As with all travel, it is the unexpected moments that I cherish the most. Long after my memories of the ancient walkways, cathedrals, and city squares fade, I will remember one single, amplified moment of the children from Ukraine that I met in Tallinn, Estonia.

Displaced by the war that has ravaged their homes, they were accompanied by their mothers and teachers. As their fathers and older brothers remained behind to defend their freedom, their faces of hope, despair, joy, and pain is what it means to have been driven from the innocence of their youth. Holding up the colors of Ukraine, they were all to happy for me to take their picture. Their life will never be the same as it once was. Neither will mine.