A back home like visit

We have lived in Europe for quite some time and our son has spent his happy childhood in Switzerland. He always considered this little beautiful country as his second home no matter where he eventually settles. So visiting European countries is quite like back home visit for us: regardless where you go, the city setting is often very similar with some local twists of course due to local traditions and culture. No difference this time when we came to visit Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn last week. Although we had never come to this part of Europe before, we often had the feeling that we seemed to have come before, especially for Helsinki and Stockholm since Tallinn (Estonia) has more Russian taste, more strange to us. One thing I must say that will never be familiar to us is the language. That’s one major reason why we decided to move to the NA. Since Chinese has no cases at all for nouns, it has already often caused confusion for us when we learned English that has 2 cases. How many times  you have called him as her or vice verse? I won’t be surprised to hear that many friends are still struggling with this in verbal conversations! Then it comes with 4 cases for German and my head started to spill when I tried to learn some German while being in Switzerland. I finally gave up as I knew I would never learn proper German. Fortunately we kept sending our son to the Saturday German school in Canada and more fortunately he has a great talent for languages and therefore he can speak nearly perfect German even without spending a day in any formal German school. For that, he has even got a formal certificate from the German government, verifying that he has mastered sufficient German equivalent to the high school diploma. Sorry for the little digression. What I just learnt from this trip is that Finnish language (including Estonian) has 14 cases for their nouns. Yes, not a few but 14!! My head was almost spun off when I heard it and I cannot really figure out how human beings can even speak such a complicated language without making any mistakes?

Anyway, this is not something I need to worry about as I was not going there to learn Finnish! What I can tell you is that we thoroughly enjoyed the trip with many breathtaking views and beauties. Let me show you a few photos about these cities.

Stockholm has being more influenced by the US I guess and you can feel the US almost everywhere. Even English is almost like a daily language there as everyone can speak very good English. The city has been divided to different parts by salty ocean rivers and I especially like its night views by the river bank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similarly for Helsinki,  the American influence is everywhere and you can see all kinds of American brands flashing on the streets. Tourism-wise, I’m less impressed by Helsinki, compared to Stockholm.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I talk about Tallinn last but actually it is really a city everyone should go to visit due to its truly breathtaking and strikingly picturesque view of the city, more precisely the old town of Tallinn! I have visited many cities around the world but this one is probably the most beautiful one in the sense that it has preserved its historical architecture and structure so well that I don’t think any other old town can compete with it. And it is also so beautifully built and maintained and the best part for tourists is probably that all the sightseeing worth visiting is confined within a relatively small area within walking distance. It probably has many world No.1 spots with historical values but one interesting spot is the world oldest pharmacy with over 1000 years that is still opening for business. My words are just too pallid and anemic to describe the astonishing beauty of Tallinn and let me just show you some pictures below for you to get a sense. Believe or not, Estonia is also the leading country in digitalization and its government has already digitalized for their daily work.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d highly recommend everyone to visit Tallinn if possible. I’m pretty sure you won’t be disappointed!! Since we visited 3 cities in three countries and cross sea straits within a week, it was not practical to rent a car to go around. One thing I think worth recommending is to go with Hop-on/Hop-off bus tour for sightseeing. The beauty of it is that one ticket you buy can take you to all the major sightseeing spots for the area and with audio guide on the bus (and Chinese is one of many languages they offer now). And you can get on or off at any spot as you like with no time limit typically within 24 hours or 48 hours. So we usually take the bus to go around first through all the spots to get an idea where are the most interesting places we want to visit and then target those with more in-depth visit. The brand is called City Sightseeing and it is  a Spain company (you can see more here).  I wish it was a publicly traded company as I feel it could be a very good stock to buy. So from the investment perspective related to tourism, I think you can consider the famous company, Expedia (EXPE). I would think almost everyone has used its services one way or the other and its business is booming. While I like Expedia very much, it is quite expensive to buy for long term. However, savvy traders may consider Expedia as a seasonal stock to trade. It may be too late for this year but historically it has a very consistent pattern that the stock should be doing well during the summer/autumn period when tourism is most active everywhere in the world. Keep this in mind for next year although Expedia may still have a few good weeks to go this year.