Around the world with a Finn

Snow. Something that the Finns take for granted. It falls down the sky and we know how to deal with it. In London though, it’s like a disaster striking in the form of a plague. Well.. Plaque on public transport that is. This year it’s England for Christmas time and little did I know when booking my trip in July, that it would be a blizzard when I turned up.

I was actually truly lucky, as I flew from Vienna on the exact last moment that I possibly could, as on the next day, both Gatwick and Heatrow were completely closing down, including the flight I took on the previous day was canceled. I must be one lucky bastard… I think there’s going to be many people stuck all around Europe this year, unable to go where ever they’d like to spend their Christmas holidays. I count my blessings for getting through to my family members and a place to live where it doesn’t cost me a hotel room price a day to keep on going…

So anyways, the British go absolutely mental with the tiniest bit of snow. To be fair, yesterday it wasn’t just a bit falling down, but a good 10cm in two hours or so… I was due to make a visit to the town to take some photographs and was very surprised to discover that there were any public transports still working. I eventually got where I was going, however the slippery streets with ice-snow combo with slash going on… Well, that wasn’t the most pleasant afternoon stroll that I’ve done.

My friend actually said that getting from Vienna to London is not the hard part, it’s getting from South London to the centre that kills you. I guess there might be some truth to this claim. Even the Austrians were getting on with their lives, but the country of England is certainly in a shock mood. I think they might be in for a surprise this year, if it’s this snowy already, who is not to tell that they’ll have a whole month of snow in Jan-Feb… But that’s just my guesstimation.

Finns have it good: We have cars with winter tires (staples) and we heat them over night. We also build our houses with triple windows so no heat gets out, and indeed the heating is on… all the time, not just two hours in the evening. We also have stuffed clothing ready to face -40C if it indeed comes. Sure, some risky people live with diesel cars which freeze in -35C, but it’s a rare phenomenon as it is to go that low on the temperature. Days like this, Finland seems like a little cosy cradle for a place to live.

So i had a privilege to stop by at winter wonderland Vienna before by Christmas break this year. This is a city I have longed to visit for a long time now, ever since 1994, when I first saw Before Sunrise, one of my favorite films of all time. I was 13 back then and utterly in love with the concept of a beautiful city romance, strangers in the night. It really defined my conception of love and probably affected on me marrying a foreigner later in life. All those beautiful and exotic building, alleyways, cemeteries and parks – I had to see Vienna sooner or later.

I am happy to say that I was not disappointed, even with winter and small blizzard hitting the city, it looked magnificent under the White blanket of flakes. Just as the Germans, Austrians have a strong culture of Christmas markets, these little huts in the streets selling handicrafts and other items suitable for Santa Claus’ bag. The lions club has also set up many huts to sell x, the malt wine, which keeps the shoppers was in the slash. Of course the street decorations and Christmas lights are a sight on their own, street after street more blinky. The cathedrals are severely impressive on the outside, but even just walking around the old area will get you to the feeling.

The food is quite similar to Slovenia, potatoes and meat, plus more chocolate. I am not too impressed, even though the sauce on my cabbage is yammy when we eat traditionally at Rathaus platz. They also seem to enjoy chestnuts with pasta, which are so terribly sweet that you cannot expect anyone to enjoy it. Luckily I opted out on that, but now have a punch of Italian colleagues eating plain tagliatelle…

As far as food goes, Vienna seems to be one of the cities where street food is varied and rich. There’s a culture of eating bratwursts and sour kraut from pieces of cardboard and you can grab some noodles or what seems to be the Austrian idea of a pizza slice – big enough to feed an entire family. They tell me ‘bitte shön’ when I buy some Mozart kugeln and sacher torta to bring as Christmas presents. This is because they want to distinguish themselves from the impolite Germans just shouting ‘bitte’.

Vienna seems lovely the little I get to see it.
I feel that i saw only a scratch as I was mainly sitting in a 16th century meeting room at freyjung plaza, but I have no doubt I’ll be back one day to see it all.

Hejssan!

This week I’m in Copenhagen, the civilized centre of Scandinavia. I haven’t really been to Denmark since last year in Aarhus, but even then my connection to Copenhagen was its glorious airport. I am in love with this airport. Not just because of the sushi available, but the athmosphere, the great shops, the wide isles and carefree nature of the surroundings.

Arriving to Denmark is so much more easy than going into any of the countries I normally travel to. The new metro system goes straight into town in only 15minutes, I’m there. It costs me around 10 euros to get a ticket for 24-hours. This works also in the busses and trains, so I don’t really need to by more than myself back to the airport on the next day. I even take a bus to my meeting venue, which is uncommon for me – normally I wouldn’t trust one to show up… But honestly, I’m almost at home, so of course everything will work.

On my walk from the metro station to the hotel Ibsens, I am met by quality shops and restaurants – loads and loads of good looking sushi places, which I only gaze at since I know I won’t have time to eat in any of them. There’s also the impressive lines of cycling citizens on their own cycle paths on each streets. This is something to model into other cities as well. Would be so much easier to get from one place to another.

In the evening we have dinner in Christiania, a slightly questionnable neighborhood with lots of gangs hang out. Our native guide makes us walk through dark woods to reach the restaurant… Which is on top of a hallway covered with crafiti. I smell Marihuana all over the lobby and think that I would have never gotten there if I were on my own. The restaurant turns out to be really great though and we eat stakes with mushroom sauce, lingonberries and potatoes. Yam! Probably the best meat I’ve had for a long time. My Danish, french, English and Netherlands colleagues seem to enjoy their beers as well, so the question probably should be: How come there’s so good food around Scandinavia when in Finland we keep on failing most expectations when it comes to our restaurants?

It’s particularly rainy on my second day in Copenhagen, so I decide to go to the airport rather than sightseeing. No pictures! Because they would just be grey and uninteresting. Sorry about that. I shall instead use some pictures from my previous visit. Does it matter that it was 23 years ago? Surely these places don’t update. What updates is just the people.

I’m going to end my small story of Copenhagen just to say: It’s not cheap, just like Finland. But it is quality, beautiful and surprising. Choose to come in a better month than October though:)

Since my trip to Lisbon, I have visited Rome, Norcia, Budabest, London, Colchester, Southend, St. Petersbourg and Göteborg. Just for the continuation point of this blog – I might post those entries later, but I won’t make a promise on it. This is where I am today and Finnworld is updating again. That’s the most important thing.

My trip to Slovenia did not start that well. I went to the money exchange counter in the Helsinki-Vantaa airport and asked to change my euros to Slovenian currency. The woman laughs at me and says: “You can probably find Slovenian currency from your own pocket! It’s ok, we get Germans all the time, trying to switch their euros to Finnish Marks…” I take comfort in knowing that Finland has been in Euro from 2002 and Slovenia just joined two years ago…

Lovely, cosy city with lots of Austrian and Italian athmosphere around. Firstly I was surprised how the trees are very similar to Finland: Birches and Pine trees growing along the forests, but of course there’s a gorgeous line of mountains lurking around – something you would never see in Finland definitely.

We arrived on a Sunday night with the sun just setting. I reached the three bridges square in the blue hour as my hotel the City Hotel Ljublijana is situated conveniently with just one block away. I’m on one of my EU project meetings again, so I met some friends and colleagues for some drinks and dinner.

The old city area is very beautiful: There is a whole line of Austian looking buildings around the river and lots and lots of restaurants around – I love a capital that is not a Metropolis – it reminds me of back home. There are the street presenters of fire breaters and rope balancer and the mandatory bum coming to ask me in Slovenian, if it’s ok to pee where I’m standing. He’s already done it by the time when I realise that he’s got his man part out… Well, all adds up to the cultural experience I guess.

Over the couple of days at my stay, I notice at least this: The food is nearly as bad as in Finland. It’s disapointing but true. They use no particular spices and have a lot of pizza places around, which unfortunately are no better than in Finland and even though they are fair in price, it’s not really a culinaristic pleasure – far from it. The wine was actually so bad that among six of us, we did not manage to finish one bottle… On my second night, we were directed to a traditional Slovenian restaurant where I had ‘Country Feast’ plate, which included around 6 kinds of meat and sour cabbage. Equally disapointing as the pizza, even up to the point that I only finished half of it. There is a large amount of Italian Ice Cream sellers around the streets, but those aren’t too good either. Yet to wait on the better experience there.

Regardless of having bad food – I do like Slovenia and think it’s quite sophisticated. Most people speak English well, including taxi drivers. 15min in a taxi costed me 3,8€. Price levels are very reasonable, but obviously it’s no China… The athmosphere is very European, but private – What I mean is that it feels like a safe, innovative environment. They do use the euro: Go Slovenia.

I haven’t quite gotten into the castle yet or the Dragons promised in the tourist website. That’s on the agenda for the last night after all of my work is done. Let’s see how I’ll do…

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…