Veni VEDI Voravi

This year, Bach has played in my headphones more than ever – the quiet, persistent soundtrack to a year defined equally by immense pressure and profound, almost imperceptible, growth.

In the rhythm between work and movement, I found a kind of balance. Most of these journeys never unfolded into full essays, they remained as fleeting impressions, scattered yet luminous. So here, as the year closes, I gather these fragments: not a logbook, but a mosaic of moments that, together, trace the outline of a year lived in transit and reflection.

No matter the weight carried in work or in service, travel and art remained my refuge.

“Go, eat your bread with joy,
And drink your wine with a merry heart;
For God has already accepted your works.”
— Ecclesiastes 9:7

The year began with its most important journey: to Toulouse during the 800th anniversary of Thomas Aquinas’s birth, bringing an offering to the saint who matters most to me. Winding through Aquitaine on consistently delayed French trains, I witnessed, under a special grace, the most breathtaking rosy dawn of my life.

North to Poitiers, where Joan of Arc fought her most critical battle, then back to Paris, with a detour to golden Normandy to see Mont Saint-Michel beyond the tourist gaze.

A business travel brought me back to Istanbul – Constantine’s “Nova Roma,” forever evoking deep, wordless thought. I revisited my beloved Hagia Irene and crossed half the Bosphorus by ferry. Then to the Netherlands: sailing scenes against the silver waves of Scheveningen beach, and the shipyard-shaped church in Amsterdam.

October took me to Wallonia where the French-speaking area never disappoints in cuisine. In windswept Brussels, I discovered many Art Nouveau buildings, countless lovely corners, with people still living in houses over a century old.

A brief trip to the U.S. followed: New York’s food was expensive and awful, but the MET is worth another week in the city.  In their Asian collections, American museums sometimes reflect a sensibility closer to China’s than to Europe’s. Before the government shutdown, I visited the Smithsonian’s Asian art museum in Washington, broad and exquisite collections, and saw artifacts from nearly every world civilization at UPenn.

The year closed in Tokyo, in a distiller’s kitchen where a private tasting awaited, and where I tasted the finest Japanese whisky of recent memory.

This year was full of serendipity. One wish remains unfulfilled, but it can wait till next year.

The journeys of 2026 are already calling.

May we all walk in the light.