Outlandish

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...

I came across the headline's statement one day at work Googling for something or the other. And it got me thinking. I'm usually pretty good with money, I rarely buy something just for the sake of buying. I need to really want the item to willingly part with my money for it.  Women usually have a problem with this; buying things without spending much time to think whether they even need them. Especially now that buying online has been made soo easy and returning the items after trying them on is free for the biggest companies. But I have a lot of friends who are just too lazy to go through the return ordeal so in the end they keep the items and plan to maybe sell them or give them away to charity later. I'm not big on shopping online, I like to know at the moment of paying that this shirt fits me and is the colour that it is supposed to be. I also don't have patience when there is something that I want so I don't like waiting for the items to arrive.  ...

I may have just found my next home city! All the good things I've heard of Prague have now been proven to be accurate; the city is truly wonderful and full of stories. So full actually that one post would become simply too long. So, here's part 1 of our Perfect Prague Weekend. I traveled to Prague from Bratislava on a bus. But not just any bus: Student Agency is a company that offers super cheap plane, train and bus tickets around Central Europe. I prefer to travel by bus since train takes approximately the same time but is more often late or cancelled. I prefer bus also because Student Agency offers coffee/hot chocolate on the way and every seat has its own screen equipped with several movies and TV series to pass the time. The Hobbit was perfectly over three hours long for the four-hour-ride. For hotel me and my friend chose the Beseda Hotel a short walk from the Vltava river and the Old Town Square. It was a 4-star-hotel but not expensive at all, especially beca...

Most people here return to their home cities/countries during weekends, but since my home country happens to be a couple thousand kilometers away spending my weekends there is quite impossible. So, this time it was super nice when everybody decided to stay in Bratislava and we had a proper shopping spree in the city's biggest shopping mall, Aupark. And because shopping, when done properly, is hard work we needed to fuel ourselves up before getting down to business and sushi buffet was the perfect lunch option. I have a hard core love-hate relationship with wasabi: even though it literally kicks me in the face in every mouthful I have to take more and more each time because it's just sooo good! After lunch we were ready to roll. And I don't know if it was because of the brilliant lunch but the very first shop we stepped into provided me with the kind of skirt that I have been looking for for ages, a leather midi skirt! This spring and summer is all about bringin...

Sometimes I surprise even myself. Or life does. Like this Thursday when I flew from Helsinki to Budapest where I had booked a hotel for the night. First of all when I got out of the airport there was a "black taxi" driver waiting for stupid tourists. I guess I looked stupid enough because he came straight to me: "You need a taxi?" As a regular customer to Budapest airport I knew that to get a legitimate taxi you go to a booth outside the airport and they assign you one. This guy tried to rip off 400 Forints more from me than what the drive really cost. So, I got a legitimate taxi, told him the address and the name of the hotel and he took me to the centre. He stopped in front of a hotel, yes, but it didn't have the name I was looking for. Despite my doubts that this could not be the right place he assured me "Yes, the right place" and was already loading my luggage on the pavement. Turned out the "hotel" I had booked for 16€ a night was ...

What a perfect weekend. Yeah, I know, there is no such thing as perfect but last weekend was pretty damn close to it! How lovely it was to have my friends over and show them around my new home city that I've grown to like so much, Bratislava. We climbed to the castle and to Slavin and we pretty much emptied one of the shoe stores here but we also ate a LOT! I was myself surprised with the quality of restaurants that I took the girls to :D On Sunday we took the train to the neighbour city Vienna. I had one thing that I really wanted to see in Vienna and that was the Schönbrunn castle which was a very humble summer house of the empress Maria Theresa. One day I will have a summer house just as glorious.... or not. The castle is nicely situated in the city, unlike the palace of Versailles which is quite far outside of Paris. We got to the Schönbrunn castle just fine on foot. The gardens there are just as magnificent as the castle: they include a labyrinth, a zoo and acres o...