Hilska Bed & Breakfast

New look of Hilska B&B

2011-11-28T17:14:00.000+01:00

Sorry guys for being so silent lately, but I guess my life has been too hectic to write about any new development. Not much has really happened to begin with, a few trips here and there and a raise in salary (plus some added responsibilities within the organization). But the biggest change is now what I'm about to tell you: new look of Hilska B&B!

I participated in this "Be your own interior designer" course organized by The Finnish Adult Education Centre of the City of Helsinki. The course was organized on three semi-consecutive Saturdays in October-November and included a personal project for each participants. I had not in fact realized there was such a project, I had just originally wanted to get some ideas on how to develop the decor of my house, but because of this I decided that my project would be to actually do something about it. During the first session and in between first and second I was mainly thinking what was wrong with my decor and what I wanted to improve. On the second session I discussed it in a small group and also with the teacher. And between the second and third I paid a visit to Claes Ohlsson, K-Rauta and IKEA and on the third I presented my classmates what I had managed to do. There remains a few things left to do, but most of the things on my list I managed to accomplish.

My 'mission' was to harmonize and simplify the color world of my house. I wanted to also think about how to better organize the furniture to give more space and provide space for my new iMac which will hopefully arrive sometime soon. I hope you guys can remember a bit how the place used to look like (if not, scroll the old posts from around October 2010 where I have pictures of the old style). Here are the photos of the new decor:

Basically in the entrance I spray painted the mirror frames black (they were natural wood color before). I also took away the teddies around it to make a more classic look. I also cleared the drawer top from excess stuff. I still need to cover the boxes on top of the hat shelf (either black or white cover around it should do the trick).

I took away all the real furniture in front of the window to give a more airy feeling and also to give as much light to the plants as possible. I also unified the colors here, only white pots in front of the window.

I completely changed the order of furniture, basically putting the bed next to the window and the bookshelves where the bed used to be. In addition I bought a new bed cover (white, to hide the size of the bed more) and also some new pillowcases to match my color palette (green and black). I will most likely go buy a few more pillows/covers to make it easier to watch TV. I also need to buy a new blanket (the light blue just doesn't fit the color scheme anymore. I also cleared out some of the teddies from the shelf on the floor and put some decorative items there. I will still need to buy a new table cloth for the table, as this one is a bit old and I don't like the color that much.. I'm also in the process of creating a picture collage to put on the wall instead of the map of Middle-Earth.

So, now the big furniture fit much nicer in the room as they are partly hidden when you enter the apartment. Also since they are next to one another they don't seem as big as they did before. The big painting also fits better amongst all the blackness.. Also a neat idea were the small cloth boxes put on the two bottom shelves under the table, hiding the ugly folders and others. I also rearranged the books alphabetically. Teddies are put on display in smaller quantities so I didn't have to get rid of them but they don't take up too much space anymore either. DVD-shelf also looks less big on this wall.

I spray painted the table shiny black, which is really nice and doesn't look gloomy at all. In fact it reflects the light that comes from the window or the lamp next to it so it brightens up the room a bit. The map of Europe is now also in much better display, showcasing where I've been (the past) and reminding me where I wanna go (future). This fulfills the feng shui rule! Also the airiness of the table allows the eye to see straight ahead from the entrance yet again giving more space for the room. I still need to spray paint the chairs black, but I will have to wait till spring because I don't wanna be cleaning the whole apartment yet again after the spray dust settles everywhere.

So, here you go. New look, feels a lot more airy and seems to just be better. It's funny how there's exactly the same amount of furniture but just organized differently.. and in fact there's pretty much exactly the same amount of space between the bed and the tv, but now it feels like there's more space than there was before.

Summer holiday in Israel (a mistake!)

2011-08-15T23:48:00.002+02:00

Shalom! So, as you most likely knew, I spent my one week summer holiday in Israel, this time spanning Ceasarea,Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.. Lots to see for 8 days! The mistake I was referring to in the title comes from the fact that the end of July is not the best month to travel to Israel: it was hot down there! I'm sure we didn't see a single day of less than 30 degrees. I'm beginning to understand my friends in southern countries praising air conditioning: it's a must there!

To briefly explain my trips (I'm sure all of whom I sent postcards to should've received them by now). On the first day we visited Ceasarea briefly. It's a nice town an hour drive north of Tel Aviv. There runs a huge ancient aqueduct on the shores, which was really nice. In addition they have old ruins, most likely a roman settlement with a port. Very nice visit indeed, and we had amazing weather (as we did for the whole trip). Here some pictures:

The aqueduct of Ceasarea

As I said last time I was there, Israel is a place of cats (my sis would love it there). Even though they are stray cats, they are very friendly

Then, we spent few days in Tel Aviv, nothing major happening, just meeting friends and hanging out. Eating cheap food; I don't think I paid even once more than 10€ per meal, or maybe once in Jerusalem.. but mostly something between 4 and 8€.. incredible! and the food was good too.. One funny thing (for me at least) in Tel Aviv was to find the Helsinki street (check the picture below). No other streets named after locations in Finland, but Helsinki they have (and they even have it in Swedish (Helsingfors) below.. funny).

Rehov is street in Hebrew.. this side didn't have the "Helsingfors" under Helsinki, but the other side did.

Then, on Tuesday me, Ofir and Rinat had a trip to Haifa, like an hour train ride north of Tel Aviv. I had no real idea what to expect from that town, but I was pleasantly surprised. If before I thought that the gardens of Versailles were amazing, well.. The gardens of the Ba'Hai temple are quite a contender! The temple itself was quite boring (only one room and you couldn't wear shoes to get in, although they did have the brochure in Finnish, which was quite surprising) but the gardens around it were phenomenal. We took an English tour of the gardens (free) and were allowed to walk all the way down from the top of the hill through fountains, flower beds and all the time having the view of the city below us. Wonderful! If you don't take my word for it, check these pictures..

Me & Rinat, behind us the Ba'Hai temple and the gardens risen to meet it (and continuing past it)

This is for my mum: take example of these and try to replicate this in our forest.. ;)

View from the first viewing point down the top of the hill

The Ba'Hai temple and the gardens running towards it.. behind the city of Haifa and the sea

Then it was again a few days in Tel Aviv before our road trip to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, the highlight of my visit this time. Nothing that interesting really happened in between. Eating in small restaurants, meeting new people and old friends, getting tanned and walking.. a lot! In Paris and other cities I rely a lot on public transportation but there it just doesn't work, so we ended up walking instead..

Then, on Thursday afternoon we took the car of Nina's mum, kindly loaned to us for the road trip. David, Ofir's friend, joined us later in Jerusalem (he was still in the army when we left Tel Aviv so he couldn't join us there). The trip to Jerusalem was surprisingly fast, only about an hour or max two (can't remember anymore). It was nice to see the scenery outside of Tel Aviv and the coast, it was so different. Drier and less vegetation, but not yet desert though (I'll get to that after Jerusalem). During Thursday evening we barely had time for other than settling in at our hostel and finding somewhere to eat.

Friday was the best day of my trip: sightseeing the old city of Jerusalem. We were slightly uneasy walking through the Muslim quarter of the town, but as soon as we reached the Christian and Jewish quarters we were quite fine. Sadly the Temple Mount was closed for all non-Muslims, but we did get to see the Western Wall and pray next to it. It was a really touching experience for me. Also visited the holiest Christian place on Earth: The location of Golgata and the alleged grave of Jesus Christ. Walking in that huge church (Church of the Holy Sepulcher) was just something special. In addition I got to walk the Via Dolorosa and we even saw a small group of Christians/pilgrims/tourists with a man walking with a cross on his shoulders and singing religious songs. It felt so surreal to be amongst all that history and feel the weight of it. We finished the day by walking up the Mount of Olives and having a stupefying view of the old city. And as is my custom in my blog, here are some pictures which will hopefully share some of the feeling I had.

One of the first things we saw after entering the old city was in fact Via Dolorosa. We didn't get to walk ON it until a few hours later on our way back, but still.. wasn't that spectacular as far as roads go, but I guess it's just the history that makes it special..

Nina, David, me and Ofir in front of the Western Wall. We had to wear kippas (jewish headgear that covers the back of your head only) and Nina had to go to a separate section of the Wall reserved only for women.. Religious people can be weird sometimes.. And you were not supposed to ever turn your back on the Wall (as we do on this picture, but I guess we were far enough).

Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Behind me the alleged grave of our Savior. People were praying on it, kissing it, laying their hands and heads on it.. Apparently it meant a lot to many.

Us inside the Church. The ceiling was high and the pillars huge. It was like a fortress..

We found this family tree, tracing from Adam & Eve to Jesus Christ going through all the seven (?) families of the Jews and all the main kings and queens and prophets. Quite impressive in fact..

NIS (New Israel Shekel, 1 € is approximately 5 NIS) is divided into 100 agorot (like our cents). 10 agorot I think is the smallest coin and the value of that is like 2 cents.. so completely useless, but I kept getting those from supermarkets and stuff. So every time I saw a fountain, I made a wish and through a coin of 10 or 50 agorot into the fountain =)

That impressive pyramid is in fact a mount of various spices.. quite impressive 'eh?

The markets in Viipuri seem nothing compared to the poorness and chaos of the markets I saw in the old town..

Mount of Olives. According to Jewish scripts, the first to be Resurrected on the Day of Resurrection are the people buried in the Mount of Olives.. So needless to say there were a LOT of graves.. My sis would not have even climbed that hill I'm sure of it! haha

Finally (after some 30 mins at least) we reached the top of the hill and had some nice views of the old town (as I mentioned above)

Dome of the Rock, perhaps the most iconic landmark of Jerusalem (next to the Western Wall, but frankly it was quite boring to look at, unlike this beauty)

Then on Saturday morning we took our car and continued our journey eastward towards the lowest point of land on Earth. They even had signs on the way telling how far below the sea level we were. This year has really been the year of extremes for me: climbing to the highest point in Europe reachable by cable car in May and then reaching the lowest point of land on Earth in July. Hmm, what else would be there ahead of me yet? Anyhow, it took us like and hour again to reach the Dead Sea. On our way we stopped for resupplies (mainly water) and we saw a camel. I was so excited to see one so upclose and then I even got to ride on it! I was so excited for the rest of the day. Anyway, we reached the Dead Sea around midday and it was already too hot. The sand/stones next to the Sea were unwalkable by foot so we had to wear our sandals all the time out of the Sea. The water was at least like 40 degrees, it was so warm. But it was sooooooo funny to float there. You had to actually push your legs and keep pushing with your hands in order to keep your legs pointing down, which is the natural direction for them in any other water. The only downside was that the water is so salty that you should not let it get on your face, cause you can't get it off without fresh water.. Meaning we run through our supply of 4,5 liters of fresh water quite fast. We also got to try out the famous mud of the Dead Sea. You could quite clearly feel the small salt in it rubbing your skin when you applied it on you. My skin was so smooth afterward you would not even believe it! All in all I have to say the Dead Sea was a bit of a disappointment, mainly cause even the Sea was too hot to stay in for long and the saltiness really ruined my stay there. I would like to revisit when it's less hot and I would have more fresh water to clean my eyes. And when I wouldn't have so many small scratches on my body (I even stupidly SHAVED that morning.. silly me). My whole body was burning all the time I was in the water.. but I guess it was the good burn, clearing and cleaning my skin.. Anyhow, after like an hour, we took a shower and then bought some more water and headed back to Tel Aviv. Here the last pictures of my trip:

As mentioned earlier, the road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea was surrounded by bare wasteland.. I've never seen so much sand in my life!

Me and the camel.. I was so scared being so close to it, absolutely sure it would bite or spit or something any minute.. haha

Me and Ofir on the camel.. It felt WEIRD sitting on top of that thing, its back was so huge (much bigger than a horse) and felt kinda mushy.. and it was so tall (again, compared to horses).

Nina, Ofir and David applying the mud

Don't I look dashing? lol

I guess the most obvious thing to do while floating on the Dead Sea is to form a star.. oh well..

On our way back our car overheated.. Sadly I didn't took a picture or a video when the helpful station clerk managed to open the cork of the cooling system.. the water (or whatever liquid) burst up like 2 meters.. it was HOT out there, poor car.. but we just let it cool for an hour or so and put some more water inside and continued our journey and reached Tel Aviv safely.

This was by far the most interesting transport I've even seen and also the most frightening.. the mattress kept flopping back and forth, side to side.. I was so sure it would fall off and on us.. luckily it didn't and we passed it before anything happened..

Anyway, this was my summer holiday in "brief". Thanks for reaching this far and I hope that there was something new even to those who've already seen my pics on facebook and heard my stories. That's all for now, more to come..

Midsummer & Giulia

2011-07-04T23:02:00.000+02:00

Trying to keep my blog up-to-date, so here's an update of Giulia's visit to Finland and Midsummer in Helsinki. This year was the first Midsummer in years (minus that one year when I was working in Lappeenranta all Midsummer) that I did NOT spend at our summer cottage. It felt quite strange during the months that I knew I would not be going there, but as it turned out, we had an amazing weekend in Helsinki, so apparently you CAN have a nice Midsummer even in the city.

To start the story, I have to start explaining Giulia.. haha.. She's an Italian girl I met while in Paris and we became good friends. I met her through another friend in April (as you might've seen from the pics last year). She had been talking about coming to Finland for a few months and then we decided that Midsummer would be the perfect time, cause I would have more time off from work. So she landed in Tampere on Midsummer eve in the morning, Heikki was kind enough to go pick her up since it was faster and easier for him to go to Tampere from Hämeenlinna than it was for me. So yeah, Heikki was coming also to Helsinki for the Midsummer. As was my sis with her exchange friend from Sweden. And also Niko with his girlfriend. So we had a pretty nice group to hang out with.

And we decided to go to Seurasaari which had this huge Midsummer festivity going on, there were thousands of people there I would assume. Lots of traditional stuff, folk dancing, artisans, bonfires, midsummer food, etc. We only had a few hours to spend there and I don't think we saw all of it, but I think the most parts. And while we were there we stumbled upon Johanna and her husband Hans. Which was great, cause there was also the possibility to go dance yourself at the end and despite how surprisingly good my sis knew how to dance waltz and foxtrot, I still needed Johanna for humppa and jenkka. That was really the perfect ending for the evening in Seurasaari, I hadn't been dancing like that in years.

Then we continued our evening by a midnight picnic on the beach here at Lauttasaari. We had a disposable grill (which Heikki was kind (and man) enough to light) and loads of food to eat (too much). Too bad for us that after only like an hour or so it started to rain a bit so we decided to call it a night and continue at my place by playing games and eating before going to sleep around 6. My sis and Helena had to take a taxi back to the hostel since there were no buses and the first morning buses started only at 11am. It was seriously a very nice surprise to have this great event in Helsinki and even if next year I sort of would like to have my sauna and lake and stuff, it was surely a nice thing to experience. Here some photos of Seurasaari before going on with the rest of the weekend.

Me and Giulia on the bridge to Seurasaari and the first bonfire (still so small, but looked really nice to us in the beginning)

The winners of the lottery we took part. My sis and Noora got really nice jewellery, I got a pink notebook and Giulia got matches.. Luck wasn't equal that night among us!

Some folk dancing

Walking with the wooden legs was way more harder than it looked. Only at the end of the evening I managed to stay up for like 10 seconds or so..

Heikki was so much better with them

The main square where apparently the majority of the events took place; like theater, music, dance, etc..

My sis, Helena and Giulia following the show (and my sis showing her good side to the camera :P)

in the back: Noora and Niko ; in the front: Helena, Giulia, my sis, Jonna and Hans

The main bonfire was lit. It was BIG.

I haven't seen a real bonfire in years. It was surprisingly nice to see one so big.

And naturally I had to play around a bit with the camera, or more importantly have my sis play around with the camera..

We seem to have lost Niko and Noora. They were not so enthusiastic with the fire as we were..

Can you get any more Midsummery than this?

We passed by the medieval trade village on our way back from the main island (yes, Seurasaari has at least two islands...)

Our picnic on the Kasinonranta beach in Lauttasaari

Heikki was the "alpha male", capable of making fire. =)

Okay, so that was Friday. Then on with Saturday and Sunday (that's when my sis and Helena had to leave, so it was only me and Giulia and I was also back to work, so no sightseeing for me then anymore). On Saturday we decided to just stroll around in the center, as we THOUGHT it was supposed to rain. In the end we had the most amazing weather on Saturday (and Sunday as well). Luckily Helsinki is so small that you can see all the main sights in like an hour or two. We started from the Railway Station, moved to Senate Square and the Cathedral of Helsinki. Then it was time for some tourist shopping on Esplanadi and some coffee. We finalized our tour with the Uspenski Cathedral and dinner at Amarillo. Then, out of the blue, we decided to have a Eurovision night at my place (since Giulia had not seen any of the competitions before 2010). So we bought some more snacks and coke to drink and headed to my place. We watched 2004 and 2005 on Saturday. It was so much fun, the knowledge of me and my sis and the enthusiasm of us all. Three different cultures, four different tastes in music. So much laughter and joy on that evening, it was really nice! Picture time! =)

Giulia, Sis, Helena and me at the Railway Square, behind us the National Theater of Helsini

Giulia, Sis and Helena at Senate Square. There was a huge bus load of Italians who just arrived when we did.. It was funny..

Having a coffee break at Kappeli on Esplanadi. It wasn't that much more expensive than a traditional café, but the location is just superb. And you can also get S-bonus from the place, so even better! :P

Sis trying out a new look for herself..

Giulia, Sis, Helena and me in front of the Uspenski Cathedral. Giulia's head seems a bit off.. I dunno what she's doing!

The views from the hill top of Uspenski are quite nice.

Dinner at my favorite restaurant in Helsinki, Amarillo! =) Muuuuuuuchos Naaaaaaachos <3

Sis showing what the night was all about! =)

Giulia is honestly one of the sweetest persons I've ever met. She brought a present for me (Les Miserables on DVD, I'll get back to this later), Heikki and my sis. She's so sweet!

Okay, then on Sunday, we finally went on the picnic in Suomenlinna I had originally planned for Saturday. I had received this picnic basket as a present last fall and I had not been able to use it yet (d'uh, Finnish winter!) so I wanted to take it to a test drive. Despite the strong wind, it was still quite warm on the island and we found a really nice spot in Kustaanmiekka to sit down and eat and drink. We even played this "Who Am I?" game that my sis thought us. It was surprisingly difficult to guess. Anyway, I think it was a perfect ending for a perfect weekend. We stayed there till like 5pm or something, then took the boat back and took Helena to the airport bus. Then we had yet another Eurovision night with Giulia, watching 2006 (LORDI!!!) and 2007. We even bought this amazingly good white chocolate strawberry cake. It was too sweet for Giulia, so I had to eat almost all of it.. :P And Giulia was trying various kinds of Finnish cookies (Jaffa, Jyväshyvä). A really nice day indeed. Aaaaand, again some pics..

On our way to Suomenlinna. The weather was just perfect for this trip!

The infamous picnic basket!

Giulia, Helena and sis.. and the food! But, where's Mörkö?

Somehow I really like this picture..

Francesco (who joined us late), Helena and me in front of the King's Gate in Kustaanmiekka

Giulia, me and Francesco at the grave of Augustin Ehrensvärd, the designer of Suomenlinna

Only one more day to go, but this is a short one (I promise). On Monday I was at work from 10 to 19 and Giulia was checking the remaining sights of Helsinki (Sibelius monument, the Rock church, Opera House, Hakaniemi markets, Parliament House, Alvar Aalto house, etc.). Then after she got back, we watching Les Miserables (since we were slightly full of Eurovision after like 6 to 8 hours in total during the weekend). I have to say, Les Miserables started pretty boring but towards the end both me an Giulia were almost crying, jaws on the ground. Such strong passion with some of the actors. Wow. And the best part is that this one has English subtitles and it's sung/spoken in English. It even has FINNISH subtitles, so no reason for anyone I know not to watch it :P

Anyway, thanks for reaching the end and being patient. Apparently a lot happened that weekend. I finally had someone over for a visit (oh yeah, and btw, my sis arrived already on Thursday and we went to see the Black Swan: awesome movie!) so lots to tell. In other news, I'll be heading to Paris this Saturday, again for business. We have some meetings on Monday and then a strategy day on Tuesday. I'll be coming back next Wednesday, just about a week before my summer holiday in Israel. Summer is great! I don't know whether I'll post anything about the trip to Paris, but you can surely expect photos of Israel in the beginning of August.

Cheers for now!

Business trip to the French Alps

2011-06-28T20:01:00.000+02:00

I know I know, I'm a "bit" late with this post, but better late than never? As you few active readers know, I was in the French Alps for a business trip at the end of May for a week. I also got to spend a few days in Paris on the weekend before, but since I've shared quite enough of pictures of Paris already on this blog, I'll just briefly tell about that part. I met with some of my old friends and hang out. It was cool, but it all just reminded me how much I love the city and I just want to move back there. It's so nice during the summer!

Anyhow, the official business part of the trip started on Monday morning around 4am when my colleague Hanna picked me up with a taxi from my friend's place where I was staying (had not slept at all that night out of fear of oversleeping). We went to Orly (first time in my life) and from there flew to Geneva (my first time in Switzerland as well). We had a few hours to wait for the group of Finnish companies to arrive so we had some coffee (I was desperately needing every drop of coffee available). From Geneva we drove to Chamonix where we pretty much stayed for the whole week, visiting other places during the days.

The trip itself was pretty easy from my point of view. Hanna had done most of the organizing and I was there mainly to share the burden of the management of the actual trip with her and then occasional translating jobs. I was also responsible for finishing the trip as Hanna left early on Friday morning to go back to Paris for her school stuff so I had Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning to look after the group. Even those final days went well. The only "bad" thing we had was that our vineyard visit went a bit too long so people got fed up with the guy. Other than that we were blessed with amazing weather and good visits. Doing these kinds of trips is so much fun and we intend to develop something on this field in the future.

As is my custom lately, I'll let the pictures tell more.. =) (getting lazy apparently)..

Goat cheese salad, was so yummy!

Chamonix

Chamonix and Mont Blanc

Church of Chamonix

A moment to breath on Monday

Closer view of the Mont Blanc (over 4 km tall!)

La Clusaz

Cows blocking the traffic.. that's how they take them from one field to another, using roads..

Another valley with stunningly beautiful views

Just breathtaking

Almost like in Finland, except the mountains are at least twice as high

A holiday cottage, on rent for just a few hundred euros a week.. wow..

The roads were quite narrow and steep from time to time.. it was honestly scary occasionally to be even on board the bus..

Maholyne Guest House with four unique rooms, room 1

Princess bathroom

Nice views

A few hundred years ago, a part of the mountains in the back collapsed causing destruction and devastation and the death of thousands of people in the village

I thought those tree climbing routes were cool, but the others said they have similar and even better tracks in Lapland..

This is where we came from..

This is where we're going =)

Some hotheads walking on the snow up in 3km

Almost at the top of Aiguille du Midi, in some 3600m

Part of the group who made it to the top, Mont Blanc on the background

Those skilifts take you to Italy =)

It was fun to be on the same level with clouds :D

Stunningly beautiful mountains on our trekking at 2800m. and we had the most amazing weather as well, not too cold and not too warm either (even if I did burn my legs on this day)

Marmot <3

Dunno the name of this flower but it was really beautiful among the otherwise quite brown surroundings

More of the beautiful mountains we saw.. it took us about 2,5 hours to walk from Plan d'Aiguille du Midi to Montenvers from where most took the mountain train to get back to Chamonix.

The road was actually pretty simple, so all of us made it through quite nicely

Although it was quite intimidating from time to time to realize that if you made a fault and stumbled on your left.. you could very easily end up falling hundreds of meters down the mountainside..

And sometimes we had slightly steeper rises.. but those were only a few

One unfortunate vacation

2011-05-19T00:22:00.000+02:00

Background
So, the background for this unfortunate vacation is that I needed to visit my sister who's in exchange in Tralee, Ireland. She's been there since September 2010 and coming back at the end of this month. Since we are both quite "fanatic" Eurovision fans and since Eurovision was this year in May (10-12-14), I decided to align my visit according to that. I didn't wanna waste too much of my vacation time for Ireland, since there was not much to see in Tralee according to my sister, so we finally agreed on 12-16, therefore allowing us to watch the second semifinal and final together before I would come back to Finland. I even found pretty nice flights through EasyJet and Aer Arann flying through Manchester to Kerry Airport on those dates and spending one night in Manchester in between the flights both ways. The flights cost me less than 200€ altogether so it was a pretty nice deal. This was the plan at least..

Things start to go wrong
Sometime at the end of February EasyJet announced that they had to cancel my outbound flight on the evening of May 11th. No specific reason given, but at least I got a full refund on the ticket price (of some 30-40€). This resulted in a sort of panicked search for alternative flight to Manchester on that night or the following morning so I could still use the remaining set of flights. I found a "reasonably" cheap flight from British Airways that took me Helsinki-Manchester on Thursday morning just two hours before my connecting flight to Kerry. Doable I felt. Then I also went on to book train tickets for Friday to Dublin, since it was only 57,5€ per person return. I got so into booking that I also booked us bus tickets to Killarney for Saturday and a return bus ticket from the airport to Tralee. All this since booking online saved me 10% in the price.

The moment when I almost lost all hope
Everything ran smoothly till Wednesday evening before the departure. I had not slept well or much the night before and I was wondering whether to sleep at all that night, since I know I'm not the best at waking up and I had hit the gym that night so I knew I wouldn't be ready for sleep anytime before midnight anyhow and my flight was at 8.35 Thursday morning. But eventually I did go to sleep at around 2am, after making sure everything was packed and ready to go. Then happened what I had feared the most. I woke up at 8.50, 25min AFTER my first flight had taken off from Helsinki. And I even had FOUR alarms on my phone, none of them which apparently had woken me up. I was so angry at myself that I was ready to cry. But, I pulled myself together and started thinking about what to do. I really wanted to go to Ireland, so I didn't want to just cancel the trip. So I fiercely started to search for alternate ways to get myself to Ireland on that day. Going through all the possible low cost airlines (RyanAir, EasyJet, Aer Arann, Aer Lingus, Norwegian) and all the cheap flight search engines (halvatlennot.fi, expedia.fr, etc.) until I finally managed to find reasonably good connection through London to Dublin for Friday (where I was going anyway). It eventually cost me some 250€ more to get those flights and bus transportation in London and Dublin but at least I got myself to Ireland, and only like half a day later than I was originally supposed to be there.

Actual visit (May 12th-16th)
So, as I said, I finally managed to get myself to Ireland. I was using four different flights, four different airlines and five different airports. Helsinki-London (Gatwick) using Norwegian ; London (Stansted)-Dublin using RyanAir ; Kerry-Manchester using Aer Arann and finally Manchester-Helsinki using EasyJet. Quite interesting I would say. The actual visits were as follows:

Thursday 12th - London (Gatwick-London-Stanstead)
Friday 13th - Dublin
Saturday 14th - Killarney & Tralee
Sunday 15th - Manchester
Monday 16th - Manchester

Let's go them day by day and I'll post the pics of that particular day at the end of each day, okay?

Thursday, 12th - London
So my eventual flight landed in Gatwick around 7pm local time. It took me about an hour and a half after that to get to London by EasyBus. EasyBus is pretty convenient and nice way to get to the center from any of the airports basically. Costs only like 7-9£ depending when you take it and whether you book online beforehand. Anyway, I ended up in Earl's Court and from there I needed to go to Baker Street to catch my connection bus to Stanstead. I was feeling kinda cheap, so I didn't take the metro and decided to walk. Little did I realize that it turned out to be almost 10km walk (I checked my route from google maps) which took pretty much all of my evening. In the beginning it was fun just to walk around the suburb and take pictures of the houses (I took many!). But once it got dark I kinda lost my interest, but since I had been walking till then, I didn't want to change. The only real sight that I saw was Buckingham Palace, but it looked pretty nice so I was happy. Besides, I had seen most of the "big ones" last time I was in London in 2009 so I was not even that interested to go see them by myself at night. Eventually I took the bus from Baker Street at 23h30 and arrived to Stanstead around half past midnight. I spent my evening at the airport first trying to find a pen, then trying to find a place to charge my iPhone, then finding a toilet, then stumbling across a shower and using it (without any towel => improvise). I can't remember at what time I proceeded through the security, but I did manage to get some sleep on that side, maybe like an hour or so. Then it was off to Dublin and another day, but before that, some pics.

Europe covered in clouds

Nice houses in London vol.1

Nice houses in London vol.2 (there were LOTS more of this, so I'm sparing you most of them..)

A Memorial of the Queen, or something.. Still can't remember the name..

Buckingham Palace

EasyBus

Friday, 13th - Dublin
My flight was at 6h30 and arriving to Dublin at 7h30. After some walking around I found the bus to take me to the center and I arrived at around 9h30. My sis had to wait a bit, but eventually we got moving. So yeah, I met my sister at the Heuston train station, where we were originally supposed to arrive together at 8h45. We didn't use any public transportation in Dublin, but instead just walked around. We started on the south side of the river and came back on the north side. Due to Queen Elisabeth's visit to Ireland this week, I was unable to leave my luggage at the train station so I was forced to drag it behind me all day. Towards the mid way through he became and active member of the day and we joyfully named him Hans Handluggage. We saw plenty of churches, Dublin Castle, a few museums (and bog bodies!) and one restaurant. The weather was absolutely insane in Dublin. During those ten hours we spent in the city we saw the weather change from sunny through cloudy to rain and back so many times I lost count. Luckily we had museums, cafés, shops, etc always nearby in case it started to rain so we managed to find cover.

Anyhow, I think I have plenty enough of pics from Dublin so they'll share the story of the day better than my blabbering...

Everything in Ireland is FIRST in Irish/Gaelic and then in English...

Custom House

Colorful houses next to river Liffey

Heuston train station

Church vol 1.

Church vol. 2. There were a LOT of churches.. and they are all nice..

Hans performing to the best of his abilities as a camera stand

Sis & me in front of the St Patrick's Cathedral

Part of the Dublin Castle -complex

Sis and the Dublin Castle, it was a bit of a disappointment.. it was kinda small.

Ireland's (or the whole world's?) largest clock (in a shopping center?)

Playing around with the perspectives.. didn't work so well with this clock :(

Entering St Stephen's Green Park

Have to take at least one flower pic from all of my trips now, ever since the one from Tel Aviv turned out so nice..

National Museum

Hans and me in Trinity College Dublin grounds

A really nice house in the Temple Bar district of Dublin

Sis and the Ha'penny Bridge

This photo and the next are taken at the same moment, this one facing east...

... and this one facing west.. see any difference in weather conditions?

One of the luckily few rainstorms that came upon us in Dublin, or at least one of the ones we saw..

Ulster Bank HQ (I pressume)

Entering the National Museum of Ireland

In the courtyard of the museum

We finally found the Guinness Storehouse, having walked past it in the morning (despite the very obvious signage)

Guinness Storehouse

Our train back to Tralee

"Where everybody knows your name!" (even the trains)

In Ireland, even the SUN goes green :P

Saturday, 14th - Killarney & Tralee
So, after a very exhausting day in Dublin, we had planned to go biking in the Killarney National park on Saturday prior to Eurovision final. Due to the continuing poor weather, we decided to skip the biking and just walked around in the town at first and then walked to Ross Castle, some 2km outside of the center. We saw Killarney Cathedral on our way to the castle. Both buildings were just stupendously beautiful. Saw even more green while in Killarney. And mountains, mountains were really nice too. Unfortunately there was a wedding or something going on at the cathedral and there was a strict "no photos" rule in the castle, so there's gonna be no inside pics of those places. But outside yes. And speaking of pics, I think I'll put some pics of Killarney here before continuing with the Tralee part.

The pubs and restaurants in Ireland look really nice

Killarney Cathedral

Killarney National Park

Tea House in KNP

Mountains <3

Ross Castle

The tree where we had our picnic in

Sis climbing on the tree

View from the top floor window of the castle (yes, she allowed us to take pics through the window in this floor)

It starts to rain....

Green <3

Killarney Cathedral again (cause it's so pretty)

Stray dog who followed us for quite some time

Then we quickly ran through the main "sights" of Tralee in the afternoon once we were back in town, around one hour ahead of schedule (due to not using the bikes). So we visited the church and walked around in the park, took us max one hour. Then it was shower time and Eurovision. We had quite an international crowd: two Finns, one Swedish, one Belgium and two Germans. Naturally no one rooted for their country harder than we Finns, despite positioning eventually as 21st.. But we rooted for Sweden too.. and many other countries. Here some pics of Tralee.

Church of Tralee

Nice tree in the park (green <3)

Circle of birches

"The ruins of Tralee"

Climbed a tree

Sunday, 15th - Manchester
Then it was time to say goodbye to Ireland and fly to Manchester. I had browsed through the wikipedia article of Manchester and printed out some stuff of places to see in the city beforehand. It's pretty much like Tampere in Finland, only bigger. Modern skyscrapers, medieval churches and town halls, red brick industry buildings. Pretty boring and nothing much to see according to the websites. But the best way was again to stop at the first shop selling postcards and checking what buildings were shown and add them on my list. Luckily I also contacted one Hungarian girl via Couchsurfing and she was kind enough to show me around Sunday evening and spend all of Monday morning with me. But mostly I was walking around by myself Sunday evening, taking pics of random old buildings and new towers. The weather continued to be crappy and my shoes were already soaking wet at this point so my mood was a bit down. But I managed to get myself up and going by taking a shower and putting three layers of shirts on, so I felt almost warm. And I also found that food is cheap in England: supermarkets have pretty good deals on sandwiches and even sushi. Finland is such an expensive country in terms of food! Anyhow, here some pics of the city.

Kerry Airport is SMALL

My hostel in Manchester. Eventually there were four other guys in the same room, but in the beginning it was just me and then this canadian guy who had been traveling around Europe for four months.. Impressive. The hotel was pretty nice by the way, cost less than 20£ for a night, had free tee, coffee and toast with butter as often and as much as you liked. Free wi-fi was included (although not very strong connection) and it was 24/7. During breakfast there was also jam and corn flakes with milk. AND it was quite centrally located near the Piccadilly Gardens so.. Highly recommend (although the showers were kinda cold and see-through.

The Wheel of Manchester

Cathedral of Manchester

Town Hall

In front of the Town Hall

Minshull Street Crown Court (didn't know the name of the place when I was there though :P)

Monday, 16th - Manchester (last day, sniff)
On Monday Nora (the Hungarian girl) had promised to join me for some museums. We ended up going to Museum of Science and Industry. It actually consisted of five different buildings with various perspectives in the history of Manchester. There were some fun facts, some nice facts and some boring stuff. But I enjoyed my time there. Then we had some time to hit John Rylands University Library as well. That was very nice building, old gothic style.. Looked very much like an old church but it was in fact purposefully built as a library. Then I finished my time in Manchester by a nice cup of coffee and a piece of Passion cake at Cafe Nerro. Many thanks go to Nora for giving me something to do with someone while I was there. Visiting a city alone can be quite boring in the end.

Example of the towering buildings of Manchester

Old-fashioned pub&restaurant. I just love these kinds of buildings.

Hilton Tower.. Quite striking, huh?

Me and Nora in the museum

Interesting facts of our daily usage of (the precious) water, a whopping total of 125l/day

Old & new

Old-fashioned first class train (in the back) and second class (in the front)

Planes in the Air&Space section of the museum

More planes

Air&Space section

Main staircase in the John Rylands University Library

John Rylands University Library

I apologize for the length of this post, but there was just so much to tell. I hope that at least one reads all of it. Please, if you're the first: leave a comment! lol

You can expect another post from me after my trip to the French Alps next week is finished. Cheers till then!

Restaurant review: Storyville (Helsinki)

2011-04-26T23:18:00.000+02:00

Okay, so this place. This was nice. Too bad we didn't get to see the live show which started like 15min after we left, but I highly recommend (the link to the restaurant is in the title, if you hadn't noticed). We got a deal of a three course dinner: giant shrimps for starters, ox with nice potatoes for main course and creme brûlée for dessert. Cost us 45€ for two, so not a bad deal for such a price. If only we had reserved the dinner a bit later so we would've been able to enjoy the jazz band playing. The restaurant was pretty international, many of the staff were not Finns.

The food itself was good. Ofir didn't like the shrimps, for me they were okay. The ox was good. I've had better creme brûlees in the past, I think it was a bit too sweet, but still quite nice. The waiters were friendly and the interior was just wonderful, really jazzy and smoky (although no smoke naturally). This restaurant I can recommend, although it's probably a bit pricey for frequent visits. Definitely worth checking during a later setting (we were there from 19 to 20.30). Eating while listening and watching a jazz band play must be awesome.

School grades:

Restaurant, decor, atmosphere: 9
Food: 9
Service: 9

Overall: 9, recommend (although a bit pricey)

Restaurant review: Vaelsa (Helsinki)

2011-04-26T23:12:00.000+02:00

Bought a meal for two through city deal: FILETTO DI MANZO AL CHIANTI. It was pretty okay, cost me 24€ for meals for two so..

The place was nicely decorated, though we were almost the only clients there. I guess Monday evening at 18h is not the peak hour for restaurants. The food was good and the ox was a nice chance for more traditional beef or pork. It was a bit funny for me to get the potatoes on a different plate, but then again that happens in some other restaurants as well. I wasn't sure whether the waiter was a Finn or Italian or what, since he spoke Finnish AND English with an accent.

So, in school grades:

Restaurant, decor, atmosphere:8
Food: 8,5
Service: 8

Overall: 8. I'm not sure whether it would be worth the full price (24€ for a main course?) but through the deal I got, it was pretty decent.

Restaurant review: Zuza (Helsinki)

2011-04-02T11:44:00.001+02:00

Hey guys! I had a thought last night when a friend of mine asked me to tell her how was the restaurant Zuza here in Helsinki where was I was going with another friend. Since I'm also visiting a few other new restaurants with Ofir in three weeks, I thought that why not give a review of them here, so everyone can participate?

Zuza, Tehtaankatu 36 Helsinki (no website, alarming sign?)

Found a deal via Offerium to get Pasta or Pizza, a tiramisu and espresso for 9,5€ (value of about 19€, according to menu prices). My friend Anna shared the idea to have our reunion dinner there, since we were going to that area anyhow last night, so we bought the coupons/vouchers and agreed to meet there at 19.30.

Okay, the restaurant is sort of in the middle of nothing. The street looks pretty boring at that spot and it's a rather small restaurant. But it had good music playing in the background and it was small yet cozy. Quite nicely space betwen tables, a few right next to the window so you had nice views while eating. And the decor was plain but nice.

The food was quite okay, at least the pizzas we had. Anna had Al Pollo and I had Quattro Staggioni (even if I had ordered Quatro Formaggio, but let's not get tangled with details). The pizza actually tasted good and authentic (though nothing compared to REAL italian pizzas naturally). The tiramisu wasn't anything special and could've easily been a frozen cake bought from a supermarket, so we weren't too happy about those. Espresso was.. well.. espresso, so nothing much to say about that.

So, the above were the good news. Now the bad news: customer service. The place had only one employee, who was I guess server, manager and chef at the same time. He was in the kitchen (behind closed doors) for ten minutes at one time, not serving us (the customers) therefore. I didn't see a smile on his face throughout the evening I think and we even had an argument about the payment. The Offerium deal specifically sent the code to our cell phones and mentioned you only need to show/mention the code to the place to check the usage of your purchase. This time he was really pissed off that we didn't have a printed version and he had to write the numbers down. And then he even had the nerve of saying that "I trust you have paid for this".. Like, as if the PRINTED PAPER was any more "realer" proof about the payment than the VERIFICATION email sent by Offerium. Giiz, what a guy. So even if we only had some minor uneasy feelings throughout the evening because of his non-existing customer service management skills, we felt really bad about the restaurant after this.

So, to give school grades:

Restaurant, decor, atmosphere: 8
Food: 8+
Service: 5

Overall: 6 or 7 (I mean, the food was good and the price (with the deal) was low, so for that only, why not.. I wouldn't pay full price EVER)

Living it with a budget.. in Helsinki

2011-03-11T00:15:00.000+01:00

I know.. Previously I was explaining how to cheap it down in Paris. Well, even if I know have a decent job and I can afford stuff more than I did in Paris (theoretically) I know also have many new goals to save for. I'm puttin money aside for apartment, 2012 trip to Canada to visit Janelle, other savings and trips and such. So I actually find myself in a situation where I have about the same amount of money for daily life as I had in Paris. So finding cheaper ways of doing stuff is a necessity.

First I have to start by saying that Internet is your friend here. I can't remember anymore how I stumbled across this website originally, but www.citydeal.fi is a god-sent gift. It's a nationwide discount website (sporting even some deals for Kouvola, so mum take heed!). You do need a credit card, but it's a minor hitch. What it basically is that every day there's a new deal (at least in Helsinki, smaller cities might have deals less often). The discount ranges from 30% to 80% at least what I've noticed. It's more targeted at women, so there are more like hairdresser appointments for women, getting your nails done, removal of sellulite etc. But I've found a good number of deals for restaurants, trips, services, etc. Very nice. AND you get to experience new places as the locations of the deals vary a lot. Very nice website. And you can even subscribe to the new offers based on your city, so the system will automatically email you when a new deal is released. How easy is that?

Another good one I stumbled across is www.kimppa.com. I think this is only in Helsinki and it's less often, but so far I've found one good deal from there. Then there was this third one, but I've forgotten the name of it. But that's not so useful either, I think out of all of these citydeal is the best and it's the widest reach. Highly highly recommend!

In other news, busy two weeks with business visits and trips behind, one more to go. And I'm also going to Paris in the beginning of April, I still need to get a confirmation from my boss but it's let's say 99% sure I'll spend the first weekend of April in Paris. All my Paris peeps take heed! ;)

And on a final note, American Idol season 10 finals started this week. I welcome all opinions and comments on this topic.

Petteri out.

Winter in Lauttasaari

2011-02-20T19:45:00.000+01:00

Hi yo'll! I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to take and share pics of Lauttasaari in different seasons. I didn't really have the time to take any pics from the fall, so you'll have to wait till next fall for those. and it's finally sunny enough to take nice pics of the winter, so here you have them:


Sun over the Finnish Bay


Forest on the southern edge of Lauttasaari

View of Keilaniemi

Sun setting over Lauttasaari

The water tower of Lauttasaari

Some nice apartments on the southern edges of Lauttasaari

Breathtaking view of the sea

Sea freezes funnily on the shores

Other than that, nothing much new to add for now. I finished my first German course and I think I learned a good deal. I even signed up for the second one, taking place in March-April. And I was bugging the prof already to have a third one next fall, since we are unable to go through the whole book in the next course (there's a total of 13 chapters and we only did 4 in this first course, e.g. three courses should cover the whole book). I guess I've learned something from my mum and grandma and I want to fully use the book I bought :P

I'm taking a salsa course with Hanna this spring as well, a total of five 1-hour lessons. Let's see how well I'll learn. Let's see what else I'll come up with during this spring.

I'll keep you guys posted and the latest new post will be sometime in April-May for "Spring in Lauttasaari". So stay tuned!

Back to school

2011-01-24T21:41:00.000+01:00

Well, not exactly but sort of. I've decided to continue learning new stuff, since I wasn't really learning that much from my work. Due to suggestions from friends, I've taken up a few free courses from Helsingin Työväenopisto. I have two philosophy course: Basics of philosophical thinking & Good and Evil, which are basically a series of lectures, once a week for about 2 months. Then I also have a few history courses: Mesopotamia & Highlights of Mediterranean history. Mesopotamia is a series of four lectures on Mesopotamian history and Highlights is a bit longer on various viewpoints on the ancient history of Mediterranean region. Those who know me, know that I'm quite interested in ancient and medieval history (through my interest on fantasy novels), so these will sort of feed my interest and knowledge on that era.

As I said, those are mainly free (I paid 10€ for the Highlights lecture series) and they are 1,5 hours a day and I basically spent Monday through Wednesday at the lectures after work. In addition to those I have a short lecture series on wines on Fridays, this week is the last on that series. Those lectures are about the history of wines and the different grapes and their features. Then there are other individual courses/lectures, such as "Decouvrez la Bourgogne" where we study the history, gastronomy and tourism of the French region of Bourgogne (naturally in French).

I also (finally) started my German studies. I took "Echt Geil" German intensive course, which takes place during two weekends, 6 hours a day. So I get 24 hours of lectures, a typical semester, in just two weekends. I had the first set last weekend and the second set is in mid-February. During this weekend I learned to count from 0 to 100, I learned to present myself, basic colors and some basics on how to conjugate verbs. But the main result of this weekend is the realization that I actually don't hate the language, as I used to think. It's pretty nice and easy in fact.

So far the German lecture was okay, the people I was with there were decent and even though it lasted 6 hours a day, I didn't get bored. The philosophy lectures (both) had this know-it-all guy who just had to brag with his knowledge of certain terminology. Did not like the guy and his comments, but it was still okay. But on the first history lecture there was this older Turkish guy.. Who was just totally clueless. For example, the professor was showing a picture of a gigantic stone megalith dated about 9000 BC. Then this guy decides to jump in and share his insights, that that megalith could be explained by:

a) aliens
b) mongols (which the professor contradicted saying they have similar structures in Mongolia, but those are much younger)
c) christian consipiracy (apparently the guy totally forgot the fact that the structure dated 9000 BC... BEFORE Christ.. lol)

so yeah, other than that I've liked the lectures so far. And they keep me occupied during the evenings alongside my gym.

Here's a brief update, since I haven't said anything in awhile. More to come when there's something to share.

End of the year under the Israeli Sun

2011-01-03T21:11:00.000+01:00

שלום
That's "hi" in hebrew.. Shalom.. As you all know, I spent the New Year's in Tel Aviv visiting Ofir, whom I had met while I was in Paris. The thought of escaping the Finnish freezing coldness for a few days was indeed intriquing and when my boss told me our Helsinki office would be closed as well for the holidays, I jumped to the occasion. Throughout my stay, it was pretty warm. During the day we saw temperatures of around +20 and I think during the night time the temperatures plunged to something still above +10. I was therefore able to wear shorts and t-shirts during the day and only like jeans and a longer shirt during the evenings. Perfect.

We didn't have much time to go outside of Tel Aviv, even if we had planned to visit such places like Jerusalem or Cesaria or others. Those will have to wait till the next visit. Luckily there was plenty to see in Tel Aviv so those 5 days I spent there went by really fast, sadly. I can still feel the amounts of walking on my feet, I have huge blisters and the shoes I had with me are going to the trash can as soon as I have the energy to throw them in there. The washing machine is also going to run almost day and night for me to be able to wash all of my dirty laundry from these past few weeks of almost non-stop traveling.

Hmmm, I think the pics will tell more than my words about the nice things I saw there. Tel Aviv really reminded me of Juan les Pins: about the same climate, same type of buildings, palm trees everywhere.. The only major difference is the language, as I can't really say I was ably to understand what was going around me. I can read the aleph beyts as they are called in hebrew, but I don't know any words. Luckily I had a guide with me all the time.

One thing what made this trip unforgettable was the airport security. Not on my way in, but on my way out. I thought I was too early at the airport when I was there around 10pm Sunday evening and my flight left at 1am on Monday morning. So I had 3 hours prior to my flight. It took 2hours to get pass all that security. First they inspected my passport and asked many questions about the reason of my stay etc. Then my check-in luggage went through a big machine. Then they told me that it needed to be hand-checked, so they thought I was a terrorist. Waiting in queue for this took about 30mins, and I was getting increasingly nervous when I saw them tooking people to the backrooms for some deeper inspection or something. Luckily when it came down to my turn, they just asked a few questions and I was pleasentfully chatting with the lady. They did inspect my whole suitcase, but found nothing and eventually I got forward. To the next bottleneck which was hand luggage security check. And again, due to my earlier note as being a potential terrorist, I got stuck with the thoroughful check-up. And to make matters worse, their big expensive machine broke down while I was on queue so we had to wait for that one to be fixed as well. And then after some 30 mins again, there was the passport check. This was quite rapid however, so I was glad. But at this time I had almost no time but to run to my gate and wait for the boarding, no time for easy chilling at a café or peaceful strolling around the shops. This all was way new to someone used to traveling only within the EU..

Other than that, I don't think there's many big stories to tell. As I said, the pics showcase my trip in a nutshell and in case you want to know more, please ask. I can now highly recommend Tel Aviv for others to visit, it's a nice city. And even the hostel we were staying in was nice, though a bit dirty and related to that, expensive.. it was however located in a very good location in the central area of the city, close to everything so..

My first breakfast in Tel Aviv

Beautiful flower

Water Lily at the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv

Pool by the sea

Late Christmas Party with Nina and Ofir

Playing Ofir's new favorite game: Guillotine

Nice building in Tel Aviv

The beach, or one of the many in fact..

By a fountain close to the university of Tel Aviv

We found the Finnish embassy

View from "our" balcony during the night

View from "our" balcony during the day

Carmet Market

More nice buildings

Tel Aviv had some stunningly beautiful houses

By the beach on a sunny, but slightly windy day

People were paddling in the sea

View of the skyline of Tel Aviv

The Old Clocktower in Jaffa

Flea market, Jaffa style.. meaning basically ANYTHING could be found on sale

The biggest church in Jaffa, and also their landmark viewed from Tel Aviv

view of Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is the city of cats, stranded and wild cats were EVERYWHERE

and dogs were moving around freely at cafés..

One of the last days

These cats were almost as good at begging as Mikki.. and that's saying a lot!

The biggest (and only?) synagogue of Tel Aviv

More of these nice buildings

More of the same..

Saturday we got a huge rainstorm all of a sudden upon us..

The streets, or at least some of them, were flooding with water.. like this one, looking more like a river than a road.

The last day! :(

The synagogue of Tel Aviv University

The date garden in Tel Aviv University

There was only a thin glass surface between us and a fall of about 20 meters...

Yes, the sign for pharmacy in Israel is not cross.. it's the star of David!

Azrieli Towers, stunningly beautiful at night time.

Arriving to the airport

Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv is massive

The first of many security queues..

Map of the terminal 3

Fountain where the water falls from the roof.

Final trip of the year: Paris

2010-12-23T10:32:00.000+01:00

So, in case you hadn't noticed I spent the weekend in Paris. My boss wanted me to participate in the final office meeting of the year in person and in addition we had the end of the year meeting amongst us permanent staff. There we learned that at least my boss is faitful that the year to come looks promising in terms of income, even despite the fact that we have yet to find real work for me. Therefore we discussed one very interesting possibility during the spring which I might ontake, but I'll discuss that more deeply once there's more fact and less talk. But I'm super excited if it comes to reality!

I didn't take much photos from Paris because, well, I've taken a pic of almost anything and everything there and I've shared those with you here on my blog and on my facebook. Besides, I didn't even get to do much of sightseeing since I was busy meeting with my friends. I was staying at Chris&Ronnay's in Lila's, just outside of Paris at the end of metro line 11. Ronnay actually had his birthday party on Saturday so I got to attend to that one. I brought him/them some Fazerin Sininen chocolate and home made joulutorttu as a gift. I hope they liked them, have to ask. Anyway, I got to meet some interesting people at the party so it was fun, and it was really nice catching up with Chris while waiting for the party to start. Then on Sunday I might Sylvain and Ludvig, again a really nice time. And finally, after a very long day at work on Monday, I met with Khal, one of the longest standing friendships I have in Paris.

It was funny to note how in Paris, with about 5 to 10 cm of snow, most of the bus traffic was canceled.. whereas in Helsinki, with about 50 to 60 cm of snow, the buses might be late, but at least the overall situation is circulating. Those poor French are not used to this white substanence.. Even thou I have to also note that the buses in Helsinki are rarely on time and many times I've seen that counter show 3 minutes... 2 minutes... 1 minute.. 0 minute... 11 minutes.. 10 minutes... etc, without the bus passing.. so, there's something within the system that does not work really..

Anyway, I thought to perhaps share a few photos anyhow of the snowy Paris:

Ronnay, (I wanna say Stefan) and Chris, after the party on Saturday

at Notre Dame de Paris

in front of Notre Dame de Paris

Tour Saint Jacques

Now it's the finaly working day, thou I'll only do a few hours today because of the long days in Paris and the traveling on Saturday. Then it's off to Kouvola for the holidays. I'll see if I have time on Sunday or Monday to upload some pics or news on that, before heading to Tel Aviv.

Merry Christmas to you all! And Happy New Year!

Christmas is here part 2.

2010-11-28T15:19:00.000+01:00

Hi and Merry Christmas =) I know it's not yet Christmas, but it's the first advent. And Hilska B&B has adapted its yearly Christmas decor. Lights are on the windows, tree is standing on its place and the place is filled with red and green colors. It's just nice here. Here are some pics of the place:


Christmas Window, something new and something old..

A bit more than just the window

Christmas shelftop

Christmas.. coffee bush?

Festive DVD-shelf

Entrance

Kitchen window

That's it for now folks, more pics from my upcoming two christmas parties the following two weekends. Ciao till then!

Christmas is here!

2010-11-21T21:26:00.000+01:00

Ho ho ho! As you all (should) know, I spent much of this week in Lapland on a business trip. There was no snow in Helsinki when I left, so arriving to -15 and lots of snow was a bit of shock to me. Especially while wearing my "summer" leather shoes and not really otherwise equipped for winter either. But we had some really nice sunny days up there and at least the scenary looks really nice from the pics. You don't have to endure the coldness of the air, but just enjoy the views. I even almost got to meet Santa himself, but forgot the exact time he was there, so I missed him. But I saw his village and it looked really nice. Pretty commercial though, but still nice.

We also got to do some driving around Lapland, not only Rovaniemi. On Thursday we visited Kuusamo and on Friday I went to Kemijärvi. On our way to Kuusamo we saw many reindeer and our my way to Kemijärvi I saw one a bit too close.. Luckily the reindeer and the car suffered no damage. Well, I can only be sure of the car and myself, I sincerely hope the reindeer in question is still doing fine!

Anyhow, enough with the chit-chatter and here are some pics from Lapland (which some of you have already seen on facebook..)


By chance a really succesful photo! :P

Some reindeer alongside the road to Kuusamo

More reindeer on the way to Kuusamo

The airport of Rovaniemi, cool 'eh?

Toyota something.. the car we had, I really liked it. Thou the console was weirdly placed!

Nice scenary on my way back from Kemijäri

Santa Claus Village


They did great things with the lights!

I also took a small video from the Santa Claus Village, for you to get a better feeling of the place. Definitely worth the visit. Don't even remember if I had ever been there before.. I'm sure we passed through Rovaniemi on several occasions during our trips to Lapland but can't remember..

Then there was my first unofficial Pikkujoulu last night at Hanne's place. It was really nice, though a bit difficult for me to remain with my diet.. The result was that I forgot my diet and ate so many joulutorttu and chips and drank quite a lot of glögi (non-alcoholic thou!). The result was me feeling quite bad afterward with all those carbs. Today I continued with the overeating by going out to eat with Hanne. We went to this Chinese at Forum. Only 8,70€ for a buffet which was surprisinly good, considering they only had 1 type of seafood, chicken and beef plus tofy and then noodles, rice and some veggies.. chicken dumplings and really poor egg rolls. But both me and Hanne got full so I'm happy for that. Now I just gotta go back to my diet starting tomorrow, in order to lose the 2 kilos I gained during yesterday and today! haha. And oh yeah, the Christmas Street of Helsinki (Aleksanterinkatu) was opened today. So since I missed santa up in Lapland, I saw him here. Not exactly the same thing, but still. The weather was pretty dull and dark so the pics did not turn out that good. I'll only post two here:

The Cathedral of Helsinki and Senat Square

My name is Claus, Santa Claus

That's all from me for now. Most likely no update from here before the trip to Israel, so wait for news concerning that. Happy Holidays before that! =)

Quick update

2010-11-16T00:57:00.000+01:00

Hi all again! Sorry for neglecting this blog. It's been quite busy lately, lots os business trips around Finland and hitting the gym quite often. Don't have much time to write posts, besides, nothing that interesting is happening in my life. Other than those business trips. I've been going around central Finland last week, Helsinki-Joensuu-Varkaus-Kuopio-Haapajärvi-Nivala-Helsinki. All in just 4 days. Pretty exhausting. Tomorrow we are flying to Rovaniemi once again and staying there till Friday. I might also have a trip to Paris in December, to join our Paris office for Christmas lunch/dinner. It's still a bit unsure, as I will not fly unless the company pays for the trip.

Other news, I've gotten new glasses, from Björn Borg. A friend of mine laughed at me when I told her that, since for her Björn Borg stands for mens underwear only. But I like them, even though it's definitely some getting used to now with them, as they are quite different than my earlier ones. I also recently (FINALLY) purchased an iPhone. I've been wanting once for a few years now, so now that I actually have a seteady income, I thought when would be a better time? I'm loving it so much!

And as some of you may have already noticed, I'm spending most of my Christmas holiday in Tel Aviv. Nice to get away from this Finnish cold winter and under the israeli sun. Currently it's still +28 there, so I'm hoping it would remain something similar till the end of the year. I'm still spending Christmas in Finland, Christmas is a family thing after all.

I guess this is all for now, more in a letter... Ciao!

Hilska B&B - Lauttasaari, Finland

2010-10-21T19:22:00.000+02:00

Dear visitors,

As you many know, Hilska B&B has been open in Lauttasaari, Finland for over a month now. The beginning in the new location has been hectic. The furnishing process took a few weeks before the first guest in the new location arrived. The first customer was happy with the service he received at Hilska B&B and I have finally been able to prepare marketing material, namely photos, of the new location for you to see. Hope you will find the photos pleasing and I look forward to receiving your requests for nights at Hilska B&B. But let's start first with a short introductory marketing clip of Hilska B&B:

Entrance to Hilska B&B

Bathroom of Hilska B&B (for those doubting minds, the washing machine fits perfectly in there!)

Hilska B&B

Hilska B&B bed, quite low and squeky, but still perfectly alright

Hilska B&B kitchen, quite capable for those breakfasts

Hilska B&B more intellectual entertainment

Hilska B&B less intellectual entertainment

Hilska B&B French decorations

In other news, not much exciting going on. Workwise things are progressing, I had my first return trip to France last weekend due to an Estonian trade delegation visit in western France. The trip went well and it felt nice to be back in France and practise my French skills. Other things are brewing. Overall I'm quite happy with the work situation, things are actually a bit better than I originally thought.

With these thoughts, I leave you this time. Till next post.

Petteri,Hilska
Manager and owner of Hilska B&B

Hang on..

2010-10-10T23:07:00.002+02:00

There's an update coming soon.. It's just been too busy to sit down to write a longer update. No time to take good pictures of the new Hilska B&B either, so you gonna have to wait for those as well. I'm going to Paris for a business trip next weekend, so the pics will have to wait till after that. But hang on, this blog is not dead =)

New page turned

2010-09-15T22:08:00.000+02:00

Greetings from Helsinki, Finland! Hilska Bed & Breakfast changed locations from the cultural capital of the world to.. Helsinki.

Things are gradually looking better and better. I have found the new place, moved in on Monday September 13. The new premises of Hilska B&B are located in Lauttasaarentie 33. I haven't had the time to actually go around the island yet, but I'm sure Lauttasaari is a nice place to live, at least that's the expression I've received from people when I've told them I'm living here now. I'm quite close to the SAI Finland office in the southern edge of Lauttasaari, only about 15min by foot. So it's really the best location for me. The bus to the center goes right in front of my house, s-market is 50m from my house and so on.

I'm still in the process of furnishing the place, so unfortunately pictures will have to wait. The bathroom is really giving me grey hair, since it's one of the tiniest bathrooms I've ever seen, and I would need to fit a washing machine in there. It's really gonna be a tough one this one. Other than that, stuff are slowly finding their place in here and I'm lacking only a few furnitures to finish the decor. Then there's bunch of other stuff to do before the first visitors, and I hopefully will have enough time for that beginning of next week, even though I'll be working full days next week already.

Workwise so far things have been easy. A business trip to Tallinn was already carried out last week and I've had a few business meetings in Helsinki, but other than that I've dedicated my time in finding myself a flat, sorting out issues with telephone, internet, etc. By the way, my old Finnish number is still working, so in case you don't have it, ask for it!

As I promised in my last post from Paris, I'll keep updating this thing occasionally when there's need. Pictures of the fall and winter of Helsinki might end up here, pictures of the apartment and various visitors will definitely be uploaded as soon as I get those. So stay tuned and ask for more detailed news if needed!

Last post from Paris! :(

2010-09-05T22:26:00.000+02:00

Okay, here comes my final post from Paris. I only have two whole days left here and then Helsinki calling. Nevertheless, I've had an amazing week, thanks to all those who participated in it! Let's progress cronologically...

The first days of the week went quite smoothly and stressing at the same time at work. I was really anxious in getting a contract for making it sure I will have a job. So I spent the majority of my time in preparing the contract and finding out issues related to work contracts in Finland. Then, finally on Tuesday, the contract was signed between me and Strategy Analysis International SAI Finland Oy. I have an indefinite contract with them, the first of this kind in my life. I know it's not the best contract a person in my situation could have, but it's a starting point. Besides, I really like what I will be doing so I don't really mind.

Then to finalize my good feelings about this, my colleagues gave me as a goodbye present two tickets to go see the musical "Fame" in Casino de Paris for Thursday night. I already knew I was meeting with Giulia for a picnic and a short troll on Montmartre on the same afternoon, but I knew she had other plans for the night. So then I decided to invite Ludvig with me and he was happy to come. More about that later. So, anyhow. On Thursday we went for a picnic in jardin de Luxembourg with Giulia. It was really nice to see her after two months of not meeting. We had a blast at the park, really enjoying the sun and the views. Her's a photo from the park.


Giulia and Me (and our favorite drink, Light Ice Tea)	at Jardin de Luxembourg

Then, after spending a few hours in the park, we wanted to take the bikes and go to Montmartre for the last time. And I'm so glad we did. After a 30min bike ride and some 20mins by foot, we arrived to Sacre Coeur and continued our picnic there, sort of. There were two guys playing a guitar and drums right in front of the church, singing songs either in french or some african language. In addition there was a guy singing some ballads on the steps in front of the church. To add into all this, the sun was shining realy brightly and it was hot. So needless to say, we were having a great time there, exactly what I had wanted to do there for months now. Here are two photos from Montmartre:

Can you see the two guys playing next to the stairs? They were reeeeally good!

He was able to sing Whitney Houston songs.. AND hit the (at least almost) same notes she can!

Okay, then it was a hurried metro ride home after Montmartre and a quick shower and change of clothing for the theatre show of the night. It turned out afterwards that even thou the place was Casino de Paris, they didn't really have that strick dress code. But it felt nice to be slightly better dressed than normal and the venue itself was amazing, almost comparable to Chateau Versailles or the Louvre at least. The musical itself was really good, I really enjoyed myself even thou I only knew one of the songs before (Fame, I wanna live forever) and I had no clue of the plot of the story actually. The only problem was that I had forgotten my glasses home so I didn't see any of the faces of the actors and my eyes became really tired after reading the subtitles all the time. The show was in French you see and subtitles (in English) were portrayed on a screen above the stage. Definitely a nice show in any case, and Ludvig agreed. Here are two photos from the evening:

Ludvig and me at the entrance of Casino de Paris

The showroom of the Casino. See the subtitle screen on the top left.

In other news.... Friday was a bit calmer day, just waiting for Tero to arrive. Was sunbathing a bit, it's been really hot and sunny the past few days. Then on Friday we went to eat in a restaurant at rue Mouffetard. I don't know how much my brother enjoyed it, but I liked it. It was actually the same restaurant I went to with my mum and sister when they were in Paris in April, if they still remember the place. Tero tried to speak Spanish all the time to the waitor and ended up, I guess, speaking a mixture of Finnish-Spanish-English.. not a really comprehendable solution. I stuck to French and was able to get by just fine.

Saturday was a really busy walking day with my brother. He didn't really wanna go anywhere so I had to figure out places to go to. We started at Notre Dame, even had a stroll inside. He wasn't too impressed, told me that the cathedral of Sevilla was bigger. Then we walked to the Louvre and admired the view in front of it. Tero said the glass pyramid was ugly. Then we had a stroll through the Tuileries gardens and admired the obelisk and tour Eiffel from Place de la Concorde. From there we continued on Champs-Elysee till the Arc de Triomphe. Again, didn't go in but just had a look on the Tomb of the Unknown soldier and tried to figure out what to do as it was only 1pm at that time. So we decided to go to Sacre Coeur so we could do some shopping and admire the views during the day. We managed to find the wallets my mum wanted and walked up the hill. I was again mesmorized by the views from top of the hill. Tero was simply saying how in Paris you can see it's built differently than Helsinki. Then we took the furniculaire back down and went for lunch at Flunch near centre Pompidou. Tero had some shrimps and I had a mince meat steak. It was nice. Then he went back to his hotel for a nap and I cycled back home to rest a bit too.

We had agreed to meet for dinner at some point before going to the Moulin Rouge for the revue Feerie show. Dinner was near Saint Michel in the Latin quarters. Then we even had some time to have a short stroll in Montmartre in the evening before the show. The queue was LONG and frustrating as we had no idea what was going on. But eventually we got in, had our bottle of champagne and the show started. The venue itself was AMAZING with red velvet everywhere. The show had everything and anything including dancing, singing, acting, juggling, acrobats, ventriloquists, snakes, mini ponies, dogs... and feathers.. lots and lots of feathers. Even thou I was slightly sceptical of the show before, I know now that it's well worth the money if you can spare as much!

Then today we managed to have time to go see the Eiffel tower, which according to my brother is ugly. We had a walk on the Ile de cygnees to go see the statue of liberty which was small (again, according to my brother). Then we tried to get into the Eiffel tower, but the queue for the lifts was too long and even thou there was practically no queue for the stairs, he didn't wanna go up. So instead we went to the musee de l'armes to see the tomb of Napoleon 2 (?). We also had just like 30mins to walk arond in the section concerning the two World Wars. There was so much else in the museum I would've loooved to see, but Tero needed to get his stuff from my place and catch his plane so we had to leave.

This is my week in a nutshell, this time I apparently decided to write in much more detail. I guess this is my thank you for all of you who've continued reading my blog. I won't stop here though! Hilska B&B will be reopened in Helsinki soon, I hope, and I will keep posting my thoughts and experienced from time to time. I won't be keeping as regular updates as I have now, but at least from time to time. To inform if and when I have visitors in Helsinki. I've grown to like about my blog so why end it.

So, thank you again and farewell Paris, bienvenue Finland! Till next time my friends!

Finally some news...

2010-08-29T23:30:00.000+02:00

Whoops, almost forgot this thing.. Sorry for those who were staying up waiting for this. I'll keep this brief, since it's really late and I need to be in bed.

For the news, I finally managed to almost seal the deal with my boss. Therefore, Helsinki here I come! I will start at our Finnish office, SAI Finland, officially as soon as I get to Finland. But since I don't have a home in Helsinki yet and there's like tons of stuff to figure out, I'll be almost part time for September. But at least now I know what I'll be doing, even thou the contract is still not yet finalized and we don't even know the title I'll be having. I'll be working by myself at the office, thou I can naturally use the help of our partners in Helsinki if needed. I only have one direct client who's interested in Europe and North America so that will keep my quite busy. On top of that I'll try to focus more on the marketing of our services in Finland, a task I did half-heartedly already from our Paris office.

I'm super excited about the opportunity and challenge of working by myself. I see a lot of potential coming up as well, so even though I start with only an average salary and responsibilities, I'm sure it will develop in no time. Besides, I don't even see other options for me now so I'm happy with this choice.

Not much other news for now. Tiina left on Thursday so it was yet another sad goodbyes. Hopefully I'll meet her soon in Finland, she's been the bestest roommate anyone could ever hope for. I will miss her for sure! I also found out that my brother is coming to visit me next weekend. And he is even willing to offer me a ticket to Moulin Rouge, cause he wants to go and I said I'm not paying. The prices are RIDICULOUS, 92 euros per person.. That's outrageous.. Let's just hope he gets his money's worth!

Anyway, here's my update for now. Next and final update from Paris on September 5th! Ciao for now!

One of the most eventful weeks yet..

2010-08-22T14:26:00.000+02:00

Phew, I'm so glad this week is over now. I've had more fun than I think I've had in ages, but I'm also more tired than ever. My dear friend Nina from Lappeenranta (who mistakenly calles me "mon petit ami" all the time in French, which is NOT true.. haha) and her friend Jenni from Tampere spent this week in Paris. It was their first time and man, did they enjoy it. And I managed to catch a glimpse of their excitement, thou at times it was too much for me to handle.

Then on top of that Tiina came back to Paris on Wednesday, thou sadly only for one week. She's leaving back to Finland to start studying, so I'm all alone the last few days of my time in Paris. Anyhow, I'll put some pictures at the end so you'll get at least an idea how much fun we've had. The downside is that I haven't had enough sleep and my body is running on reserve energy or something. It will be nice to breath and just be for awhile now.

Anyhow, here's a list of things I got to do with the girls: rue Mouffetard, Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, Opera, quais de Seine, Moulin Rouge, Dragon d'Asie, tour Eiffel, Champs de Mars, Duplex, quartier Latin... and many more.. and on the top of the list is the official pre-closure of Hilska B&B we had last night. Amazing party, very nice people..

Tomorrow it will be back to work and hopefully I'll get some news on my future career life tomorrow or at least during the beginning of the week. We'll see. I'll again keep you posted on how it progresses.

But now for the piece de resistance, pictures =)

Me, Nina and Jenni.. or as we started to call them, "my nanas" :)

trying to eat des escargos.. snails.. eww..

On our way to Tuileries, Louvre at the back

The girls were seemingly mesmerized from the view at Place de la Concorde

Good times with the girls

Having some coffee and amazing cakes at Starbucks Opera

Tiina, me, Nina and Jenni at Trocadèro

Don't hear, don't see, don't talk no evil

Dining at Dragon d'Asie.. for TWO AND A HALF HOURS!!! We wre so full after that trip..

- Pierre's Angels -

Official Pre-closure of Hilska B&B

Moment of silence about to end once more..

2010-08-15T12:23:00.000+02:00

My moment to breath and rest is about to end tonight. Nina and Jenni are arriving by Easyjet tonight from Helsinki, so I have till midnight to relax. Then it's over. My time alone in Paris that is. Tiina is coming back to Paris on Thursday and hopefully staying till the end of my stay at least, I dunno yet. She might actually go back to Finland as well, I have to talk to her about that. But it feels so good to see her after such a long time apart. And naturally spending time with Nina before that is almost equally as exciting!

We "lost" another intern on Friday. Max had finally had enough and after 12 months and 2 weeks he finally said goodbye and ended his internship. It was sort of sad, cause it made me remember and perhaps finally realize that my time is about to come in just three weeks. It doesn't feel like a year. Funny how time is such a mysterious concept, you never have enough.. you have either too much or too little.. And especially when looking back, time seems to have gone by so fast and you forget how much you got to experience.

Anyhow, this one's gonna be a shorter one as there's not much more to say since Thursday. Next one will have pictures, as we are throwing my "going away"-party and "tiina's coming back"-party and "nina's & jenni's being here"-party next Saturday. It's gonna be the biggest I've held so far :) Stay tuned for pictures and news.. Ciao!

A moment to breath, when all you want to do is hold your breath..

2010-08-12T23:06:00.001+02:00

Sorry for this VERY late blog post.. As I told in my last post, I've had a friend (Ofir) over since the end of July and he just left today. Since his arrival we've been basically just popping our heads inside my home and then out to see the city, see friends and meeting new ones. He was originally only supposed to be in Paris for a few days, but decided to stay for longer and since I had no one else staying at the same time, I offered him my place. At least this way I had some company for the evenings and weekends, so it was nice. It got slightly crowded in here when Christina was staying for 6 nights last week, but we managed to survive. Plus, we had an amazing trip to Versailles Saturday night to see the Grandes Eaux Nocturnes. It feels a bit weird now to be here all alone, as for the past weeks there was always someone to talk to. At least I can rest my legs a bit before Nina and Jenni arrive on Sunday. :)

Workwise things are flowing at their own pace. I was able to finally finish the work with our website (for now). For the almost completely renewed website structure since I arrive, go to http://www.strategyanalysis.com. I know they don't look pretty, but at least they are a bit nicer than they used to be. I don't have the skills nor the tools to do much better than that.

The slightly calmer few nights also give me time to send out those job applications, which I haven't even had the time to think about for the past 3 weeks or so. But in any case, here are some photos from our trip to Versailles on Saturday August 7th, for you to enjoy: :)

There was a bubble-making-machine at Versailles Saturday evening.

Christina, me and Ofir

"I'm gonna eat you, arrgh"

Pictures of the amazing fountains

Ofir and Me in front of the Dragon fountain

Me and Christina having fun :)

The mist caused by dry ice was so cool!

Fireworks at the end of the evening

Till next time! Only a few more to go :(

It's so weird..

2010-08-02T20:55:00.000+02:00

Hmm, sorry for a little late post.. I've had a friend over for awhile now and nights just fly by.. Besides, he's pretty much always on the comp, so I don't have time to even check my emails almost at home.. But better late than never, right?

As I said on my last post, motivation to work has been low recently. Mainly cause there's not much to do. I knew the new guys would be coming today (Monday) and they would pretty much start to take over immediately. Well, today they were focusing mainly on learning the ropes and getting adjusted to new environment etc. It feels so weird to think they are in the position I was in a year ago. So weird. Though, for their benefit, it's muuuch more organized now than it was back then. Mainly, thanks to me. This is the one thing I can take pride in knowing and acknowledging I'm good at: organizing things. Everybody in the office say the same thing, they make fun of it most of the time, but then have to admit that I do my part quite well. It's funny how people don't necessarily like order, but then they have to admit it makes sense. I'm hopeful with the newcomers that they'll adapt my methods well, as those are the only they know of. I just gotta pay attention to what Max and Caro are telling them to do, in order to avoid confusion. Even Caroline might be able to learn the ways, as she joined the group quite recently. But I don't know what to do with the others.. Well, Max I don't really even care as he's leaving in two weeks. It's Hanna and Mr Frost I need to teach into the new ways. I'll keep you posted on how things progress.

It's also really weird to look outside here now. I've read from the news that it's been like scorching hot in Finland for the past three or so weeks. And it's raining and cloudy in here, I don't think I've seen like a really sunny day in ages. It's not too cold though, luckily, so I'm like able to wear shorts during the weekends and even during the night. We are planning to go to Grandes Eaux Nocturnes on Saturday, let's hope it's not gonna rain then. Christina is coming on Wednesday and I managed to convince her to join us there.

Sorry if this post doesn't make sense but apparently I'm not focused on it right now. But I just wanted to post something so my mum doesn't get worried.. haha.. It just starts to feel stupid to post anything as I'm not really into Paris that much anymore. All important is said and done and I'm just.. Dunno.. it's weird.. Let's hope the remaining few posts will make more sense, and that I'd have some pictures.. So far we've had only Ofir's camera with us when we've been sightseeing and he was foolish enough to leave the wire at his home, so we can't download the pics into my comp yet.. Oh well, next time I'll have my camera with me.

Until next time amigos...

Time of change : motivation slightly lost..

2010-07-25T17:45:00.000+02:00

It's definitely time of change. I know now for like 99% certain that I'll be coming back to Finland in September for good. It has certainly affected my mood here, cause now everything here seems temporary. Just a month ago when I was on my holidays in Finland, Paris felt like home. I actually felt homesick to Paris. Now, even thou this is still my home, the feeling of being home is diminishing. There's so much more that I need to plan, search for appartments and jobs and sort out my life. It's a bit shame, cause now would definitely be the time to enjoy Paris. It's summer, Paris Plage has arrived and even during the night the air is calm enough for silent strolls on the neighborhood. But as I'm getting ready to move out, I don't want to get attached to this place any more than I already am. Don't really have friends to hang out with, as some have already left and others are about to and I don't really want to make much new friends, having to have to say goodbyes in no time. It's definitely weird times.

Workwise as well. One of the new interns started this week. His name is Olivier and he comes from Mauritius, so he's actually my first actual black friend. Thou he's more of mixed color than black, but still. Anyway, his arrival didn't really affect my work so much as he took over mainly projects from Max and one of MJ's. It feels a bit strange that he only took one of MJ's as he has already left, yet two of Max's, who is still there. In any case, I did spend most of this week, and some of last, fixing his computer, making sure everything was about as ready as possible when he arrived. And then helped him get to know the system. We've created some useful start-up docs for new employees, thing that did not exist when we all started last fall. I'm at the same time trying so hard to create some order in the chaos we used to have, harmonizing and standardizing the way we do our daily work. Let's just hope that my work bears some fruit at some point.

Other than that, pretty dull week. Nothing extraordinary happened, went to the movies on Saturday to watch Toy Story 3: definitely nice ending for the series. Recommend. Cleaned the house again, finally. That's about it. See you next week, it's gonna be a busy one so you can expect slightly more news and perhaps even pictures next Sunday. Take care. Ciao!

Bastille Day

2010-07-18T18:09:00.000+02:00

This week we had a 4-day work week and the awesome Bastille Day on Wednesday. Bastille Day is sort of the French Independence day, so to speak of, and included military parade and a massive 30-min fireworks at the end of the day. Veeeeeery nice day. To top it off, I had my dear childhood friend Tanja and her bf visiting me during this week. We had loads of fun first on Tuesday night at the Les Millelacs restaurant with my colleagues celebrating my Master's degree. And then on a very touristy day around Paris on Wednesday. I believe the pictures will tell you more than I can, so here you go :

@Les Millelacs

The aftermath of the military parade on Champs-Elysee

Rogier & Tanja in front the Arc

Me, Rogier and Tanja in front the Notre Dame

Sacre Coeur

From hereon it'll be pics from the Bastille Day fireworks, taken from Trocadero

btw, more pics of the fireworks are available on my facebook profile (for those who are friends with me there).

Other than that, nothing much new going on. We have a new intern staring on Monday, so I'd better be at the office on time for that. To give a good impression to the new guy. I was "given" the responsibility to make sure he'll be able to start easily, so I've set up a computer for him (for now) and made sure things are ready for him. Max created a welcoming package for new interns and consultants to facilitate the learning process and orientation. We'll see how it goes :)

Okay, enough for now, more laters.. Ciao!

Some things must end for others to begin..

2010-07-11T14:42:00.000+02:00

It's been ages since my last post, but I forwarned you that I might not be able (or bother) to update my blog whilest in Finland. So I'll disguss my holiday a bit to start with, also tackle the first part of the title, and then I'll move on to stuff in Paris, the later part of the title.

Okay, I had a two week holiday in Finland (21 June - 4 July). It wasn't too eventful time, mostly the length was dictated by my insurance company. haha. But I did get to do bunch of fun stuff, we were at our summer cottage for the Mid Summer with mum and sis. This year it was actually warm, but there were also more mosquitos than I've ever seen in my life, I think. So my legs were completely eaten by the time we got back to Kouvola on Saturday evening. The second week of my holiday was taken to prepare for my graduation. I am Master of Economics now, it's so frikkin cool. Graduated officially on Wednesday 30 June and had the celebrations at my mum's place in Kouvola on Saturday 3 July. So many people came, but sadly only a few of my friends. Oh well, I'm gonna celebrate with my Parisian friends next Tuesday at the Les Millelacs restaurant in Paris so. Here are some photos from Wednesday at Lappeenranta:

In front of my now ex-university. Never again!

Getting my degree with plenty of others..

Fresh Master of Science (Economics and Business Administration)

That part of my life is now over. Lappeenranta was my home for over 3 years (I've spent like half of my university life abroad). But no longer, now my home is in Paris (for another two more months) and then I'm "homeless" again till I find my new home somewhere..

So, now back home in Paris. Been here a week. And it's hot, oh so hot. It's almost impossible to even think about wearing any clothes, haha. My thermometer on the balcony shows ridiculous numbers during the afternoon, over +50.. But it's been around +30 almost every day (for real). But despite the too hot weather, it's still nice to be home again. And in terms of "for others to begin" there has been some development but I'll share them with you as soon as I know something concrete. To avoid telling some people stuff that might not be true.. Till next time!

LOMA is here

2010-06-20T15:35:00.004+02:00

It's finally here : vacation! Well, technically not until tomorrow, but I don't have to go back to the office until the 4th July. It's just a bit of shame that we had really automny weather in here during this week, something like 15 to 18 degrees during the day, sun was hiding most of the time behinds clouds.. and next week we're gonna hit summer temperatures again.. and I'm not gonna be here!!! oh well, luckily they have some nice temperatures in finland next week too, so at least I get to enjoy that :)

Hmm, would there be any news concerning work? not really.. haha.. doing market studies for two of my clients, well.. three actually.. one on France, one on Switzerland and one on Madeira. They are progressing slowly, but firmly. Managed to secure the meetings for my fourth client for week 27, which is good.. as that week is directly after my vacation, so.. it's nice to know it's secured so I don't have to worry about it during my holidays.

On Friday me and Giulia went to have a look on this Juin 18 -thing at Invalides. It was quite nice, very impressive in fact. I'm a sucker for music + lights so.. It was sort of given. plus, we had tons of fun with Giulia.. We ate at this chinese restaurant, ended up walking a bit around the neighborhood and then took the biked back home. Very nice evening. And we're gonna finish our two week movie marathon tonight with celine dion concert. It will be sad, cause it's the last time I see for awhile so.. but anyway, here are some pics from Friday:

Giulia and Assemblee Nationale

Tour Eiffel

Musée des Armes and the spectacle

Movie week

2010-06-13T21:07:00.002+02:00

Hiya all! This week has been really nice, I've been watching tons of movies with Giulia. It all started actually on Eurovision night, which we watched together with Giulia. She really liked the concept so I proposed her to watch Romeo&Juliette together, which she agreed to. That was like last Saturday. She absolutely loved the movie, so we had a look on my DVD collection and immediately found like five or six additional movies to watch. So far we've seen Emperor Kuzco (in French) and Mamma Mia!. Tonight we're gonna watch Paris je t'aime and we still have Phantom of the Opera and Celine Dion in Concert to watch. Nice. It's just sad she's leaving Paris in one week, gonna lose another good friend again.

This week I also finally gave vlogging a chance. Dunno how it's gonna develop, but if you wanna check it out, it's on my youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/eorain). It's in English, sorry for non-speakers and great for non-Finns.. haha.. I know that the first topic, weather, was not so intelligently chosen, but a man's gotta start somewhere! Perhaps my next topic will be more cleaver and fun.

I've been doing slightly more sports starting this week. I finally got my velib account to working, so I've already come home from work three times by bike. Let's hope the weather stays nice this week so I could do it every night. The distance is almost 10km so it's a good minim. 30min workout after work. Then I'm also trying this 20min bodybalance cd I got from a box of cereals every morning. It's a good workout as well, wakes you up a bit and relaxes a little. What better way to start a day than that? And the best part is that it didn't cost me anything extra, it came with the box of cereals. I highly recommend people in Paris to buy those! Currently they have BodyBalance and BodyVive as options, I'm hoping they would include some others in the near future as well, so I could gather to whole set!

Next week is gonna be my last before holidays! Wohoo! Dunno yet whether I'll update this while in Finland or not, you'll get to see it. haha. But one final thought before ending: I got to the third stage with Nordea Graduate-program recruitment! Wohoo.. I'm so excited about that. I'm gonna have a phone interview next Friday and then if things go well another test the week after and potentially yet another interview, this time live (as I'm in Finland so I can actually attend to it). Let's keep our fingers crossed, shall we? Ciao à tutti!

Quiet week for a change

2010-06-06T16:52:00.002+02:00

Hiya there! For change quite a shorter blog update, since nothing really interesting has happened during this week. The weather was a bit dull in the beginning of the week, got a little better towards the end and had a huge downturn on Sunday. I woke up this morning to find out that it was raining like crazy and the wind hit my balcony. Had to quickly go recover some stuff I left on the balcony, that would not endure water.

Workwise pretty steady : working steadily on my projects. Oh yeah, confirmed a new visit in France for week 27. So for you who think about coming for a visit, bear this in mind. I'm gonna be gone the end of that week (weekend is good though).

Then also got confirmation this week that I will graduate on the 30 June as a Master. Wuhuu! It feels a bit surreal to know that I'll be a Master in just 4 weeks! At least it will help me find a job better, as I will actually have that degree instead of saying "I'll graduate as Master on...".

Then the video I promised to show my mum n grandma, as they didn't have the appropriate program to view it on their comps. This is the night sky over Paris one night last week, beautiful isn't it?

Okay, here are the news for this week. Nothing exciting. Only two more weeks and I'm back in Finland for 2 weeks. Hopefully next week there would be some more news, most likely not. haha. Ciao a tutti!

Business trip to Eastern France

2010-05-30T13:13:00.000+02:00

Hi again, for once on a Sunday afternoon. As I think I told you on my last post, I was on a business trip this week. Left Tuesday afternoon from Paris to Mulhouse, where my client picked me up and then had a small tour in Alsace and other eastern regions and then on Friday my client dropped me off at Thionville where I took the train back to Paris. While I waited for him in Mulhouse, I got to take a quick tour in the centre and it turned out to be a really pittoresque town.

Hotel de Ville of Mulhouse

I think a cathedral, but anyway a church in the central square of Mulhouse

We visited four companies between Habsheim and Gorcy. It was actually really educational and fun. The first two visits went quite smoothly for me, as the people from the two companies spoke rather good English, so my client was able to give the presentation himself and I was there just to translate if needed. The last two however did not spoke a word of English so I was "forced" to give the presentations. It was definitely interesting, but luckily both were interested to start with, so they overlooked my bad French and constant need for backup from my client. Well, I had explained that I was no expert in the field, I was just the translator and business development aid. Not an expert in their field of business, though I started to get into the whole thing while presenting. After all, I had seen the presentation twice before, so I sort of knew the key points.

I also got to experience the French hotels.. they were okay, nothing special but okay. The breakfast offering for example was no where near the quantity and quality of Scandic, but then again I managed to get full every time. The beds were nice, there was free internet and all that. And the prices were lower than those of Scandic, so can't complain actually. Besides, the Campanile chain is very nice. They are motel-like, with a small restaurant serving as the reception and then a small two-story building with individual rooms. Entrance is straight from outside, so it's really close to nature etc. The last night we were at Ibis, it was more hotel-like, barer with interiors. Did not like as much.

Our first campanile hotel/motel

On Saturday I invited Giulia over to watch the Eurovision finals. She had never seen a single show, so it was interesting to watch it with her, though it was sad at the same time as it was the first time since 2002 that I watched Eurovision without my sister. She wasn't even online, so I wasn't able to chat with her during the show. Wasn't too happy with the winner and especailly the low placement of Iceland this year, but there were some nice songs. I will buy the DVD later, so I get to watch my favorites over and over again.

Now it's back to normality for a change. Nothing special going on the coming few weeks, just business as usual. Not even a lot of that, as it's summer months so nothing much going on. Have to start preparing for September I guess, need to find a job somewhere and start my letting go of Paris -process. Sadly..

Niko à Paris

2010-05-25T00:55:00.001+02:00

Oookay, a really quick update on this thing now, since it's way past midnight and I still need to pack for tomorrow. The past few months have been really hectic and I barely have time to sit at home. I sort of like it, but from time to time it can be a bit exhausting. And to top it all, we've had a serious heat wave here in Paris for the past week or so, I think today we reached +30.. Aaaanyhow, onto the news of the week..

First of all, I headed almost straight to Finland after my holidays in Italy. I had a meeting with one of my clients up near Jyväskylä on Thursday, so left the office on Wednesday afternoon right after lunch. As is the custom, my Easyjet flight was delayed by 2 hours, so finally I arrived to the hotel in Helsinki around 11pm. Had a brief chat with some of my friends and then after a few hours sleep, off the bed and down to breakfast. Charming. The breakfast was really goof though, as usual at Scandic. The meeting went really well with the client, though I did have some issues staying awake on our way north, but once in business and on our way back I was sharp and focused. The visit really helped me to see what they were doing and what I should be doing, so now I know my schedule for them for the rest of my stay, which is good.

Then, on my way back I managed to lose my glasses, as many of you already know. I had them on when I entered the car, but once at the airport and trying to find them, I couldn't find them. I called my client to ask if they were in his car, but he did not find them. I was sort of panicking as even thou I can see quite well without my glasses, my eyes get really tired if I have to read or focus my eyes on small print.. aka what I do 8 hours a day at work! I was really depressed as new glasses would cost a fortune and I would anyhow have to wait 4 weeks to get them, as I didn't wanna buy them in France. But luckily I got a text from my client the morning after that he had in fact found them in his car, under the bench. So now I will get them back next Monday as my boss is picking them up while in Finland.

As the title tells, I had Niko over this week. We actually met at the airport Thursday evening and came to Paris together. It all sounded really easy in my head beforehand, until I found out that his flight was due to terminal 1 whereas mine was to terminal 2, which is on the opposite end of the whole airport CDG complex.. and not only that, but his flight was scheduled to arrive 23.25, almost an hour later than mine. Oh well, I waited for him and surely just before midnight he had received his luggage and naturally the last RER had gone. BUT, to my benefit I was reminded that the night buses actually go to the airport, so we managed to catch a bus from terminal 3. Which turned out to be even cheaper than the RER. So great, no longer am I afraid of late flights! Okay, so the bus took a bit longer and then we had to find another bus once at Gare de l'Est, but it was sort of an adventure, besides it gave us a time to chat already on our way to Paris.

Our program with Niko was quite simple: Friday he was resting most of the day because of jetlag. Then we went to Louvre after my work and dined at this lovely japanese restaurant not far from my place. The place is amazing, and now we even got to dine at their courtyard, really spanish feeling as Niko said. Then on Saturday morning/afternoon we had a quick touristy tour around Paris: tour Eiffel, Champs-Elysee, Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur. All in like 4 hours, so pretty good. Then it was time to prepare for the party we had on Saturday evening: Summer Initiation Party. There were supposed to be a heck of a lot more people, but many canceled just before the party, which was a bit shame. But luckily a few people showed up and we had a really nice and relaxing evening with them. Luckily Niko was generous enough not to mind the much too constant french speaking, which I tried to restrict to minimum on his presence. Then on Sunday we had my sort of traditional chinese buffet night, meaning stuffing ourselves with greasy chinese stuff. I love this kind of Sundays! After chinese we went to see Louis to get the latest episodes of Smallville and then off to Starbucks Opera. Man, Niko was sold from the first moment he tasted the raspberry-white chocolate cheesecake, already on Saturday. Man, that is some delicious cake! Then a quick tour to see the Pont Neuf, Notre Dame and tour Eiffel. Monday morning we had a quick revisit to Champs-Elysee as there was this plant-thingy going on, Niko got almost claustrofobic there.. Way too many people for a shy Finn there. I was okay though. Then to have drinks at Hard Rock Café, cause Niko wanted. After that it was sadly time to say good bye to Niko, at least for now. He might come back in August, so people still wondering whether to come, pick your date soon! Perhaps some pics before I tell you about the later part of my Monday:

Quitemany showed up to watch these guys dance.. and they were GOOD

Niko found he had a panorama-mode in his camera. Quite nice, though still requires some work..

Summer Initiation Party (back row from left: Chris, Annick, Khalid, Giulia, Caroline, ?, Max. Front row from left: Niko, Me and Mj)

Then some really funny vids that Niko took while here:

Okay, then off to the reason why I'm still up and just updating my blog. After Niko left, I relaxed for a bit, then did some laundry and did the dishes. Then I watched the episodes of Smallville I had received the night before. Then a friend asked me to go sit by the Seine with him and talk with a bottle of wine. Then after that I went to see Robin Hood in the cinema. The movie ended just after midnight, so voilá! Now I still have to pack my bags for tomorrow, as I'm going on a 3 day business trip on eastern France. Hopefully it'll be nice, and hopefully they'll have tv on the hotels so that I can watch Eurovision while there. On Saturday I've invited a few friends over and we're gonna watch the finals here. Next update should come on the regular time on Sunday, so till then!

Holiday in Italy (13 - 18 May)

2010-05-19T00:11:00.000+02:00

Hi there! This blog update will be solely dedicated to the holiday I had in Italy last and this week. I think everyone should've known I was in Italy for 6 days and 5 nights, resting my nerves (or at least trying to). I will separate my thoughts according to day, so it's easier for you guys to follow as well.

Thursday 13 May - Traveling
Thursday was the day of transportation. It's actually quite funny how it can take more time to get to the airport than it actually takes to fly to another country. Gotta love the traffic in Ile de France! Anyhow, my flight was actually pretty much on time, but I happened to just miss my bus both at the airport and then at the train station in Bologna, so I arrived to the hostel quite late (close to 11pm). Already during my first day I got totally lost as I understood nothing that was going on around me and I was even afraid to go buy anything to eat, cause I understood none of the labels. Made me realize how much I depended on Ingvar to survive this trip.

Had an hour to kill while waiting for the next bus, went for a short stroll around the train station and found this. Nice.

When I entered the bus, I realized that the driver didn't sell tickets. They had this coin operated machine that sold tickets, and naturally I had no coins. So I was just hoping that no one would come to check my tickets, for the driver couldn't care less. Naturally, just a few stops before mine two inspectors came in. I took out my wallet ready to pay the fine or at least try to explain why I didn't have the ticket. But they didn't ask me, so phew for that.

Friday 14 May - Bologna
Okay, Friday morning I woke up rather early, had a breakfast at the hostel and texted Ingvar to see me in Bologna as soon as possible. I had a few hours before he came to town, so I went for a short stroll in the centre. I saw Piazza Maggiore, bought some post cards and wrote them while sitting in the square. Visited Basilica San Petronio as well, quite impressive. It actually felt bigger than Notre Dame, much more space inside. Then walked to have a look on the Duo Torri, didn't go in yet cause it was rather cloudy. Then had a short walk to have a look on the Chiesa di San Stefano. Just as I got in there it closed for the afternoon. Great. After that it was about time to meet Ingvar, so I walked back to the train station to meet him. We had a short stroll around the center with him, had some nice pizza for lunch and then some ice cream for desserts. Mainly it was nice just to catch up with him and enjoy the city. We actually ran into some people from Texas who had come to Bologna to preach the word of the Christ. I was actually really happy to talk with the younger ones, as they didn't say a word about any religion (the older lady was a bit scary in the beginning). But it was quite interesting to find out after we had parted ways that Ingvar did not like them at all. He had met some others the day before and for his benefit, they had harrassed him while he was having lunch so I can understand him. But for me it was just nice to see someone speak in English in the middle of all that Italian. Anyhow, we parted ways with Ingvar around 6pm, he had a party to go to and I was left to enjoy the last rays of sun. Then we had some plans for the night, he came to pick me up from the hostel later and we went out with his friends. It didn't go as planned, but it was okay. At least I got to experience what a night out in Bologna is like.

Southern Europe seems to be keen on this kind of "Viipurintori" as my family knows these kinds of places. Weird.

Palazzo Re Enzo

Basilica di San Petronio

Duo Torri

Chiesa di San Stefano

Saturday 15 May - Venice
Saturday I wanted to go to Venice. My decision was reinforced as soon as I woke up and saw it was pouring rain. Did not wanna spend the day in rainy Bologna, so hoped it would be better in Venice, after all it was 160km east of Bologna so. Took the train at the beginning of the afternoon and two hours later I was in Venice. I was still really tired from the night before, so I basically slept my way to Venice, but as soon as I got there I was wide awake. Immediately in front of the train station the canals start. It was surreal to realize I was in Venice, one of the most romantic cities in Europe. Well, the cloudy and rainy weather was a bit of a downer, but still. I had no clear idea what to see and where to go, so I had a look on the postcards on sale near the station to see what there was to see. I already saw many domes and churches, so I knew there was plenty to see. The main sight for me however were the canals and I also got to see plenty of gondolas, though most were on dock because of the lousy weather. The main sight I think however is the Piazza di San Marco, which was actually really hard to find. I got lost so many times and thanks to the lousy weather, I started to become really frustratred with the city. But with better weather, I'm sure Venice would show completely different face. Definitely worth another visit, with more time. The four hours I had were clearly not enough to appreciate the city in all its glory.

The trains are definitely up to (Finnish) standards, but they were very cheap. The two hour trip to Venice cost me 8,90.

The canals were just so pretty, I have like dozens of pictures just of the various canals, boats and bridges.

It was especially funny to see these doors that open directly to water.

I ate a lot of ice cream in Italy, after all it's their speciality. Well, I only had one per day but look at the size of one! and they weren't even that expensive, from 2 to 3 euros, depending on how many flavors I took.

Some traditional gondolas with their gondoliers.

Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal. I'm pretty sure it's the only bridge over the darn thing, as I was unable to get back without crossing it again.

Basilica di San Marco. Or I think that's what it's called :P

Another fancy church, kinda reminds me of Sacre Coeur in Paris.

Sunday 16 May - Bologna
Sunday I met with Ingvar again, had the morning to myself though. Ingvar was really busy with his studies (International law => lots of books and details to memorize) so he was only able to hang out with me for a few hours per day. Thanks to much better weather I decided to climb to Tour Asselini in the morning, especially since I knew I wouldn't have time to go up there with Ingvar. I was really scared going up, the stairs were wooden and heavily worn. They were also slightly tilted from time to time and very narrow and steep occasionally. But once up, the views were just magnificient. The tower was close to 100m tall and the views over sunny rooftops of Bologna were just amazing. Then had a nice stroll around the center, mostly actually visiting some of the same sights as on Friday, now the weather was just way better. This time I also went to see Chiesa di San Francesco on the other side of the city, had seen it on some postcards. Then it was back to the train station to meet with Ingvar, this time he had come with his car. We drove first actually to Ikea to have something to eat and then up to San Lucca. Amazing church, honestly. And the views from up the hills were also breathtaking. Then we met with some of Ingvars friends again for a few drinks and had a long talk with Ingvar after, just catching up again.

The stairs were really scary, I'm sure Karo would not be able to go up.

San Lucca on the back. As I said, magnificient views.

Piezza Maggiore on the background.

Can't remember the name of the lower tower next to Tour Asselini, but it was at most half the size of Asselini. Look how small those people look like! :)

Apparently Bologna has the closest airport of any major city. It took only like 15min by bus to get there and you could see the runways from the tower. And obviously the planes landing as well.

Strada Maggiore (I think) leading east. Looked like it continued for ever and ever..

On my way down, there was a hole in the floor and you could see all the way down.. to the next level at least (luckily).

Up near San Lucca with Ingvar. Looked so much bigger than it did from Tour Asselini.

The sky was pretty on most nights, I would not even have noticed, but Ingvar told me to take pictures all the time of it. haha.

Monday 17 May - Verona
Monday I did not know what to do, I had planned to go to Pisa or Florence, but found out that the tickets were way too expensive when I arrived to the train station. I got really frustrated as there was pretty much nothing left for me to do in Bologna, so was really pissed. And I knew as well that Ingvar wanted to study on Monday, so I didn't even have his company. But then I went back to the train station to see where else to go and saw Verona on the list. Remembered that Verona was the home of Romeo&Juliette, so had a look and the tickets were only 7,20 one way, so decided to go there. Definitely worth the visit, probably the best city out of all three I went to, architecture-wise at least. The weather was also really nice so I had a really nice visit to Verona. The Arena was immense, and it cost me only 4,50 to have a peek inside. Then had a nice walk around the borders of Verona and saw many nice churches. After getting a bit lost and having had to buy a map, I finally found the house of Juliette and the famous balcony. Was actually a bit of a let down, nothing spectacular about it. Found out only on my way back that there would've been the tomb of Juliette as well, pity I didn't got to see that one. Then continued to check out many more churches and palaces and bridges and castles. Very nice medieval city, I have to admit. Then met Ingvar for dinner later in Bologna and visited his friend Andreas for a few hours for a glass of wine and talk. Quite smooth last night in Bologna, I was already a bit sad because I knew I had to leave the day after so that kind of evening was okay for my mood.

Look how high the rails are compared to the platform.. I actually saw people running across the rail to get to other platforms. This would not go in Finland!

Entering Verona. Can you see the Alps on the back? I had not expected to see them, so I was really happy.

The Arena di Verona

The place was huge, as I said.

According to the manuals, there's room for 30.000 people in the Arena!!!

Chiesa San Fermo

Casa di Giulietta

Palazzo Maffei

Castel San Pietro and Teatro Romano (in front of the Castel)

Some church on top of a hill (not visible on my map) and Chiesa San Giordio in Prada

Castelvecchio

I was first surprised to see the flag of Sweden at the gates of Verona, but found out later that the city of Verona actually has the same colors as Sweden!

Sunset over Bologna.

Tuesday 18 May - Last day in Bologna
We agreed with Ingvar to meet for lunch on my last day in Bologna. That's all he had time for, so I knew I needed to find out something to do for a few more hours. My solution was sunbathing actually. And a short stroll on via Zamboni before meeting with Ingvar.

Ostello San Sisto, my home for 5 nights.

The hostel was 6km from the center of Bologna, and it was honestly in the middle of the countryside! haha.

In some cities, even H&M is stylish! haha

The most unefficient gate personnels I have ever met. Then again, why am I surprised? It was Italy after all..

It was definitely sad to leave the city, but at the same time I as relieved to get back home and in a country whose language I spoke. It wasn't necessarily very relaxing holiday, as I was not really able to sleep properly in a hostel and there were people there snoring. I also came back to the hostel very late every night. And had walked miles every day to top that, so I was really tired all the time. And I was also a bit let down that Ingvar was not able to spend as much time with me as I had thought, so it was definitely an interesting holiday. Was it worth the time and money? Who knows, hopefully. Only time will tell.

That's all for now, tomorrow evening Finland calls me for one night and then I'll come back with Niko, who will spend the weekend in Paris. So next blog update will have to wait again till next Monday.

Calm before the storm

2010-05-09T22:01:00.000+02:00

Hi there again! Another sort of calm week passed. Work has been quite easy, everything was sort of anticipating our move to new rooms at the back of our offices. This was finally done on Thursday-Friday, Wednesday saw us packing everything we could into boxes (finally, I had asked about that earlier that why we didn't pack anything..). In the end the move went quite smoothly, but then again I would not have expected anything else, as I was sort of supervising the move.. I do have like a little experience in moves, a "little" being something like 9 moves in Finland plus seeeeveral more in France. So I know how it's done. And now we have a nice new room, much bigger and more light than in the old one. And we are all in one room, and our boss has once more a room just for himself (as it should be). The true test starts next week when all of us will be at work at the same time, so we get to see how it actually works in practise. But I have high hopes for it!

I finally got my ass on the gym on Thursday evening once more. It did some real good to me, especially to relax at the sauna afterwards. Gawd, I miss sauna so much! Luckily it's only a few more weeks to my summer vacation in Finland, so I'm gonna spend most of it at our summer cottage. That's for sure! Well, apart from seeing a bunch of my friends, all eager to meet me while I'm in Finland.

Other than that nothing really interesting happening. I was invited to this birthday party of a friend of a friend (who I did not even know) on Saturday. It was fun, the birthday hero was actually a salsa instructor so we got to see some really hot latin dance moves at the party. And tonight I went to the Japanese restaurant Tiina and I found on Easter. I went there with a friend and we had a blast, talked a lot and enjoyed some really good for. The chicken balls were just delicious, much like last time (you remember Tiina?). Oh yeah, I also dyed my hair for the first time myself. Had seen this clip on youtube "Dying My Hair Red" and suddenly I got a desire to dye my hair. Not red, but the basic blond I have done so many times before. So when I was at TATI Saturday morning, I found this color for 2,99. So I ended up buying it and testing it Saturday evening before going out. About the result? Well, I guess for my first time it's quite okay. I mean, I should've used all of the stuff, but for some reason I thought half of it would be okay. And I also thought that 25 mins instead of the 30 min instructed would be enough. So now my hair is a bit orangeish.. or something like that. But I sort of like it, it works. I guess even better than total blond, which I think would not even be possible with any home-made stuff. With my natural hair color and hair strength, I would need something way stronger. Here's a pic that hopefully will illustrate the new color:

Well, it's not the best but apparently I can't get a decent pic of it.

Anyhow, I guess this is enough for now. The next post will come a little later than usual, as I am in Italy till Tuesday evening, so I'm gonna post something on Tuesday. I don't have my laptop with me there, so you won't be hearing from me during the weekend. I'm leaving on Thursday and spend 5 days in there. Really looking forward to it, recharging my batteries I hope. So, therefore I leave you with this image of "summer" in Paris:

Duller week this time

2010-05-02T14:50:00.000+02:00

Okay, this week has been quite dull in fact. Nothing much happened during the week. I've been staying at work a bit later than usual and then do nothing at home, just chill online on facebook or msn. Work has been quite dull as well, phoning up companies in Luxembourg basically all week. The funny thing is that I was included in the campaign for Luxembourg because English could be used, but I ended up talking in French at the end with everyone. It's not that my French is yet at that level, but it just felt more natural as everyone was talking French around me and I'm so used to using French on the phone, at least more than English.

Didn't do anything exciting for Wappu, stayed home all night. I received unseen episodes of American Idol and Smallville from a friend, so I was up till 4am watching American Idol. Planning on viewing the Smallvilles today. On Saturday we had a picnic with Hanna and her friend at Jardin de Luxembourg. I made a delicious salade and then we had some stawrberries and pringless and some sparkling to drink. Even thou the weather was not nice, it was still very nice, we were 4 hours in the park. Then I went to spend the evening with an old friend of mine. We were listening to music and talking quite late, all in French. So I'm starting to be quite happy with my level of French.

No pictures this week and probably nothing from next week either. It's good to have a few of these calmer and duller weeks occasionally, as the whole of March and April was pretty busy for me and it's going to get busier in just a few weeks with the holiday in Italy coming up and other stuff as well. Sorry for being this dull this time, but there just is nothing to say. Oh yeah, Tiina is not coming back to Paris before August, so I'm living alone till then. It made me a bit sad as she was my best friend in Paris so now I have to reorient for the summer. There was so much I wanted to do with her, but now I can't. Oh well, at least now I have a parisian penthouse just for me. At least that's something!

back to normality for a change

2010-04-25T20:13:00.000+02:00

Blog update for a change on a sunday! Got the folk's visit over, slightly later than anticipated thanks to Icelandish ash.. All well in the end however, both of them got safely back home to Finland on Friday, slightly more tired and sick than planned, but at least they are there. And I'm back to more normal routines. Still got a week or so to enjoy this time by myself before Tiina comes back. I've been taking it easy this weekend, resting and sunbathing. Yes, sunbathing! It's been way past +20 all weekend, so I've enjoyed the sun on the balcony quite a lot.

Also started my jogging, I hope it keeps up. There's this park close by, parc de Choisy, where they have actually marked the length of various jogging paths. So that's where I'll be heading after work quite often. Also finally got myself back to one of those free concerts. It wasn't great this time, but it was definitely nice.

But okay, a brief update on the folk's visit. As many of you have seen from the pics (and I also told you a week ago) this week was Versailles on Monday and Disneyland on Tuesday. Versailles was still a bit dead, none of the fountains were on and most of the flowers were still not yet planted. It was definitely an upgrade to our last visit in December 2008, but still not great. Have to go there one weekend to see the water shows. Disneyland however was a blast, as was to be expected. Did not have time to visit all attractions nor even visit anything twice (except Indiana Jones, which we luckily got in two times). We were there for 8 hours still, so you can count the queueing times and walking times.. But anyhow, a great experience once more, took a lot of photos and laughed a lot. The total saldo for this visit was again over 1000 photos. So now I have over 2000 photos of Paris with my mum and sis, most of them actually from the same places, it's just that the first 1000 are from winter and the rest from summer. To finihs, here are some of those photos:

Family in Paris, week 1

2010-04-19T10:29:00.000+02:00

This week will be quite short on text, but plenty on pics. Monday and Tuesday was spent on work, not much news on that front. We finally got our boss back to the office. Then Tuesday evening my mum and sis arrived. I have been sick for awhile and got really sick on Tuesday, but I've stuck around. Now my sis is also a bit sick, so it's ruined our trip a bit (much like last time). Also my bro's abcense was a bit depressing last weekend, when he was indeed supposed to be here for the weekend. But thanks to Iceland, he could not come. And now I'm not sure whether we are able to leave to Finland on Wednesday, most likely not. But we're trying to enjoy as much as we can during the remaining days.

In short our program so far has been:

Wednesday - North of Paris, Sacre Coeur and the "turistirysät" as my mum calls them, meaning the souvenir shops in Montmartre (mainly).
Thursday - South of Paris, Cité Universitaire, Kiva Boutique, Jardin de Luxembourg, Jardin de Plantes
Friday - Centre of Paris, Notre Dame, Hotel de Ville
Saturday - West of Paris, Tour Eiffel, Concorde, Champs-Élysée, l'Arc de Triomphe, Defense
Sunday - East of Paris, Château de Vincennes, Avenue Planté, Parc Buttes Chaumonts.

Remaning program should be today Monday Versailles and tomorrow Tuesday Disneyland. Let's see how it goes. But here are the pics I told you:

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Okay, that's it.. More pics on my next post and on facebook! :)

Summer is here

2010-04-11T20:49:00.000+02:00

This week was sort of in between week, at least in my mind. I was supposed to be on a business trip in eastern France, but that got canceled because my client had a problem with his leg, so he did not want to risk anything with the long drive from Germany to France, even though I would've been able to drive the truck once in France. That trip got postponed till the end of May, so perhaps I can still make it better, even thou the client appreciated it as it was.

In addition we finally had our boss back to work. He had caught some weird fever while in Djibouti at the end of March, so he and his wife were sick for a week or so. Luckily they recovered and we are now back on track with our projects etc. I also booked my trip to Finland for the 21st April. So that is now in order. But it's funny how this late spring is unfolding.. I have people coming over, business trips, vacations, my own trips, etc almost constantly. So the "boring" daily life doesn't really concern me much these days, which is sad cause I would now have the apartment to enjoy that.. oh well, it's not that I'm complaining, just an observation.

The weather has been amazing the past few days, as I have been telling many f my friends already. The sun has been out, the weather has not been cold, thou not yet summery neither. But I have been on the balcony already with just shorts on and it wasn't cold. You can go walking around during the day with just your t-shirt on so for me that's summer. and the parks are looking good with a bunch of flowers everywhere and cherrie trees blossoming. all teh trees basically have leaves already, some bigger than others.

Then in addition I decided earlier this week (or was it already last week) that I will try to graduate already in June. As I'm basically already done with everything needed, I just need to write my report from this internship and apply and I'm done. This way I get to throw my graduation party while in Finland for my summer vacation and then I already have my degree when I come back to Finland so it's easier to find a job. I'll keep you posted on how this proceeds, as I still need to work on the report. I was foolish enough to write it already in Finnish. Now I have to translate it in order to verify it's content with my boss before sending it out. Stupid me.

To once more finish my post with photos:
The sunset seen from our balcony (you can be expecting a lot of these, I think it just looks amazing every single time, and always a bit different too!)

Parc de Choissy or something like that, very close to our place anyhow

Easter

2010-04-05T15:13:00.000+02:00

Hi blogbuddies! One of the guys I follow on youtube always starts his vlogs like that. it's pretty annoying, isn't it? Anyhow, this week saw the coming of Easter and Teemu&Toni. Their visit was a bit different however as they were staying in a hotel and I let them wonder around pretty much quite individually. The main reason for that was that Heikki had just been here so I had just seen all the main sights with him so it wasn't as exciting for me this time. Besides, the weather has been really bad, well not bad bad but changing. We have seem sun, clouds and pouring rain all in one hour.. But it's still looking like spring here, trees are becoming green and flowers are blossoming.. and then we also have the sun and people are dressing lighter. so it's definitely nice.

Found a few new nice restaurant this weekend.. Friday we went to my favorite spot le Marr@inners (or something like that) at Marais. Then on Saturday we visited this smaller restaurant with an African theme, also in Marais. And on Sunday me and Tiina found this really nice japanese restaurant just around the corner from our place. Took a walk in the China Town as well, the neighborhood is awesome. Gotta remember to take my folks down there for a walk one day, really peaceful and pretty.

Workwise I was preparing for the trip this week. Organizing final details, booking hotels, confirming stuff etc. And we also had a new consultant who started on Thursday so I was busy preparing her computer etc. Nothing new on that front that is to say.. Oh yeah, everybody is sick right now.. Max was out of office for the beginning of the week because he was sick, our boss got sick on Wednesday and was out of office for the rest of the week. I'm a bit sick myself right now, but can't let it affect me.. Gotta do the business trip nevertheless!

Okay, now to finish my Easter post, here are some pics:

Eglise Saint Eustache and some cherry blossoms.. Or the other way around :D

Visiting the Citroën store at Champs-Elysee with Teemu&Toni

Tiina took care of our Easter flowers as I took care the ones for the housewarming party. Quite nice eh?

Eating some japanese.. Should I take Karo & mum here too? Would sis eat some japanese, as chinese didn't sink it.. probably not :/

The makis look delicious thou..

And the interior was nice too, they had a small acquarium on the side as well. cutesy..

Me and Tiina going out again. I really like my housemate a lot :) I've never had better housemate..

Heikki à Paris

2010-03-30T20:25:00.000+02:00

Hello my loyal readers (hope that includes someone else besides my mum n grandma)! Last week saw the long-waited visit of Heikki, which was also greeted by considerably worse weather. Luckily we also got to see some sun while he was here and not that much rain. I enjoyed his visit, even thou we did not get to do so much touristy-stuff, but that was just because he was not really into that. Nevertheless we got to see the Louvre from the inside, spent some good two hours or so in there. In addition visited Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur and took a look on the Eiffel-tower from Trocadero. As is my habit, here are some photos that we took while sightseeing (this time I actually tried to select photos NOT on facebook too, to avoid repetition..)

At the Louvre, top floor and in some room filled with paintings. Me giving a tour on the paintings, Tiina didn't quite like my take on them..

You've probably seen this before but it keeps amazing me every single time!

I like how I managed to capture this situation.

Naturally we were acting all touristy in there, as usual..

The Napoleon III appartments are just really nice.

There was this big dance/music event going about in the courtyard. Was really nice and soothing in fact.

One of the few and only joined photos of me and Heikki.

A view from the Sacre Coer: Centre Pompidou (these are photos from Heikki's camera, he had like 12 mega pixels and a 10x zoom, can't you tell?)

Eglise Saint Eustache and Pantheon

Tour Montparnasse

Tour Eiffel

The main event during Heikki's stay was however our housewarming party on Saturday night. Sadly some of my good friends were not able to make it, but luckily all of my colleagues did this time. Plus then a bunch of other people, we really had fun and everybody complimented my pizzas. If I know something, it's how to make good pizzas!

From the party

You can see some of the food we had to offer and the flowers I bought from the flower shop downstairs :)

My new mac <3 and hanna acting as dj for a few moments..

The last pic of this post, still from the party..

I guess this covers it.. not much new concerning work, we have a new consultant starting on Thursday this week. Nothing much new on my part, business trip next week in eastern France. Trip to Finland at the end of April.. that's about it.

Till next time!

Trip to icy Finland

2010-03-21T17:10:00.000+01:00

Okay, so the main thing about this week was my first single visit to Finland for business. It was a bit strange, to travel for work by myself. Especially to go to Finland, where it was like -10 when it was +20 in Paris at the same time. But, overall the trip was quite successful. I attended the start up seminar, which was not even the main point as I had no official presense there. But I finally met Anne from Finsve in person and now we know who we are talking to on the phone in the future. And we have sort of clear idea on what's going on with the project. In addition I did one start-up consultation to one of our future clients, so that project can take off soon. And we spoke at length with a new potential partner of ours and there's much to do with them in the future if there just is enough time. We are already planning a new visit to Tampere with them on May, so I might be coming back to Finland, again. I needed to visit Jyväskylä anyhow quite soon, so might as well try to combine those two. Here are some pics from Tampere for you guys:

This was the traditional "kahvia ja pullaa".. the pulla part was just a bit over the top, just the way I like it!

Pyynikki area in Tampere is quite nice, must be very nice in the summertime

It was snowing with a capitol S while I was walking back to the hotel. I did not like it! It was sooo much fun to be back to Paris and the almost subtropical climate after this!

The hotel where I was staying at. It is nice, don't get me wrong, but quite remotely located. Next time I'm in town, I'll stay in the Scandic city.. it's easier!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell about the way back to Paris, man this is a story. After the visit to the potential partner in the future, I had to basically run to the trainstation as I left too late. By the time I got to the train station I was barely able to walk, my legs were on fire and I almost fell down just while standing. And there was a huuuuge queue for the tickets, but I just made it. Arrived to Tikkurila around 18.40, so I had some time to get to Helsinki-Vantaa. I had some nice ideas about eating something at one of the restaurants there and checking my emails etc while waiting for the plane. My plans did not come through, as I stood in line, waiting to check in, for more than an hour! the printing system for the luggage tags had crashed, so the line did not move an inch for like and hour. But, it wasn't as bad as you would think, as it just happened to be that there were these two north american girls behind me in the line and we got to talking. They were really nice, our sense of humor hit it off immediately and we had fun while waiting. Then we sat next to each other on the plane too. And had even more fun there, man I would have so many fun quotes from that flight but I guess for the best interest of the people involved, I'll leave those in my head. After the flight we took the same shuttle-bus-rer route to paris and we agreed that we should hang out together on Saturday. Which we did, we went out together to Queen, as a friend of theirs had suggested that place and she was there too so. We even got to the VIP section of the place because of her, so it was quite nice. Although we almost got thrown out of there a few times because no one knew who we were.. haha.. And oh yeah, Tiina was invited too and she also liked Michele and Cristina, so Saturday night was a blast!

Me and Tiina at Queen, VIP-style

Anyhow, I guess that's the news at this stage. Heikki will be arriving next week and we have a huge-ish party, also serving as our housewarming party, planned for next Saturday. So there will be even more news on the next post, which is due to be posted a bit on the late side, as Heikki is leaving on Tuesday so I might wait until his trip is totally over before posting anything. But we'll see, as for now: ciao!

New place, yet again

2010-03-15T20:03:00.004+01:00

Okay, finally some news (and pictures) of the new place, which will hopefully be the final place for my stay in Paris.. at least for now.. We have sort of settled down nicely during this week, even though it was quite a hassle as Ingvar came already on Wednesday to Paris so I was sort of busy showing him around. But we managed to get everything sorted out, washing and cleaned. The place is awesome, everyone who's seen it says the same thing. And naturally Tiina and I agree wholeheartedly! haha. Here are some photos for those of you who haven't taken a sneakpeak at Tiina's blog, where there have been photos already.

The bedroom, currently at my disposal

The ensuite bathroom with a washing machine

The corridor and the kitchen

View of the living room from the corridor

View of the living room from the balcony

View from the balcony

So here you go, I guess you should be happy with the photos now?

In other news, Ingvar (a friend from Germany, currently studying in Italy) was indeed visiting me and another friend of his in Paris last weekend. We had good time, sightseeing around Paris and fiiiinally visiting the Finnish restaurant Les Mille Lacs. The restaurant was amazing, and not even that expensive. The staff all spoke Finnish and they were really friendly. I highly recommend it to everyone! Here are some photos from the restaurant:

Smoked salmon and cream potatoes. Yummy!

Tiina and Giulia

Ingvar and me

Lastly, this week will again be a bit hectic for me, as I'm going back to Finland already on Wednesday afternoon. I have this seminar on Thursday in Tampere and then visiting some companies on Friday. Friday evening back to Paris, so I'm able to take note how to get from the airport to Paris, as I'm again flying via Easyjet. But it shouldn't be that hard, I mean: shuttle+bus+rer+metro.. come on, everyone can do that!

Till next time,

Weekend at Helsinki

2010-03-10T01:12:00.000+01:00

What a weekend. Much of last week was spent on anticipating the weekend at Helsinki, work did not really even seem to stress that much, as there was so much planning involved with the trip itself. Finally Friday came and we took the jackie-taxie to get to the airport (I wish we had taken the RER, but more about that later). Our flight was delayed, but we nevertheless arrived to Helsinki that same night, a bit more frustrated and tired, but we were there anyway. The French really seemed to get some kicks out of the snow, I personally hated it: it was cold and depressing, as it had been sunny and warm in Paris all week. As soon as I got out of my suit and got to see Hanne at the centre, it was all okay however. We took the French to taste Finnish burgers, aka Hesburger. We did not have the money to eat in a restaurant and not even really any desire at that point, as it was close to midnight already. By chance we got to see Antti Tuisku on the drive-in, that was pretty neat. Then after Hesburger Hanne took us to this small little club called Cuba, it was really nice. Here are some photos from Friday evening.

Max & Charline

Hanne & Me

Saturday we started at the Kauppatori. It was a beautiful day, lots of sunshine and basically almost no clouds on sight. It was a bit chilly, but not too much. So we had some coffee, or black water as MJ called it, and some Finnish donuts (munkkipossu) at the market. Then we continued past the President's office to see the Uspenski Cathedral. I actually had never gone inside before, so it was exciting for me too. From Uspenski we headed towards the Helsinki Cathedral, and took some really nice photos. Also went in the Cathedral, for the first time as well. From there a quick stop at Kamppi and Forum shopping centers before settling down for a lunch at Forum. After lunch I was already in a hurry to go to Itäkeskus to buy my new laptop. We had some other plans at 17h, so I barely made it back to the hostel, took a shower and changed for the night. Hanne was in charge of the night's program, so thanks a lot Hanne! We really had fun, I'm sure even the French liked it. Here are some photos from Saturday:

At the Kauppatori (MJ, Charline and Max)

President's office (MJ, Me and Max)

Uspenski Cathedral (Charline & Max)

Inside the Uspenski Cathedral (Max & MJ)

Senaatintori and Helsinki Cathedral (I absolutely love the colors on this photo)

MJ and his question mark (not done by him though...)

Baker's (Mj & Hanne)

Baker's (Hanne, Me, Max)

Onnela (Me, Suvi, Hanne)

Sunday was spent pretty much tired. We had seen so much and stayed up quite late on Friday and Saturday, so we just changed from our hostel to the hotel, then took a quick walk around the center and then it was back to bed for me. Went for dinner later that night on the neighbor hotel, as ours (Scandic Continenalt) did not have a restaurant open on Sundays. Then I played awhile with my new comp, trying to sort out as many of the settings as possible. Then to bed in order to be ready for Monday. Here a few photos:

Sunday brunch with MJ

Dino <3

Apparently I did not took any nice photos on Monday, but then again the weather was not that nice anymore: it was cloudy and windy. Luckily we spent most of the day inside, as we were traveling to Lahti to visit MJ's new client and we spent a good 4 hours there. Then back to Helsinki to wait for our flight, which was 20min late (arrived on time though). The worst news came once we were back to CDG: all the trains from the airports were canceled after 23h. And it was not just that night, they are canceled every night after 23h till sometime at May. So a word of warning to all of my friends coming with easyjet, you have to have a back-up plan to get to Paris from the airport. In fact, there is only three options...

Option A) take the taxi (costs like 50€)

Option B) take the bus. Takes you to Opera in Paris and costs like 9,10€. Not a bad option, though I have never used the bus from CDG so I have nooo idea how long it takes and wether they even go at that late hour

Option C) take the Roissypol shuttle from terminal 2 to terminal 3 (free), then take the free bus shuttle from terminal 3 to Aulnay-sul-Bois, which is the first RER station still served by the trains after 23h. Then you can take the RER B from Aulnay and pay only 3,60€, so this is the cheapest option... but it requires a bit more concentration than the two above.

At the end, it's your choice.. But I'm happy to help as much as possible naturally!

Butterflies, those darn butterflies...

2010-02-28T11:57:00.000+01:00

No, it's not yet that spring in Paris. We don't have butterflies flying around us. But, I have many of them in my stomach. So much is happening during the following two months that I don't know from which to be more excited. I've got trips to Finland coming up, I have my move in with Tiina and the whole idea of the new apartment is just overwhelming. We have been talking with Tiina about all the stuff we're gonna do together now that we live together: dinners, plants in the balcony, movie nights, parties... the list is almost endless. And even though I don't really know her that well, every time we see each other we just hit it off very well. So I'm really looking for that. Then starting almost immediately I come back from Finland next week I have my first visitor of March-April coming over. And since then I don't really have but a few days in between either a new friend of my visit somewhere. So March and April will just fly by, that I'm sure of.

Nothing new on work front. Spoke with Hanna in great details about my desires to continue with SAI after my internship. We both agreed that I should take it up with the boss soon, but I feel I still have time. I've only experienced 6 months of this, gotta try it out for a few more months before I take it up with him. But I still like my job a lot. I now have three projects, from which one is completely new. So I have a lot of work ahead of me with that, the other two are sort of hibernating. Not much more to do with them for the moment.

Then to finish off for this week, I tell you a bit about my Saturday with Tiina. Originally we thought about going for a picnic, but we missed the sunny moments, so picnic was ruled out. But it was still warm and we wanted to do something so we agreed to go for a walk in some park. We chose the Pere Lachaise cemetery. It was beautiful out there, thou no leafs and no sun, and Tiina wore absolutely the wrong kind of shoes (who wears heels for pebble stone road?). But here are some pics from our short visit to Pere Lachaise.

Outside view of the cemetery

You could actually see Notre Dame from there. I just wanted to take a picture of Tiina with Notre Dame on the background. I was on a roll, managed to take several pictures of her that we both agreed did not look like she was a 40-year old gouger... lol

I know this photo freaks out my sister. She has a thing against graveyards in the first place and then when there are these types of broken-open graves... WE HAVE SKELETONS AT LOOSE!

Totally random idea from Tiina. Kinda funny though.

Finally found something I wanted to be photographed with.

Chopin R.I.P. The sad and funny thing is that when we were leaving the grave we turned towards each other and almost simultaneously asked each other "Who the heck was Chopin?"

The Roundabout of Pere Lachaise. But it was pretty amazing the views, graves in like three or four levels.

I finally found the grave of Jim Morrison. Though we both were a bit disappointed that his grave was pretty unnoticeable. We would not have found it without all the people standing in front of it. haha

This was close to the grave of Oscar Wilde. Looked pretty frightening as far as grave statues go. Tiina had no problems getting more familiar with it though.

My next post will not come next Sunday as I will still be in Finland. But I'll try to post something either already on Monday night after arrival to Paris (around midnight so might not happen) or then during Tuesday. Hang on to your hats before that!

Then again, they say spring is the time of change...

2010-02-21T16:46:00.000+01:00

So, a lot has happened since my last post. Well, not that lot but still. Let's deal with the most important issue first: I found a new apartment. Well, we did. We as in me and Tiina. We are "moving in together". We found this cool place down at Tolbiac. It's on the 9th floor, facing west (not south as I have told some of you). It's got a bedroom, large living room and a balcony. The only downside is that the bathroom is through the bedroom, but we'll figure something out. The rent is quite cheap (only 1000EUR) so it's quite a deal. Besides, I've never lived on the ninth floor so it's gonna be cool. We already got a glimpse on the view: spectacular! Moving date is 8th of March, so you gonna have to wait for pics from the inside a bit longer. We're gonna sign the contracts on Wednesday and get the keys. But here are some photos from the neighborhood. I went there today to take some pics for you guys, sadly it wasn't as sunny as it was yesterday. Hmmm, for some reason this new posting system doesn't look so well with the pics so I apologize that in advance. I'll return back to the old system, cause this is just messy... Anyhow, the last picture of the line is (supposed to be) our building. Our balcony is on the top and left. Found it? cool :)

Anyhow, then in addition to taking pics of the neighborhood and the house, I also found out that the chinese are still celebrating their New Year. There was this huge parade going on and lots of people, so naturally I took some photos and videos. Apparently this new system doesn't even allow posting of videos, so I'll try to figure out a way to post them afterwards, okay? :)

Other than that, I guess no news to tell. Work is going great, my boss hasn't yet discussed with me about my potential continuation with SAI after my internship, but I guess that should happen quite soon. I have two trips to Finland coming up: the first in two weeks to Helsinki for the weekend and Lahti on Monday, the next one in mid-March to Tampere for a few days. No news on my Bauma trip in April, might not happen.

Sun, we finally have some sun again

2010-02-14T16:48:00.005+01:00

We almost had a traditional Finnish laskiainen here in Paris. It has been snowing almost all week, I've been hating it. It's really cold, even thou it's only around zero all the time. But because it's been so cold outside, it's also been cold inside. One morning I woke up and the thermometer read 15 degrees.. in my room. FIFTEEN! Needless to say I was freezing. But I spoke about it with my soon-to-be-ex-landlady and after that it has been from 18 to 21, so it's been okay. At the moment it's apparently 19,9 so quite okay.

Anyhow, today the weather was amazing. When I woke up I saw that the sun was shining, so I just knew I wanted to go out. I therefore forgot my plans to go swimming (who wants to waste a beautiful day like this inside?) and prepared myself to go for a walk in the Buttes-Chaumont. Even thou the thermometer said 5 degrees outside, it was still rather cold. When the sun hit you, it was almost warm, but my ears are still sore and probably all red. But then again, the lake in park Buttes-Chaumont made the air a lot colder. But all in all, it was a really nice day, I added some photos at the end of this post. Enjoy.

Regarding my new apartment hunting, nothing affirmative yet. I visited one place on Saturday, it would be another flat sharing situation, but the owner seemed nice. The place is close to M:Villiers, so a lot better neighborhood than this one. I will know more about that on Wednesday. Then I have one place for me and Tiina, I will still have to get a confirmation from Tiina if she likes it or not. It would be outside of Paris, in la Defense, but it would be cheap (only 890e/month). The other downside is that it would only be for the spring, but. We'll see. At least it would be a place for me and Tiina, so I would know that the roommate is nice.

I also learned this week that I will be going to Finland again in March, for a training session with our potential future partner. I'm supposed to then tell the others how they work in that partner company. Quite a responsibility. But at least because of that, and some other issues, I was able to delegate the new projects to our other consultants. I'm far too busy with the business development of our own.
They were celebrating the Chinese New Year still in Belleville.

Views at Buttes-Chaumont

Housing issues

2010-02-10T00:55:00.002+01:00

Just a brief update, as I just found out I have less than two months to find a new place. Because of a really unfriendly and nosy soon to be ex-husband of my landlady, she decided it to be best that we two, me and I think the other tenant is Sebastien, find new places to live. So I've started my search all over again, on craigslist, on institut-finlandais. I will go visit the Swedish church, the American church.

But it should not be so bad, after all I have more than one month to find a place. And since Tiina is looking as well, we might try to find something together. That might be fun! I'll keep you posted so you'll know how it progresses. At least I've gotten used to this already, so I know the potential frauds and I can pick up the good ones from the crowd.

Spring is here

2010-02-07T15:06:00.003+01:00

Okay, I know it's not yet spring, but I bought myself a new spring jacket. and it has been sunny occasionally AND it hasn't snowed since Tuesday, though it has rained. But overall it's been warmer, much like April in Finland, so in my opinion it is spring!

Anyhow, obviously I went shopping this Saturday with Tiina, this time it was my turn to shop and her to act as a judge. Some really cool judgment was done. Even thou it feels liks a lot (160euro), considering what I got for that: leather jacket, jeans, shoes, shirt, haircut AND nice afternoon coffee with Tiina. It's not that much now is it? besides, my budget allowed me that, my budget for the remainder of the month is still over 10e/day so there's nothing to worry about. I live so cheaply most of my time that I can afford these occasional shopping days.

Then we also went for a dinner with Tiina. There were supposed to be her roommate and her boyfriend with us, but they decided to eat earlier, so it turned out to be just the two of us. We went to Marr@nniers in Marais, one of the restaurants I know best in Paris. The food was good, I had some smoked salmon (was delicious!) and Tiina had some italian pasta. She was really adventurous however, as neither of us completely knew what it was that she ordered... haha... but luckily it turned out to be good and she was barely able to finish it all, there was so much of it. Then after dinner we had drinks at this bar in Chatelet, the atmosphere in there was great, so I have to take back the words I said to MJ after our last visit. Hideout is the best place to go for a few, not a good place to go for the whole night though.

Workwise, it's been quite interesting. Still no progress on the computer front, even thou we might have one new iMac waiting for us at the office on Monday. We test the new system and new programs on one comp to decide what we want to use. Apparently you don't get any quantity discount on macs, so we might as well try first before buying. In addition we did some reorganization at the office, Hanna moved to the same office with Mr Frost. I had all these floorplans made out on how to put all 5 consultants in the same room, but the others didn't want to listen. We are now betting on how long Hanna is able to stay in the same room with the boss. Lucky for her, Mr Frost is in Finland next week from Monday to Wednesday so she'll have the whole office to herself.

I've been phoning Finland a lot this week, this year in fact. I think I've spent close to 50euro on skype credits just this year. I've been doing some heavy marketing so it's understandable. I finally managed to go through all our contacts in Helsinki-area. Now we just need to contact those companies to find out where they stand. And I'm starting on Eastern Finland now, so if any of you know any Finnish companies in Joensuu area, potentially interested in the French markets, let me know!

I'll finish this post with some photos from the past week.

We stumbled across this guy doing these huuuuuge bubbles at place palais roayl on Saturday. Nice.
This is what you get for 133euro.
Me and Tiina at Hideout.