Picture the scene. It’s Wednesday evening. Randi and I are sitting on the sofa together under the warm glow of the Christmas tree lights. The night before we were both out at work-related Christmas parties; in my case, a big bash at Freemasons’ Hall organised by Fora (our shared office space provider) and DJed by Annie Mac. Surreptitiously, I’m trying to organise a surprise weekend break for January as a Christmas gift, but I can see in Randi’s eyes that she’s hungry for one thing… a Christmas market, ASAP.
Soon, I’m accelerating my plans into an emergency Christmas trip that very weekend to… *rolls European getaway dice*… Gdańsk!
I’ve always been very curious to visit Gdańsk. Today it’s part of Poland – as it has been many times before in history – but after being invaded by Prussia in 1793, and subsequently becoming part of Germany, Gdańsk (or ‘Danzig’, in German) later spent a remarkable period between 1920 and 1939 as a rare remaining example of a European city state: the Free City of Danzig. My family has a lot of connection with Gdańsk during this period; my great-grandmother was born there. Of course, the reason this independence ended in 1939 was thanks to Nazi invasion, and the entire Jewish population – including my family – either escaped in time or were wiped out. The same is true of many non-Jewish Polish families, and as a result the modern city of Gdańsk, which was almost entirely physically destroyed by 1945, is very much a post-war reconstruction in terms of both its buildings and its people. Still, even though all this means I was never going to find a plaque commemorating my great-grandmother on a wall, you can see how I was primed for a lot of historical resonances.
Our late-night flight from Luton airport was trouble-free, despite being a bit of a trek to get there, but since the moment of booking I’d harboured doubts about whether we really had a room at the Hotel Gdańsk Boutique and when we finally arrived at 1.30am, the subsequent ten minutes of the receptionist’s hardcore keyboard tapping (interrupted only by “can I see your reservation again?”) only confounded my suspicions. Nevertheless, we waited patiently and were eventually rewarded when he finally looked up and handed over the room keys to a much, much bigger room than the one I had booked. Relieved, we hurried to bed before he could change his mind.
Randi also has Polish ancestry, and the next morning she began to experience a growing love for her long-lost motherland when she discovered that the breakfast buffet included both pickles and fish. Having both stuffed ourselves, we walked off our breakfasts on a nature path along one of the branches of the river before turning towards the Old Town for our first foray into the Christmas Fair. Gdańsk is very proud of winning the Best Christmas Market in Europe award for 2025, and if it was ever a ‘hidden gem’ type of place it’s certainly not now! The market is absolutely packed with people, but there are also tons of stalls and we barely had to queue for our latke lunch. (They had a different name, but same thing.) We also tried the delicious little Oscypek dumplings served with cranberry sauce which – I later learnt from Klaudia! – are filled with sheep cheese. Another win for Gdańsk.
You’ll be glad to hear that we took a break from eating in exchange for a two-hour afternoon walking tour, which did get a little chilly as the sun went down. I could have done with a little more historical context from the guide as he was pointing things out, but he redeemed himself at the end with a useful overview of Gdańsk’s history combined with an impassioned defence of Polish democracy against both Putin and the native Law and Justice party. It packs a punch when you’re standing in a courtyard where one of the first battles of the Second World War took place (the Defence of the Post Office); afterwards, the captured Polish prisoners were executed by firing squad.
It is worth saying that, just as in Warsaw, the architecture of the Old Town is truly extraordinary. You’re walking around a medieval city – cobbled streets, protected from cars, flanked on either side by beautiful painted buildings – and yet almost the entire thing has been resurrected from rubble in the 1950s and 60s. As a British person, Poland’s success at recapturing the beauty of its pre-war architecture makes me so envious in comparison to some of the ‘modernisation’ which took place in the UK around the same time. Why?!
After nipping back to our hotel to warm up, we dined on pierogi and salmon (although it turns out that lard is a step too far for Randi) before returning to the Christmas market for a spot of Secret Santing, dessert and a spin on the ‘Spinning Barrels’ fairground ride on which (a) we were definitely the oldest people not accompanied by any children, (b) Randi wasn’t certain if she was going to make it without throwing up or not. (But she didn’t!) Finally, we returned to our hotel to redeem our free beers from the inhouse brewery (see, there’s a reason they were actually fully booked) and enjoyed the live music before bed.
If I claimed we didn’t spend a hearty chunk of Sunday morning down at the breakfast buffet, I’d be lying. (I mean, c’mon, they had honey from the honeycomb.) But then we marched up to the Góra Gradowa hilltop lookout, through the gorgeous Gdańsk Główny railway station and onto the museum which made it to the top of the museum wishlist: the European Solidarity Centre. This was a close call – yes, the other museums were very tempting! – but here you’re spoiled for choice, as on top of everything else Gdańsk was also the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union in the 1980s. This movement led civil resistance against the Soviet-aligned state, precipitating the imposition of martial law in 1981 in Poland and ultimately contributing to the remarkably peaceful downfall of Communist rule. So, of course we had to see this.
Plus, on the walk there we stumbled across a near-infinite stream of motorised Santas to boot…
I won’t recap the entire history of the Polish trade union movement (stifle your disappointment, please) but suffice to say the exhibition was very immersive, and you could really feel the pride not just in the movement’s ultimate successful but in how the transition to democracy unfolded in Poland. As Randi noted, it gave us both a new perspective on how painful the democratic backsliding of the last few years must have been for those who opposed the Law and Justice government. The 1980s was never the period of history I had in mind when visiting Gdańsk – my family were long gone by then – but learning more about this era was an unexpected bonus of our trip.
With our emergency Christmas Market mission achieved, we flew home on Sunday night feeling very satisfied and festive. Over the following week, Randi treated me to dinner in Strangers’ Dining Room at the Houses of Parliament (while the abolition of the last hereditary peers was debated down the hallway). The following night we hopped over to Queen’s Park to see Randi’s colleague Dan play a gig at Worldly Wicked & Wise, which in my day (!) was a trinket-filled gift shop but is now a minimalist art gallery with space for a band to play. This was a super-fun night, my favourite song being the adorably silly cover In Spite of Ourselves, which gives you a sense of the vibe.
Finally – and to complete the circle of my last post being drafted on the Friday night train to Edinburgh – this weekend we were back in Scotland! Many thanks to Katie and James for hosting us and also for Katie’s stellar gingerbread men, which were quickly devoured when we all made it over to Kirsty and Roger’s on Saturday night for a really wonderful evening together. We also met Katie and James’s friend Dan over brunch, who patiently answered my dumb gardening questions without rolling his eyes, and later shared some great growing facts with us at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital’s Community Gardens.
In addition, Katie and I completed not one but two classic Doctor Who stories on this trip: 1987’s Paradise Towers and 1964’s Planet of Giants. The former is the first classic story I’ve ever seen with Mel as the companion – a gap I was keen to fill after her triumphant return in the most recent series. It’s safe to say the writing of this character has improved. Poor Mel: back in the day, more than half of respondents to a BBC audience research survey wished she’d been eaten by the cannibalistic couple in this story! Cannibals aside, Paradise Towers is partly a satire about brutalist housing block disasters. I really should love it, but it made me somewhat depressed, especially since I can all too vividly imagine the Twentieth Century Society fundraising to support the Great Architect Kroagnon’s legal defence fund. In contrast, Planet of Giants is more whimsical and fun: the Doctor and his (original) companions are accidentally shrunk down to be very small, and have to escape terrors such as ‘cat’, ‘matchbox’ and ‘plughole’. What more could you ask for?
I have a bit of a pre-Christmas blog backlog to clear before our upcoming holiday to the States, so for once I’m actually using my laptop as a laptop (!) and trying to make productive use of the 20.27 Lumo train to Edinburgh. [Editor’s note from the future: I failed, because I don’t have Randi’s superpower of being able to work from a train. But hello from Katie and James’s sofa the next day.]
To start, let’s hop back a few weeks to the outskirts of Regent’s Park, on another dark and wintery Friday night, as I made my way to join Randi outside the shuttered entrance of London Zoo for one of the most amazing and generous couple gifts we’ve received: a sleepover in the zoo itself!
“But wait…” you ask, “where in London Zoo can you sleep?” The answer is in one of a small cluster of little cabins just opposite the lion enclosure. After a brief pit stop here for welcome drinks, our group assembled for the first part of our exclusive nighttime tour of the zoo. Spoiler alert: this is absolutely the best way to see the zoo. Our guides were not only super friendly and knowledgeable but they were also happy to bounce around between biology, sociology, architecture (mostly in frustration at the absurd rules over listed buildings) and the philosophy and ethics of zoos and conservation in general.
It’s just quite wonderful to be led around by people who are so passionate about what they do, and could explain so much more about the animals we were looking at than a self-guided visit. We also took part in some of the ‘enrichment’ activities to keep the animals stimulated, such as stuffing nuts into logs for the porcupines to find. If you have the money, I couldn’t recommend this experience enough.
We broke for dinner served in the main zoo café but fancied-up with bonus mood lighting and music. Afterwards, our tour continued – including a peek into the backstage food kitchens – before settling down for the night in our cabin. Finally, after breakfast, we had a final hour to ourselves with one last daytime tour before the gates opened to the general public. Our favourite might have been the gibbons, Jimmy and Yoda, whose spot overlooks the Saturday morning football matches being played in the park. But here’s a short compilation of some of the others too, including the naked mole-rats which – Randi was entranced to learn – are led by a Queen who viciously smashes all of the other rats to prevent anyone from growing too big to challenge her. “Better to be the smasher than the smashee,” as I recall.
(Not included: the Komodo dragon, although she was awesome and we learnt amazing things about parthenogenesis, and the gorillas, because they are so close to humans in their mannerisms that it felt genuinely uncomfortable to film them.)
A massive thank you to Kirsty for such an amazing gift!
On the way home we also stopped by the Tube Map exhibition at The Map House, because of course we did, of which the coolest thing is probably this annotated proof of Harry Beck’s original diagram from 1932. (Note that almost every article I’ve read about this exhibition refers there being a note about ‘Willesden Green’ at the top, because this is what it says in the gallery notes, even though you can see with your eyes that it says ‘Willesden Junction’.) Sadly, the original costs £75,000 so we declined to purchase one, although in pure value for money terms that makes more sense than trying to flog a Tube map from a few years ago for £35.
Talking of Tube maps, the new Overground line names (which we started spotting in October) have now officially rolled out and we are loving life on the Windrush line. Seriously, for everyone who’s visited us in London over the last few years and has had the same criticism about confusing Overground line maps: your problems are solved.
Last month we also saw our final play at the Bush for 2024, Wolves on Road, about two enterprising crypto chancers whose wild rise and inevitable crash was predictable but fun to watch. This was a mostly light-hearted affair, of which the best part was the chemistry between main characters Manny and Abdul, although not all parts of the production met the same high standards.
In November we also braved stormy weather for the (very short) walk over to Angela’s for drinks one evening – which were lovely – while I very much enjoyed a work lunch at Granger & Co and am making a mental note here to go back.
Next time on dom.blog: An emergency flight to a Christmas Market…
Spoiler alert for anyone who’s still saving the US election night for a streaming binge over Christmas: Trump won. And, as Randi says, if Trump was going to win then we should be glad it was clear and decisive, because it’s always unhealthy when the losing side can sooth itself into passivity because it “won the argument” or wasn’t “really” beaten. There are a million arguments about why the Democrats lost – and I have my favourites! – reasonable people can disagree. What irks me is when people start from the question “…but how could people vote for Trump?”.
The answer to that question is really simple: Donald Trump was the Republican candidate. His voters pulled lever A rather than lever B, and that’s it. It doesn’t work to claim that you’re not allowed to vote for one of the two candidates on the ballot, or that you’re guilty of pathological character flaws if you do. It’s not just that blaming the electorate is a bad idea. It’s also absurd to claim that you’re defending democracy by leaving the voter with only one valid choice. That’s not a vote, it’s a threat.
I know this is disempowering because none of the Democrats chose Donald Trump to be their opponent. So what can they do? Well, one answer is to keep trying to win elections. Political parties which keep getting beaten have a strong incentive to change. But the Democrats do try to win elections, of course. Everyone’s entitled to their own pet theories about how to increase the odds. Here’s my list: Biden announces he won’t seek re-election after the 2022 midterms. An open primary selects a candidate with outsider energy and a popular theme. Internal coalitional groups stop being so self-destructive and weird. You can pick your own list, and it may be completely different to mine. Bernie would have won! Michelle Obama would have won! Taylor Swift would have won!
The point is, believing that Democrats could have done things differently is not the same as believing that victory can ever be guaranteed, especially in a world where all incumbents are losing. ‘Sometimes losing elections’ is really, really normal. I’m not writing this to be sanguine. Trump winning is very bad. But the alternate universe hovering most closely to ours is the one where Democrats lose to someone else, not the one where Democrats always win every election. If you care about a democracy in a two party system, you have to care about the health of both parties, not just your own side. To use an overly British metaphor, they are the neighbouring flat in your terraced house. You should not expect to share their taste in music. A good neighbour is not the same as a good friend! But if they have rising damp, or a leaky roof, it’s going to get you both in the end.
Ranty introduction over! If you made it through all that, I promise I’ll move on to other things too, just after recording how strange my actual 5th November turned out to be. After a day on a stationary boat – for an unrelated work event! – I ended up at a watch party with Randi’s colleagues featuring not just the usual CNN (gotta love John King’s magic wall) but also a dedicated desk of hardcore election analysts just for us. So while CNN cut to commercials, we could just wander over to the number crunchers to get the real story. Sadly, of course, none of this did anything to change the outcome and by the time we got into an Uber home at around 1.30am the trends were starting to become clear. By the end of our ride, it was obvious. Still, I’m grateful for the invite and it was certainly a memorable election-watching experience.
In between all of this Randi and I also did some emergency kitten-sitting for Za’atar at Tash and Cormac’s place in Leyton, where we also enjoyed a very tasty Italian dinner with mum later in the week. That Friday night I was also very excited for a catch-up with Jill at The Island (where I feel like she had to endure an early draft of the opening to this post) and we somehow managed to drag out our last half-pint for nearly two hours.
But, fun things aside, by the end of that week Randi and I were itching to get away somewhere and so we settled on… Bath!
The honest reason why we ended choosing Bath is because at Matt and Rachael’s wedding, several weeks earlier, I had been reunited with ex-Groupon colleague Ben and his wife Steph. When I learnt that Steph runs her own bakery and brunch place – Good Day Cafe in Bath- I sent the menu to Randi as a note for the future, and this seemed like a good time to be sharing some delicious French toast and loaded hash browns. Which we did, for brunch on Sunday, and it was great!
We also arrived with enough time for a long Saturday afternoon walk, which we both found invigorating even when Randi made a rare slip-up in her directions and we had to climb under some barbed wire to avoid a 25 minute walk through a long, dark tunnel. (Which, to be fair, looked really cool. It just wasn’t the outside-in-nature experience we were looking for.)
That evening, we met up with Randi’s friends Will and Zoë for dinner at an excellent pizza place, followed by drinks elsewhere, followed by an oh-my-god-we-can’t-get-rid-of-them walk back to their house for even more drinks around the kitchen counter. They’re both super fun to hang out with, and when we eventually took ourselves back to our BnB (by phone torchlight) we were both suitably uplifted about the world.
After brunch at Steph’s café we thought it would be silly not to visit the Roman Baths of Bath, which (I later learnt) I apparently visited as a child but have no memory of. There have been no swimmers here since a child was killed by a waterborne infection in 1978, but there is a decent audio guide which guides you through the Roman development of this hot spring into a full-blown leisure complex featuring hot baths, cold baths, gyms, wine and poolside snack vendors.
The best part are the curse tablets: bitchy notes inscribed into metal by ordinary people asking the goddess Sulis Minerva to curse someone else, usually after a theft. For example: Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess’ temple. (Very level-headed, Docimedis.) Our absolute favourite author wasn’t actually sure who had stolen his property, but named about eight potential suspects like a stressed-out supply teacher. It’s wild to still have access to this bottled-up rage nearly 2000 years later.
On the way home on Sunday night we had some engineering works on our Overground and did what any normal couple would do: split up to race home via two completely different routes. Sadly, I don’t think this record will last 2000 years, but here’s a teaser in case I can somehow fool the far future into thinking that everyone did this:
Finally, while Randi is in Wales for the weekend, I met up with Josh, Anna and Cora for lunch and a stomp around Golders Hill Park . A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon, even after being magically transformed into a rabbit-frog-tree.
Exactly eight years ago, after watching the Cubs win the World Series, I wrote:
I fully expect the election of America’s first female President to follow next week. But just in case…. here was the high before the low. Look how happy we were!
So, OK, lesson learnt. This time I’m not expecting anything. But I will stay very hopeful for all of our friends and family who have been working, volunteering or raising money for Kamala. We appreciate you! 💙
Going even further back in time, I have a whole collection of nostalgic memories from my late teens or early 20s filed under ‘being dragged to a gig in Camden’ in which Josh, Abbi or some combination of the two had a band they really wanted to see playing at the back of a pub. So it was very strange a few weekends ago when we popped over to the Fiddler’s Elbow to see Randi’s colleague Terrie, and her band The Red Queens, for a Sunday night set.
It felt like very little had changed – aside from not needing to take out cash to cover the entrance charge anymore – with the same restrained nodding from the black t-shirted crowd around the stage. But I really enjoyed it – not least because Terrie’s band was great! – and I hope we see them again soon.
There were more blasts from the past this month at Matt and Rachael’s wonderful wedding, including reunions with former Groupon colleagues Sam and Ben as well as Matt and Clark’s old flatmate Emily. Unfortunately, Emily had to run home early to look after a nervous dog, so the following weekend I headed to Crawley for a proper, unhurried catch-up in her local pub plus a first-rate tour of Crawley’s third most impressive park. (I only have this ranking on Emily’s authority, and I have to say I was surprised at how nice Crawley’s third best park actually was.) This was a super fun evening and a good reminder that you never know when you might see someone again!
Finally, I’ve seen a few things:
- Coherence, the latest film recommendation from Katie from the “when Randi’s away” list. I really, really liked this sci-fi thriller about a dinner party gone awry when a mysterious comet causes its guests to start shifting between alternate realities, even if it did leave me a little paranoid that an alternative reality Dominic would try to break in and murder me overnight. Would recommend, especially because the director has been willing to answer many detailed questions about the plot in helpful YouTube videos.
- The Real Ones at the Bush theatre. My first thought immediately after seeing this was “maybe one of the best plays we’ve seen here?”, and then I had to second-guess myself because maybe I always feel that way. Regardless, this was a fantastic production centered on the friendship between Neelam and Zaid, two British Pakistanis from Ilford who we originally meet as 19 year olds before their lives spin off in different directions. It’s hard not to love these characters, even if Zaid is ultimately more self-destructive, and there’s something very moving about a play which treats the rise and fall of a platonic friendship with the same seriousness as a grand romance.
- Statues, also at the Bush, in their smaller studio space. This is a two-man show about loss, grief and code switching, as English teacher Yusuf is shocked to discover that the silent father he’d known had once been a boisterous rapper for life, love and liberation. This felt like a very personal play, written and performed by Azan Ahmed, and together with Jonny Khan he shifted between the characters with incredible skill. I especially appreciated their endearing portrayals of teenage speech and body language, with just the right balance of affected nonchalance and earnest self-expression.
Well, this is it. I’ll hit the publish button, and then by next time we’ll all have discovered which future those critical swing voters in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Nevada had in store for us. Good luck…
Last week I returned to Amsterdam for Booking.com’s annual Travel Tech conference for software partners. The event itself was great, and this year I was super happy to be joined by Kira who (a) could split the technical roundtable sessions with me, (b) was willing to indulge my late night craving for pizza. Thank you!
Since the conference finished on a Friday, we took advantage of the weekend by having Randi fly out to meet me in Amsterdam on Friday afternoon and then catching the train tother to Haarlem, a nearby city which Randi’s parents had really enjoyed on their recent trip to the Netherlands. (And when I say ‘nearby’ city I mean really, really nearby – this is a small country and nothing is far apart.) Anyway, Haarlem is lovely! As it happens, Randi had just upgraded her phone so you can appreciate it through some artfully refined photos which I have stolen for this post.
After an evening stroll along the canal to the local windmill and a great Italian meal, we retired to our boutique hotel suite (the ‘sardine’ suite – probably not the name I’d use for any hotel room but actually very spacious) and slept soundly before waking up for an early-morning run into the countryside and\or sleeping some more.
Later that morning we enjoyed some tasty savoury crepes from a café on a pretty little side street while watching the cyclists go by. The centre of Haarlem follows the typical Dutch street layout where the ‘road’ and ‘pavement’ aren’t sharply delineated from each other, which sounds scary but works because the cars have been completely tamed. Sure, there are a few going by, but for the most part everyone is on their bikes, with many kids either cycling alongside their parents or sitting happily in a trailer. It’s both beautiful and a little infuriating. This isn’t a fantasy utopia! It’s just the Netherlands!
Afterwards we took the bus to the beach resort of Zandvoort, admired the plaques commemorating the great and good of Zandvoort (often with local notes along the lines of “his uncle still lives in Zandvoort”) and took a stroll along the sandy beach. We got very lucky with the weather this whole weekend, and despite it being October could enjoy cocktails at a beach bar as if we were on some tropical island (with jumpers).
On Saturday we also admired the interior of the local church, popped into a board game café and had dinner at Kokkie Londo, a Javanese restaurant with a set menu, delicious food and a very cheerful chef who tours the tables to talk about his food with an infectious laugh. Finally, back at our hotel, we curled up on the sofa with some complimentary wine and chocolate to watch a Norwegian police procedural (with Dutch subtitles) and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (which still throws me with the new lifelines). It makes me a bit sad that enjoying random TV from another country is now archaic, and I don’t suppose anyone younger than us would ever think to do it. Still, Google Translate was very helpful for translating the quiz questions, even if we still didn’t know whose cabinet was brought down by the Night of Schmelzer in 1966.
We spent most of Sunday at the nearby Zuid-Kennemerland National Park and decided to rent bikes from the visitor centre. Despite several staff members reminding us that helmets aren’t compulsory in the Netherlands – and basically nobody thinks to wear them – we insisted on paying extra so that all the other cyclists would see that we were stupid tourists.
While I definitely got quite sore by the end, riding around the park was so lovely and peaceful, and the occasional detours out of the park onto nearby roads only underlined how exceptional the cycling infrastructure is here. For any main road there’s just always a dedicated cycle lane, with no awkward missing gaps or theatrening car traffic. It felt completely safe, and quite magical.
The price for such a relaxed Sunday was a very late flight back from Amsterdam and then a taxi from Heathrow, but it was a price worth paying for such a full and enjoyable weekend in Haarlem. A final word of appreciation goes to the German-themed Wurst & Schnitzelhaus near the station before we left, with some fine German beer and the staff all complete in dirndl and lederhosen. In fact, the Dutch seem to be particularly fond of dressing up in restaurants, with everyone in Indonesian outfits on Saturday night at our Javanese place. It feels vaguely inappropriate, but is obviously considered to be a critical part of the theming.
In retrospect, flying back to London on Sunday night was a stupid plan because on Tuesday morning I was back out again on a stupidly early Eurostar to Paris for a work event. In mitigation, Eric was over from the States so it was great to see him in person again and catch-up as we caffined ourselves up to being fully awake. The event itself was fantastic – always excellent to meet some of our customers in person, share what we’re working on and gather feedback – and in the evening we all went to the famous (and joyously French) Moulin Rouge cabaret show.
Back in London again, on Thursday we gathered almost all of eviivo’s R&D department in person for an offsite meeting, roadmap kick-off and pub evening together. It’s always a bit surreal when this happens, as seeing everyone from Zoom in person feels a bit like a reunion with characters from a computer game. But I really enjoyed chatting to everyone – too many to name here! Finally, this weekend Randi and I congratulated Caroline and Josh at their pre-baby bash, before joining Reema at a nearby pub in Streatham for a catch-up and general work\life updates. Sadly, we could not cycle home afterwards. But if we were Dutch, we would have cycled home. Sigh.
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
