Outlandish

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...

Before moving to Slovakia I had never heard of the Tatras. Maybe they had been mentioned in primary school but I had forgotten all about them long ago. Turns out they are a pretty huge mountain range forming the border between Poland and Slovakia. They are also known as High Tatras since in central Slovakia there is another range of mountains called Low Tatras. A colleague of mine has a cottage there, at which we spent the previous weekend.  We woke up in the morning in to a thick fog. But since we were anyway going to climb above the fog it didn't bother us much. The first plan was to leave for the hike at 7 o'clock. We didn't quite manage it. Eventually it was already 9 when we got out of the house. And the only way was UP! We drove a little bit up the serpentine road to a chalet from which the path upwards started. And the view from the parking lot for a city girl who was born and raised in a country with no trace of mountains was breath-taking: ...

When googleing sights worth seeing in Bratislava the Devin castle is the most recommended one. So far I've thought that the castle is far away but as it turns out it is located inside Bratislava borders and the distance is quite walkable. So, since the summer is showing no intentions of leaving we decided to have a nice Saturday-walk with some wine to the castle. The leaves are turning yellow, which would indicate that autumn is here. But when temperature is around 22 degrees every day it is a bit weird to think that it's already mid-October. I don't mind, though! Not at all! Who or what built that? Devin is a nice little town at the foot of the castle, right by the Slovakia-Austria border. Looking at the houses there I would guess that the town is quite new; the houses were rather modern for Slovak standards. As many Slovak towns, Devin also has wine producers. What I love about the local wines is that they are often not made of grapes, but of ...