I had the brilliant idea to try and recap 2024 somehow, maybe on a month-by-month basis, only to discover that I’d already had the same basic idea a year ago. Last January I put together a travel and photo update blog post for 2023, this year I’m not as organized with the photos, though I do hope I’ll get around to sorting and uploading those. 

I’m also going to mention a few work-related things, mostly as they relate to travel, but I’m planning (hoping?) on writing a somewhat separate post for that, so more details on that to come. Let me know if I mention anything here you’d like to hear more about.

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January

February

March

Weekend trip to the Frankfurt area for the Democrats Abroad Germany Annual General Meeting, where I've been treasurer. Not even actually in Frankfurt, it took place in Ingelheim am Rhein, didn't take many photos to be honest.

April

Check out the full Paris album on Flickr. I just resubscribed for another year, as part of some digital clean-up. I've uploaded everything there!

The last time I was in Paris was in 2009, I'm having trouble finding stuff online digital proof that I was there. It was so long ago, I still blogged fairly regularly (if inanely and briefly) and used Flickr: March 14, 2009: Photographs from Paris

May

I started a new job at the Sovereign Tech Fund, so stayed put in Berlin!

June

Went to Leipzig for a day for work stuff, nothing really exciting to report.

July

Finally made my way back to London. My friends Garima and Pravesh had been living there since 2020, but were moving away soon so that's the kind of thing that helps motivate me to plan a trip. It was a lovely long weekend (bit rainy of course, being London), less regular tourist stuff and more just spending with friends, like Sarah and Dylan, Chris and Mike, and Shruti, Ravi, and their chickens.

I think the last time I was in London before July 2023 was for a silly 24-hour trip in September 2017 to go to the Tate Modern's Queer British Art exhibition, of all things.

London Flickr photo set 

August

For work, we had a couple days at an offsite at Coconat in Bad Belzig. That's about an hour by regional train and bus from Berlin in the surrounding state of Brandenburg.

It seems weird to write this in a post detailing all the cool places I went in 2023, but I do have a hard time actually taking time off and using it to go to new (to me) places. I've been talking about going to one of the Baltic countries for years, usually when it gets hot in Berlin, and I fantasize about somewhere with a more temperate climate an actual coastline. Finally, finally, I booked a trip and spent two weeks in August in Tallinn, Estonia. The first week was properly off work, and the second week I worked remotely. It probably deserves its own blog post, but the remote work wasn't quite as refreshing / change of scenery-inspiring as I had hoped. Nonetheless, it was great to go to a new country and city.

Tallinn Flickr photo set

I also took the ferry from Tallinn for a day-trip to Helsinki. I love ferries! Sadly I somehow deleted most of the photos and only could cobble together a few of my first visit to Finland

Helsinki Flickr photo set

I also took a one-night trip to Leipzig (by train) for SPRIND's summer event/party. Since they're the host organization for STF (work), it was interesting to see all the other projects they support and meet more of the people who work there.

September

My friends Tom and Stefi got married to Italy, in a beautiful seaside town called Castiglioncello. I always have to look up how to spell it, maybe that's why it's off the beaten path? Though there are plenty of hotels and places to stay, so I don't think it's a secret.

It's near where Stefi grew up, and absolutely gorgeous. I flew in and out of Pisa, stayed overnight there, and then took the train down to Castiglioncello.

Pisa & Castiglioncello Flickr photo set

October

Took a train trip down to Frankfurt, or technically Eschborn for a work conference called OSPOlogyLive hosted by SAP and the Linux Foundation. Eschborn is basically an enormous office park outside Frankfurt city limits. Maybe it's a tax thing?

November

I lived in San Francisco before l moved to Berlin, and the first few years after I left, there were lots of occasions to go back for work or friends. But basically with pandemic and a few other factors, the last time I was there before this year was September 2018, which seems just wild. But this time I got to go for almost two weeks, combining two work conferences with some other things, so the long flight was definitely worth it. 

San Francisco Flickr photo set

December

Stayed put in Berlin! In fact, in the last couple weeks, barely left the apartment.

It's hard to remember all the nice parts of a trip when it's bookended by Ryanair flights and extremely backed up German border crossings, but setting that aside, I had a wonderful time in Sofia this weekend. After months of incompatible schedules, my friend Owen (yes, really) and I finally found somewhere we could meet, with him coming from Düsseldorf and me from Berlin.

I did not know a lot, or really anything about Sofia. I still don't. I remember from elementary school that the capital of Bulgaria had a nice and easy-to-remember name. I've met some Bulgarians at different points in my life, but I would be hard-pressed to recall anything about country or people. Are there any famous fictional Bulgarians? In fact, a new friend in Berlin is Bulgarian but I didn't realize it until I ran into him at a party a week before the trip. So suffice it to say, I went in pretty blind.

The City

I don't think Sofia sticks out as having particularly beautiful or interesting architecture or urban design. There do seem to be large number of parks and public spaces, though in winter everything's covered in snow and ice anyway. Buildings tend to look (to my untrained eye) basically socialist blocks or 70s concrete. What's actually the difference? There are two subway lines, one which goes to the airport, so points for convenience, especially compared to Berlin. There are lots of buses and trams, but I couldn't figure out how to use them and we mostly walked places anyway. Someone should make an app with a trip planner for Sofia!

Food

This was one area where Sofia really surprised me. We got a few tips for restaurants to check out and even went on a free food tour. Almost everything we ate was really good! It was interesting, experimental, well-cooked. I didn't expect there to be a forward-thinking food scene, but there was and we were lucky enough to experience a bit of it!

History

My final thoughts on Sofia and Bulgaria are that I'd like to understand their history better. While on the walking tours, our guides tended to gloss over the thousands of years of history, explaining that there were Thracians, then Slavs and proto-Bulgarians who came to occupy the land that is now Bulgaria. I'm sure it was bloodier and messier, and a country that has 3 kingdoms and was conquered by the Ottoman empire surely has a complex history. But I always feel this way after I go on trips, so please recommend any good (interesting) histories of Bulgaria that you might have! Even fairytales would be an interesting place to start.

I walked out of my apartment and headed down Valencia Street towards my polling place, only to realize that I'd be late for a meeting at work if I voted now. If I hadn't walked down Valencia though, I wouldn't have seen this parking space-turned-temporary street art installation.

At lunch, I walked over to the grand opening of Local Mission Market at 23rd & Harrison, the latest in the "local" Mission empire (see also Local's Corner and Local: Mission Eatery, but not Local Edition, which is downtown). Nothing suitable to grab for lunch, but I'll check back in a week or so to see what else they add.

As I left work, HBO's Looking was filming at Punjab again. What is their obsession with our local cheap Chinese joint? I don't care, I just want to meet Jonathan Groff and Russell Tovey. How hard can that be?

Some photos from walking around yesterday on one of the best weekends I've had in SF!