This is probably not the greatest title. I left it to the very end and couldn’t come up with anything better but I hope it does the job. The initial dilemma The news of the illness were surprising. They broke the last hope there was that maybe this was just a regular infection gone too far. I had a sudden wake- up moment somewhere between the regular calls and the waiting for…
Ekaterina Basinkevich
What I Have Learned While Going Through Grief
I have spent the past week searching the depths of the internet for strategies for coping with grief. Quite frankly, I must admit that so far I was not able to come up with much more than letting my tears speak for the state that my mind is currently in. I may not have come up with a great approach myself, as I kept researching, reading and crying myself to sleep, and…
Over my years abroad I learned that children who grow up in a culture other than the one of their parents or who move around a lot internationally are called third culture kids. Living abroad is a great privilege and I am lucky to have been granted that. It seems, however, that the privilege aspect is taking center stage in any discussions on this topic. I am happy with how my life…
Day Two in Athens: A Real-Life Itinerary
Read part 1 of the itinerary here Sweet Sins In Russian, the walnut is referred to as Greek nut. The connection between the word and its country of origin occurs to me at the age of 24 as I sit down at Stani, looking at the Greek yogurt with honey and walnuts in front of me. I appreciate the hunger of the early morning hours to try as many local dishes as…
Day One in Athens: A Real-Life Itinerary
At the age of 18, the first trip I ever took on my own began with a map of Amsterdam spread out on my table and an Excel chart on the screen of my laptop. Although it would only be for four days, I took the planning of this trip very seriously, all the way from a to-do list to budget planning for each day. As I sat in a café in…
Riyadh Q & A: Transitioning Between Cultures
Last week my Lost in Riyadh Facebook page has reached 1000 likes! Since then I have been thinking about ways to celebrate the occasion beyond the usual thank you post. Looking through my old entries that once composed my Lost in Riyadh blog right before GDPR came along in the EU, I found a comment by a reader from back in 2014. Tonight, to celebrate my blog’s wide outreach, I would like to…
Oslo on a Budget
A lot has happened since the last time this blog has seen a new post. To reward myself for the work I had put in over the last couple of months and to celebrate all the good things that have happened recently, I decided to finally add Norway to my list of visited destinations. While there is a lot of truth to Norway’s reputation of being one of the most expensive countries…
Guest Post: 24 Hours as a Solo Female Traveler in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
It has already been a surprise to me when I was contacted for the first time by a young woman living in Saudi Arabia asking for a feature of her 24 Hours as a Solo Female Traveler in Riyadh post back in 2016. The controversy of the subject of Saudi Arabia may have been one reason for the success of my blog Lost in Riyadh (see page above for all posts) even after…
The One Time I was Adopted by a Cuban Family
Read part 1 of the story here Those who know me personally may have noticed at some point that I usually don’t drink alcohol and should I ever do so, said alcohol would form part of a cocktail. But even in the form of a cocktail, the alcohol strikes me as too strong and always makes me feel like I just had a sip of disinfectant. Not so in Havana. The Cubans,…
Lobsters are Just Fancy Shrimps
To make the post shorter, this is part 1 of a longer story. Read part 2 here. If I really think about it, lobster basically tastes like a fancy shrimp. Back in Riyadh, a piece of lobster the mere size of my thumb was part of a € 70 six course meal I never would have gone for myself, had it not been upon an invitation which would have been rude to…