Author: Daniel Hatke
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Fooling Yourself
Mike Dariano’s The Waiter’s Pad should be more widely read. I’m sure his readership has been growing heaps lately, but we’d all be wiser if more of us read his well-synthesized material. I was delighted as I read one of his year-in-review posts entitled Know Thyself. A nod to the plaque above The Oracle’s door,…
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Advice to my Younger Self
Staying silent for ten days and focusing on one single thing for 12-14 hours of each of those ten days would, one would think, not leave much time for thinking and meandering through the corners of one’s brain. Alas, the brain, at least mine, craves distraction and moving from thought to thought quickly enough to…
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Happy Thanksgiving – Update // Reading & Podcast List
While everyone back home takes time out for Thanksgiving and shows gratitude towards one another, Shell and I are in Dharamsala, India doing much the same. We spent the morning meditating at Tushita Center, and later in the afternoon volunteered by speaking English with Tibetan refugees at Lha Charitable Trust. A humbling experience, fitting for…
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Wiesbaden // Köln // Ibbenbüren
Wiesbaden: July 23-27 | Ibbenbüren: July 27-29 With our home base in Wiesbaden, a small distance west of Frankfurt, we toured the Rheingau region. This part of our trip, along with our stay in Bruges, was highlighted for me by being in spaces that were conducive to us doing big family dinners. We cooked our…
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Goals and changing beds every 2.26 nights
Greetings from Morocco! Couscous the turtle says hi from our riad in Marrakech. He’s a bit peevish and likes to stick his head under the couch for naps. Needless to say, Couscous and I have gotten along well. Before we took the flight from JFK to Milan on July 3rd, I wrote a draft post…
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Bruges and Damme // Cycling the Belgian Countryside
July 18-21 Bruges Bruges is a beautiful town, many of you reading will likely already be familiar with it or have been. While I had been warned Bruges is touristy, it was not at all off-putting. I hear touristy and I think one or both of two directions: overcrowded and miserable, shops selling soulless and…
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Rafting the Drina River and Hiking Sutjeska in Bosnia and Montenegro
August 15-18 After Belgrade and spending a lot of time in cities Shell was aching to get out into the countryside, and now we had a car to do it with. She was able to find a great spot for us at the Drina Tara Rafting facility in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have a lot…
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Diving into Bosnia // A Day in Mostar // A Week in Sarajevo
Aug 26-27: Mostar | Aug 27-Sep1: Sarajevo Strap in, this one’s long, and I hope worth your while. The TL;DR is: go to Sarajevo, it’s a wonderful place to visit despite what I begin this post with. “I realize that what happened in Bosnia could happen anywhere in the world, particularly in places that are…
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Theroux’s Road Trip // Our Balkan Road Trip // Dubrovnik
Zaton and Dubrovnik: August 23-26 Yesterday, September 1st, we arrived in Trogir, Croatia. Not far from Split. It has a small and beautifully walled old town, not unlike Dubrovnik or Kotor, but with a bit more elbow room from other humans. There is a large fortress at one end of the island that was built…
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Exploring and Eating in Prague
August 7-9 It is a fairy tale type place. Visually, some mix of Disney, Hogwarts, and something one’s own imagination came up with during bed time stories. The reality of being in Prague on foot in August was to be competing in a sea of humanity. As one Czech put it to us, “No Czechs…