Globetrotting 2010 in retrospect

I realized that I've been around quite much during 2010. Overall the whole year has been a good one, almost bordering great. During 2010 I had LOTS of new experiences and I saw way more than I thought I would. Some highlights in numbers:

• Had address in 3 different countries (Finland, Hungary and a couple of days in St.Pete, Russia)
• Visited or lived in 6 countries (Russia, Finland, Hungary, Mexico, Italy, Slovakia).
• Had overall 17 flights (oops, sorry about the carbon footprint...)
• Studied 3 languages (Russian, Spanish for a couple of weeks, Hungarian)
• ....and spoke or tried to speak 5 (previous + Finnish and English. Also few lines of Swedish)

My only gripes about the year was the summer - great weather, but not good from financial or career point of view. But, as often happens, there is a silver lining to everything. Because of the relaxed summer, I had lots of time to think about my future and things that I want. Now I know where to aim. If things go as planned, 2011 will be a year of major changes and achievements. 

I am sure 2011 will be a great year for me!

Bratislava was cool, but it feels so good to be back in Budapest.

That's what she said!

The flights have been booked to Finland. Best news in a long long time!

Corporate visit at KONE

On Wednesday we had a quick 2 hour visit at KONE corporation in Espoo. So in the morning around 7 o'clock we rushed in to uni to jump on our bus which took us to Espoo. We were there around 11 o'clock and our return journey started at 1. It was a bit funny to travel like 3,5 hours to one direction just for such a quick visit, especially when it wasn't THAT interesting or useful. Oh well, it was still a nice trip. At least had some time to socialize with student friends :)

Oopsidaisie.

During the last 4 weeks I have been on 14 flights. Oops. I bet that my carbon footprint is not that ecologic at the moment....

Been in Mexico, now in Finland for a while.

I managed to get back to Finland alive and somehow intact. Now suffering from serious jetlag and just trying to stay awake for a few more hours before going to sleep to turn my rhythm quickly. Mexico-report coming a bit later.

Lots of school work done

Because of my trip I have had to do a lot of work during recent weeks. I have finished several assignments waaaayyyy before their deadlines - some even one month in advance. I just wanted to get rid of as much of these things before going since I will have some intense reading later in the spring because of traveling I will miss a few exams. Thus I need to do those in May which means quite a congested schedule.


Anyways. The projects are now done for me and I can fully concentrate on relaxing in Mexico! Ghihi! 

Going to Mexico!!!

So okay, here is the deal. Tomorrow I am going to leave Lappeenranta for Helsinki. On Friday morning I will fly from there to Mexico! Wooohoooooo! I can't express how excited I am about going there, for many many reasons. Well, the biggest reason comes from Europe :) Ghihi.

Anyways, really looking forward to that adventure. Going to a lot of goooood fooooood, see amazing places and meet complete idiots :D (idiots in a good way). What else can you wish from a trip? I have almost finished packing, the apartment is clean and mentally I am already on my way. Camera is charged and ready to document the trip :)

This all means that this blog will most likely be very very quiet during the next couple of weeks. Try to survive :D

"Refreshing" weekend in Tallinn

We went to Tallinn, Estonia for the weekend with M on Friday evening. The plan was to meet T, N and R in there and that we certainly did. Amazing weekend is now behind us, at least I had a lot of fun. But not that much sleep.... Some pics will soon be in facebook, more details only in person :)


The plan was to stay in Helsinki from Sunday to Monday and conduct an interview for our SMoG course in Helsinki, but the person who we were supposed to interview called on Sunday that he is sick and thus unavailable for the interview. I guess we will conduct that via telephone on a later date.

About 4 weeks until Mexico!!!

Statistics about the past year

During the last 12 months I have

• had 5 official addresses
• lived in 4 different cities
• visited or lived in 4 countries
• spoken 3 languages (if you can count my Russian as spoken :D)

...and I will add at least 2 new countries visited during this spring. Hopefully next fall I can add one more country to list of countries resided in. I guess this is the mobility politicians have been talking about!

Budapest

First things first: Budapest is a freaking beautiful city. The beauty is different kind than in St.Pete - it is not that flashy but a bit more modest looking place. But, the thing is that at least to me it was more like "let's build a cool building because we can"-kind of place than "okay, now some emperor wants something really flashy". Kind of beautiful in a natural way - not too much makeup but just good bone- and body structure without too much glitter and stuff :) Btw, that is exactly the case with the local ladies too compared to Russian ones :)

Budapest is also cheap city, at least for a Finn. Basically everything in cheaper than in Finland, which is not a surprise at all. It's also cheaper than St.Pete for sure. One of the coolest things about BP and Hungary in general is the foooooooooooooooooooood. It's definitely yummy yummy across the board. They really do like their bread and red meat making the country kind of heaven for me :D Eros Pista - the hot paprika cream - is really good stuff and if you like hot food even a bit and visit Hungary you must, must try that one! Most likely you'll bring some of that with you to your home country. At least I did as did other members of our group.

From this trip I remember the Mexican dudes I got to know a bit and especially Pepes insane sandwiches :D Also the spas - a larger spa with many pools outside and a smaller, but older, some 500 years old spa - were amazing and definitely worth the visit. The water smells a bit funky because of the minerals in there, but with shower gel that problem can be solved. Really relaxing places and not that expensive either I think (something like 9 euros per visit). It was also refreshing to see functioning public transport system (a part of that is the oldest metro line in the continent, really cool in a way. Well maintained, short distances between stops.). Some of the places like the square of heroes were really impressive as was the older part of the city.

I will visit Budapest again for sure.

The old metro line.

The square of heroes.

The parliament.

More pictures in Facebook.

Back in Finland, this time for a longer time period.

I came back to Finland late yesterday evening. During my 1.5 week absence not that much has changed here, of course didn't expect that to happen either. New Years eve in St.Pete is now experienced and the life at Karabli is now over. I also took first ride in minibus from St.Pete to Helsinki and experienced the "joys" of it. More about that later. The latest adventure was in Budapest, Hungary. Beautiful city, great food! Some more details coming about that trip later too :)

In Finland after EPIC FAIL

I have been in Finland now for a bit more than one day. I arrived to my home town late on the 23rd or early in the 24th, depends how you look at the situation (it was about 1 a.m. on 24th). The trip from Piter was quite interesting one. First we took a gypsy taxi from the dorm to Finnlandskiy vokzal because we had quite a lot of bags with us. The ride was okay, even though it took a bit more than one hour because of the traffic. But no problems on getting in to the train in time.

In the train we had a bit of a MITIM meeting in the restaurant car. There was 8 of us from LUT side of MITIM program. Very cool way to spend the beginning of the trip :)

What was not cool about the ride was that after we left Viborg the trains exhaust fumes got somehow sucked in to the cars for a while... Breathing diesel is not that funny it seems :D

In Vainikkala everything was okay, just a brief passport control and that's it. From there I got a car ride to Lappeenranta where I was supposed to jump in to a train to my home town. Supposed to. Here comes the epic fail part of this story. So I was there sitting in the railway station for like 45 minutes before the train was supposed to leave. It being VR, it got delayed for 15 minutes. When the train arrived to the station I took my bags and walked on the platform for like a bit more than one minute before getting in.

But I didn't get in! Just few seconds before I tried to get to the train the conductor locked the doors.... I guess he/she did not see that I was still on the platform walking. So the train left just in front of my eyes. I was left standing there with 30-40 kilos of baggage's and no way to reach my home during that day by public transport.

Luckily there is family and my cousin who lives in Lappeenranta was nice enough to pick me up and start driving towards my hometown. At the same time my brother and dad came from other direction to meet us halfway. So after some hours in car I reached home. Family really is the best :)

Booking master

I booked some tickets yesterday for the next couple of weeks. First off, I am going to Finland for Christmas which is not that surprising but definitely a good thing. Somehow a Christmas here at the dormitory would have been quite depressing I think. So yeah, my train leaves on 23rd in the afternoon after my final exam here at GSOM. There is a lot of other MITIM-students in the same train, which is nice.

The other trip that I booked is to Budapest, Hungary! :) I'm going there on 3rd of January and will stay for one week. I am really looking forward to this trip, since I've heard only good things about Budapest and their fooooooooooooooood :) The food is awesome, at least based on the stuff that has been prepared by the Hungarians. And also, it is really fun to have the chance to spend some time with a lovely resident idiot in non-dormitory environment :D

The funny thing is that it took longer to book the traintickets than the airline tickets to Hungary. In the trainticket office, it took something like 10 or 15 minutes from the lady to make the tickets to me and Lauri. She asked do we want to take the morning or evening train, and of course gave us the tickets to wrong one... So we had to ask her to correct those, which took another 10-15 minutes. Also, it is a bit.. ummm.. Russian that in the international ticket office (where they sell tickets to go abroad) the ladies do not speak English or any other foreign language. How on earth can a tourist leave this country if he/she is not able to speak Russian? :D

Visit to Viborg

I went for a brief visit to Viborg on Saturday. Kind of a shocking place to visit actually, especially being a Finn. It was my first time in there so I didn't know that well what to expect - I guess I didn't expect anything. But still, it was a bit of a shock.

The thing that was shocking is how beautiful the city could easily be if just some effort would be used. But no. It has been let to rot and crumble which is a shame because it really would have a lot of potential to be awesome city.

But I guess I had to see that. Now I've seen St.Petersburg, Moscow and also Russia - the way those not so glamorous cities are...

Brief visit to Finland

I was in Finland from Friday evening till this morning. We arrived back to St.Pete just after 6 o'clock by bus. The reason for the visit was quite amazing, but on the other hand not that surprising at all - Russian bureaucracy. I didn't have any problems with that (this time), I just decided to help someone who had and went there for the company.

Helsinki was.... Well, boring. I lived there for two years, but now going back there in after just few months absence I could see that it's not a city for me. I was really amazed how dead the city actually was on Saturday night! I mean. There was basically no-one on the move after 7 o'clock. The weather wasn't that bad neither it was that cold.

Yeah, moving abroad after graduation is more and more likely option for me...

But of course there are good things about Finland and Helsinki too. Small, but cool things. Like the amount parks and the ability to drink water straight from the tap :D And almost everything works there without too much problems. Unlike in Russia..

Going to Moscow

I am leaving this evening from St.Pete to Moscow. Taking a night train with a couple of other students. Few of them are from Moscow, so we will have some locals in there which is cool. They were also kind enough to accommodate our group to their apartments. The trip is going to be quite a short one, we are coming back here early on Monday morning. But, still better to go there even for a few days than not go at all.