Outlandish

I am the kind of person who doesn’t do well when there’s nothing to do. The state of boredom is more likely to cause me symptoms of a burn-out than a month of explosions on the work front and overlong workdays. That is one of the main reasons why I do not see Finland as a place for me to live in. People there are like a negatively toned gray mass, even more so during the past year than ever before in my lifetime. Excitement and new experiences are not interesting to my fellow Finns. Whereas I count myself among experience addicts; I need action, I need speed, I need experiences! All of them are not good, of course, but they are still experiences, excitement, diverging from the routine, something to talk about. As a child I thought that I would never want to live the kind of life that my parents’ everyday life was: going to work, coming home, watching TV, sleep, going to work, coming home, watching TV, sleep, and this continues endlessly. And I succeeded to avoid such a life...

I've spent so much time at home in Turku this past Spring and Summer that I'm not quite sure any more which country I live in, Estonia or Finland. But now I think it's time to leave the cruise ships in peace for a while and hopefully people will visit me, so I won't need to compare the times for buses and boats because they never really match the way I would want them to. But before I walk to Linnhall and wave my goodbyes to Finland for a while I want to go back to last weekend, which turned into a proper Turku Experience.  All sorts of little happenings and businesses offering things to do pop up around the city of Turku in the summer. Especially around the Aura River at the moment you can find anything from restaurants and river boats to a couple of very Finnish phenomenon; a mini sauna and a hot tub that you heat up with wood in a little stove. This hot tub is special, though, because you can sit in there while floating in the river. We found the idea...

This gorgeous summer weather already in May (yes, up in these latitudes it’s a rarety that May is warm and sunny, usually we can expect snow any minute) is making me nuts! I’m so happy, I feel like a balloon that’s too full of helium on the brink of exploding. Any moment I might just jump up from my work chair and start climbing the walls and laugh uncontrollably without any proper reason. Just because I feel like it and it’s this woooonderful warmth and sunshine that is doing it to me! Last week I traveled home to Turku on the first morning boat. I was sooo tired and as always also quite grumpy. Before 10AM is just too early to be expected to be jolly about anything. But sitting there on the view deck at the front of the ship, watching the sun rise from the East and two swans flying diagonally past the front of the ship no matter how tired and grumpy, I smiled to myself. On Thursday morning me and my brother and his girlfriend drove to the Turku Archipelago to ...

Last year I saw a newspaper article about a play about mothers and daughters with three brilliant Finnish actresses. I instantly thought that would be the perfect Mothers' Day gift and when the tickets came out I bought them for a show in September. Then things happened and in just few weeks I found myself moving to Bratislava. But I decided I would not miss this night with my mum so on my first week at my new job I booked flights home for September. What I didn't think quite through was the fact that Budapest is not as conveniently located from Bratislava as Vienna is. Instead of buses going every half an hour they only went couple times a day (and in very inconvenient times) as well as the travel time being much longer than what it is to Vienna. So, even though I booked an evening flight so I wouldn't miss a day's work I had to leave at 11am so I missed a whole day's work. Anyway, despite the panick, shaking and a technical problem with the bus I got all the ...