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…

I’m in a meeting in Bavarian house, in the middle of Brussels, five meters from the European parlament. Glass buildings are pretty impressive in general, tall, massive, the castles of the millennium. There’s a large variation of flagpoles outside, probably the full 27+1, but I don’t have time to count them. Brussels has a feeling of high-expressed political atmosphere, splashes of all Europeaness floats around in small street cafes which you need to walk through to get past the french and Flemish speaking business women with clout. Euro buys you anything, but the value of it is about the same as in back home, Finland: Expensive. Alcohol is cheaper, but that’s really not a surprise. Alcohol is cheaper anywhere outside Finland. Chocolates are everywhere. I would buy cheese if it wouldn’t be such a hot day – it would just melt and besides, I won’t have time to eat it as I’m due to be in Crete next week.

I work in EU funded eLearning projects, which take me around Europe almost every other month, sometimes more often. This is a great job as it means traveling and meeting new, interesting people and innovations. I am in Brussels for a kickoff meeting of ‘Open Science Resources’ which is a three year project that aims to create ways to include digital learning resources produced by Science Centers and museums into huge pan-European repository and therefore reach teachers and students around the 27 member countries.

I love European cities at warm evenings with cool breeze, blue skies and impressive buildings. The air is magical and the roads are covered with individually set stones. Small shops sell tourist crap but also sometimes interesting items and specially fresh fruits and flowers. You would not see this in Finland, because both would freeze to death in a second outside, so there’s never this kind of central European feeling back home.

However, it also gets aggressive on the streets at night and I find my martial arts training from last week coming in handy: I walk alert, no victim behavior, head high, no mp3-player armed with a 3-kilo camera and 1,5litres of Evian. I get some dodgy males shouting “Ca va?” to me, but no one really bothers me even if I am woman alone in heals and a dress after dark. This is an area near the metro station “Rogier”, which apparently has been known to be slightly questionable in the past. To prove that, in the morning at 8am, my colleague and I leave for the meeting and discover three hookers outside our hotel, really selling themselves as well. Who buys sex at 8am on Thursday mornings? Business men stuck in traffic perhaps?

It really doesn’t get anymore European than Brussels, I think. Who ever you come across on the streets, is cross-cultural, multilingual and dress-code free. you can hear which ever language and one should not assume that one speaks a language that no one else speaks. Behind me and my friends walk some Finns, complaining as usual, this time about how slow we walk, so they cannot get past us. I say to them “Kyllä, voimme siirtyä sivuun, olkaa hyvä vaan” (Yes, we can get out of your way, please pass in your hurry) And they feel as embarrassed as I have occasionally done. Somehow I get immediate pleasure on lowering their feeling of superiority – I know, I have cheap fun.

I meet some colleagues from another European project. We have an interesting analysis of human behavior in consortiums, how do people establish social interactions and politics all the wat. However, that’s clearly a long enough topic for another post because we keep ourselves entertained for five hours. There is also a carnival in the Grand Platz in the honor of Charles V. It’s called “The Entre” and quite an entrance it is: Perhaps a thousand people dressed in medieval costumes, carrying flags, riding horses, dancing and singing. There’s a huge barrel of beer and the pheasant dressed men and women are distributing it to the audience. There’s even a dragon and of course releasing some pigeons and firing thousands of paper pieces around the area. Kings of today might throw parties like this one, but I don’t see the population appreciating it to the extent of Europeans back then.

Brussels, however hot or dirty on the streets, still gets my favorable stamp. It has been young and old, new and traditional, memorable and surprising. I buy my overly prices bottle of water from the airport and wonder when I’ll be back.

So I have decided that since this blog is called the Finnworld – I will also talk about my other travels in the wonderful world that I live in. Today, I’m in Brussels. It’s 27 degrees celcius – let me tell you, that’s called ‘hot’ if you are a Finn. I live back home in a smallish city called Jyväskylä, which means that when ever I travel absolutely anywhere, I first have to go through Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Getting to Helsinki from Jyväskylä, you can take about four options, the car, the bus, the train the plane – normal variety. Today, I took the plane.

When taking connecting flights via Helsinki, Finnair is normally very good with being in schedule. No problems. They do have a tiny issue with luggage though, specially when connecting flights are too close to each other. So exactly like mine today. Note to self: Always have at least an hour in Helsinki – it might make the difference of washing your teeth at night. Note to self number two: Always wear sensible shoes in the plane and pack at least one bra to your hand luggage. Preferably a change of clothing entirely. This might make a difference of your meeting wardrobe in the following day. I am sure the consortium will have a field day tomorrow with me turning up in a tank top. But hey, it was warm in Finland as well.

I probably cope much better than many others to the sudden loss of luggage. Afterall, it’s just clothes and toiletries. The only thing that I cannot do without is suncream, and that I’m sure I can find somewhere in the capital of Europe at 8am. I suppose it’s even a weird sensation, being ‘alone’ in a new city with nothing but the clothes that I have on my back. Clothes are not that important to me anyways. I went a week in China with just hand luggage, I can easily do Brussels for three days in a summer skirt. Laptop is what I have much more longing for, or the internet connection. I can’t perform basic functions without my camera either – god knows how did I manage without it once.

Perhaps I get my luggage tomorrow, perhaps not. In any case, European capital looks like a new exciting city to explore. With loads of monuments and confusing combinations of street names. Who knew that “Laan” means “Boulevard”. In the middle of all the Flemish and French, which I can perhaps have some understanding of – The main language that I would have needed tonight was Greek. “You will take on some lessons, yes?” says my colleague, Sofoklies. And if I would be smart, that’s exactly the direction for my language learning right now with all the Greeks involved in all the European projects.

“Kippis”, I say to my two identical hunkie programmer colleagues from Crete, fixing my pashmina, which has saved me from the embarrashment for not wearing a bra on EU project dinner. Thank you, mother in law, for perhaps the best item in my travel wardrobe. You are never alone with a Pashmina.