Outlandish

Autumn in Central Europe means wine and beer festivals. Best known is obviously the Octoberfest in Germany, but Slovakia has its own alcohol-related festivities as well. September was the time for the local wine makers to provide their range of local wines to people in the multiple wine festivals around Slovakia. Unfortunately I did not attend any of them. But last weekend the beer fest came into town! If you ask Slovak people, many of them will recommend Czech beers over Slovak beers. I don't know much about beer since I never drank it before moving here. But out of the three beers that we bought at the beer fest I could easily identify my favourite. And that was all I was actually able to get out of the festival because after the first beers a colleague of mine (with whom I went to the fest) all of a sudden fainted. I was able to catch her before she hit her head on the gobble stones, thank goodness. She had barely hit the ground when there were people swarming ar...

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...

I've been super lucky to have had many, many really good friends in my life. Sometimes, with some people, you just click. My darling girls are my everything and whenever I've been so down that I've pretty much been knocking on the gates of depression the thing that has kept me relatively sane is the fact that I have such awesome friends around me! No matter what shit life throws at me, I'll be fine as long as I have them :) One of them I met when we were only little girls, playing in the snow. We ended up in the same class around the age of 8 and the rest is history. History that includes sitting at a bus stop in -20 degrees after being thrown out of a club before really even getting in trying to sober up so that I could call dad to come and pick us up; fighting over boys and what other stupid shit; going through worst times and the best times together. No matter if we sometimes lost touch for years, we always found a way back to each other because, as Em...

I have very mixed feelings about rainy days. I'm the kind of person whose mood is very much affected by the weather. For example, when it's sunny I'm full of energy, I multitask like crazy and I can do all the things gladly that I usually would postpone as long as I can, like cleaning. Then again when it's dark and cloudy I'm super-tired, not very excited about anything and just want to watch movies and eat Pringles. The previous weekend it rained like hell here. One night I woke up because it was raining so hard and thought if this doesn't result in flood I'll be very surprised. In the morning I was surprised but happily so. Last Thursday we had burger-day again. This time we didn't go to Le Beef, though, but tried a new place in the Old Town. We stood outside in the pouring rain eating our burgers like some homeless people with no place to go. And then we went to have coffee in this café, Gorila.sk. I've had drinks there on the terrace ou...

There was a lot of buzz in the social media and in yellow press  in Finland about a middle-aged woman insulting a mildly handicap girl in a café. In another article  a man described how in France traveling with a wheelchair is much, MUCH easier than in Finland because people are always willing to help. These caught my eye because I have been thinking about basic manners since moving here. I once had coffee with a man who had lived in Finland for a year and he said that as much as he liked Finland as a country he couldn't stand the fact that Finns have absolutely no regard for manners. Out loud I completely agreed with him, on the inside I cried because I couldn't think of any defence for my countrymen: the man was right.   Here in Bratislava it's a completely different story. Even though many Slovak people have told me that Slovaks are rude, unfriendly and jealous I can't but disagree. I have never been to a country were basic manners are such an everyday,...

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 ...

As I've said before I love seeing new places, meeting new people and learning about new cultures. But that requires moving from place A to place B, also known as traveling. And that I have learned to hate. I say learned because it really was like that to me: too many big travel disasters in too short a time and I am forever traumatized. Having been stuck in separate airports in the UK because of the worst snow storm in Europe in decades, because of a volcano having a little stomach ache causing the European airspace to be closed down for a week, because of too many clouds in the sky (in England, REALLY?!?!?), and also having been present in the only occasion ever when a bus between Rauma and Turku broke down and caused me to be two hours late from work (just to name a few) actually is bloody ridiculous, funny even. Just not so much to me...    The experience of being stuck during the 2010 snow storm just before Christmas actually still brings tears to my eyes. It...

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...