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.

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…

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!

Day 48/63

We reluctantly left the save haven that is our friend’s place in San Francisco and got a taxi to the airport. San Francisco has been much better than could be expected and certainly a place where we’ll return one day.

Today’s flight was the only one that we couldn’t do with One World tickets, so we got United Airlines cheap flight. This meant that we got surprised with another 40dollars to check in our bags. I have to say that the Around the world ticket is a pretty good deal: You don’t have to pay for everything else in the side… You get luggage for free and you also normally get served food and alcohol. Not with American Airlines though, so don’t be surprised. If they say they are selling ‘entrees’ on a 5 hour flight, what they mean is: Do buy food if you are hungry.

In any case, San Francisco airport had little shopping to do, so I continued to bury myself into the Twilight saga, which I am reading now, so that I don’t have to waste my time back home. It’s very addictive, even if it’s not all that good. I suppose Best Sellers are like that.

As we arrived to British Columbia, it was immediately like coming back home. It’s about as cold, I can imagine, and there seems to be plenty of water. The immigration’s decorations were filled with aboriginal cloths and poles, they made me feel like I will have a good time in this city. We got another taxi to our hotel, the Park Inn, right outside Downtown Vancouver.

The selection of restaurants around the hotel are various and promising. Three metres to a liquor shop and seven eleven, three Japanese restaurants in the same block and so on. We also have wireless internet in the room as well as my husband’s number one fantasy: A Coin Laundry inside the hotel as well. Oh, and did I mention the Post office five metres away? We clearly have picked the best position so far to be in.

We had a lovely Indian buffet for dinner, while watching the city lights. Our friend from Dallas is joining us for a few days, so we decided to leave sightseeing for tomorrow and the seven days we are spending here. It didn’t take me long to realize that this is the most promising city yet. Sure, it’s freezing outside, but that’s just like home: Just need to go shopping for some tights!

In the airport I realized that I will never move to the Southern Athmosphere, it’s just not my thing. I am a Northern girl.

Day 26/63

It was pissing down rain on our last day in Shanghai, so as cheap as the possible tat around the corner would have been, we decided to spend our time in the hotel instead. We had some martinis and dumplings and headed for the airport in the afternoon. Goodbye Shanghai!

Overnight flight from Shanghai to Sydney was okay, 10 hours is still going to hurt, no matter how well you have managed the situation of inflatable pillows, flight socks, alcohol and entertainment. Of course your airline will contribute as well. We flew with Qantas this time, which probably hear me playing Balderdash with my husband before the flight… They totally ignored me on several occasions on service, including ‘forgetting us’ out of all the others while delivering dinner… I have now reached a point where I have seen many of the films on offer in the entertainment systems – I watch films a lot anyways, and this time the selection *in* the system was nothing like the one described in the little magazine they handed to us. However, I enjoyed State of Play and Young Victoria, finally some good airplane entertainment.

So do you know what QANTAS stands for? Because I should think: “Quick! Ask Nobbs to Attack Siperia” is a pretty good shot at it… Do I get your votes?

Day 8/63

My husband and I left my family memebers to Tadotsu and took the morning train to Takamatsu. From takamatsu, we took the bus to the airport. I was looking at postcards in the gifto shoppu when I saw a familiar face: You know how in the middle of a crowd of Japanese, you are not sure if you recognise someone or not and you question your capability to know if it actually is someone you know, or just someone who looks exactly the same as someone you know… This was one of those cases. This time I was right: It was Kawashima sensei, who was on his way to Tokyo on a seminar and came to talk to us briefly on the way. Kawashima sensei visited Finland back in 2001. I think I’ve seen him since in Paris and perhaps also in Italy… Time does fly by.

I slept through most of the legs of our flights, there was a case of turbulence between Tokyo and Hakodate, but I didn’t really let it worry me too much. At Haneda airport, the toilet boots have got their individual screens that tell you what is on sale… I wonder if the squatting toilets also have those and do people hang out in the boots more because of them… Japanese are obsessed with toilets. Even the hotel toilets start their own theme songs or water sounds to cover the possible noises one might have in the toilet. I may not be completely happy with someone listening on me to pee, but for god’sake, it should be a natural sound!

We were the only Gaijin (foreigners) in the plane as can be expected and as we landed on Hokkaido, I immediately thought this was going to be a very different experience from Shikoku… For one, no vending machines at sight. Obviously less need to drink up, when it’s colder. For two, the weather was seriously colder. We digged up our long trousers, socks and even rain coat. I was happy that all these big items we carry around are not going to be just luggage. Plus it’s seriously easier to do power sightseeing in a colder weather.

Our hotel, the Chisun Grand is near the harbour, close to the cable car that takes you to the mountains. We can see both the sea and the mountain from our window. As you probably have also noticed, the room provided us with a long lost internet connection, which meant that I could seriously upload some pictures. There is a coin usable washing machine and “Lawson” the seven eleven at the corner. This supermarket sold gorgeous packed sushi, anime magazines and even stringy cheese. I felt like I had entered a comfort zone in our trip. Trip advisor said that Chisun Grand is a little bit away from the action, but our smallish walk to find dinner showed that it’s actually very close to everything, there is even a statue of a Samurai on our street. Hurrah.

We had weird curry noodles for dinner and walked around town in a small rain. The feeling that my husband got was that the town was a little sad, it has got a lot of western looking buildings, but not really a lot of people around… My feeling however was, that this is a home away from home. Climate, the limited amount of culture, the small town feeling – these are all what I feel is home. What can I say: I’m a nothern girl.

There’s a couple of ways to dealing with them: 1. Don’t book it. 2. If you absolutely cannot avoid them, then mp3 player and some booze might help. I sit at Helsinki-Vantaa airport at 5:30am waiting for an Air Finland flight to Chania. I can tell you now, that if I could have taken the Finnair option, I would have. Unfortunately this week, that would have meant that I would loose yet another day of being with my husband out of two months that we’ve had the pleasure of each other’s company for approximately four days. But also, I would have missed a day of a meeting that I am therefore, so Finnair was not exactly an option.

I can already tell that this flight is going to be hell. About half of the population can be called ‘kids’ of some sort. The other half is their alcoholic parents who have started drinking at 5am, or perhaps not stopped. There’s a fat Finnish lady with bicycle shorts and a poncho on top. She’s sipping her bubbly wine and I feel sorry for the 7 year old daughter who doesn’t seem to get a sandwich while the parents have a feast. There’s a family of four kids, not one or two but solid four with one of them being approximately one years old. I look at all of these families and wonder why on earth they thought it would be an idea to take all these kids to a resort that’s going be unbearably hot in October – and did I mention that it’s July. Suddenly flying to Chania through Budabest *and* Athens doesn’t sound like a bad option at all.

I’ve just read a great article about a very sensitive topic of having kids on planes. I am going to follow the propsed tactics of the article, and board as late as possible. This is not a two hour flight. From Helsinki within the reach of only two hours, you could get to the baltic countries or perhaps even Germany, but that’s it for the flights that the kids would take well. This flight is double the fun. One of the kids is already vommiting, and there’s still an hour to the takeoff.

At the end, the plane is huge with four individual aistles and I get a whole row of my own. prepared to the worst, but the trip is actually very pleasant. There’s a stupid bride film on television and nice breakfast, the toilets are located in the middle of the plane and have baby changing possibilities. This saves the lives of at least some parents. I sleep, eat and watch Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway fighting over a wedding venue. Could have been so much worse.

It’s good to know that everything that can go wrong, does not always go wrong.