On the road / tracks / clouds again: Four days, four countries

(Kaiserslautern, with the football stadium in the background)


(Mannheim, first place to change trains. Beautiful station with Hotspot)

I just loooove travelling. Especially when you feel like you have to many choices to spend your time with, a comfy chair, no annoying kids around and a socket to plug a powerbook in. Like now.
Sitting in an ICE, a really fast german train, on my way to Basel in Switzerland. So much more relaxing than the flight yesterday from Finland to Germany with Ryanair (crappy seats, no space, bad air, exorbitant prices)
The only thing that is missing in this train is an Internet connection. Funnily enough I just had access to a hotspot while the train was in the station, and while I was doing a survey that would have given me a voucher for some free minutes of access, the train rolled out of the station... Who made that survey? It took more than ten minutes, and I was only halfway through when my wlan-meter told me that there was no signal anymore. Shame!


Much easier to read a newspaper. Or a book. Last time I checked, the biggest avialable selection of magazines (printed periodical publications) was in Germany, or in german language. We cover everything! Funniest thing I found rummaging through the station's newsagent was "Wedding style". Who needs that? No one wants to marry anymore, and few and fewer people have enough money for fancy weddings. Is there a market for that? I don't think so.



Better reading: "Die Zeit", a very good german weekly newspaper in the biggest ever format: You need about a meter of arms width if you unfold it, about two secret agents should be able to hide behind one page. Plus a sniper team. And their operation central. Biiiig newspaper. But I should continue reading...or should I watch a movie...or listen to music... life is hard!

(Basel / Switzerland, the german railway station -there are two others. Looks almost like a little version of Helsinki's...)

Second day with the enemy - or, just Sweden

Uppsala is beautiful! Once you get beyond the ridiculous sound of the town, it is all very nice. Things on offer include the largest cathedral in Scandinavia, the place where they took apart a monk or so and of course the nations. The nations are like student unions and there are about thirteen of them, all offer various activities throughout the week.
After a very short pub-crawl because of St. Patricks day, with some singing and guitar playing, we went to the so called "meat market", a clubby thing in one of the nations famous for its last dance, which is a slow one. That dance is the last chance to grab someone for the night, hence the name.
Some random things that got my attention: Swedish beer is better and cheaper than finnish one, while liqour is more expensive (where is the Suomi viina?). Swedish man are far too metrosexual, giving way too much attention to their looks, that cliche seems true at least.

Sweden hooray!

Ah, what a trip! Yesterday we had a nice mexican evening at Domus - Fajitas, Tequilas, Nachos- Too much Tequila.
then we went to Svengi's; a karaoke Bar that is almost always empty during the week. There was one Elvis with a really good voice and a man-mountain with a good voice as well. We stayed and sang till the said "please don't give any more songs you want to sing, cause we will close".
As I had to prepare for a presentation, I got up at 9 after about four hours of sleep... : - ( Hungover, sick and hungry I went to University to prepare a response paper as well, but the copying machine jammed and I ran out of time - only one hour left to do a two hour job so I skipped it and ate instead (good decision).
The presentation went smooth, I only wondered if my voice really sounded so raspy and deep as I thought. After that, only 30 minutes were left to go back to Domus, pack stuff and ran back to get the bus to the airport. I missed the first one of course, with only 2 minutes left to run to the check in as my plane went at 16.15 and I arrived at the airport at 15.43. . . AHHH!
Luckily enough, there was still a guy on the counter, but officially it was closed already. He let me in though, and I boarded the plane with almost only Business people in proper black suits; me sporting a 3-day beard and a sick face.

But since I am here in Uppsala, everything went fine and dandy! The town is nice and small, swedish currency is a laugh (Kroners, ha!) things are cheaper than back in Helsinki. Meet Eli and we cooked, got me a guest card for the nations and then went to the Floksta, a ghetto only for us.
The ingenious guys, under swiss command of course, built a kicker (snowjump) at the bottom of a hill behind one of the houses in Floksta. It went over a trail about 1,5 meters wide (the famous "Floksta gap") and went over it the next two hours or so, some with Snowboards, others with Skis. Various sledges and bobs were also used Ah, everything got wet, but I am happy. Now back and getting dry and sleepy...

sick day spent in bed

What to do when you are sick since almost two weeks and fed up with it? Spent a day in bed. Fortunately, it is the period week in between the two parts of the summer semester (summer, ha!) and I don't have much to do but reading a really boring book about Peru, on which my progress is getting better at last. What is there to be done in a bed during the day?

1) Drink lots of tea
Not as easy as it sounds! Permanent supply of tea and honey are needed. I ran out of any other tea than black this morning, and on honey just some hours ago. Damn! Wait - there still is black tea flavoured with peach. Peach, wtf? Who wants to drink that?

2) Change position often
If you want to avoid gettin a sore back, fling around like an eel. Lots of pillows help.

3) Make sure ethernet cable and power chord are long enough, so that you can do 2).
Alternatively, make your schedule so you can have reload periods in which the laptop remains close to a socket.

4) Use up your food, avoiding going out
My menu today: Muesli with yoguhrt (thanks to Marie Sophie! Have a nice stay in Norway!) and bananas. Yum. Coming up: Bouillon with meatballs and potatoes (call me master-chef). Ran out of vegetables.

5) Spent endless hours searching for good music.
Ah, what a daunting task. "We are scientists" were close to be bought, the "Jets" were discarded after reading a hilarious review, and the "Good night and good luck" soundtrack is good, but not good enough. By the way: All you communication/media fellows out there, go watch that movie! So finally I got the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and they are not quite as yeah as I thought. Damn.

6) Remember that site you always wanted to tell the world about
Which is -drums- Helsinki looks. The nice people behind the site roam the streets and clubs and whatnots of Helsinki and take pictures of the good, the bad and the oh-my-gods. People get the chance to tell where that funky robe was bought and why the hell they are wearing different coluored pink-striped socks (don't ask).

Sledging video online finally

Got it hosted!
If your ever hear videoblogging became easy, let me know - this procedure was just a pain in the ass. I became member of about four different sites (archive.org, ourmedia.org and whatnot) just in order to host it. And getting the pic is not easy too. But what am I saying - Enjoy! (size about 6 MB)





click here to watch

car mechanics union assembly

car mechanics union assembly
Originally uploaded by Stürmifüdle.

And then there was Laskiainen, or "shrove tuesday": All the students meet up in Kaivopuisto and go sledging in their overalls. Music was played, and boy, Taru and me had a lot of mint-liquor fortified hot chocolate... Traditional food is pea soup, and some nice buns with cream and jam.

Oh, and the sledging...it's crazy! There is one hill for roughly 1000 students, and basically no one cares to look if they walk up. The alcohol might play it's part here - but surprisingly very few people are injured.

And there's not just the ordinary sledge, most of the things are plastic things to sit on, waste bags these "put em under your ass and hold with one hand " things. The big players have special vehicles: Sofas with skis, welded-metal frames with car chairs, steering and brakes; boats, Poeang-chairs with skis and whatever goes down a hill.
Hanna Lena had a friend with some sort of styrofoam-mat sleigh which proved to be one of the fastest things around, requiring constant screaming ("out of the way! Attention!"). For funsis, Hanna Lena took a video which I edited a bit. Get it here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/14444210/Laskiainen06.mp4.html
- scroll down and click on the "free download" thing on the right - it looks a bit overstuffed-
(after I tried for about an hour to get a decent v-log entry... ahahfrhgh)

he gets the men and the women alike! - Foto update

he gets the men and the women alike!
Originally uploaded by Stürmifüdle.

see, that's Jussi; man with the proper camera. All the pictures I take when it's dark make use of a blinding light, which in return give the people in the pictures very unfriendly faces.

More importantly: If you want to see all my pictures from now on, send me a mail. I decided to make all my pictures from now on only visible to "friends" as flickr calls them, which means you have to get an invitation from me. I can't get the permission from all the nice people I take pictures of, and I don't know if they all would agree to appear on the Internet without knowing - I know some don't. So if you want to see it all, mail me!

Period party!

P3041051
Originally uploaded by jussip.

No, not what you think! Studying in Helsinki is now divided in two "studying periods" per semester, with a one week break in between. Reason to party! The nice young man in the picture is Olavi Uusivirta, playing nice finnish rock. We froze our asses of outside as we didn't have tickets and arrived quite late, and then we got in the wrong queue. But Taru saved us - thanks Taru! Check the other Pics by Jussi, crazy arafat-scarf wearing Jussi that is.