Thursday 29 December 2011

About travelling


 I'm sitting on a train, on my way to Cardiff.

People's reactions have been rather interesting when I've told them that I was about to go to Cardiff.

Example conversation 1:

“So are you going home tomorrow?”
“No, I'm going to Cardiff.”
“CARDIFF? Do you have a friend there?”
“No, I'm going alone. Just visiting Cardiff.”
(seemingly unsurely of whether it was a joke or not:) “...Fair enough.”

Example conversation 2:

“I'm going to Cardiff.”
“Why?!”
“Well, I've never been to Wales.”
“Well most people live quite happily without ever being to Wales.”

So in this blog post I'm going to talk about travelling. And how it's good for you.

Cardiff.


I ended up booking the tickets to Cardiff after watching Torchwood, Doctor Who and Gavin & Stacey. I thought that going to Wales was an excellent idea. My flatmate pointed out that I could go to Wales. Indeed, I had never been to Wales and I had just handed in my dissertation and I technically had a holiday.

So I did some research of how to get there. Unfortunately the Megabus website had once again collapsed (resembling the way their buses normally break down when you're on them), and Ryanair had stopped flying from Aberdeen to Dublin, so I couldn't fly to Ireland and get a ferry across to Wales. Thus, I booked train tickets through 4 different train companies, and here I am. - I even managed to change a train in Birmingham, although my train was late. It was very exciting: I run around the station panicking that I would miss my connection and would need to spend a night in a McDonald's, until I realised that my connecting train would leave from the same platform the previous train arrived at.

It didn't even occur to me to ask someone to come with me. I wouldn't mind company, I really wouldn't (unless, of course, it was someone very annoying with very different ideas of what travelling is about), but during the holidays most people have plans and the rest probably wouldn't fancy a spontaneous trip to Cardiff.

Last year, I did manage to convince a friend to go travelling with me. It took her a few days to decide on, whether she wanted to come or not. We ended up going to Spain, which was never on the list of places I wanted to visit. But since I had never been to Spain, I figured why not, I should give the place a chance.

Spanish palm trees.

Travelling alone is alright, and it has many benefits: you get to decide what you want to do, and when and how you want to do it. You don't have to visit all the boring tourist attractions or walk around all the boutiques if you don't feel like it. You don't have to carry anyone else's stuff, let them take pictures of you or listen to them complain about something you don't care about. The down sides are that you will have no one to talk about the trip with later and the only person who knows the inside jokes concerning this trip is you, and you will become even weirder.

Why should you go and see places then? Well it's true that all the same chains are everywhere. As I learned watching Torchwood and Gavin & Stacey, Cardiff will have McDonald's, Boots and Tiger Tiger just the same as Aberdeen. But the town is different! I will probably get lost again! But I'm prepared – I draw myself a map.

My map.

When I went to Anchorage I hadn't done that, but fortunately they gave me a map at the hostel so that I could pay, as I didn't have enough cash either. I then managed to find a cash machine, which inconveniently was a drive-in ATM with a sprinkler next to it. It took some planning to choose the right moment to approach it without getting wet in the process. Turned out the machine was out of notes. But I didn't get wet and I had a map.

Drive-in ATM with a  sprinkler challenge.

What I'm trying to say is, that by leaving home once in a while, you will see and experience things that you otherwise wouldn't. And after your adventure you will get to come back home with many more stories to tell and remember. Travelling is never complete waste of time. Even bad trips having something positive about them. If nothing else, they made you more patient and to appreciate all that you have at home.

Let's see how this Wales trip goes.

Tuesday 29 November 2011

Happy morning, world!

I am up because I have completely messed up my sleeping rhythms, and it's actually an evening to me.

But being up now, I can see everyone else get up. And it makes me wonder why everyone is always so grumpy in the morning. Are people not meant to be happy because it's a new day and anything could happen? They get to have a cup of tea or coffee or a glass of juice and eat their favourite breakfast. Today they could meet the most interesting person or the most exciting opportunities could come up. For sure something funny will happen and there will always be something to be happy about.

But people don't seem to understand this. Is it because they have run out of milk for their tea, coffee or cereal? Or because they didn't get to sleep enough last night? Or because it's winter and the sun didn't rise before they had to get up? Or because they are so tired of getting up everyday to do the same things? They get up every day and go to school or work, getting stuck in the traffic, coming home, watching TV, going to bed and doing the same thing again tomorrow?

Okay, those who know me know that I am the worst person at getting up, or actually waking up in general. And I will not speak after I've just woken up. My mornings are quiet. But I'm happy. I've woken up. I can do things. I know there was a dead insect floating in my tea cup this morning. But the whole world is out there and there are things to see.


I hope you're not too tired this morning and that you would be happily eating your breakfast. I hope you'd be able to enjoy these last days of November before it's December. These are the last days of this year! The trees are getting bolder, and people are putting Christmas lights up. And it's dark and cold which is exactly why we need friends, candles, hot water bottles and woolly things. I hope you all have enough of those.

Have a happy day!

Thursday 17 November 2011

Less than a month left

Hello people!

As you can see, I changed my blog background, isn't it magical? Seriously, let me know if it's too bright, too dark or in some other way irritating.

Okay, and to the topic, I have less than a month left. After that I can get my life back, move into a closet and feel like a Harry Potter. But before that I have to write 10,000 words about how amazing Greenland is. I hate writing posts relating to my dissertation, but it is the biggest thing I've have to do in my life so far. If I will ever end up having a baby, I would probably blog about that too. But because a dissertation is a lot less exciting than a baby, I will try and not blog too much about it. But today it felt important to tell you that I have less than a month to go before the deadline because it is due 16th December. I wish I had more time and more motivation. I look forward to having it handed in. I hope I will get it handed in.

And yes, now when I have updated you with all that, never ever ask me how it is going. I will tell you if I feel like talking about it. But you will be happy to hear that, (unfortunately to me, for now) there are many more delightful topics to talk about. For instance, some of my recent favourite topics are: burlesque, candy floss, hot water bottles, pokémons, transgenderism, chocolate, lingerie, my belated surprise birthday party that you will organise, cats, awesome food, Doctor Who, Finland's presidential election, vodka, ironing, vitamins I should take, pretty people, your wedding, and the day when it's not normal for me to be awake at 3:30 in the morning. What are yours?



Happy second half of November to you, enjoy hot chocolate or large cups of tea and good luck with whatever you're struggling in your life right now!

Friday 11 November 2011

Sailor's wife


Good evening bunnies,     (Yes, I did just call you a bunny – never done that before – now let's move on)

I was poked about an hour ago for not having written a new blog post. Well the thing is, that I would have written one earlier but I didn't feel that I had anything especially interesting to write about. Today I had a quite a normal, boring day.

I got woken up by a strange Irish man who asked whether I had a bit too much to drink last night. Then I got up and walked to a computer to write about some rocks. I tried to microwave myself a cup of tea but forgot it in the microwave until my flatmate washed the cup and made me some new tea. Then I got hungry and went to look for some left-over pizza but there wasn't any. It made me sad so I ate some chocolate. In the evening I did some cleaning around the house but accidentally broke a glass. This made me even more sad, so I decided to have some cheesy pasta for tea. Unfortunately when the crucial point of adding some milk to make the cheesiness into a sauce came, I discovered that we were out of milk. So I ran to the corner shop in my pyjamas and bought some. I also bought some Jaffa cakes because they are meant to make any occasion happier. Then I watched the first episode of the documentary series My Transsexual Summer  until my flatmate came home and we played Scrabble. The end.

Well, not really the end, because now I'm writing this. And the reason I'm writing this is, that I would love to write more blog posts about things that interest you! What would you want me to write about or discuss? Tell me and there are very good chances that I will write about that.

When I started this blog Mandi asked if I could write about music and books that I like. Unfortunately recently, I haven't found the time to read any novels and I've just been listening to really random songs that I've for some reason added as my favourite on Youtube. In the course of that I've found out that my flatmate really dislikes Aqua's Barbie Girl. But that's not the song I've listening to right now.



This is song is called Merimiehen vaimo, it's from a Finnish band PMMP and it tells about a wife of a sailor. She never got a chance to get a good education so she just had a lot of children instead, and stayed at home with them. She became a little bit bitter in the end, and was always very sad when it was the time for her husband to leave again. She always took the children to wave him away, until the children grew up, moved elsewhere and never visited her anymore. And of course one day the ship came back without her husband. But this song is about how she met her sailor in a ball and they danced together when they were still young and everything was still ahead of them. I like this song.

So yes, if you didn't like this post and have anything in your mind that you would like to read instead, or if you liked this and have anything inspiring to say about how I could make you enjoy reading this blog even more, let me know! Otherwise, I might never end up writing about those things.

Friday 4 November 2011

Anti-stress strategy


 Hello people!

Last week I wrote about my coffee break while I was stressing about my dissertation. Well, I've since then come to a conclusion that stressing is bad and unhelpful. My stress didn't make the books that I needed miraculously appear on the shelves in the library nor did the maths I had to do get any easier. Therefore, this week I'm going to tell you about my new strategy: not stressing.

This week has been great. I went to a few Halloween parties at the weekend and then heard on Tuesday that some Christians despise Halloween. I ended up creating a personal theological dilemma because of this, and threw my Christmas into a bin. I then had a wonderful midnight conversation with a friend and picked the Christmas back up again. I now know approximately what I'm going to do this Christmas and it won't be stressful at all. (Well, apart from the Christmas shopping.)

Because my dissertation was not getting anywhere, thanks to the lack of books I needed and the diagram that I was convinced was wrong, I decided to have a break from it and write an essay for another course. My essay topic was interesting and it was all good, except that actually writing it sounded very tiring.

But then because the university' rector elections coming up, someone called Matt Bell put posters up about getting rid of the unisex toilets in the library.



This lead me to do a lot of reading about toilets and how they should or could be separated. And I ended up joining the “Unisex Toilet Appreciation Group” on Facebook. But someone posted a Youtube link there. And I watched the video. And then I watched another video that Youtube recommended me. And this went on for quite a while and in the end I found myself watching all the videos that someone had posted there (they didn't have anything to do with toilets) and realised that I was developing a really unhealthy crush on someone I had never met and will never meet. But hey, I was happy! And definitely not stressed.

And I'm still happy, and now I'm actually more willing to write my essay and dissertation because I'm not stressed about it. I guess sometimes you just have to have a break from your work and do something really stupid that and potentially embarrassing.

I would also like to tell you that blog writing helps, because I am writing. And the more I write, the more used to I get to write and it will therefore be easier to write thousands of words.

Both of my flatmates are participating in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) contest, which I find a little bit depressing because they are writing thousands of words each day and I can't write my assignments that fast. But writing is good. Keep writing. You may start by writing me a comment.

Friday 28 October 2011

I'm not dead yet.


I've just spent an hour sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee, trying to stay awake. I was really quite tired and didn't want to move. So I thought about things and life and theories. 
It was nice, and for once I felt that everything made sense. I wondered whether anyone else had thought about the things I was thinking of ever before. Because someone should write them down and publish a book or a study about them so that everyone could have a chance to understand life and feel calm about it. 
I felt that if someone had asked me anything under the universe I would have known the answer. But no one asked. And now the moment has passed.

I'm in a cafe where I came to seek inspiration to write this stupid thing called dissertation which is making me really unhappy. Apparently it's making everyone really unhappy. It doesn't make sense why so many people keep wanting to write them. Perhaps it's one of these things where you have to suffer to know what happiness really is about. At the moment I feel that it's about not having a dissertation to write. But I could be wrong. I'll let you know in 2012.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

Fish fingers with rice

Let me tell you a story. Yesterday, my very foolish flatmate asked if I could cook for us. I didn't have time to go to a supermarket to buy any food so I told her that I could do it if she would be happy to eat whatever I had in the cupboard.

The truth is that I can't really cook. I'm very happy to feed myself though and I'll just cook things that I would like to eat. Lately I've been eating a lot of pasta with cheese in green curry sauce. According to some people it's weird.


Pasta with cheese in green curry sauce.


When I got home I looked into the cupboard to see what I had. There was cheesy pasta, crushed tomatoes, canned meatballs, red pesto, chow mein stir fry sauce, jelly, a pot noodle, red kidney beans, black eyed beans and chick peas. I had no idea what to do with all the beans and peas, but I figured that my foolish flatmate could eat them.

I ended up cooking some mince from the freezer. I learned that you should really defrost it properly before trying to fry it. But in the end it was all okay and I added some crushed tomatoes and black eyed beans with it. I learned that although it's apparently easy to cook things that come in cans, it's really not easy to open the cans. And then I just stirred half a jar of pesto in with the mince and the beans and let it boil a bit. And voilà it was ready to be served with the rice that was ready before I had even started the cooking because it was very difficult to fry the mince that very closely resembled an ice cube.

My flatmate did eat the food. But she said that she would have normally used pesto with pasta and chicken. I thought it went perfectly with mince and rice.

Do you think we're just too used to associating certain foods and tastes together? To give an another example, I used to cook fish fingers with pasta on Tuesdays. This mainly happened because the person who I was feeding them didn't want me to boil rice, that I would normally eat them with, because she didn't trust my rice boiling skills. She protested eating fish fingers with pasta for a while too, because according to her they should always be eaten with chips. In my opinion eating  fatty fish fingers with fatty chips would have been too much. But in the end she got used to eating them with pasta.

So my point is, why do people do this? Why do we like ready meals so much? Where do these set structures of what is meant to go together come from?

Another example involving fish fingers is the first episode of the 5th series of the new Doctor Who serials where the eleventh Doctor Who is hungry after his regeneration and asks 7-year-old Amy Pond to cook him various different things. In the end he asked if he could have some fish fingers with custard.


The Doctor happily eating fish fingers with custard.

Amy Pond found this very strange. And the viewers were meant to find it strange too. But why? Why are we so used to eating what we think is right to eat? There are people who go on holidays to foreign countries and take food from home with them just because you can't buy it in their destination. Why are we so afraid of trying new things? In some cultures insects are the greatest delicacy. I'm not telling you to eat insects, although they are full of protein and potentially quite good for you. In our culture they are not something that we would think to eat. But they do sell a lot of things in supermarkets that we are allowed to mix and match if we're brave enough.

Oh, and yes, I do find Doctor Who as a very educative program. Here's the bit with the fish fingers and custard!


Now I'm off to possibly play some golf. Have a tasty evening!

Thursday 8 September 2011

About unexpected situations!

Hello my dear readers,


I'm sorry that I left you without these very informative and enlightening blog posts for this long. But I hadn't forgotten you, I was just busy getting myself into situations I could write about. This time I will write about what to do when you find yourself in an unexpected and a tricky situation.


Heidelberg, Germany Easter 2010.



I will only write about practical situations where you've been physically in a difficult place. All of that emotional and social stuff that involves communicating with human beings and maintaining relationships with them, will need to wait.



Weekend in Comrie.



Okay, let's begin.


I want to write about this, because things keep happening to me. Usually when I go outside, something happens. I won't write about every possible situation in this post because it would turn into a book. And because it's very late and my brain is on its sleeping-mode already, I will only give a few scenarios that I've needed to deal with.


Gaiberg, Germany 2010.


I will list the situations first so that you may imagine the inconvenience of the situation.




The recent ones:


a) You parked your car at a parking garage which closed while you were out. The car can be accessed again at 12 noon the next day. Unfortunately you're flight departs at 11am, 200 kilometres away from the parking garage.

b) You're driving up a ridiculously steep hill and because you didn't change the gear to a smaller one on time, you stall.


Other memorable situations:


c) You thought you were going to fly but it didn't happen. This could be caused by many reasons. Just to mention a few examples, these are some of the reasons why I have been stranded:

i.    A bird flew into the motor of the plane.
ii.   You miss your flight because you were queueing to the wrong check-in desk.
iii.  It apparently snowed in Amsterdam and they closed the airport for days.
iv.  An Icelandic volcano erupted and there was an ash cloud floating in the air.
v.   The pilot gets ill.

d) You've visited a toilet in a wedding party but for some reason the door doesn't open and you find yourself trapped.

e) You're in a foreign city and you need to get from the train station to a bus station which is 10 minutes away. You're bus is due to leave in 25 minutes. The city has three bus stations and you're not quite sure what the one you need is called. You don't have a map.



Tiia in Heidelberg 2010.



Can you imagine the hopelessness of these situations? Well, I assume that because you're reading this you're my friend (or a stalker), and because I choose my friends very carefully and only accept creative and strange individuals who are very good at getting themselves into unbelievable situations or the unexpected situations just happen to them (and my stalkers must have some sort of urge to make their life less simple) that you have been in a similarly tricky situation before.

The advisable thing to do is to try and avoid these situations before hand. There is no reason to look for these situations. They certainly do make your life interesting but if you're anything like me, they will happen without actively looking for them. 



My car key photographed on a forest adventure trip in Finland.


If you occasionally would like your nerves to relax, make sure what time the car park or a shopping centre or any building that you visit closes. Note that the time that the car park closes can be different from the building it is associated with (this is what caused the situation a!).

When travelling, always make sure you've planned all parts of the journey and made sure that you have enough time to make it to your connection.

If you're flying, consider how late the airline you're using usually is and make sure there is enough time to get your next ticket and move your luggage to the next plane. Avoid flights that require a change of an airport. Always make sure you know exactly where you're flying! Airports are labelled with the big city they are near of but they are never in centre of towns and often they are somewhere far in the middle of nowhere. If you've booked a flight that comes with changes, you have less to worry about because your airline has the responsibility to take care of you, but it's good to check what the changes look like anyway.

If you're travelling by land, think about how late your transport is likely to be. Trains are often a little bit late. Buses are likely to break down, especially certain local buses and cheap travel buses. Traffic jams can occur. Make sure you've thought about how to travel all the legs of your journey. Remember that to check the timetables. For instance, there are places that do not have public transport on Sundays.

If you're travelling on a ferry, make sure that you know where you need to be, when you need to be there and what you need with you. It's more straight forward than flying but they will want you on it early and will require certain travel documents.



The Netherlands.



I would also warmly recommend you to always have a plan B. It's possible that your original plan will go wrong because plans just sometimes tend to do that. Then you will be grateful that you did think about alternative options and you don't need to panic so much when things do go wrong. And also you will be happier and more confident when they are going according to the plan, because you don't have to worry about what to do if it doesn't work.

And when things do go wrong, don't panic. Stop and think. What the current situations is and what you can do to get out of it? Don't worry about how you ended up in the situation and most importantly, don't start blaming anyone. The last thing you need is a fight when the situation is awkward already.



Tuomas in Tornio.


Okay, so how did I survive in the example situations?
a) You parked your car at a parking garage which closed while you were out. The car can be accessed again at 12 noon the next day. Unfortunately you're flight departs at 11am, 200 kilometres away from the parking garage.

I was with four of my friends visiting Helsinki. 

A few panicked. One started to calm them down by telling them what we needed to do if we couldn't access the car. How I would need to take a train back to my mum's place to make it to my flight and how some of us needed to stay behind and get the car out the next day. One of us phoned her brother who studies in Helsinki and was taking a care of a few things at his term time flat that day. He told her sister that she was too late because he's already at home, and because he was with his girlfriend he didn't really give much thought to the situation that his sister was in.

The guy at the restaurant that we had been eating in had said to us that we couldn't get the car out. He had apparently locked his car in there before and told that they refused to let it out of there when he had phoned them.

I wanted to find this phone number and phone them. There were, however, no signs anywhere telling me the phone number. One of my friends then told me a number that I could phone and ask for the number I needed. I phoned there but wasn't fully convinced about their professional abilities because the lady that answered the phone was at one point trying to find the number to the parking garage's security people on Wikipedia. In the end, she managed to find the number though and I got to speak to the guy who had just locked the car park. He told me that he had already gone home but he promised to come back after I explained our especially difficult situation because we didn't actually live in Helsinki and I was meant to be out of the country by the time the parking garage would open again.
A few of my friends then figured that we should complain to him when he comes how there aren't any signs outside saying that the car park will close before the shopping centre will. They were soon pointed out though that it wasn't the man's fault and that he was actually exceptionally kind to come and save us in his freetime.

Lesson of the story: Be nice to people and they will help you. If that doesn't work, use the plan B.



On the way to Tampere-Pirkkala Airport.


b) You're driving up a ridiculously steep hill and because you didn't change the gear to a smaller one on time, you stall.

Scotland has too many hills. And silly roads where people drive way too fast and squish poor animals. Anyway, so I was driving along one of these silly roads and didn't have quite enough speed and the gear I had on was too big for the hill that I was up against. So I stalled.

I wanted to panic because it's not ideal to stop on a road where people drive 60 miles per hour. Nor slide down that hill. No no, it was bad. But I stopped. And breathed. And to everyone's surprise did a successful hill start and drove up the hill.

Lesson of the story: When driving, stay calm. When something goes wrong, don't worry and do what you need to do. (And although not a part of this particular story, passengers please do not scream or give any unnecessary advice.)



Scotland 2012.


c) You thought you were going to fly but it didn't happen. This could be caused by many reasons. Just to mention a few examples, these are some of the reasons why I have been stranded:

i.    A bird flew into the motor of the plane.
ii.   You miss your flight because you were queueing to the wrong check-in desk.
iii.  It apparently snowed in Amsterdam and they closed the airport for days.
iv.  An Icelandic volcano erupted and there was an ash cloud floating in the air.
v.   The pilot gets ill.

Ah flying. If there isn't a strike or delays or cancellations, it's really quite lively. But if you fly a lot you will experience strikes, delays, cancellations and lost luggage. It's part of the experience.

i. I had been spending my winter holiday in Oulu when my flight got cancelled because of a bird that flew into the motor of the plane on it's way to the airport. I was then put on an extra flight that flew around midnight, so it was alright. And instead of being picked up straight from the Helsinki airport, I took a taxi to my dad's place and bused home the next day and ended up being late from school. Going to school was a bad move because I walked into my Swedish class and found out that we had a vocabulary test that day. Of course I got it all wrong.

Lesson of the story: Cancelled flights are nothing to worry about because you will be put on another one. Unexpected Swedish vocabulary tests are a serious problem.



Made it to school! This photo is actually from a Christmassy chemistry class but it'll do. Jonna, Anna and I.



ii. Queueing to wrong checking desks is something very idiotic to do. Some airlines are trying to confuse you by sprinkling several check-in desks all around the airport. It's a stupidity test and you have to find the right one. On time. Mine closed a minute after I found it but there was another lost person in front of me and he spent the last minute that there was left asking stupid questions. There was nothing I could do. I didn't get on the plane. I cried. I got the last of my monies out of my bank account and bought a new ticket. I slept at the airport because I had no money left. There were some construction workers jackhammering the floor next to the very uncomfortable bench that I was trying to sleep on.
It wasn't that bad really, there are lots of people sleeping at airports. They have interesting stories to tell. You learn a lot by socialising with people who are travelling as well.

Lesson of the story: Don't miss your flight. If you do, or if your flight leaves really early or arrives really late it's sometimes the best option to sleep at the airport.



Just an expected ending to a Scottish holiday really.


iii. I was trying to go home one Christmas and it snowed. When it snows in places that don't consider themselves 'north' they close down. My flight was cancelled. I spent the day in the new ticket queue with all the other people that were trying to go home for Christmas. And went back to the airport the next day. And my new flight was cancelled as well. So I did it again. Get the picture?

Those days were pretty frustrating and I didn't really want to spend my Christmas in my flat alone eating a pot noodle. A few of my friends then told me that I would be welcome to go down to their place for Christmas. I spent my evenings looking at the tickets to go down and was ready to book them if my third flight wouldn't get me to Finland.

That third flight however took off. And I even made it to my connection and didn't have to spend Christmas in Amsterdam.

Lesson of the story: Flying around Christmas time via middle Europe is a bad idea. If you need to fly around that time, do it via northern places.



Christmas in Finland.



iv. When volcanos explode or other such natural happenings occur there is nothing you can do. I was happily spending time in the southern Germany when a happy little Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajökull started to erupt. When I found out about this I was with my friend who had been aupairing in Germany for half a year and had a lot of luggage to move back to Finland. We were staying in a lovely hostel and kept booking more nights to stay there. The owner of the place pitied us and served us wine on the house and turned the radio louder when the song I believe I can fly came on. 
We were trying to follow the media to find out what was going on with the volcano. We came to a conclusion that we might need to stay in Germany for quite a long time before we could fly again. I had horrible assignments due soon so I really needed to get back to Scotland and my friend was starting work very soon in Finland. We then proceeded to buy a lot of train and ferry tickets. This was, however, more difficult than it could have been because we both had problems with our bank accounts. I managed to lend money to my friend and I was helped by a friend who was also stranded elsewhere who purchased me a ferry ticket.

My friend and I then separated and started our long and complicated train journeys to different directions. And all I needed to do was to find my other friend who had my ferry ticket somewhere in Belgium. This was suitably made more difficult by the fact that both of our phones were about to die. Fortunately I spotted her walking on the side of a motorway near the harbour. She even thanked me for my company on the ferry ride although it took 27 hours and I slept 25 of them.

Lesson of the story: Sometimes travelling by land is more reliable than flying. Never trust volcanoes.




Catching one more train to get to a harbour.


v. My flight got cancelled because the pilot got ill. I was then put on a new flight which left the next day. This was a problem because it meant that I missed my train up from Manchester and needed a new plan to get home. I phoned my flatmate who was lovely and made up a new plan for me to get home.
The airline paid for a hotel room and for the bus transport to and from there. This was one of my favourite experiences! I met so many interesting people who were on the same flight with me and came to the hotel. I don't normally even stay in hotels so I had to take everything out of the experience. I drank some coke, had a bath, walked around in the dressing gown and slippers, spent a suitable amount of time deciding which of the two beds I wanted to sleep in, looked out of the window, phoned my friend to tell her what happened and took photographs. Then I slept for the few hours that I had time to and went to the breakfast with my new temporary friends and I tasted all the good looking hotel breakfast foods and drank a lot of coffee.

Lesson of the story: It's not the end of the world, when the original plan goes wrong. Enjoy the adventure.


My room in Hilton Helsinki.


d) You've visited a toilet in a wedding party but for some reason the door doesn't open and you find yourself trapped.

 I was at a family wedding party with my cousin. We were little so we went to the toilet together. We didn't lock it but somehow it locked itself and we didn't know how to open it. We didn't manage to unlock it. We could see our parents out of the window and were wondering if they would notice us if we dropped our cardigans down. We did, however, think that it wasn't the most brilliant idea and decided to scream for help. Someone heard us and came to tell us how to unlock the door and after a while of trying we managed it and got out.

Lesson of the story: You never know when you get locked somewhere where you didn't want to be locked in. There are only two things you can do: to come up with a way to unlock it or to scream for help.



This window is actually from Bremen.


e) You're in a foreign city and you need to get from the train station to a bus station which is 10 minutes away. You're bus is due to leave in 25 minutes. The city has three bus stations and you're not quite sure what the one you need is called. You don't have a map.

My original plan went wrong and I found myself in a foreign city and I needed to get my self from the train station to a bus station. And I can tell you that having absolutely no idea of what the place you're in looks like and where things are is not an ideal situation. Always have a map with you. I did try to get a map but the lady in front of me got the last map at the train station. I tried asking people where I needed to go but soon found out that the city had three bus stations and everyone seemed to be pointing me to the direction of a different one. Always know the name of the station you want to go to! 

I was worried if I would walk 10 minutes to the wrong direction I would suddenly find myself 20 minutes away from the station and end up missing my bus which was the last one that day.

I phoned a friend who happened to be at a computer and found me out the route. I tried to follow it but it was difficult because I wasn't quite sure what the instructions would look like on the map and how long I needed to walk down each street. With the help of the instructions and the local people I did find the station on time though!

Lesson of the story: Know where you are and where you need to go. Ask for help when you needed. If you need to, get a taxi.



Ended up in Amsterdam!


So to summarise, when things happen, stay calm and think of what you need to do to solve the situation. Be creative and don't panic. Ask for help when you need it!

You never know what goes wrong. I have friends who often find themselves in strange situations: locked out, abroad without a passport, transporting more luggage than they can manage on their own and so on. I would tell you what they did, but it's their story to tell. And this blog post is already more than long enough for now.

Thank you for reading!

Wednesday 24 August 2011

How to pack?

Good evening*.


*Or which ever time of the day it is when you're reading this. For me it's an evening, although that's not what the clock says.

I'm contemplating packing. This is a very essential part of my strategy for packing. It's unintentional, and I definitely don't recommend packing around midnight, but this is how it happens to me every time, and I've learned to accept it. I'm just unable to pack too early (20 minutes before I actually need to rush out of the door is the point when I usually start feeling like it might be the time to actually do it), so I decided to take this time and use it to write to you about packing and how to do it wisely.


My friend Tiia packing.



1. Before you go anywhere you need to think about where you're going. Well duh, that's quite an obvious thing really. But then you should apply this and think what you actually need with you, and leave all the unnecessary things that you normally would use at home. For instance, if you're going to stay with grown-up guests or in a hotel there's no point filling half of your backpack with a towel because you will be provided one when you get there. And you definitely don't need things like your hair-straightener if you're going camping and won't even have electricity.


I'm starting my journey to Finland tomorrow (in my opinion and experience, it's not proper travelling if you arrive to your final destination too soon). I'm going to visit my friends and family for approximately a weekend. Therefore this blog post will only tell you how to pack for short visits. I will write about packing for longer visits and proper touristy trips later.


Tampere, Finland.



2. Once you know where you're going (it of course gets trickier if you don't know where you're going but I will discuss that problem in my next packing post as well) you need to think about what you're going to do there. I would recommend writing these things down so you can see the whole picture. But if you don't feel like using it, you just have to trust your brain to keep all of it in order. And if you forget something, you can only blame your brain.


The special things that I'm going to be doing are:

a) Seeing my cat.
b) Getting my hair cut.
c) Going to my brother's army vow.
d) Going to my friend's leaving party.
e) Visiting a friend who moved to a new flat in Helsinki.


Remus the Cat.



3. Once you have these things down it's easy to think them through and gather things that you need in these occasions.


For the happening (a) I need myself because my cat likes me. 

For the happening (b) I need my hair messy and too long. 

For the happening (c) I probably need something slightly sensible, although I have no idea what is going to happen there. According to my mum it will involve a lot of standing on a cold and windy motordrome looking at things happen. She told me that I should wear lots of clothes because she heard that last January some mothers nearly froze to death because they weren't wearing enough clothes. Well, it was -20 in January and according to the weather forecast it will be 40 degrees warmer this time, so I wouldn't really worry about freezing and can leave my fur coat at home. And after standing on the motordrome I will go and dine with the soldiers and my brother's girlfriend. So sensible clothes might be the way forward although I do love my giraffe t-shirt.

For the happening (d) I need my ridiculous high heels because this is a chance to wear them if we end up going out. And because she hosts a leaving party because she's moving to UK, and I'm flying from the UK to go to her party, which is a little bit silly, I must keep up the ridiculousness level.

For the happening (e) I probably would need a boat, because there seems to be a lot of water on the roads in Helsinki every time I try to approach it with a car. The other day, someone was swimming on the road there. But I am not likely to have space for a boat in my backpack so I just have to live without it and hope for the best. My friend also told me that I'm allowed to come and visit if I bring something really expensive as a house-warming gift. Therefore I will pack an empty Ben&Jerry's ice cream tub. She collects them and it's only good if it's already empty because the ice cream would just melt and it would be messy.


Turku.


4. Once you have all of your special bits and pieces gathered you can pretty much see how big a bag you require. The size of the bag will also depend on how you're travelling and what you're allowed to take with you.

I'm flying with Ryanair with only hand-luggage. This means that I am only allowed to have myself and one bag. I am however allowed to wear a lot of clothes and to have a jacket on and fill my pockets. This is why so many people look like they are pregnant when they are flying with cheap airlines. This time I'm not going to do that, but I'm going to wear my woolly winter coat "just in case it's cold in Finland". If I needed to take a lamp-shade with me, I would have to wear it as a hat.

Everything that I am not wearing will need to go into my backpack. I am not allowed to have a handbag when I walk onto the plane but no one will stop me if I walk out with one. My backpack can therefore be as full as it can as long as there is still space for my handbag to fit in it for the 5 minutes that it takes to walk onto the plane. It's also probably a good idea to pack an empty carrier bag somewhere near the top of your backpack in case you get a slightly too warm on the plane wearing all of your extra layers and want to take them off.

So how am I going to pack the silly things I need to take with me: the high heels and the empty ice cream tub? 

The high heels take a lot of space so there is no point trying to fit them anywhere in my luggage. There is also no point trying to run across the airport wearing them. Thus, I will carry them in my handbag (a carrier bag works too if your handbag isn't big enough) until I need to fit everything in my backpack at the gate. Then I will wear them until I'm through the passport check on the other side. Not so that my mum and grandma would faint, but because it's not a long walk and doesn't involve any running.

The ice cream tub can go in the backpack once it's filled with clothes that will support it's structure so that it will keep it's beautiful rounded shape. I will just have to remember to remove the clothes before I gift-wrap it or my friend might be a little bit surprised why I am giving her my old odd socks in an ice cream tub.

Gilmore Girls.


5. Add all of the other required things, excluding the ones you decided where unnecessary at the point 1.

I warmly recommend taking:

a) Underwear (believe me, it's embarrassing if you forget them)

b) A clean top for each day (if it's a short stay without a possibility of doing laundry or if you're not going on a shopping holiday)

c) Toothbrush

d) Small toilet bag including your medication

e) Travel documents (make sure you have your passport when you're OUTSIDE. You don't want to get to the airport/another passport check point and realise that you did check that you had it before you left but then put it down on your desk at home.)

f) Phone and camera 


And that's all you need unless you have some souvenirs to take to someone. If for some reason you feel like you need something else, keep it to minimum. For instance, you do not need your whole make-up bag. And if you're flying you need to pop most of it into a mini-grip bag anyway, so take only a small selection of them. If for some reason you're flying you have a suitcase for a short trip, you are probably taking too much stuff with you. If you have an empty suitcase on the way there, it's ok because it means that you're going to renew all of your wardrobe and do your next weeks grocery shopping wherever you're going. It's alright, I already know someone who does that.


Landing in Finland.


6. Close the bag and go to sleep. Or run to the station/bus stop/taxi/one-of-those-other-things-that-move.


Of course I haven't done any of this yet, because I've been writing to you here. So now I will need to go and do just what I explained to you. And possibly eat some ice cream.