I was doing an exchange high school year in Santa Clara, California. Nowadays I look back on this time and wonder how on earth I didn’t get shot. My daughter is definitely picking another country for an exchange year.

Also, I refused to get Facebook, but this bit me in the ass because it was the way to communicate and stay in touch back then, and I ended up losing all the contacts I made in that school.

There are large chunks of it that are really repetitive and boring, just things like the number of goats and chickens owned by so and so.

That honestly sounds like the exposition of every character in a Wes Anderson movie

I agree so much with that! I love long distance travelling, but due to financial and, more importantly, environmental costs I hardly ever do it. During my early 20s I found a fondness for holidays close by. I am not a big fan of nature (I mean, I am, but I don’t need to be immersed in it if you know what I mean), but there are so many cities and towns to explore nearby. To be fair, we are kind of privileged in Europe, me in Germany even more so. Due to the history and Germany basically being a plethora of kingdoms sewn together in the mid 1800s, you really have so many different cultures within a single country and don’t need to cross borders to experience a different world. (However, growing up in Munich, it was faster to drive to Italy’s coast than to Germany’s.)

I agree with everything you’re saying. I just want to point out some caveats to trains (although I absolutely love them and prefer them to cars or planes as well). The obvious one is that few people have enough vacation days to spend multiple days traveling by train. Even if we aren’t talking about paid vacation, not every job/position lets you take unpaid time off. Some jobs don’t let you take more than one or two weeks in a row.

For families this can be additionally challenging since a lot of vacation days need to be taken when school or daycare is out, or the kid is sick, or the kid needs to go to some dentist appointment, leaving you with a total of a week of vacation.

Yeah, and kids in general. It is difficult to keep little children, who want to move and be loud, on a train for days. It’s not impossible, but most likely everyone will be a nerve wreck by the time of arrival. The other people on the train will hate you because you cannot “tame” your kid, or they will judge you because after one and a half days you decide to allow your kid to watch a movie on a tablet to have a break. The relaxing aspect of a train ride tends to vanish.

And last but not least, health conditions. Some people cannot sit for long periods of time and have to wear compression socks or even get heparin shots to prevent thrombosis. This is already the case for a 6 hour flight, but 6 days of minimal movement is difficult and not recommended. You can do it - there are ways to do it - but it is something that you need to keep in mind when travelling.

But nevertheless, I agree that long train rides and a break from the fast paced, information immersed world is great. Maybe this: as long as you can do so, do it! There might be a time in your life when this will be more difficult and you will have to pause and find a better suited alternative. But that doesn’t mean you can’t unpause when the time is right. Enjoy!

Banana with brown almond butter (that one that is 100% almonds).

Mandatory mention that cup size means nothing without the band size.

A C cup with a 70 cm band is much smaller in volume than a C cup with a 90 cm band. 70G and 90C have equivalent breast volume (if you go with A, B C, D, E, F, G as nomenclature).

Which is especially annoying because as a 70G you still get the industrial support model while you’d be fine with a turtle dove model. And if you have a band width below 70 you are absolutely fucked, although a lot of petite women would do better in 65.

Didn’t Interview With The Vampire answer this question? I mean if we take it as part of the vampire canon then the brain does develop further as that little girl was mentally a full ass grown woman trapped in a child’s body

The funny thing is I can taste and smell this ice cream and my mom would tell me “no, no, this one tastes different, plombir in the Soviet Union was something different”. There’s a lot of older people longing for that ice cream that you are holding as if it could bring back youth. It’s crazy.

(I will assume that the 1992 version was still the old taste)

That’s moronic, not gonna lie, but I just want to say, man, being the first one in my friend group to have had a kid, it was bonkers what I was invited to, with all seriousness. Concerts, house parties, clubs,… When I pointed out I have a 3 week old baby it was “just leave it with their dad for the night!” When I told them it was a fully breastfed baby it was “oh then just bring the baby! It’ll be fun!” When I tried to point out that I am exhausted, recovering, and am using any minute that I don’t tender to the baby to sleep - as did my partner - I got “oh wow I thought they mostly sleep lol, well ok then maybe next week at that other house party at the other end of the city? It will be full of people you don’t know and it starts at 10 pm, there will be beer but you can bring some hard liquor!”

So, to heavily play devil’s advocate, maybe these are new parents that were pressured into being cool and staying the same despite having a baby… By outsiders or by themselves.