Around the world with a Finn

Being stuck, day 2.

Ok, this morning I made plenty of mistakes, which I learned from. Rules of being stuck: You will never know what’s going on. And you’ll begin to loose money very fast. I woke up after 3 hours of sleep or so and found out that most flights are cancelled as the airport is closed. However, went to the airport anyways, as there was some hope for Rome. Got there at 5am. The place is like Woodstock with no light in sight. No chairs, just queues, and my ticket says that I might not be on the flight that I should have been because some money issues with Portugese Air. I walked around for a while, but they say that the airport will be closed for *at least* for another 7 hours. I had no idea if my flight would leave at that point and neither had the million-gazillion other people there. So I made a quick decision that I could be back in bed in 20 minutes if I just take a taxi back. Which is exactly what I did. Taxi back was *a lot* cheaper than taxi there, who completely ripped me off. Well, tomorrow’s taxi to the airport WILL NOT do that. Over my dead body.

So came back, got my old room, number 130 back, which is great as it’s three metres from the internet literarily. I slept for a while and decided to start formulating plan C, which means that if the airspace is closed tomorrow also and I cannot fly with rebooked Easyjet, then I will take the night train to Madrid, then day train to Barcelona and hopefully some night bus or so to Italy from there (via France). Probably via Milan and then to Rome. Whether or not I get there before it’s time to leave to Norcia, this is unknown.

The hotel receptionist was very helpful for me – Hotel Londres, if you ever have to stay in Estoril… or Lisbon for that matter, this is the best place. Has started to feel like home to me. So I planned some routes and then made my way back to town where I visited the station where the trains leave. Remarkably I was there for *just* that one hour per day that they handle international bookings. What a blessing! So then I booked the next train out for *anywhere* and that is tomorrow night’s sleeper to Madrid. Somehow at the same time as I feel that it’s horrible not to know what will happen, I am happy to be finding myself in the middle of this adventure. I booked a day train to Barcelona then. If worst comes to worst, I might have to stay one night in Barcelona and then get the sleeper to Milan as it only goes on Thursdays. This would mean I hardly make it to the bus to Norcia though, so I am still reconsidering if I can find a bus on Wednesday night from Barcelona to Milan. I have never seen any of these cities, and I really don’t want to do it with luggage that actually includes two laptops… But if I need to, I shall go though them. All the Gaudi or Europe, here I come.

It’s: Be careful what you wish for, because I said to myself when Philipp was stuck in Italy that for one, I would have already left by land. Yes indeed, that’s me – head first and no tomorrow.

On other matters, I spent some extra time in the Lisbon city centre where the catholic Mecca prepares to receive the ‘Papa’ as they say. Benedictus is in deed trying to make my trip to the other way tomorrow. Best of luck to him. His arrival means that there is no way of getting bus to airport though, so I shall get a taxi. Again. Lisbon has prepared itself to the Pope’s arrival like it was getting a BIG concert guest. The service is on a huge arena, central town, where there is so many cameras, screens, satellites and studios today already that I have lost count. There is banners of him waving with a suspicious smile and there are pope statues, candles and praying necklaces being sold in the streets. Grannies camper around the althar and all traffic is a mess. Oh, and portable toilets came in two colors: Blue and Orange today. It’s really a joy to witness the holy papa’s entrance to such catholic land. Of course it also means I would have to get out to the train station about the same time as the mass ends, which means that I might have to kill myself a couple of times, and you know, not in a good way.

If I am not bancrupt after this week, I shall be seriously happy about this. But note to self: Only plan trips that go to countries where you can stay for free. Like London for example. Had my first train out from here been to Hendais (Paris), then I would have probably considered Eurostar to my husband’s flat, but which ever is good at this point. Makes me really want to go interrailing in the future. As a preparation for the train journey, I have planned to post off a package of my extra clothes tomorrow. I also bought some ‘emergency food’ in case I am stuck without food somewhere. Tuna in cans and peanuts + dark chocolate. I think these are all things that will survive flights, trains and busses.

Ok so: Tomorrow I will be out of Internet, probably for  a long time. So I am posting this today (written on Monday night). I’ll be either in Rome tomorrow by plane or on my way in the train-bus-combinations for the next three days. Which ever it is, it’s been interesting. And humbling. Man thinks he’s so smart. But when the mountain desides to come to Mohammed, then it really blocks all air traffic.

So it happened that the ash cloud entered my universe as well. I suppose with my travel dates, it was inevitable. My Easyjet from Lisbon to Rome was cancelled, preventing me from leaving the work city and entering the holiday destination. I have booked another flight though, so hopefully when this entry uploads to Finnworld, I am already flying over the Mediterranean and on my way to Italy.

And here I am still, in the land of endless fruit salads. Ok, I think I am going to start this post by talking about the ash cloud a little: You never think it’s going to hit you, and yet when it does, all you care is a) money and b) that you are stranded alone with no cool people around. Yes I’m happy my colleagues, all 44 or so of them got out. But why was it me left behind??? What I did immediately when I woke up to the realisation that *my* flight was canceled, I booked another one. Also on another airline, because the cheap flight companies are not willing to fly around the cloud. I am putting my pennies to Star Alliance and TAP Porgugese Airline and hoping it will fly… Around.

Then I changed my orginal flight to Tuesday, in case tomorrow fails. Afterwards I decided to see some Lisbon – fairly enough, I had never really been there on daylight. So I took the train to town, which is easy and very punctual. After that I walked around – it was a nice day, not full-on sun, but I managed to burn my nose anyways. One thing that all travellers should keep in mind: Pashminas save lives. I got mine from my mother-in-law and it is the best thing ever. Why? Because it can do the following: a) Keep you safe from sun (Islamic-style – the plus side is that if you wear a scarf around your head, they think you are a muslim and they really do not mess around with you, I mean not even TAT sellers!), b) it covers you from wind – good if you have a sore throat, c) it covers you for religious purpose – try to get to Vatican without shoulders covered!, d) it IS a blanket! It’s truly BIG and warm and still cool at the same time. I do not even think of travelling without a pashmina, they are that great!

Ok, so, I decided to check the castle. At first I was not impressed. You have to remember that I’ve been to some kick-arse castles in my time, specially the one in Shimabara. But this one DID have its characteristics. Yes, it was quite dull and towery, but there was plenty of it (not like castles in Finland which you can see in 10 minutes) and I spent two hours there. There’s plently of layers, and for some reason, plenty of cats and peacocks. Latter of which ‘MEOW’ loudly, in a way that you think it’s the cats, but realise that it’s some muppet tourists hazzling around the peacock not leaving it alone… Ok, fair enough I was one of those and it did give me the full closure of spread end… Fairly enough, that’s the most of arse I’ve seen in weeks… Do not pay attention to the writer’s twisted mind…

Anyways, lots of cats. Photogenic. And towers, and camera obscura to show the harbor. I thought they had been clever for their time. I finally disturbed a Portugese granny and bought one of the traditional creme brulee cakes with a cappuchino on my way out, stopping to eat it with an ecquisite vista. To be fair, I am stuck in Lisbon – which is gorgeous as hell. I should be ashamed of wanting to leave so badly. But to be honest, the only thing I want right now is to be with my family or with my husband. The first of which is still in Finland and the latter which is in Copenhagen. They might move closer tomorrow – my husband is due to fly back to London and my family is due to fly to Rome. Which ever I’ll reach first, that’s where my heart is. It’s difficult to enjoy something like Lisbon, when you know you did not plan this, but I managed anyways, so I am happy. The castle reminded me of the castle site in Sendai weirdly, as the park around it on the hill was quite similar. Something close to my heart from far, far, away.

When I got out of the castle eventually, I decided to walk around. Everyone is already preparing for the Pope’s visit in two days and there was a parade which closed some streets. It was also Sunday, which mean that only a limited amount of shops were open. Weirdly, United COlors of Benetton was open. I tried on some tops and a dress, but they were not right, so I dumped them. It’s amazing how this particular brand has never pleased me. Not even now. When I was leaving and got to the street to get to the big shopping centre – I met the Elephant man. I am NOT kidding. I jumped from the pavement without a controlled reaction. This was a man, trying to cover his head, with large, 30cm lumps of red big skin and fat falling off the side of his head. Truly I am amazed even now. Of the fact that I could not control my sense of jump and how I felt awful after it had happened. This is Lisbon – everything is possible.

Attack of Benedictus had hit the streets pretty bad at that point already so I decided to take the train home and try to get some sleep. Of course this meant that I was half the night online and trying to update my websites and so on. Tomorrow – hoping to get to ROme! Wish me luck with my TAP Portugese Airline!

Oh, I have to mention that I dined in Hotel Londres (14,9euros including a bottle of wine and water plus three courses) and I was there with Swedish grandmothers mainly. Of all the people in the world! Why am I surrounded by these swedes???

COuld be worse – the rooms in Hotel Londres Estoril are 66eur/night and the internet is free in the lobby. Which is three steps from my room door. YEs, I have to dine with Swedish elderly ladies, but it’s a relatively small price to pay. It really is.

Visit number two to Lisbon went well. On Saturday I was holding a teachers workshop on content packaging and testing all the standards that my European project ASPECT has been promoting. Of course everything was slightly Portugese, so the internet decided not to work for the first two hours (this is quite bad if you have *everything* online for the excersises) and we had some power cables missing, coffee breaks late and the usual, southern European feeling. To the credit of the Ministry of Education in Portugal – we had to admit: They did do an excellent job at the end – after we got Internet back, everything was pretty much working very well.

In the evening, we were picked up by a bus who took us for a tour in Lisbon – some places that I did not visit on my previous time… In Belem, I went inside the Jeronimos Monastery, where Vasco da Gama and his crew spent their last night in Portugal in prayer before leaving for India. The monastery has a sort of a chappel attached to it – which is almost as impressive as Nôtre dame… We also had a small walk to see the tower of Belem close which I did not do the last time I was here.

What was even more impressive than the big catholic momuments though, was the night show of Fado – traditional Portugese music that we were taken to listen with our dinner. Fado is a very melancholy type of singing and live music act, often about lost love or so. Even though my Portugese interpreter, Ricardo was apparently not as fluent in English as he pretended to be… Elivira the woman next to him said to me: “Do not listen to him! When he said they were singing of boats which never came back, what he *actually meant* was that singer was imagining what it would be like to loose someone, but no one had sunk yet…” I was truly impressed by the Portugese guitar player – apparenly you have to start playing when you are five years old or you have no chance of becoming good. Missed my chance there. Fado also included some dancing and different national costumes on the girls and boys around. It was quite clear to see where many of the Portugese Eurovision Songs get their inspiration!

After a lovely evening with 44 European teachers, I was exhausted but happy – the next morning of course I realised that I had no flight to Rome and I was stuck yet in Estoril and Lisbon for another day. But looking at the bright side: That meant another day in Lisbon sightseeing, and in daylight!

Obrigada!

So writing this to you at Copenhagen airport, waiting for my flight to Lisbon. What you have missed though dear readers, is that I already visited Lisbon two months ago in March 2010. I was on business back then as well as today, on a mission to the European union project ASPECT to promote eLearning Standards.

So here’s a little recap from that first visit of mine to Lisbon…I’m going to do this update first as it will keep Finnworld’s chronology almost attached. Yes, I technically also visited Paris and London in the meanwhile, but they don’t really count do they…? I’ll try to be a better blogger, I promise.

When we finally managed to get to Lisbon after two days of beeing cooked alive in the conference rooms and auditoriums – it’s awesome and I am hoping that I would have had more than one night to experience it… I was in a small croud with my colleagues around Europe, but the most important one was Alenka, my slovenian friend who also speaks portugese and has planned the whole evening for us. We’ve also have Svetlana from Lithuania, Lars from Denmark, Ingo from Germany and my Finnish-French-Ivory Coastian colleague, Anicet in the crowd. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten the name of Alenka’s colleague, but let’s just call him the guy who always smiles:)

We had a small trip in a car by the coast from Estoril to Lisbon, (we are actually staying at Estoril, which is around 20 minutes away from Lisbon by train. On this car ride I got a chance to glance over the harbor area – obviously very impressive. I have decided to name this city the European San Francisco and I’ll tell you why:
1. The bridge. Who knows if this was there before the Golden Gate, but they look remarkably alike.
2. The very similar feeling of landscape and Ocean near
3. The trams. They are old and gorgeous just like in San Francisco.
4. Last but not least, the feeling of hills growing straight from Ocean. And the pastel colored houses, which will forever remind me of those in Ashbury Hights—

So needless to say I like this city, a *lot*. Alenka’s small but efficient tour on Lisbon first took us to Belem, which is an old area with gorgeous buildings, huge fountains and of course the belem little cupcake creme bruleés. We actually visited the old place that made became famous of them and bought some very fresh to eat while walking on the streets.

When in Lisbon, you cannnot help but noticing the strong effect of catholisism everywhere. It’s great, because all the churches are really impressive (none of that Lutherian ‘we sit on spikes’ mentality… If you don’t get that reference, you need to revisit Blackadder season 2 and the turnips episode). Also, where ever you go, there is the occasional statue of Vasco Da Cama. Yeah, he probably is the most well known and impressive Portugese that ever lived, but do we need his statue in *every corner* of the capital??? Sometimes he’s so obvious that there is not even a name stuck on it… And they potray him quite like the fish people in Pirates of the Caribean – or perhaps the makers of the film visited Lisbon to get some inspiration on men who would have been spending *a lot* of time in ships…

Anyways, from Belem, we continue to the centre of the time when the sun is already setting. We walk the picturesk centre and I take photos of everything that moves. We finally get to the point where the old trams go. We take one of those rides uphill and decide to walk back down. I can see that this would have been a better idea during sunlight, but never the less, the sightseeing view spots work also at night with all the lights on. Lisbon seems like quite a safe city, some homeless and druken outside, but nothing much.

After we’ve walked our feet off, we are back at the square in the centre and I insist to find some food in the next 15 minutes. It’s just that I’ve been there so many times with random crowds not making decisions and we could have eneded up walking around for another hour. Not a good idea and will make everyone slightly bitchy. So the crowd actually makes the best choise that we could have done and the old cafe-restaurant is even mentioned in the lonely planet as the best in town. I am happy as I get to order Cataplana, which my German colleague has insisted I eat somewhen in Lisbon.

Cataplana is great: It’s like a fish stew with big full prawns and great sauce with some vegetables. And there is much more than my *other* German colleague Ingo and I can eat, so there is some leftovers even for my Finnish-French-African colleague, who after 12 years of being in Finland, has started to order in a restaurant like a Finn. I get quite upset of this kind of behaviour, specially when I had some white wine as well… Oh well, let’s just say that Finns always order the cheapest or the *cheaper* option and then complain that it’s not the best on the menu… When you put that together with French nature with actually complaining out loud – well, let’s just say that Ingo needed to calm me down after the incident.

Overall, a great evening. Our hotel in Estoril is right next to the biggest Casino in Europe, but I don’t have the energy to visit it… I never was much of a money gambler anyways – bet me something else and I’m in.

So here I go Lisbon part 2! In case it rains throughout this visit, I shall not mind as I’ve already got the killer pictures:) Now it’s time to teach 44 teachers from Lithuania, Portugal, Romania and Belgium how eLearning packaging standards will affect their lives. What fun my job is!

So I was back home for a luxurious 9 days or so and was called off to go to Denmark. This didn’t really surprise me, since the travel was business, not pleasure. People asked me in the US: Did you tour Europe at all? My answer always is that no, I do that for my job. And even now that my trip around the world is over, I plan to keep up the blog. Just to point out – my Finnworld goes on and so do my various travels. I plan to do a little sneak peaks on the places I visit, just to keep records on my travels and hopefully pop up some interesting things to those who keep on reading from a point of view of a Finn.

So today I’m in Aarhus, Denmark. Aarhus is one of the biggest towns in Denmark and it’s on the mainland of it, not in the island like Copenhagen. To get to Aarhus from Jyväskylä where I live, I have to take three very small plane rides, Jyväskylä to Helsinki, Helsinki to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Aarhus. And then a bus for fortyfive minutes. This took the better part of my Sunday to be honest.

I have only been to Copenhagen before in all of Denmark, and even there I was as a kid, visiting Legoland as you can expect. Denmark is slightly like everywhere else in the Nordic countries, we have had a pact even before the European Union, that we can travel between our countries as we please… But just being here now, the whole idea of the Nordic Countries feels slightly like a gang of swedish-speaking friends where Finland has always been a little left out of the club. Certainly we would have never even been invited in unless we would have been a part of Sweden for such a long time and having a swedish speaking minority still attached.

As you know, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are very similar languages. As a Finn, I am made to learn Swedish in Schools. It’s not optional in Finland, you do it or you fail basic education. And no one fails in Finland. This week, I have once again been feeling blessed that I come from a small country with a weird language that doesn’t comply with almost any other – this forced me as well as all Finns, to learn various of languages in School. I have studied Swedish, English, French, Spannish, Estonian, Japanese and small amount of Italian. Even if I wouldn’t be comfortable in more than couple of them, it means I can read signs and get around Europe without much difficulty.

You would think that one survives somewhere like in Denmark with just English, right? Yes, everyone speaks it, but try to get a local bus and bus fare and where to get off… It suddenly becomes more complicated. Swedish is similar yes, but it’s not instant understanding of what is going on, I am telling you.

Aarhus seems like a nice enough University town, with a big campus area spread around the harbor. There is an old town, which means medieval buildings, looking pretty much the same as others in central Europe… Of course all have their own details, but in the end, they have the same European quality attached to them. European night skies also have the same blue going on somehow. I swear the blue of the magic hour in US or in Asia is different. In Japan, everything is kind of purple-pink, in US it’s a strong violet color. In Europe, it’s a dark blue night. All beautiful, but all different to me.

What irritates me of certain countries in Europe like Denmark, is that they have to be so god damn special NOT to switch into using euros, even now that they are EU members. Sweden and UK both belong to this club of stupidity and they have paid dearly in the economical crisis and value of their own currency going down. Not to even mention Iceland. DKK the Danish Kronor is also a very hard currency to convert, now in November 2009, 100DKKs is 13 euros. So take one zero off and add 30% to the price. I have to say that I like dollars (USD, AUD and CAD) much better, since they just need for me to give myself a 40-30% discount. Which I can much better live with. My hotel receptionist told me that my bus to the campus was going to cost 180DKK. Of course he made a small error in his english and meant ‘18′. But this is why I now have 500DKK extra, which I’ll turn back to euros, probably loosing something like 20% of the value in the process. What can I say, life is a bitch today. Perhaps a better way of getting my moneys worth would be to just covert those kronas into Gin.

But overall, I am complaining about nothing in Scandinavia. It’s like travelling back home. My  recommendation for a hotel if you ever need to stay in the Nordic countries is Scandic. It’s slightly less expensive than the Radisson SAS (which of course is posher and more luxurious), and it’s always top class. Even if the receptionist can make small mistakes.

I am flying back home tomorrow, but on my way I’ll pass fields and flat land as well as windmills of old and new kinds. That’s what Denmark is for you. For me of course, it’s the land that Hamlet lived in and somehow taking my bus from Aarhus airport to Aarhus reminded me a lot of the Kenneth Branaugh version of Hamlet. I wonder if I should treat myself with that from Amazon for Christmas… Perhaps so:)

At the last point I would add that who ever designed the lighting sceme of the pedestrial main road… had the same pattern as the ones in my home town. Just see for yourself…

This morning I woke up and I knew that I was going to get ill. It was one of those tingles in the throat when it’s evident. But no worries, it was the very last morning, so I thanked my luck for being ill on zero of the days in my holiday, what a blessing. Swine flu, bring it on.

Our flight to Heathrow wasn’t until six a clock, so we had a good while morning to bounce around New York left. It was sunny as well, what a great set of weathers have we stumbled on. We generally had very little rain on this trip, only a couple of days when it was pissing down, and even then, it was entertaining.

First things first, our mission was to visit the Chinatown post office and get the very last package on its way to Finland. 26 packages total have we sent from this trip, most of them not on the smaller side if you see what I mean. The post office was an experience on its own. In there you really understand all the safety rituals, all the reasons to be alert of all times. This was like going to a prison to talk to an inmate. All the office workers were behind thick, bullet proof glass, with signs on them that said: Attacking a Postal Worker or robbing a post office is a crime punishable by 10-15 years in prison. There was a bullet proof glass cage which you put the package into, which the officer then opens only after you closed it from the other side. Later on the day we walked past another post office downtown. The security in that one was nothing like this. It really gives you a perspective on how dodgy the neighborhood where we were staying was. I didn’t see any guns, but I could feel them all around me, in the bags, under the counters.

After checking out and leaving our luggage to the hotel reception, we took bus number 15 to Battery Park again and went to visit the museum of American Indians. This was a huge, gorgeous Art Deco building which they seemed to have gained recently to the purpose of putting out this exhibit. However, it was one of the poorest experiences that I’ve seen, an excuse for a museum. It didn’t help that we stumbled onto a security guard, who was pretending to be a curator, who knew absolutely nothing about the pieces on show and then decided that he would interpret my husband’s shit which was Haida art moon that we bought from Vancouver: “See this, it’s a Killer Whale”, was the last straw. They had some costumes of the aboriginals on show (some inluded series of Moose teeth sewn on top!), which of course were interesting, but they had been placed out in the huge building by an eight year old… The museum seriously needs to pay a visit to the Asian Art Museum on San Francisco. As the aboriginals let us down, I felt no obligation or need to buy their tat, even though they had Haida art there as well.

We decided to take the metro back to the Chinatown to have lunch around there. We also tried to check out the museum of Chinese in New York, but it was –if possible- even a bigger disappointment than museum number one previously today. This one didn’t even have an entrance to it. There was a corridor, a sign, but no entrance. But not to worry, there was still plenty of post cards to write back home. I estimate that I have written around 200 post cards, at least 12 from each city (30 from some) and we were in around 12 cities on our way…

No more to do except to get a taxi to the airport. JFK terminal 8 was kind of a disappointment as well… Nothing more that I would have wanted to buy, series or burger kings and Kentucky fried chickens lurking. We spent our last hours abroad watching quality American television – the one thing that the Americans do well. I never had a huge urge to go to America, like some… And now as I’ve been there, I can say that yes, there is original culture there, hiding underneath it all… But I have no huge desire to be back soon… Back in San Francisco one day would be nice, maybe we’ll take the Transsiperian to Vladivostok like we always talked about.

Just when leaving, I stumbled onto the evil King Fu Panda Noodles shop… Forget everything I said about it being bland in here… Only in America…

Our last full day on the trip started out with a metro trip up to the 51^st street and Rockerfeller centre. 30 Rock of course is the home of NBC studios, which meant that finally my dreams came through with the perfect gift shop filled with by-products to all the NBC shows. There was a line of Nerf Herd hooties and Buy More mugs, House candy in the shape of brains and of course the fantastic line of t-shirts from Battlestar Galactica. And this was just the shows of my interest. There was course loads of stuff from Heroes, The Office and whatnot, but I was trying to keep it minimal… Somehow I still managed to spend 220dollars in this shop. The cashier man looked at me and said: Looks like you are buying for the whole of Finland…

In front of the Rockerfeller plaza, there is an ice rink – apparently one of at least three that exist in Manhattan. They clearly like the idea of skating. We walked down 5^th avenue, until we got to Grand Central Station, where we had lunch in an American diner type of place in the food hall basement. I then stalked some people at the main level of the impressive station. Behind the central station stands the Chrystler building, which was the tallest building of Manhattan for like two months until Emprire State Building rose above it. Both of them look pretty similar in style, so it’s not difficult to see they were built in the same era. Tall buildings are of course currently very unpopular ever since 9-11. Even in San Francisco, it so happened that no one wanted to work or live in tall buildings any more, so they are just sitting by.

Our 5^th avenue quest took us to the Emprire State building next, outside of which someone tried to sell the tickets with 47dollars instead of 20dollars that they actually cost inside. He said we’d get through the line – which apparently is 30-45minutes. We decided to take our chances inside and found out that this was a total sham, there was almost no one there. We walked through all the empty waiting areas, clearly this been at some point, a very popular stop for tourists… Could the effects of terrorism still be affecting the tourism at this extent? We saw the city from the 86^th floor and took appropriate pictures. The life makes your ears pop of course, but besides this – it wasn’t a particularly exciting journey. Even the tat shop couldn’t allure our money – We are starting to be ready to go home.

Walking downtown took us to Union Square, where we were originally going to search for the Forbidden Planet. Of course with the NBC shopping in our bags, this turned out to be a window tour of the shop which to be fair enough, didn’t exactly offer anything that I would have particularly wanted at this point. However the window display was worth a visit anyways. They had two people in it dressed as a zombie and victim with huge amounts of fake blood and guts. I suppose must beat a job of cleaning somebody’s toilet.

As sun was setting and we were back at Canal Street station, I let my husband go to our hotel to fiddle with the interwebs while I took my chances with Manhattan bridge city view photography. Perhaps it’s needless to say, but this part of downtown in particular is not what you would call ‘okay to walk alone at night’. And specially if you are a) woman and b) carrying a big camera. By this point of our trip, we haven’t experienced any muggings, robbery or pick pocketing. I doubt this has been an accident. There has been series of precautions done to assure the security of us and our stuff. Just to list some:

1. I don’t carry a camera bag. That’s a clear sign of ‘I have something valuable – please mugg me.’ Instead I have a ‘girly flower bag’, which in no way lets on that what’s inside is more than 2000euros of goods.

2. I carry my money, my passport, my tickets and other valuables like room keys or metro tickets – only in a small bag which is most of the time underneath my clothes, impossible to get to without me noticing someone fiddling with me.

3. We’ve used the hotel safes when accessible

4. I’ve got a copy of my passport and travel documents in my gmail account, just in case I’d loose it.

5. I don’t look people into their eyes on the streets of big cities.

6. I try to walk like I know where I am going, trying not to flash out a big map on an area with very little tourists.

7. Use ‘Mr. carrier bags’ (locals walking on the area) to walk after, if walking in the dark. This means that you should always have a native to follow, specially if you don’t know them. Pick one that looks like they know what they are doing.

8. Take pictures of your belongings in the hotel rooms – and hide them to the suitcase when you are out.

9. Do not stop to talk to the homeless. Do not pass money, but more importantly, ignore them so they don’t have a case against you. If they get you talking, you’ve already lost.

10. No victim behavior – if they can see you are afraid, you are an easy target. No reading of books or listening to iPods. Those will make them come after you.

There is just a few examples on how to deal with New York, but also the world in general. Might sound like overly protective antisocial way of looking at it, but I have decided to leave my gullible Finnish me home and expect the worst. Plus – it worked to the extent that no one mugged me, robbed me, pick pocketed me…

In the evening we saw one of our friends for a lovely Chinese in a place where we had gone previously on Sunday. He’s a real New Yorker and reminded me just how much the city was disturbed by the 9-11. It’s a blow that the whole western world felt, but of course it was never for us like it was for those who actually lived in the cloud of ash, saw people falling through the air or tried desperately call out for the loved ones through phone lines that were just completely shut. We didn’t go to Ground Zero, but I saw it from the Empire State Building Observation terrace. A spot on Manhattan which is considerably more low built than any other. For a sparkle of a second, you think: What is that… And then you remember.

We got up at eight and were by the Battery Park by nine thirtyish. You guess right, today was the time to do the boring sightseeing that all the tourists do. We had tickets for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island cruise and went through the inspection (as tough as any airport customs) to get to the ferry in no time. It surely was not the best weather to see the symbol of freedom, but tomorrow it’s promised to rain, so cloudy Liberty pictures it was.

We decided to skip the statue itself, since there’s not exactly much to do there on the Liberty Island and just went straight to Ellis Island instead. This turned out to be a great move – Ellis Island has loads of history to see and we had very detailed audio guides once again to help us. I have come to appreciate Audio guides on this trip. They are really good for the museums as well as the visitors for several reasons: 1) You don’t need a tour guide who is yelling at a tourist group, 2) you can move along at your own phase and 3) you can skip things that might be boring to you, or 4) you can hear more about things that are actually interesting. 5) You don’t have to read, you can concentrate on the atmosphere and area and 6) If you are a museum, you can fit so much more detail, story and drama into the audio guides than you ever could to some wall texts that people don’t stop by to read anyways. Overall, whoever thought of audio guides was genious.

Ellis Island served as the immigration port for years and years of people immigrating to America. And of course, there was a lot of people. They were inspected in Ellis Island, to be fit to the society with their physical and mental health. If you were suspected to have a mental disease, you’d be marked with an ‘X’ on your jacket. If you had tuberculosis with ‘T’ and so on. The island also was a hospital to those who might get well and be fit to the society.

Looking at the exhibitions, I was surprised to realize how bad the life must have been in Europe, specially for those whose religion was not accepted. America served as the safe haven, the place where you are ‘free’ even if you do work 14 hour days, or even if you need to work as a child. Even now, sitting on the subway, it’s clear that this country is a melting pot of all the races together. No wonder they have issues!

I was touched by the gallery of ‘what did you bring with you’? The audio guide asks you, what would you bring if you only could bring a suitcase filled with things. Now a days it’s a very different matter, I feel. Memories and entertainment doesn’t have to take space. Clothes to me a quite irrelevant, as long as I’m warm or cool enough – it doesn’t matter. I bring my life on three different hard drives. All copies of themselves. All texts, all emails, all the pictures. Or better yet, access to internet gives me much more access to memories than any of these men and women immigrating had. Somehow seems more simple back then. At least they knew where the limits of the world laid.

It’s an interesting thought that America was something so much better than Europe. I’ve had Americans telling me on this trip that they should get out in the next ten years because it’s all going down hill. Who knows if that’s the way of the world. Perhaps our children will visit it with very different eyes. The current depression really shows on the streets with goods been sold in the internet more than anywhere. Unlike some, I don’t believe the postal services have come to their ends – I think shipping is a fair cost in today’s world. The Airlines are really pushing anything that isn’t the flight cost – as extra. Your luggage will cost. It’s still possibly cheaper than shipping, but for how long? I have faith in living in Europe for now. If there is one thing I’ve learned on this trip, it’s that I know where my home is and I’m pleased with it. Give me a couple of decades and I might even develop some patriotism…

We had some time after Ellis Island, so we took number 1 to 50^th street trying to get to the empire state building… Instead we stumbled onto Times Square. It was a slightly sad sight after the Virgin Megastore had closed. There was nothing I desperately wanted to shop – actually I’ve had that kind of feeling for two days now. New York crap is what you can buy anywhere in the world, so it doesn’t seem to attract me at all. Could also be that all that I’ve seen and bought on this trip has been so much more interesting… Or perhaps I’m simply tired of shopping. I certainly wouldn’t want a plastic statue of Liberty to my shelf.

It’s a great feeling to see that perhaps going home isn’t such a bad thing, I certainly have started to feel road-weary for a while now. Only one more day to go and then we are flying to London.

We arrived to the JFK after only 4 hours of flight, which meant that we basically skipped the whole night. I had maybe two times ten minutes sleep, so with jetlag, that was not the nicest day ahead.

The customs were not a Bitch, if you don’t count the continuous CNN and morning shows where the ‘stupid people’ can complain about their loans. It took about 45 minutes and we were through. We didn’t even have to fill the green leaflets again since we had only been to Canada… Not exactly abroad now, is it?

It was 7am still and we got a taxi to our Manhattan hotel, the Hotel 91 in East Broadway, Chinatown. This was one of the two options we had in our price range, which was 100euros tops. New York hotels tend to cost average of 300dollars a night, so that was a bargain. The hotel is clean and nice. We have two double beds, so technically four people could have stayed in our room… The toilet is clean, but in comparison to all the hotels that we’ve stayed at before this: It lacks a kettle. There is a lounge for hot water though, in case we need it. There is a coin laundy inside and a post office as well as a liquor store next door. This makes it a great hotel for us, but of course not for all the people.

As tired as we were, we didn’t really get to our room before 3pm, so we had around seven hours to kill. This involved the trial and error or buying a metcard (7day overall pass to the metro and bus system) and realizing that it does not work if you need to go out and in again. Also the Halloween time had seriously closed down some of the lines, so the closest subway station to us was Canal Street. We took the metro uptown to Central Park, since we figured that it would certainly at least be open.

It was the New York city Marathon day today, which was closing even more streets, not to mention confusing the traffic in the Central Park. We had Vancouver-type breakfast in the memory of our friend KG, I had a vegetable omelet, brown toast, orange juice and coffee. I have to say that it tasted better in Vancouver.

When ever in my head I thought of New York, my first place to visit was always the Angel Bethesda. What can I say: I just love ‘Angels in America’ so much. New York is really a city that you see through the television a lot. It’s on all the TV series, it’s on all the films. We walked past the Mall of Central park in a gorgeous yellow and green blanket of trees. This was the spot on cover of ‘When Harry met Sally’. It takes you all the way to the lovely fountain of Bethesda, which to me symbolizes all the tragedy of the big city – the aids, the religions, The cold world outside. It’s as breathtaking as it is in the series.

After wandering through the ramble of the park, we came to our senses and returned to the road which took us to the Metropolitan museum of art. It’s a huge complex, like the British Museum or Louvre, but we were mainly interested in the exhibition on Samurai art, which had just gone on. It was a fascinating layout, lots of katanas, even some cloth pieces, which we know can only be exposed to daylight for a month in every five years, and of course some helmets and armor. The Helmets were even more obscure than we’ve seen before – not even Masamune Date had a huge ‘U’ shaped golden fork decorating his head. At this point however, it started to feel as we’d have to commit ritual suicide if we didn’t get any sleep, so my memories of the exhibition are specially vague. Sleep deprivation is a fascinating thing. Man can think that can accomplish anything, but if man does not sleep… There is nothing but insanity waiting.

We then walked to a subway and found ourselves back in Canal Street. We had one of the best meals of my life for lunch in a Schetzuan restaurant there, hot but great. After that it was three hour nap and dinner to make our night complete. I saw the angel, that was the main accomplishment of the day.

Our hotel was happy to keep our luggage so we dumped it and headed to see some more museums. The museum of Vancouver this is. It was a nice, sunny day for change and we walked. Of course in the anticipation of this being one of those long two days melting together as one… Well, that was probably not the brightest idea on earth.

Museum of Vancouver turned out to have two exhibitions. The main one and something called the ‘Taxidermy’ which means stuffing animals. They were almost apologizing for it, they said they are not against it or for it, but since they have it, they show it. Fair enough. This of course meant some heads on the wall, snakes in jars and the usual. There was a full size moose and even a cute little platypus, my new favorite animal. Even a rhino head… Apparently now a days taxidermy has fallen off fashion and I can see why. People are more environmentally cautions and don’t want to be looking at stuffed animals. They would much rather see the replicas, I’m sure. I don’t object… Whatever way the world goes with it, I am sure it’s alright.

Museum of Vancouver was rich and ‘interactive’ as the girl behind the desk told us enthusiastically. It certainly wasn’t the best exhibition that I’ve seen on this trip, but fair enough, there was interesting videos. One was a real piece filmed from a tram going around the centre with people hopping away from in front of it. Another one was an advert for ‘re-doing’ your house. It was targeting the bored house wives whose biggest problem was that their fridge doors opened to the wrong direction. I had no idea that the 60’s homes had started to have dish washers… Somehow I am very interested in the totally electrical homes, it’s just that now a days you think more like ‘how to make it all wireless’ or how to have the iPod stereo go around the apartment.

We then walked our way to town via the rainbow village of the city which was preparing for Halloween by costumes and decorations. I’ve got news for Finns: We have no idea how to do it! Now in North America… Well, they take the pumpkins really seriously and it’s an adult carnival that vappu(1^st of May) has no comparison to. It’s the time to dress up to the sexy nurse costumes, or the short skirt maid as I discovered in the sky train. My favorite was still the Drag-Marge with tits serving tables.

Unfortunately the only Halloween party I was going for was a flight to New York. The airport was pretty deserted as no one wants to travel on Halloween. My husband and I decided to have martinis in the empty bar, where we were accompanied by one of those ‘I-know-him-from-television-stars-but-cant-quite-remember-who-it-is’. It took me all flight to realize that he was Scott Wolfe, flying on economy with his wife… He as well as us, was surprised of the flight being postponed for an hour because of the time turning back for an hour here… It turned out that this was good for us because the JFK opens its customs at 6 sharp and we would have had to have wait 1,5 hours instead of half in the plane at the other end…

Last city to go, trip almost over. Let’s go to the place where the boys are pretty, New York City!