it was close to an emergency. However, the line was long and slow, and it got to the point where I thought I might not make it. Then, when I was second in line, the captain tells everyone that we are going through some heavy turbulence and that everyone had put on the seatbelts. I couldn’t feel anything, but the airhostess told all of us in line for the restroom to go back to our seats and so I had not choice. I still couldn’t feel turbulence but all of a sudden, the captain comes out of the cockpit and goes into the toilet. And upon returning into the cockpit, sure enough, the seatbelt sign was turned off again!

It is quite common that we have to stay a night in Vienna when we go back to Washington from the Western Balkans due to the mismatching connections. Or rather, we have to stay over night either in Vienna or in Frankfurt on the way back, but most seem to pick Vienna for some reason! So did my colleague and I, and I really think we made the most of our time there. We strolled around the city centre, have lunch at one Viennese café, coffee and Sachertorte in another, and bought marzipan in a third. We also went to the Art History Museum in the Museum Quarter where we saw work by Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Bruegel. My colleague takes art classes so she showed me the different palettes that the Renaissance painter used which made me see the paintings in a somewhat different light. In the evening, we had a light meal at the Schwartsenberg Café where we tried their own sausage before going to a wonderful concert with a small chamber music orchestra playing pieces by Mozart and Straus, and with both dance performances and opera singers. And if that was not all, we managed to squeeze in a little shopping! It was a wonderful day and I wish I could have stayed longer, but hopefully, I will have a stop-over there again soon.

I couldn’t fit all the pictures that I wanted to show you, so I inserted a slideshow:

I know I already wrote about this hotel on this blog but the Best Western in Podgorica really is my favorite hotel of all the ones I have stayed at when traveling through work. It is not that it is the most fancy hotel and unfortunately they don’t have a gym, but the service is great and they pay attention to small details which really make the difference. Like fruits and candy in the lobby, cappuccino and caffe latte for breakfast at no extra charge, a small library that the guests can borrow books from during their stay, a lovely outdoor cafe for lunch and coffee breaks, good international news channels, and so on. This time, the regular rooms were fully booked by the time I made my reservation so I got a room in the attic right under the roof. As you can see, the room is really cute and cosy and I can see the stars through the skylight when I go to sleep!

I am back in Prodgorica working on the project I used to support before I got my current assignment in the Africa region. It is nice to be back and to meet everyone here that works with the project. It is also nice to travel a bit. Except for my trip to New York the other weekend, I haven’t been out of Washington DC for quite some time. And spring is here so it is really lovely! Now I am off for a meeting on food safety and SPS related infrastructure.

Flying in to Podgorica

Lunch break between meetings