It’s hard to follow someone like Hemingway into their world. He lived it and wrote it with so much ethos. Cojímar is said to have inspired the Old Man and the Sea, and the writer’s heavy bronze head rests on a pillar by the oceanfront, but to interpret the cluster of juxtaposing structures and buildings as a fishing village, one needed an avalanche of imagination or a time machine.

Dissecting Havana with my feet during those first days, I tripped over quite a few of the political and economic implications wedded by the Marxian ideal, surprised by how divorced some experiences were from others, both for Cubans and visitors.

Perhaps, December 2014—the dawn of the Cuban thaw—marked the tipping point of Caribbean communism (two words and concepts that feel almost at odds): the first act of the last wriggle, the overstretching of a cocoon that was too tight and worn too long. Moving, shaking, breaking. No going back.

„And what about the camera?“ the officer asked, looking at it with glassy and hungry eyes that glowed like honey-colored phosphor in the dimly lit garage. “I’m not giving you my camera,” I answered, my voice turning into verbal exclamation marks.

Somebody had said something about deadly explosions or eruptions, and I wasn’t looking for any of that per se. Least of all in a lake. I just wanted to get out of Kigali for a while. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I did. A little too much for my liking. Its comforts and niceties had lulled me.

They all said it's different when you live there. Paris. Worse they meant, but when I lived there it was better. The best. The Paris you live in is the best Paris. Those who were born into it don't understand the Paris that is Paris by choice.

A faint air of grandeur streamed through the colossal pillars of the Parthenon as the ruin lay bare before us like a whale skeleton’s rib cage. Stranded atop an outcrop in the middle of Athens, the cluster of marble bones was surrounded by others—devastated remains of the Acropolis, the once pulsating citadel in the heart of Ancient Greece.

Well, Jakarta, there is no easy way to say this, but you didn’t make my Top 10. Or the Top 50, or the top, or even just the list. But then again, you know that I disdain these lists and that I made this one up just to tease you. You’re alright Jakarta. Sure, you are no Paris, but why would you be, or want to be? I'm sorry if I'm getting under your skin here, but see, that's exactly where I want to be. For yours isn’t a superficial Paris-beauty; yours is an underneath-beauty.

When is Venice? Because it doesn’t look like it is now. It is a replica of a fairy tale and at least one hundred million stories old.