Hi all! Hope this finds you all well. I predict a less reflective update this time round, although with the world in such flux who knows...

All of a sudden, life feels pretty hectic. With the changes to travel restrictions, and I suppose a desire by many countries to get back to some sort of normal, there has been a real shift in the amount of travel in Anna's work diary. And in the plans of friends and family too! The last few weeks have seen a second work trip to Japan for Anna and visits to Romania and Hungary. We've also had our first visitors who weren't here for a meeting, our second visitor who was here for a meeting, lots of fun in the snow and one case of COVID (just the one though).

Unfortunately for Anna her trip to Japan still required some pretty strict COVID isolation requirements, although this time I understand the team were allowed a run around an astro-turf football pitch in an open-sided barn for a fixed period of time. Whilst this was clearly provided with the best of intentions, it did make the whole thing sound more like being in prison! Romania and Hungary have now dropped all COVID restrictions and so are a completely different experience. I have been lucky enough to join Anna in Budapest for a few days (less than three hours on the train from Vienna). We did say that we would try and do this where it makes sense and isn't taking the mickey and given that many of Anna's meetings span weekends, it only seems fair.

Budapest rocks! We've been here a few days and I can't really describe why it rocks, but it does. There's a buzz, something in the air, a bit of vim! It feels young and confident, a bit edgy, and the beer is pretty good - so maybe it's somewhere in that lot. We were partially guided by our friend Lucy who used to live here, with some great recommendations for food and sights. There was a slight disappointment when we found the building that Lucy used to live in and discovered that it had been renovated and was no longer adorned with bullet holes and shell damage from an uprising in 1956. Of course, I imagine if you live there, the excellent work that had been done is much appreciated. Next door is still very much in need of work.

Much of this spirit can be felt in the "Ruin Bars", which are pubs that have been set up in derelict buildings. I think they are mostly in buildings ruined in that 1956 uprising against Soviets influence. We popped into the original ruin bar and I went back for a pint of stout(!) when Anna had an evening meeting. As well as being fun and having a good atmosphere, there was a certain entrepreneurship about the place. I was in no way the only tourist there, but I felt like a student again (😁) and I enjoyed watching uncomfortable loafer wearing American tourists having a peek around and not knowing what to do with themselves! 😆 Seriously shabby chic but I imagine that whoever owns the place doesn't do shabby chic at home!

Whilst here, I've been trying to learn a bit about the more recent history and we went on a "Retro Communist Bike Tour" as part of this learning. Our guide was the same age as me and it was quite something to hear him talk about growing up and going to school where the only foreign language "choice" was Russian, where all of the shops sold the same small selection of goods and the shopkeepers were really scary. He recently found out that his Grandfather worked for the KGB... But he also talked about how he was just a kid and didn’t know anything different.

Hungary has a troubled past, which over the last few hundred years seems to have been dominated by other nations (Austria, Soviet Union, etc) "giving them their freedom"...! And also some dubious choices of backing the losing side in Europe's major conflicts. It was really interesting to see the Cold War played out in Budapest’s Freedom Square where Russia and the USA have played statue one-upmanship on someone else’s turf. But it felt like this really was the past and our guide talked about a national mindset based on working with their neighbours and coming to terms with the past. Having said that, I also listened to a podcast about the upcoming election and how the incumbent is a Putin-friendly right-wing populist who has manipulated the system and the state-run media to enhance his chances of staying in power, all of which sounds like a pretty slippery slope to me... It'll be interesting to see how things play out on Sunday 3 April.

There were some great insights into relatively recent history - all of which had an extra keenness given what's happening now in Ukraine. Our guide said that when the tours started again a few weeks ago, giving the tour we were on and talking about the times under the yoke of the Soviet Union feels very different to how it used to... It was all supposed to be in the past and now it's next door...

Elsewhere we've had some great fun in the snow, ticking another box on our list of reasons to have this change of scenery. We haven't got in as much skiing as we'd hoped (partly due to the dreaded lurgy) but we have tried cross-country skiing again when we were away for Anna's birthday and we had a fantastic long-weekend snow-shoeing in the Alps near Innsbruck. We stayed in the highest monastery in Austria and were straight out into deep snow from the door every day. Snow-shoeing is a curious thing, with downhill definitely more difficult than up, but when you're walking across a meadow on untouched powder snow, and not sinking to your waist, there really is nothing like it! We're certainly looking forward to a bit more of that next year.

As is presumably the case for all of you reading this, we have been shocked and saddened by what is happening in Ukraine. And for Anna, working for an international organisation, it really does bring it close to home. We can only hope that there is some sort of resolution sooner rather than later, but no doubt the effects will be felt in many ways for years to come. It feels like we humans are content to lurch from one tragedy to the next, which every time puts back dealing with the biggest problem we face in climate change. Maybe we all need to gather in our respective "ruin bars" and come up with some new ways to work with our neighbours, develop some bright new ideas, find our inner entrepreneur and make the world a better place in whatever way we can. Phoenix from the flames and all that.

Ha! Failed. 🤣