Tekstit

Näytetään blogitekstit, joiden ajankohta on huhtikuu, 2017.

Riga - A Baltic City Worth Visiting

Kuva
Latvia’s capital, Riga, is well worth visiting! It is the biggest city in the Baltic Countries by its population (almost 700 000) and its long and varied history has left its mark on the city. Latvia has belonged under Polish, Swedish, German, and Russian rule and even these days about 39% of the population is Russian. Riga’s historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its Art Nouveau architecture is world-renowned. Unlike most people destined for Riga, we traveled there on a bus, not on a budget airline. The bus from Tallinn took four hours but it was quite all right when the travel company was as great as mine was. It was surprisingly noticeable when we had wandered over the border from Estonia to Latvia; the houses on the way became derelict and not well looked after, the roads were partly in horrendous condition and when we got into Riga the slum-like areas with most terrible blocks of flats were a truly depressing sight. For some reason I hadn’t expected su

Spring in a Pie

Kuva
Finnish people go nuts for asparagus in the Spring. And they do have a point; those long, green goodies taste awesome in a pie, accompanying a steak or just boiled with a knob of butter. But as always, I don’t like to be too mainstream, I don’t like to do or wear what everybody else is doing or wearing. And it applies to food as well; instead of asparagus I’ve gone a bit nuts for spinach. My main lunch item at work is usually a spinach and feta cheese pastry. I never grow tired of it, it’s just too good. And one day I was flicking through programs available on telly and put on some Jamie Oliver. I don’t usually like to mimic his cooking because he has too many, often weird and unusual ingredients in his recipes: each ingredient or spice costs money and since I rarely cook anyway, I don’t want to get all those rare herbs and spices to waste space from my limited drawers. But this time he made something that was easy and only had five main ingredients + salt, pepper and a lit

The Traveler is Back

Kuva
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything and there is a very simple reason for that: I have lived in such lack of money that there has not been much opportunity to visit any places or see new things that would be worth mentioning in the blog. Winter can be very hard and expensive in Estonia because living costs, especially the heating bill, are incredibly high here. Thankfully this winter has been quite “warm”, but the couple cold weeks ensured that the heating has been on full blast for months now. Considering that the wages in this country do not meet the daily living costs at all, I do not want to think how difficult it must be for a family of four to make ends meet if I, as a single woman with a rather high salary, can’t cope. But Spring is here! And while the weather is getting warmer and the heating is turned down in our building (because obviously we can’t influence the heating in our flats ourselves at all) I am left with more money and it’s about time too! The