player. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Missed being the Grand Champion on five separate occasions. Many chess historians consider him to be one of the greatest players in history, and the strongest player never to become world champion. He was born in Narva. Hence, the sculpture, the plaque, and … I happen to live on the street named after him. Needless to say, on this past Saturday, he remained number two. I beat him handily. Sorry, Paul. You can’t win ‘em all. Obviously. 
Narva, Estonia September 2021
I walked past two elderly ladies sitting in the rain with their small selection of fruits & veggies and no customers. I turned around because I just wanted to give them a little money, even if it was for just one bulb of garlic 🧄or something. I knew it was going to be a hard transaction with my non-existent Russian, but I went for it, anyway. I handed the lady 2 euro and gestured to ‘whatever she could give me for that amount.’ I pointed to the garlic and made a kind of gesture like ‘How about some of that?’ And I pointed at the cucumbers & the aubergines…and she went straight for the plums. And never left the plums. Her cohort kept trying to tell her to give me some garlic but the woman didn’t understand and even tried to hand me my money back and I laughed and said “No, no, for you!” And back to the plums she went. I’d never seen so many plums. I thought I’d need a truck 🛻 home. She finally stopped, showed me the scale like I cared, and handed me the bag. I swear my arm dropped as I wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy. I asked them if I could eat one right there and they gestured to do so…I wiped it off, took a bite, and was like “Hot damn. I’m a plum lover now.” Estonian plums are so freaking good! Moral of the story: You may think you want one bulb of garlic, one cucumber, one aubergine, and one plum for 2 euro, but god will give you 10 lbs. of plums instead. That’s the meaning of life.
Narva, Estonia 🇪🇪 12sep21
4september 2021
28August2021
