This time Lufthansa decided to play it safe and asked me to come early. There wasn't a huge crowd, but I actually did show up early :)

Germans being Germans, you know? They say they really care about the environment, so when planning trips, they try to pick destinations they can reach by train whenever possible. No planes, no cars.

Not all of them, but you'll definitely notice it.

Lucky for them they're right in the heart of Europe with everything at their doorstep. Though if you really want to go to, say, Greece, well, there's no way around it – you've gotta fly :)

In Germany, there's a law that if a child lives more than 2 km away from school, they get a free travel pass for all types of ground transport within their region.

You just write an application to the school and that's it. Sometimes officials are willing to work with you and approve it even if you live closer. A colleague submitted an application for his son even though the school is only 1.6 km away. It went through without any problems.

Germans really love playing the game of "who can squeeze more out of the state" (from tax refunds to little perks like this) :)

I specifically chose a flight without Sheremetyevo to avoid baggage issues. But Frankfurt Airport is putting all my plans at risk: 30,000 suitcases got stuck at the airport on September 28th and 20,000 still haven't left 🙈

I'm hoping my baggage will be fine :)

Made it to Frankfurt. Gonna hang out for a day: catch up with some former colleagues and head home.

Such a homey feeling when I come here :)

P.S. I took a bus from Amsterdam and it turned out to be the right call: the railways cancelled a bunch of trains because of fears of a hurricane that never really materialized. Everyone's complaining about Deutsche Bahn.

A ticket controller booth in Amsterdam. Right inside the tram o.O

Hooray. We've arrived in Amsterdam!

Every port has equipped showers and washing machines. It's basically a whole infrastructure for getting cleaned up.

Access is by code, which gets radioed to the ship (or given in person after docking). If you know the code, everything's free. Apparently, you can sometimes find out the code at the cafe that's usually nearby.

But mooring the ship itself costs money. They charge our boat 130€ per day at the Amsterdam port. Not cheap.

This is what sailing looks like in calm weather with a good following wind. The ship hardly pitches, responds well to the helm, everything's smooth.

During our night watch it was a completely different story: it's dark, visibility is zero, there's pouring rain, lightning flashing, huge waves, wind gusts constantly pushing the ship off course, and the helm response is often super slow or doesn't come at all (currents and wind throw in their own adjustments).

In bad weather, the cost of a mistake goes up too: drifting off course makes the pitching worse, and if you catch the wind at the wrong angle, you can even damage the sails. Plus it's harder to get back on the right course afterwards.

With modern navigation it's so much easier: the autopilot does everything for you :)

Sometimes seasickness strikes during the crossing. According to statistics, about 20-25% of people are unlucky enough to get it. There are pills, but they supposedly don't help much. In our team, only 2 people actually turned completely green.

The best way to feel better is to head up on deck and look at the horizon. Balance games (in the video you can see people trying to make each other lose their balance) also help quite a bit.

Suddenly, right there on the beach, these massive sand sculptures. And they're not even listed on any maps or tourist guides. We just stumbled upon them by chance. Pretty cool!

We made a stop at the port of the Belgian city of Ostend. You can already feel we're getting close to Amsterdam (:​

Sometimes you've gotta do work at height (with safety gear). What else can you do :)

And this is the toilet :)

Hooray! I signed all the paperwork.

Now I'm a full-fledged sailor. Life aboard ship looks something like this:

Woohoo! Made it to Dunkirk. The ship behind me is my home for the next 4 days and my ride to Amsterdam.

Oh no! Street cleaning machines are washing the asphalt in the rain not just in Moscow! Oh no! 🙈🙈🙈

Brooms and garbage bags? Those days are gone. Street vacuums are all the rage now. Give it a few more years and they'll probably teach the machines to clean the streets on their own.

PS. It's 20 degrees out. And this guy, along with tons of other people, are walking around in warm sweaters and raincoats. I don't even do that when it's 10 degrees. Did they get so cold after those summer 40-degree days that they're already freezing?

Paris is literally covered in scooters and bikes from Uber and other companies. These things are clearly in high demand. No matter where you go, you're bound to run into one.

The city has a lot of dedicated bike lanes with their own traffic lights so pedestrians can cross safely. But for some reason, cyclists just ignore the signals, so even when you cross on green, it's better to let them pass. I almost saw a couple of accidents. We barely managed to avoid each other at the last second.

It looks like you need to watch out for pickpockets in Paris.

You see signs like these in museums. Every metro station plays voice warnings asking people to watch their pockets.

C'est la vie.