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...

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 ...

Finally my trainee period of 4 months has ended and I am officially a Project Manager. A title I’ve been aiming for ever since I entered University. Why I aimed for that particularly? Because a project is a completely open concept, it can be anything and there are usually many of them at the same time, which means it’s a perfect job for me, because I don’t want every day to be the same and, most importantly, I want to be in charge :D And since I am now officially an employee I am entitled to use the holidays that have gathered up so far. And what would be a better way to waste my one week’s worth of holidays than fly to Central Europe to see some of my favourite people and places! But before that I am traveling first to Turku to see friends and family, since there’s no need for me to be in the office when I can work from wherever. Ok, I might have organized things so that I wouldn’t have to be in the office in June and scheduled all new trainees to arrive in J...

Some people critique wines, some movies, I seem to have developed a habit of critiquing countries. The difference is that for me that critiquing affects my actual life quite a lot. If a country gets a negative review from me, I’m not going to be comfortable living there, obviously. Cultural differences, those little everyday things that drive you crazy, make you appreciate all the little things you have back at home and make you realize all the things that prove the fact that grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. Those are the things I base my critiques on and obviously as a Finn I look at things quite differently than somebody from India or Brazil, for example. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral The only culture shocks that I have experienced have been all those times that I moved back to Finland. Noticing how nothing had changed, nothing had moved forwards, rather backwards and how the coldness and darkness really do affect your and everybody else’...

Estonia, a country I didn't know much more about than that everything there is cheaper than in   Finland. By now I've learnt such interesting things as the fact that Estonia has two Independence Days. First in 1918 when Germans lost the First World War and second after the Soviet Union had been demolished in 1991. Tallinn has been an unknown center of some pretty major historical events, such as the sailing competitions in the Moscow Olympics in 1980. For this occasion the communists built one of the ugliest things my eyes have ever had to endure, Linnahall. It used to be a concert hall on which you can climb and look around the harbour and the sea. The idea is so lovely that I cannot comprehend how they could fuck it up with such an abominable structure. The view's nice though. Another highlight for Tallinn was in 2011 when it shared the status of the European Capital of Culture with the almighty city of Turku. How splendid! But my favourite thing about Tal...

Another position in my pocket, this time the one I've been reaching for for many, many years; project manager! Ooh it's good to be me :) And being a new citizen in another country once again I had to get all the paper work done. So, one evening I decided to take care of the registering. Unlike in Bratislava, here the registration office is in the city centre and people speak English.   That doesn't mean, though, that things would go smoothly for me: I found the correct street alright but stepped into a building way too early. I marched to the receptionist and announced in my unFinnishly loud voice that "I'm here to register!" Everybody in the lobby went quiet, the poor receptionist even looked a bit frightened. She mumbled something which I didn't hear and so I kept telling that I just moved from Finland blabla blablabla. She looked so embarrassed (for me perhaps?) when she finally managed to say in a teeny tiny voice "This is a theate...

Reality starting to set in. Last week I handed in my resignation, for the first time with trepidation. I'm utterly aware that most people would never do what I'm about to do: leave a job they like in a company they like and move away from a country that they absolutely love. Yes, I'm completely nuts! We have this saying in Finland that rolling rocks don't get mossy and I think that's the story of my life in a nutshell. I get bored easily and boredom is my worst nightmare. I need new experiences and excitement in my life all the time and even though I am completely happy here in Bratislava, if I let this opportunity of discovering a new country slip away I would never  forgive myself! And as a single, childless, independent person, why wouldn't I go and be nuts :D I'm an experience-addict! But, I still have a lot of time left here and thankfully it's one of my favourite times of the year: Christmas. The markets are lit up and there's ...

Arriving to the Budapest bus station for the first time can be a bit confusing. The bus from Bratislava leaves you outside the station area and there are no signs to anything, ATM, taxis, anything. I remember the desperation, the following of random people to an underground tunnel, of trying to locate someone, ANYONE with even little English. Nowadays I'm a professional bus station goer there but I noticed a woman of about 50 years of age asking different people something. She didn't seem to be getting anywhere so I went to ask if maybe she was looking for an ATM, which there is located to a place that cannot be found except by those who already know where it is (note the clever Pirates of the Caribbean reference). So, I took her to the ATM and then back up to where the taxi stop was and I called her a taxi. She wasn't very impressed with Hungarian people for starters but at least I could sleep in peace knowing that she at least found her hotel. I was very much blessed by ...