April 18; rainy days and indoors inspiration ⛈
It's raining, but at least the restaurants have reopened... this was my week
Happy Sunday,
We can say it out loud now: spring is slow this year in Southeastern Europe. The Timehop app on my phone shows me memories of mid-April weekends of previous years, full of sun and outdoors fun, but this year so far, April mostly looks like this
Non-fiction inspiration 📚
In my line of work, I’m often asked to recommend books on business, startups, and venture, and those who know me, know that I like to joke my way out of it with the excuse that I prefer fiction to non-fiction. While mostly true, there are some non-fiction works, usually of the personal storytelling kind, that really leave a mark. One such book for me has been Dan Rather’s “What Unites Us”. In November 2017, as Dan Rather was doing his book tour promoting it, Ellie and I happened to to be around in Nashville, Tennessee, and managed to attend the tour event there one night.
In that first year of Trump in office, with so many people so angry and emotional about the divisions that had surfaced, it was incredibly comforting to listen to and read the words of someone like Rather. In his soft-spoken, reconciliatory manner, recalling his long and interesting life with the gift of a great storyteller, Dan Rather at once recognizes the anxious questions and dangers our civil societies face today, and manages to assure you that in the end, from a bird’s-eye view of someone who’s been covering world events for well over half a century, things are actually not that bad and will be alright in the end.
I have “What Unites Us” always within reach on my iPad, as well as one of the physical signed copies we got that night in Nashville, on the shelf in our office at Vitosha, and sometimes I re-read a chapter or two to help my brain zoom out and see the bigger picture of complicated processes.
A few weeks ago I got to re-experience the joy of discovering “What Unites Us” in a different context, as I stumbled upon a very similar work, from a different veteran thought leader, in a different country and in a different language.
In the aftermath of last month’s general election in The Netherlands, facing a fractured new parliament and limited options to form a government, the country’s political leaders called upon elder statesman Herman Tjeenk Willink to guide the formation of a new government. A former senator and no.1 government advisor, Tjeenk Willink is famous for being the architect of a number of successful Netherlands governments in the 1990s and 2000s, and it was an unexpected move that at age 79 he’d be called in again.
Reading the news about this latest project of his, I stumbled upon a book he published in 2018, called “Groter Denken, Kleiner Doen”, or “Thinking Bigger, Acting Smaller” in English. It’s a very similar concept to that of Dan Rather's “What Unites Us”: an elderly and very erudite voice, concerned about the disintegration of society, with very positive and actionable insights on how to change course and avoid systemic deterioration of a highly functioning social system. Highly worth a read if you know Dutch. Here’s a great video interview (in Dutch again) where Tjeenk Willink shares his ideas conversationally:
Further Vitosha office upgrades 👨🏻💻
This week we completed another step in improving our work environment in Sofia. Together with our neighbors from launchlabs Sofia, and the visual identity firm Four Plus, we started adding branding elements to our workspace.
If you’re in Sofia and are a Sunday Max reader: our doors are always open for a glass and a chat, just reply here and we’ll schedule!
The rooftop revolution continues 😎
I’ve always found it strange how a city with such a breathtaking skyline like Sofia has virtually no public (or private, for that matter) rooftop decks. That’s slowly changing now, and it’s fantastic. As avid readers of these updates know, we are huge fans of rooftops. Starting this summer, another amazing location will open in Sofia, featuring a hip deli, stylish restaurant, beautiful minimalist hotel rooms, and a rooftop bar with killer views: Kitchen59. Owned and developed by my fellow Dutchies Mike van Bokhoven and Freek den Hollander, Kitchen59 will be a completely new urban meeting, lodging, and relaxing space, something that Sofia is more than ripe for. I had a sneak preview this week, and can’t wait for the multiple launch events scheduled in the next weeks and months. Ping me if you want to tag along!
The Flying Dutchman of Sofia 🍻🇳🇱
Since we’re on the wave of Dutch eating and drinking businesses in Sofia, as bars and restaurants reopened this week, I also paid two after-work visits to the very quaint and thoroughly enjoyable Flying Dutchman Bar. Run by yet another Sofia Dutchie, Frits Hovenkamp, this is a former neighborhood cafe in Lozenets, that Frits beautifully transformed into an authentic Dutch beer bar. He bought out the interiors and exteriors of several bars back home in Holland, which had gone out of business, and hauled all of it to Sofia to create the Flying Dutchman. The bar is the only place in Bulgaria with some unique Dutch and Belgian beers on draft, like Affligem and Grolsch, and even offers bitterballen plates to boot:
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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