Outlandish

When life kicks you in the stomach repeatedly for months on end it’s good to keep in mind the wise words of the great thinker, Taylor Swift: Shake it off! Different people have different ways of ”shaking off” all the shit that life has seen fit to pile on your shoulders and mine is spending time with friends. How fortunate then that one of my best friends arriving for a long weekend visit coincided with so far the worst week of this Autumn! I received a crushing ”Thank you but no thank you”-message from a job that I was sure was mine (yeah, no sign of Finnish humility here) on the same day that my friend cruised to Tallinn and thank goodness for that! I needed her cheering company more than ever. After a quick visit to my local supermarket we decided to make a little curve on our way to my place. The curve had a  conveniently  situated  sushi restaurant on it. There is nothing in life that sparkling wine, sushi and good company couldn’t fix! Ev...

* I tend to demand things, not ask: it's very impolite and quite arrogant /  It's also very effective and I usually get my will across. * I am an extrovert: culturally in my home country this is quite unacceptable behavior, it's not OK to be too loud or too open about differing opinions; it all can be embarrassing for family and friends /  I make friends easily because I am very open-minded and willing to try new things, which all leads to not being judgmental. * I am emotional: culturally (again) quite strange, sometimes I am unable to control myself, especially negative feelings can take over my entire body (head ache, heart attack etc.)  / I come across as genuine, honest and caring person, so people find it easy to trust me, which is the base of any friendship. * I value free time/freedom of choice over money: there’s no risk of me ever becoming rich / I am happier when I spend more time with my friends and family and am able to do things t...

This year has been particularly bad weather-wise; we moved from Spring straight to Autumn (read: we moved from rain straight to more rain). And now it seems that global warming might ensure that in the future 'Summer' will become a word that can only be used in past tense, because warm waters (and thus weather) will flee from these latitudes. It's little bit hard to try and stay positive when the shelf of clouds on top of us is so  thick and consistent that we live in constant darkness. The difference between day and night becomes more and more obscure every day as the days also get shorter. Oh yeah, and then there's this rain. Like, non-stop rain, which I thought was a physical impossibility... Unless you live in the monsoon area, which I do not. But it turns out that there is an area, the very last corner of Europe where all clouds gather and dump their load throughout the year. And that place is called Estonia and I, an imbecile moron, decided to move here...

Escape Rooms have been really popular all over the world for the past few years. Who ever created this idea, hooray to them! Escape Rooms are exactly what you would expect: you are locked into a space with a varied theme and your job is to find solutions to riddles and find hints in the furniture to be able to get out within an hour. If you are experiencing a stressful time in your life I can gladly recommend an hour's escape room experience! It really sucks you in and for an hour you forget about everything that might be outside that room, it's rather therapeutic really.  There are loads of different kinds of escape rooms to choose from; individual people who have reserved one room from their apartment for this kind of physical puzzles that people are willing to pay for, and actual companies that have rented an entire space to set up this experience in, some of them even have a bar and space to hang out in after the hour's ordeal. I had my first ever Es...

A – Aurinko. That would be sun in Finnish. I remember an advice from my dad when I was struggling with some minor school work: “Always pick the first thing that comes to your mind. Instinct is most of the time right.” And aurinko has been on my mind constantly for months now. There’s a saying in Finnish about people talking most about the things that they lack at that very moment. And I truly lack my doze of sunshine, sun owes me three months’ worth of shine dosage! B – Bratislava. My former home city, capital of Slovakia and one of my favourite places on this planet. Everything is so cheap in Slovakia and there is a lot of what we have very little here in the North: Sun being just one them! C – Cocktails. It’s Friday, of course the answer is cocktails. D – Ducktape. I saw a glimpse of an article about how you can hide fatty parts in your body with ducktape. I didn’t bother reading the article but it brought tears of laughter in my eyes: I have done that! I have never b...

Another November is behind us, the most devastatingly lame month of the year is over! And that means that Christmas is literally on our doorsteps. A little comfort is brought into the crushing darkness all-day everyday by Christmas lights twinkling in people’s windows and at the markets. The Central European Christmas markets are world-famous but what about doing things differently this time and visiting a proper Northern atmosphere with genuine Christmas treats like glögi (aka mulled wine, a better option for the hot wines served in the South) and traditional Christmas tarts shaped like stars with plum jam. Finland has recently brushed up its game when it comes to Christmas markets and there are all kinds of performances and handicrafts on sale. But they are still missing an enormous beat: Christmas markets are all about good food and drink! So, while Finland contemplates whether serving alcoholic glögi in their Christmas markets will ruin the country completely or not you might ...

I love having friends over. Whether for a weekend or just for one night, I love hosting and everything that comes with it. A big part of hosting are the preparations; cleaning, cooking, arranging. As a project manager this is a very natural state for me to be in, organizing. This weekend my best friend is coming over to relax and for a girly weekend. The only plan we have is a table booked for Saturday evening in Kaks Kokka and that there will be shopping. I always want people to feel as much at home as they can and it all starts with preparations. I always start from cleaning. Vacuum, wipe the dusts, do the dishes, change the sheets and clean the bathroom. Once upon a time I wondered what was the point of cleaning before a party because you will have to clean up the day after properly anyway. But the truth is that nobody would feel at home coming to a place where every surface is covered in dust and there are clothes hanging everywhere and dishes in the most imaginativ...

Brunch is a concept that found its way to Finland at the turn of the first decade of 21st century. And within no time there were queues to some of the nicest bars and restaurants in the Turku and Helsinki center on Sunday mornings, a phenomenon which I thought I would never see in a country that relishes hangover on Sundays! I love brunches. No need to cook yourself, just drag yourself to a restaurant and pay and then fill up your plate as many times as you like! Usually brunches in Finland are like a classier version of a hotel breakfast; a buffet. But depending on the style of the restaurant, of course.  In the Eastern European countries the brunch culture hasn't been noted that much... yet. But little by little the habit is sneaking itself from the shores of Helsinki into Tallinn. And finally about a month ago I noticed that one of my ultimate favourite restaurants here, the aforementioned NOP, has started to serve brunch! Obviously I took the first opportunity...

This challenge has been going around in Facebook for a while already but I’m jumping on board only now. It’s been funny and interesting to read people’s first work experiences, it has given a little window to see how they have ended up where they are now, what sort of path have they traveled. And there have been some very surprising ones also, that I would never have imagined that some of my friends would have done as work. Somehow this has (as far as I know) been concentrated on the Western world and especially young people living in Nordic countries. It is a fact that in Nordic countries people start working and move out of their parents’ place much younger than in other parts of Europe. So quite many of my friends can’t even list as many jobs as seven because their first work experience is from after they graduated University.  But I sure can! #1 Library assistant My first ever job was a one-month-long summer job for the City of Turku. I was 13 so legal...

I have never been very interior design oriented. Maybe because most of my adulthood I have lived abroad with the knowledge that I will not stay here for long, so the state of the apartment hasn’t played that big of a part in my life. Which has resulted in me staying in some pretty dodgy apartments. For me they haven’t seemed like such bad places to stay in, it has been enough if the apartment was warm and clean and there were the basic furnishings, which include a window, a nice(ish) bed, table and a chair. My family has only recently admitted how horrified she was of some places where I have stayed along the years. But now (finally?) I have so many kilometres under my belt that I feel like I should be content staying still for a little bit longer than just a couple years, which is why finding an unfurnished apartment was a must this time around. In the end finding such an apartment wasn’t even that difficult in Tallinn, although it might have been without a little help fr...

Tallinn is a good place for a shop-a-holic. There are three big malls scattered around the small city (although Rocca Al Mare I wouldn’t recommend, very narrow selection of stores) and truck-loads of small boutiques from the tourist knick-knacks to the global high-end fashion brands. Viru Keskus is probably the most known of them all because it is situated right next to the Old Town, right in the center of the city next to the most famous and prominent building in Tallinn, the very ugly Viru Hotel, which also hosts the KGB museum (some rooms still have the old spy equipment left in them). But between the harbour and Viru Keskus there is an old and a very peculiar industrial area, Rotermanni Kvartal, which is also worth checking out. Rotermann offers something for everyone; if you are a foodie, like shopping, are interested in architecture or history, go check this area out! It is the most interesting mix of old industrial buildings and modern buildings consisting largely ...