Outlandish

It's August but the worst kind of Autumn has already arrived in Estonia. It has been raining eeevery day, just as it did in February for a whole month. And since it's raining all the time it's also dark, which is the most frustrating thing, because in reality it should still be light most of the day for couple more months. Until the never-ending winter darkness descends. And no matter how positive a person you are there is no way the darkness wouldn't affect you. Especially when I lived much more South it was easy to recognize from people's reactions that darkness was descending here, because people started to complain more than usual. The closer to the end of the year we got the worse the complaining got, and the array of issues worth complaining about went to stratospheric lengths. French are famous for being very big complainers but I think we Finns could beat them hands down every time. It's in our genes. But in the end no matter how much you complai...

Home sweet home. And what a way to start off the Christmas season! On Friday I went to see a concert from a Finnish Idol-contestant from 10 years ago, Antti Tuisku. A record audience sang along to every song and danced like crazy. We had a blast! And on Saturday we had Little Christmas party with my girls, which was kicked off early in the afternoon with riding Icelandic horses. We had dressed warmly but the weather surprised us in the most positive way. Full-on sunshine and almost 10 degrees warm. It has been an ongoing joke in Facebook how in July it was colder in Finland than it is now in December.    We got to the stables in Mynämäki (Jaakkolan Islanninhevostalli) a little bit late but it was fine. When we got into the stables everybody sighed with adoration: Icelandic horses are incredibly cute! They are smaller than regular horses but bigger than ponies with very fluffy fur and big eyes. They are very calm and live in herds so, unlike with bigger horses, ...

Sunday morning, slow and lazy as it should be. The Sun was out as it always is on Sunday mornings and there were people already in the kitchen eating breakfast. Exactly what I like Sundays to be like. I like going for trips with a big group, the bigger the better, and somehow I love mornings then. Drowsy people sitting around table, one staring at the table cloth with blank eyes, couple people talking about which is the best sandwich cheese, one sipping coffee from a mug that's bigger than her head and someone going around asking who wants more of this or that. Life <3 Of course after breakfast comes the time to start cleaning up and packing. In Finland, when at the summer house, Sunday mornings were very efficient and fast for some reason. No matter if the weather was awesome we were in the car driving to the ferry before it was 12 o'clock. Since moving to Slovakia and traveling with my colleagues I've learned that Sundays can also be full of things to do before go...

Back in Bratislava again. Seemed like I brought the gray clouds with me but thankfully they were gone by Thursday. It was great to be home, especially because the month was very action-packed, but it is also nice to be back in Brati. The trees here are full of flowers and pushing new leaves and there's the smell of fresh grass everywhere.  My last weekend in Finland was the Easter weekend, which provided us with enough time to go to see one of my favourite girls up in Kajaani. It takes between 7-9 hours to drive there so going there for only one day doesn't make so much sense. In addition to spending the weekend with my best friends it was also the perfect distraction for me; I didn't think about the fact that I was leaving again on Tuesday at all. My friend and her husband had bought and renovated a house in Kajaani and now they had a little baby-boy. I thought that going to Kajaani would not leave me with enough time to pack and get ready to go, but the fa...

Pre-autumn, end of August and beginning of September, is the time when Swedes and Finns go catching crayfish from rivers. Then we have a feast and put Summer to rest for another year. I have only ever attended one crayfish party and that was in London. And it was a very short party for me since after couple shots of Aquavit I found myself hugging the toilet for the rest of the evening. It so happens that I have been destined to celebrate these traditional feasts abroad only: this time in Bratislava!         I was so happy when I was invited to a colleague's crayfish party here. It was a great opportunity to meet other Nordics living here and also to catch up with the people I already knew. Also, the fact that there were going to be two gorgeous golden retrievers made my RSVP be a big fat YES. When I arrived at their beautiful home I obviously had to go straight into the back yard where the dogs were kept. And it was mmmayhem! They wer...

I can't even remember the last time I was in a zoo. Every summer I planned this year I'll go to the Korkeasaari zoo in Helsinki, but I never did. Then I heard there's a zoo in pretty much every big city in Central Europe. Including Bratislava of course. Bratislava zoo is probably not as big as the ones in Vienna or Budapest, but it was quite nice. 5-10 minutes bus ride from the centre and about 4€ for a ticket. The ticket also includes a dinosaur park in addition to the zoo so it was definitely cheap. Most animals were in different kinds of enclosures, but the camels didn't have any fences around them whatsoever. They didn't want to come any closer though. There were all kinds of animals from (probably) a local bear to white tigers and a pretty blonde lion. But the best and definitely the most interesting dudes were the chimps. There were four or five adult ones and one baby and the baby had ADHD for sure. It was sooo cute jumping on the adults and throw...