July 11; a dispatch from home-home 🧡
Finally back on planes and back to roots... this was my week
Happy Sunday,
A bit of a late update from me on this Sunday, as I find myself in this position today:
Ellie and I are finally traveling outside Bulgaria and the Balkans; we’re in the Netherlands this week. Coming back here, to where I grew up, was my biggest travel craving, built up during the period since March of last year, and I haven’t been this excited about a trip since many-many years.
The week started with a few long days in the office, as with our Vitosha team we’re preparing a number of investments we want to see through this summer. Those long days were capped off with excellent evenings on our office rooftop, overlooking Sofia:
On Wednesday, Ellie and I boarded a plane to Berlin, and it was really nice to feel the vibe of an airport again, and to land in a bustling big city, especially one we know so well, and where we’ve lived before.
The next morning we walked around Mitte, and I remembered that one of my early first visits to Berlin was exactly twenty years ago, when I took a train from The Netherlands to Berlin with my granddad for a week. We were staying with a friend of his and walked around the city on most days. I snapped some shots of my granddad on the steps of the Reichstag building, as he retold me the stories of how he was part of defeating Nazi Germany in his role as a Soviet Air Force plane mechanic, in Berlin in May 1945. Here’s a collage I shared about those photos on Insta:
The next day Ellie and I boarded an ICE train to Hamburg, a place we’d long wanted to visit. Our main reference points in Germany are Cologne and Berlin, the two cities we’ve lived in and know well. Hamburg appeared as something in between the two, definitely not the international culture capital that Berlin is, but a much more stately and picturesque city than Cologne, with a grand lake view, and lots of cultural and historical monuments.
After Hamburg, we set out for the three-hour drive to the place I spent my university years in, Groningen in the Netherlands. I decided I wanted to take a nice EV for a spin on this trip, and since most such rentals are Teslas, I settled on that. But just as we went to pick ours up in Hamburg, we realized our hotel was next-door to a Polestar Space, the dealership brand of Volvo’s new line of premium EVs. It was the first time I got to see a Polestar in person, and as a big fan of both Volvos and EVs I was naturally smitten from the first second.
It’s very likely I’ll end up having a Polestar 2 (or 3 or 4) at some point, and this impromptu visit to the Hamburg Polestar space kind of sealed the deal for me. The trip now continues with a Tesla Model S, and I’ll probably share next week how that experience is going.
Those who know Groningen will know that nearly the entire downtown area is paved with yellow pavement stones, which led us in our student years to refer to it is as the magical Yellow Brick Road. Spending this weekend here again was to wallow in the sweet memories of those years, and to enjoy the atmosphere of friendly laissez-faire which I have to admit I miss more and more as the time goes by. An additional bonus is that the Netherlands have a very laid-back approach to Covid restrictions, with masks no longer mandatory anywhere except public transport. This definitely makes you almost forget there’s a pandemic going on. With full vaccination nearing 50% here, I cross my fingers this policy will prove its usefulness and will not lead to disappointments.
Ellie and I will be spending the entire week here in the Netherlands, so ping us if you want to meet up, in Amsterdam or elsewhere, and I’ll share the story of our next adventures here next week.
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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