Europe 2014: Warsaw, Poland

With two cities under our belts, we took a short flight from Riga to Warsaw in Poland. Having never been to Poland before I was uncertain about what to expect from the country and its capital. Would it be like Latvia or Estonia, or would it be more Westernised? My question was soon answered, along with the discovery of what is now one of my favourite cities.

Europe 2014: Riga, Latvia

Having left a little part of myself in Tallinn, we made the five hour bus journey (complete with a slight hangover) to Riga in Latvia. The bus trip, although punctuated by a few post-drinking moments of unease, was brilliant, with the perfectly straight roads cutting a seemingly endless highway across the Baltic States. And so with tired legs and a tired mind, I rolled off the coach and set foot in Latvia for the first time.

Europe 2014: Tallinn, Estonia

"I want to see the world. I want sunshine and skyscrapers; languages I don't understand; music I've never hear before."

That is a quote from one of my favourite films in recent years - namely, Sunshine on Leith. When I first watched the film I scoffed at how cliché that line was but I've thought about it a bit and found that the truth is that is accurately describes how I feel about traveling. The fact that it is said with a beautiful Scottish accent sends familiar tingles down my spine - a familiarity which makes me long for the unfamiliar. It is with this mindset that I set out on my most recent trip to Europe. 

My next seven posts are going to be about each city that I visit, providing small snapshots into an experience that I'm never going to forget. The first stop was Tallinn a little under two weeks ago and it went a little like this...

Post 100: Symmetry, Change and What's to Come

I've only gone and done it again! It is with great pleasure that I report to you that this post is my 100th on Ramblings of a Twenty-Something. For those of you who have been following me over the years, you will know that we've been here before over on Ramblings of a Teenager. However, this time seems to matter more for some reason.

It has taken me over two years to get to this point again, with the coincidence between the end of my undergraduate degree and this landmark being almost poetic. I'll not bore you with the romance of it all  - I like to write, I think we all get that now! - but it is enough to say that the majority of the 236 posts that I have written over the years map my whole time at university. With that in mind, can you at least let me indulge myself with a quick look back at that time? Tough, I'm doing it anyway!

Good Morning Edinburgh

"Everyone we know is down there sleeping just now".

It's about half four in the morning and we are scaling the side of Arthur's seat to see the city that I love wake up. The wind is crisp and the ground is damp from yesterday's downpour. We're not really dressed for the climb but the warmth of the white wine and beer is keeping out the cold. I can feel my lungs straining and my legs burning with every stone that I scale. Every twenty metres calls for another break; a gulp of ginger beer and half a sausage roll bought from the twenty-four hour shop. Onwards.

Summer 2014 is Here!

Time. Zeit. Summer. Sommer.

I don't want to check the time-stamp on my most recent post because I think it will make me greet. It might have been just after dissertation, or it might have been just after my eighteenth birthday - time has felt like that recently. Anyway, I'm here now and that's all that matters.

Is She?

My break is almost over. It's been three weeks to the day since my dissertation deadline passed and I haven't touched university work since - it's been great. In that time I've had a relaxing week away beside the sea, resolved to make a decent go of improving my German in the summer and rediscovered my interest in poetry. I started writing poetry towards the end of high school and was quite productive between then and the middle of second year at university when it just disappeared from my life. Until this afternoon I hadn't penned a single stanza for two years. 

It felt good to be creative with something again and to get my hands dirty with structure and story telling. Today I remembered how much I love writing poetry and I thought I would share that with you in this post. Underneath I've included an audio of me reciting the poem which I've called 'Is she?'. Hope you enjoy it. 

A day pined for, a day now gone.

A hop, a grape and repeat –

as long as I stand, hit me neat.

Stunned. Stranger yet familiar;

familiar but I’m strange

like that.

I admit: I see you in her, and her in you.

Make it stop, help me start:

another round?

And around we go. Sit and watch and talk and

I will show,

show nothing new, not to you.

For you know my type:

light and loud, heavy and

Quiet.

Is she? I don’t even know her name.

Cheers,

Martin

My Favourite Wikipedia Page

Wikipedia gets bad press. From day one at university we were told, in no uncertain terms, that it is the devil's source and should not be used in any academic work. Consequently, when you tell someone that you found your information (whether that be about how many goals Liam Fox scored for Livingston or the names of the Queen's corgis) on Wikipedia, they scoff. Granted, I'm sure that, overall, Wikipedia comes quite short of being 100% accurate, but you would be lying if you said you don't use it at least a hand-full of times a week.

Once you get past the prejudice against the great online encyclopedia, you can start to enjoy it. Away from the likes of BuzzFeed and Facebook, there is a world of knowledge out there waiting to fill the hours you should be using for other things - knowledge gathering procrastination, you might call it. Anyway, this morning I searched for something I've been meaning to for a while and found what I can comfortably term my favourite page on Wikipedia. Guess I should tell you about it then?

Dissertation Reflections

Dissertation and idleness. Those are the two extremes on what has very much been a sliding scale of emotions and productivity for me over the last couple of months. Before the idleness, however, came the 'Big D' and I think that enough time has elapsed for me to be able to properly reflect on it.

It was a curious experience for me. The biggest hurdle was getting over the disappointment of not enjoying my dissertation as much as I thought I would. When I set out to 're-think liability for defective products' back at the start of fourth year, I had the genuine belief that I could make a valuable contribution to the product liability debate. I set myself up for a fall. 

Questioning, Questioning - Another Guest Post

And so to the second guest blog of the day. Having, I'm sure, enjoyed Iain's post earlier, this post will set another interesting thought process in motion. I've had a great time with the work that I have been sent today and I hope it will encourage others to write their own stuff. The writer of this post has asked to remain anonymous. 

Having volunteered, somewhat over-enthusiastically, to author a guest post for Martin I faced the problem of actually coming up with something to write about. This is one area that normally I have no trouble with - I can ramble on about anything and everything. However when looking at what I would like to talk about I hit a brick wall.  

The inspiration eventually came in the form of a couple of podcasts that I have been listening to recently. The podcasts themselves are not wonderful works of art or a lesson in editing but rather are the discussions of two individuals talking about a range of topics that take their fancy. My listening to them has posed one of the most perplexing questions I have thought about recently: the question of asking questions.

This is not going to be a discussion of a major logical challenge posing issues of regression in relation to questions. Instead I simply query why we don’t always ask the difficult questions?