I took my first trip out of Pakistan! Some friends were going to be in Kathmandu and invited me to meet them there. I had a great time, but there was a bit of a stress cloud hanging over my head…
Bidding on your next Foreign Service post is as time-consuming as a part-time side gig. And because Pakistan is only a one year assignment, I was bidding barely a month after arrival.
To manage my stress, I created a spreadsheet tracking the whole process: I listed each post, position, benefits (COLA, hardship pay, R&Rs), length of tour, the point of contact at post, the date I reached out, what, if anything, I heard back, the status of my interview, etc.
Sidenote: While I like things to be as orderly as an Excel spreadsheet, Kathmandu tested my fortitude by being easily the most chaotic place I have ever visited. And yet my friends told me that compared to India, it is much calmer. Lord help me if I ever visit India.
Worth dodging scooters and elbowing through crowds to get to that lassi stand
I felt pretty prepared for the official opening of bidding season on September 11. From that date, there was a specific schedule of when posts could start interviews, get shortlists of preferred candidates to the D.C. overlords, offer early handshakes (job offers) to eligible bidders, and then, finally, to finish up the process with offers to remaining bidders. As I am early handshake eligible (an incentive of serving at a Special Incentive Post), and those could be offered as early as September 26, I went ahead and booked my trip to Kathmandu for October 6-10, thinking I’d for sure be wrapped up by then.
Sidenote: It’s hard to explain what Foreign Service does to your sense of travel. Places I would once have only visited on a carefully curated itinerary with at least two weeks to burn and a long list of “things to do/see” are now places I go for a spontaneous long weekend with no particular plan.
A former colleague from Guangzhou, now posted in Kathmandu, took me to see the Boudhanath Stupa, one of Kathmandu’s most important Buddhist sites.
Alas, no sooner had I booked my flight then they decided to push the entire bidding season to start September 26 instead of September 11. Which is how I found myself in the quietest (not very quiet) corner of the Kathmandu airport, praying the wifi was strong enough to complete a call with a hiring committee. 
I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of wireless connectivity in Kathmandu. Anything requiring wires however…
So where did I bid? Places I thought had enough tourist appeal that someone would finally visit me. Because it is both weird and sad that no one from home has ever seen where I live and work. But China had “Zero Covid” policy and Pakistan has security concerns and Kazakhstan…well no one believed me that Central Asia was worth visiting.
So I bid mostly EUR (European and Eurasian Affairs) posts, which are the most competitive, and a couple of NEA (Near Eastern Affairs). But me being me, I went light on western Europe. Do I need to explain (AGAIN?) why I don’t just bid on Paris, Rome, Vienna, Amsterdam, and London? First of all, several of those posts are language designated and I am barely fluent in English. Second, the places one wants to vacation are not necessarily the places one wants to live. Why live in Vienna when Budapest or Bratislava are both nearby and cheaper? Third, I want visitors, but I don’t want them every weekend. So I scanned the list for “close to western Europe but not in it” with special attention to the Balkans and Baltics. While Balkans were scarce, all three Baltics were up for grabs.
Sidenote: Sorry this is boring. Here’s pictures of the Monkey Temple in Kathmandu.
The process could have been over for me in week one, (and this blog post could have been a lot shorter!) when an NEA post offered me a very early handshake. But while I went into bidding season thinking “a bird in the hand” and all that, after a few interviews I started to get the feeling that breaking into EUR might not be impossible. So I told the NEA post no.
After turning down one post, it was off to play the super awkward game of “I like you, do you like me?” with the remaining posts on my list. Every post is looking to hear, “you’re my number one and I will 100% take the job if you offer it!” No one wants to ask you to prom if they suspect you’ll say no.
While I did not bid anywhere I wouldn’t be very happy to go, I also didn’t want to lie and tell anyone they were my number one if they were not. I think I got taken off at least one short list because I didn’t pledge my undying troth. Another couple of posts were so tempting (there’s one I know my family and many friends would kill me to know I turned down), but were also more lateral career moves so I didn’t feel comfortable saying yes right away.
If it came up, I would remind hiring committees that I was eligible for early handshake, in case anyone wanted to lock me in. The thing is, EUR posts are so in demand that most like to keep their prom date options open until the last minute, I guess in case a hot new girl transfers in, having been kicked out of boarding school after getting caught [redacted] with some townies.
There was a non-Baltic former Soviet Socialist Republic asking if I’d take an early handshake and I know I would have loved it there, but it was a little bit more off the beaten path than some of the other options and I wasn’t sure it would meet my goal of attracting visitors.
As I was trying to decide, one of my very top choices blew in like a Baltic Sea breeze with a query of, “if we got permission to offer an early handshake, would you take it?”
No hesitation. The winner is…Tallinn, Estonia! (But the real winner is me!)
I would have been over the moon with any of the Baltics but Tallinn is the one that picked me so I love them the best. It’s the northernmost, so I need to prepare for dark winters and midnight sun summers and I am absolutely soliciting recommendations for good winter boots.
I know that some people in my life will think, “Estonia? Estonia is what you’ve picked because you want people to visit? Is that even in Europe much less on the beaten path?”
Well, maybe not the London-Paris-Rome path, but Helsinki and Stockholm are both easy ferry rides from Tallinn, which has an old Europe fairytale cobblestoned old town. Plus Estonia is in the EU and NATO, uses the Euro, and even won Eurovision back in 2001. Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland are all within easy reach, as is much of western Europe. I call that path beaten.
So…plan a visit if you want. I should be there for three years and then…who knows?
Final note: Lest you think that I spent all my time in Kathmandu worrying about bidding while dodging monkeys, scooter traffic, and questionable electrical wiring, I promise I also enjoyed beautiful views, good food, and charming moments.
Evidence of the 2015 Earthquake is everywhere in old town, as some building remain under re-construction and others look to be propped up by toothpicks.
In Foreign Places 