Outlandish

The drive to Zuberec on Friday evening last week was quite bad: it was already dark and it was raining so hard that you could barely see the red back lights of the car in front. But one thing I did notice on the way: a huge castle lit up on top of a steep hill. Turns out it was the Orava Castle (Oravsky Hrad). I love castles (because I still want to be a princess...) so I wanted to at least stop on the way home on Sunday long enough to get a picture of it.  We did stop. But the moment we got up to the castle door it was literally closed in our faces. Closing time. Suomen Leijona !?!?!? The legend of the castle says that the noblemen owning the land made a pact with a devil because they wanted a castle that couldn't be built by any man. If the devil succeeded in building the castle in one day the noblemen were fine, but if not they would go to Hell. Obviously the devil didn't succeed (on purpose I expect) and the noblemen went to Hell. In proven fac...

Sunday morning, slow and lazy as it should be. The Sun was out as it always is on Sunday mornings and there were people already in the kitchen eating breakfast. Exactly what I like Sundays to be like. I like going for trips with a big group, the bigger the better, and somehow I love mornings then. Drowsy people sitting around table, one staring at the table cloth with blank eyes, couple people talking about which is the best sandwich cheese, one sipping coffee from a mug that's bigger than her head and someone going around asking who wants more of this or that. Life <3 Of course after breakfast comes the time to start cleaning up and packing. In Finland, when at the summer house, Sunday mornings were very efficient and fast for some reason. No matter if the weather was awesome we were in the car driving to the ferry before it was 12 o'clock. Since moving to Slovakia and traveling with my colleagues I've learned that Sundays can also be full of things to do before go...

I don't think I'm quite right in the head because I keep putting myself  voluntarily into situation that are far from my comfort zone. This time especially I found myself close to the limit. Last time I made the big mistake of drinking too much on Friday. This time I knew better... But I apparently still had one shot too many. I blame the altitude, it fucked up my body because normally I wouldn't have been so hungover on Saturday morning! (Comparison: Turku approx. 10m above sea level, Bratislava 140m above sea level, Zuberec (where our cottage was) much higher.) Not so bad though that a proper portion of scrambled eggs, bacon and a bucket of coffee wouldn't fix! The weather for Saturday was forecasted to be bad. Rain and a lot of clouds. So I comforted myself by thinking that we would take it easy. And we did find a route that was supposed to take approximately three hours and which would take us to some mountain lakes. So, we got our gear together a...

How many times do you have to fail to learn? Everybody knows that Googleing is the best way to lie to yourself. So of course I Googled altitude effects on human body to prepare for this week's trip to High Tatras. Last time  I had an issue with the lack of oxygen and Google encouraged me with these words: - swollen brain - thickening of blood - lungs collapsing - balance problems etc. Not what I would call good preparation this Google, but if I can make the climb even a little bit easier for me, or Orsi, I would love to do that! Despite the fact that breathing up there is an unbearable challenge I am SO full of anticipation and excitement! We're going to higher and more challenging places this time and even though there is the risk that you actually fall down a hill I want to go already! I guess I'm some sort of an adrenaline addict, what with my history of skydiving, choosing the most challenging and dangerous slope when downhill skiing, and moving abroa...

Lately I've come face to face with the biggest cultural difference, not just between Finland and Slovakia, but between Nordic  (and some Western European)  countries  and the entire rest of the world: equality between men and women. I grew up in a world where my sex didn't determine anything for me or the people around me. I had a lot of boy friends (not boyfriends) already in kindergarten and it could never have occurred to me that I couldn't or shouldn't do something that they did just because I was a girl. In my family I was the only girl child and I was usually the one who did all the crazy things that boys are expected to do like climbing trees, walking first in line to a dark forest and jumping off rocks. As I got older I as a person was never seen as someone whose main function in life is to settle down with a man, not necessarily a man I would like, just some man, and produce children and be content with the fact that that's all my life would ever be. ...