Necrophenia and Cheesecake.

Are two things that i have been spending the last couple of days occupied with. And what a lovely pastime they make for those lazy days following Christmas. Before dubious images of what that may entail fill your mind, i’ll elaborate that Necrophenia (for those of you who have yet to be acquainted with it) is in actual fact a book written by one Robert Rankin, and cheesecake is actually something i baked for Christmas dessert.

In terms of goodness, the two are far from evenly matched. It seems now that i’ve gotten halfway through both (getting through the cheesecake has proved far easier, not to mention more enjoyable) i can justifiably conclude that the book (which features a rock band, Aleister Crowley, the summer of love, an army of zombies and the end of the world) cannot surpass the cheesecake (which features fresh mint, after eight chocolate filling and lemony raspberry-mint sorbet).

I think this is probably because of Rankin’s style of writing, which I find arch to the point of being supremely irritating, and the fact that halfway through the book, I remain oblivious to any kind of masterful plot it might contain. My disregard or lack of understanding for said book has nothing to do with the sugar high-induced attention deficit state in which I’ve so far been reading it.

I originally picked up the book because someone compared Rankin to Gaiman, who is the author of one of my all-time favourite books (that, and the fact that it had a neat skull design on the cover), which in itself sets the standard rather high. Yet to be impressed by Necrophenia, I think I’ll plough through till the end and hope it gets better.

This cheesecake, on the other hand, is pretty good. It’s a spin on the classic baked, cream cheese version, with melted after eight chocolates and fresh mint thrown in the mix for some extra minty goodness. Unfortunately this isn't a vegan version, but you can easily substitute the egg with an egg replacer and use vegan mint chocolate instead. I tend to stray from recipes when i bake, which is why the amounts are approximations, and i encourage you to adjust them as you go along, if need be. As the cake is quite rich, it's complemented nicely by a zesty raspberry sorbet, which is super easy to make. This cake will happily feed six greedy eaters, or eight normal ones. 

After Eight Cheesecake 

For the base

• about 200g (half a pack) of digestive biscuits
• handful of rice krispies (optional, but they add a nice crunch)
• 3 tablespoons of margarine

For the filling

• about 600g of vegan cream cheese (Tofutti brand is pretty good)
• 3 organic eggs (or your choice of egg substitute)
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar
• about 200-250g of after eight chocolates (depending on how much mint chocolate you fancy)
• about 1dl of sugar (give or take, as much as you feel is needed)
• chopped fresh mint (a handful, or as much as you like)

Crush digestives, add rice krispies and melted margarine. Line your cake tin (ideally 23cm in diameter) with the mix and pop into a 180 degree oven for ten minutes.

Whisk together cream cheese and sugar with an electric mixer. Add eggs one by one, whisking only until consistency is smooth. Throw in chopped mint. 

Melt most of the after eights in a water bath, adding a little water and the vanilla sugar. Chop remaining after eights into chunks. 

Mix melted after eights, chocolate chunks and whisked cream cheese together. 

Pour into cake tin, and place onto lowest level of oven. Place a dish of hot water underneath the cake tin to achieve best cheesecake baking results.

Bake at 165 degrees for about an hour and ten minutes. 

Raspberry-Mint Sorbet

• Raspberries (frozen work well for this)
• Juice of half a lemon
• Chopped fresh mint

Throw all ingredients in a food processor. Add lemon/lime/sugar to taste. When pleased with result, put mix into a freezer proof container and leave in the freezer until it has set, but isn't fully frozen. Use an ice cream scoop to serve sorbet with cheesecake. 

Enjoy. I recommend enjoying a slice (or seven) with a really good book.

Yuletide mischief.

Well i'll say. The run-up to Christmas has been hectic. i'm only now realizing that the day itself is, in fact, tomorrow. While the fact that Christmas has managed to sneak up on me is in part probably due to natural light being practically absent and days being disconcertingly short, it's also due to the fact that i've been too busy to sit around counting down the days like i used to, back in the day.


Instead i've occupied my time with a precariously balanced marriage of work and play. Going to work in the sleepy darkness of the morning and emerging therefrom at an equally dark hour seems to have wreaked havoc with any sort of natural body clock i might have once had. I find myself frequently at bars and other after-dark establishments until the wee hours of the morning, celebrating someone's birthday, little christmas, or simply the fact that it happens to be a Tuesday (which is a perfectly acceptable reason to celebrate). While this is all fun and games, the daily toiling, nocturnal frolicking and averaging of four hours of shuteye per night has finally caught up with me; i've managed to catch a vicious cold that has rendered me speechless, grumpy and achy. Which means i'll probably be spending Christmas in bed with some Finrexin and a pen and paper as my only means of communication. Which probably serves me right. Oh well, at least i had a good run. And some pics to document it. 

I've written before about the curative properties of various types of chilled, blended fruit beverages. Here's a christmas version i had one morning. I threw in frozen blueberries, cranberry juice, glogi, ice, ground flaxseed and goji berries. And it brought me back to life, it did. 

One happy night at Kuudes linja, where a couple of kids decided to dance on tables outside in temperature that was well below freezing. Altogether a great idea and a brilliant night.

 

One is never too old to believe in Santa Claus. Or receive a Cthulhu stuffed toy from said geriatric, while he downs drink after drink and makes lewd jokes. Which is what happened at this particular gift-swapping shindig. But hell, that little green, winged, octopus creature is the shit. Not many can say the go to bed every night with The Great Old One.

A day trip to wintery Tallinn, featuring my mother, sister, cousin and two aunts. Our expedition enjoyed some hardcore snowfall, delicious food and copious amounts of mulled wine to warm the soul. I never knew how much fun day trips with the extended family can be. This is going to have to become an annual tradition. 

I haven't managed to break the habit of buying presents for myself yet, and i figured a small bottle of perfume could be a personal Christmas present. I'll put it under the tree with a little gift tag reading "For Nina. Love, Nina". I love this perfume though, it' all old school glamour with powdery, rosy nuances in the mix. Also love the scarf the perfume is pictured on, which was a birthday present from a certain lovely lady. In addition to the perfume, I also bought 24 bottles of Crowmoor cider, but i figured putting a pic of the perfume might be a little more classy. And wont serve to advocate a careless lifestyle centered on late nights and whimsical fancies in the run-up to Christmas. 

Now if i could only heed my own words.   

Older and Beardier.

To the great misfortune of a large proportion of my friends, i'm rather fond of theme parties, and i like throwing them whenever a suitable occasion arises. And there's really no occasion that more calls for one than a birthday. So to commemorate my 24th birthday, i thought i'd pop the facial-hair-theme-party cherry.

The idea for the party came up as a joke during a night out, but after giving it some serious thought i figured this would be an ideal opportunity to make like a bearded lady for a night. Guests were invited to arrive sporting a choice of facial hair - anything from unibrows to eyelash beards*. As long as the thing sported some follicular quality and was situated on the face, it qualified. And i'll say, the caliber and range of some two dozen facial fuzz fiends was impressive (not to mention hilarious). Also, it kinda made a mockery of the whole aging another year thing, what with those in attendance reverting to a bunch of giggling teenagers with glue-on hair in strange places.

Party food included bearded peanut butter-chocolate and coconut-lime cupcakes (green cotton candy makes for some super beard), rocket-topped retro mini pizzas, and these great swirly, stuffed pastries, the recipe for which i nicked from my friend Tuomas (also pictured above, proudly displaying his mustache collection like a frigging graduation certificate). Some time after midnight we ventured to Loose, and the fact that everyone else had de-bearded escaped me, so i spent the rest of the night being complemented and stared at distastefully in equal amounts by the folks at the bar. All in all, the positive attention an overgrown, stringy tuft of chin hair can get a girl is rather surprising. Like vanilla cigars and excessive rowdiness, this could become a birthday tradition.

* We imagined the eyelash beard. We debated on what it would look like. None of us ever got to see it. But i'm not giving up on it, i think it could work. When i see it i'll post a pic.

Happy Bearded Birthday.

And so it was that yet another year had passed, and December 11th was once again upon her. Happy friggin' birthday, me.
Now, some folks take this opportunity to dwell on the rapid decline of youth's heyday, and others get hit by serious angst about all manner of things they have yet to achieve in the process. My personal preference this year involves neither course of action. Instead, i'll face this annual aging party head on. Bring it, 24. I'll take you on with a Facial Hair theme-party (an account of which will surely follow), armed with champagne and bearded cupcakes . 
And these lil presents (that i may or may not have bought for myself).

A book, or four. Grimm's Fairy Tales. I've been wanting to get an edition of the original tales for a long while now; these are the hardcore, hardly happily-ever-after versions, not that sugar-coated Disney rubbish. Why eat gingerbread when you can eat children?


The Greatest Show On Earth is rather simply and conclusively subtitled "The Evidence For Evolution". Go on Dick, tell 'em.


I feel like some quality time with the daddy of Gonzo is long overdue, so i'll save Kingdom of Fear for the Christmas holidays.


On Monsters is "An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears". I was drawn to the cover before i even knew what the book was about, and so i was even more chuffed when i scanned the contents: Ancient, medieval, scientific, psychological, contemporary and futuristic - this book covers the whole monstrous spectrum. Especially looking forward to reading about mischievous taxidermists, monstrous births, freaks and creeping flesh, all of which have a section devoted to them.

Then i came across this dress while buying a scarf at Cybershop in Kamppi. At 34 euros, it really was a steal, and very little persuasion was required to convince me of its loveliness. i really like the cut, and the little bow is quite adorable. Also, it'll look rather fetching coupled with a beard. 

Sleep overs. Because you're never too old for one.

So it's probably been almost a decade since i've last attended a real sleep over. Drunkenly passing out on a friend's couch with a bunch of equally hammered partygoers in the wee hours of the morning does not count. A real sleep over is about pajamas, sleeping bags, late night gossip, good friends and crap movies. 
Yuck. If this sounds like something vomit-inducing out of a Sweet Valley High novel, i'll tell you it don't have to be that way. The list of sleep over activities is not restricted to playing with ponies and brushing each other's hair. Four girls had a sleep over last Friday, featuring gluttony, excrement and intoxicants. Here's how it came to happen:

• We made some seriously good food. Couldn't decide between sushi and tapas, so we had both. Works out nicely when everyone brings something, and we ended up having way more than we could manage to eat. Finger food, aside from being seriously moreish, is also ideal for snacking on through the night. All night. And in the morning. Nothing like garlic chili mushrooms and a stiff hit of wasabi for breakfast.
• We watched a crap scary movie. Yeah...getting freaked out by a cam corder view of things that go bump in the night in a suburban bedroom only works for the first fifteen minutes. Yours truly fell asleep halfway through Paranormal Activity. Not so good.
• Had mint chocolate chip brownies, Ben&Jerry's cookie dough ice cream, and marshmallow-topped hot chocolate (with a generous splash of minttuviina) for dessert. I feel like the sugar high was always the highlight of parties when you were a kid. And hey, it's good to know it still does the trick a decade later.
• Brought along a boston terrier puppy with an acute case of flatulence. At first it was inappropriately entertaining, then it got practically unbearable (what the hell do these puppies eat - that smell is lethal!), after which the desperate nocturnal swoops to rescue the white carpet from being soiled by liquid feces became just a little too funny and surreal to deal with. 

After all aforementioned pastimes, we were happy to call it a night at around five in the morning, when half of us were snoring and the other two were half-heartedly watching the SATC movie with little success.

When we finally woke up in the afternoon, bleary-eyed after varying amounts of sleep and dog turds, we were all in agreement that we should make a habit of this. There's something special about over indulgence, sleeping on an air mattress and sharing a sleeping bag with a friend and their dog (who, i was told, attempted to attack me while i was sleeping). Something that makes you wonder why people don't do this more often.

'Tis the season of Christmas shopping.

It's gotta be done at some point, and each year the prospect of entering department stores crawling with super stressed-out businesspeople (who rely 100% on the generic gift-wrapping service, cause it takes like, at least three minutes to wrap that gift for your kid), industrious mothers who are on a marathon shopping trip (and are carrying twice their weight in shopping bags) and the scary Burberry-clad grannies with sharpened elbows (which are ideal weapons for swiftly dispersing of crowds - or people ahead of them in the line) seems less and less enchanting. 

So i thought i'd make a start this year by going to one of my favorite places for xmas shopping - the TOKYO xmas sale. Hosted by the students of TaiK (University of Art and Design Helsinki), the pre-xmas market features all sorts of art and design from underwear to baked goods. It's a great place to find something a little more unique, and a great way of supporting up-and-coming Finnish talent. 

Flipping the bird at Christmas. A welcome take on the traditional xmas card.

 

I spotted this underwear at the market last year, and since then i've been wanting a pair of these briefs. What a brilliant idea. The undies, like the accompanying baked goods, are the handiwork of artistic duo Tärähtäneet ämmät, and were among the coolest items i spotted at the sale. 

What i ended up buying was a beautiful set of 36 Ex Libris stickers featuring what looks like bird fetuses in glass balls, with a third ball for you to write your name in. Definitely too adorably sinister to pass. With only three dozen stickers, only my nicest books will get one. Gives me good reason to go back next year, though!

I bought something else, too. My first official investment in art. Two girls in dresses, barefoot, having tea and cupcakes with Venetian masks on. There's something really enchanting about the seeming normalcy of their tea party that i was drawn to. And with echoes of Roman Dirge, Tim Burton and Alice in Wonderland, i was happy to spend my remaining 35 euros on this. All i need to do now is frame it, hang it up, and admire at leisure. 

As a kickoff to Christmas shopping mayhem, the TOKYO sale was great. On the downside (or the upside) my gift foraging was kind of self-centered. But alas, fear not, i tell myself, because our fair city plays host to several other seasonal shopping sales: this weekend one can browse the traditional christmas gift selection at the 78th annual Naisten Joulumessut (Women's Christmas Fair), or jazz up the season by purchasing a fascinator and nipple tassels from the Burlesque/Rock'n'Roll/Vintage themed Ofelia Market. My plan is to attend both, and strictly refrain from buying myself anything. We'll see how that goes.

Naisten Joulumessut 2-6.12.2009, Wanha Satama, Pikku Satamakatu 3-5, Helsinki

Ofelia Market 5-6.12.2009, Kulttuuriareena Glora, Pikku Roobertinkatu 12, Helsinki

i heart in November.

1. Glögi. It’s officially the season.
2. Browsing books at the bookstore and dividing them into wish lists for myself and gift lists for others (with items on my wish list far outnumbering those on the list for others).
3. Weekends, which are rapidly filling up with various pikkujoulu shindigs.
4. Wearing dresses with biker boots. Boots are so much warmer than converse all stars, which are my footwear of choice 99.9% of the time.
5. Messer Chups. Wicked Russian psychobilly band. Great horror sound to counter all the x-mas carols they play obnoxiously loud 24/7 at most establishments from November to January .
6. Fairylights. My apartment is all a-twinkle. And kinda looks like one of those dodgy thai massage establishments in Kallio…
7. Being inside when it’s hideous weather outside. Preferably with woolly socks, a good book and a stiff drink.
8. Zombieland. Cinematic pleasure with zombies, weapons and Woody Harrelson.
9. Hats and scarves. The bigger and woollier the better.
10.  Kung Po Tofu at New Bamboo Center. Nothing like picking up super spicy take away on the way home through the rain/sleet/whatever else the sky chucks at you. Nom nom. 

Let Luck Be a Lady Tonight. Or not.

Around this time last week i was pleased to note that i had managed to dodge the imminent onslaught of bad luck associated with Friday the 13th. Hadn't slipped on the icy streets on my way to work, didn't call my boss in an obscene state of intoxication, wasn't lying in bed with swine flu. Instead i was rocking at the local bowling alley, beating the boys hands down. In your face, ye superstitious dunces, psychic hotlines and Jason Voorhees!


Writing this a week later, i'm convinced that my foolhardy rebelliousness in the face of a universally unlucky day is whipping me back with some warped karmic vendetta: my personal score of bad luck hit me with a one week delay and several days worth of shit fortune (thanks Cthulhu, psychic hotline lady, or whatever other supernatural entity wants to take a bow at this point). And the manner in which it has been inflicted upon me, now that's some sinister, uncool stuff. 


It started at work on Tuesday. I was starving, and when i could finally manage a quick break i raced to the deli in search of food. Finding a take away goat cheese caesar salad and a soda, i scamper to pay for it so as to have enough time to eat it in the remaining ten minutes of break time. I run back to the lunch room, tear off the lid and tuck into the salad. And realize something in my mouth tastes awfully fishy. I inspect the contents of the salad box more closely. Little pink tails can be seen lying on the caesar dressing-drenched bed of lettuce. Ugh. In my hurry to pay, run back and eat super fast, i'd picked up a box of prawn caesar instead of the goat cheese that was next to it. Balls. With less than ten minutes left, there's no way i'd have enough time to make it back to the deli, swap salads and have the time to eat, no matter how voracious an appetite i'd worked up. Weighing my options, i figure i'll pass out in the next four hours without eating, so i wolf down the salad, feeling a little sorry and more than a little queasy because of the mass of chewed up crustaceans floating around in my gut. Briny. 


On Thursday my Father calls. He tells me they've made reservations for a big family dinner for Independence day Sunday. The restaurant is upscale, the meal is on them and the menu is reportedly a lavish Christmas buffet with all the trimmings. I'll forward the menu  to you, check it out, he says. I check out the email attachment, scanning the extremely long list of Christmas dishes, and frown. I pick up the phone and get back to dad. Umm, dad, yeah, it's great, but there's nothing but fish and meat on the menu. Oh, well, Nina, i don't know what to tell you. I'm sure there's loads on it you can eat, like...the green salad and boiled potatoes. 
Oh right, okay. Yum.


Today i was walking back from work in the wet, dark murk of Helsinki in November. Seeing as i was tired and it's Friday, i thought i'd make dinner easy and get a ciabatta sandwich from the recently reopened Gran Delicato, which is one of the nicest deli/cafes establishments in the neighborhood. Not bothering to consult the menu, i ask for the one with the brilliant, grilled eggplant. Coming right up, he says. I drool at the beautiful marinated olives while he makes my sandwich. I pay, head out into the rain and hurry home. And so here i am, changed into raggedy sweatpants and a hoodie, with an ice-cold coke and the newest episode of Grey's Anatomy, ready to kick off a chilled Friday night. I unwrap the sandwich, focusing on Owen Hunt rather than my food. I'm about to bite into it (the sandwich, not The Hunt) when i realize there's an offensively large layer of some kind of ham spilling out of the sides of my sandwich. WTF? Not again. (at this point Cthulhu is slapping his octopus knee with his giant tentacle and guffawing). I peel out the pinkish grey meat. The eggplant that i discover underneath looks wretched and measly. Sigh. I eat the sandwich, trying to focus on Dr. Hunt's rugged good looks instead of the metallic tang of my sad sandwich. 


I get it, revenge is meat. Next year i'll carry around a rabbit paw when defying the gods of fortune. 


ps. Gran Delicato rocks, though. Yummy sandwiches, hot drinks, deli goodness. 
Kalevankatu 34 00180 Helsinki

Llamas, Loose & Poetry.

It's a truth generally acknowledged (at least by all those who spend their weeks working) that weekends rock. Having recently stepped back into the ranks of the employed masses, i've been cruelly reminded that rampaging and mayhem is better left for a night not followed by a 7 am wake-up. And so my wait for this weekend was brightened by a friend conspiratorially relating the devious Friday Night Master Plan to me on Thursday. It was conceived entirely independently of my own designs and went pretty much as follows: 

Hey Nina, i heard a rumor that people are coming over to yours on Friday. At eight. People bring booze, we drink for a while, Batman* picks a fight with someone. At nine we head to  Bar Llamas and do some wicked tequila shots (with the possible addition of a Mexican hat dance). At about eleven we end up in Bar Loose and go home when they kick us out. Good night.

Hell, master plan if there ever was one. And masterfully it proceeded to unfold, i might add. It's amazing how a tiny apartment can accommodate so many revelers. Which is way more than Llamas could. This little den, bedecked with skulls and Dia de los Muertos themed Mexican kitsch, has only been on iso-Roba since October, but i've found myself wandering through the door on more than one occasion. Our business tonight was with the agave liquor. We sought the magical chili/ginger/pepper/lemon/honey infused tequila (which, turns out, is not actually tequila, but your regular grain alcohol. whatever, it's still great and burns your insides), but found the tiny bar full to the brim with people who weren't as behind schedule as our party (we got there around 11 i think, at least 2 hour later than the master plan dictated) and so found every available seat and surface occupied.

 

One of my favorite things about this bar (aside for the great non-tequila shots) are the bar swings they have instead of bar stools. There was, however, no swinging to be done in this mob of people, so we decided to cross a prolonged visit off the list and move forward.

  
 

So after the brave stormed the bar for a quick cheeky shot, the small-bladdered made time for a bathroom stop, and a drunken straggler of a friend joined our gang, we picked up and headed to Loose.

I've never had less than a brilliant time in Loose. Tonight was no exception. Which is all a lady's pride (or perhaps memory) choose to disclose in terms of the rest of the night. All in all, the cunning designs for Friday mapped out a great night. Thanks go out to The Architect and all revelers present. Thanks are also extended to those who decided to put their creative talents (and my fridge door) to good use and provided entertaining reading for the following day in the form of alcohol-inspired anecdotes and poetry. A few choice picks below:

And so another week of waiting begins...


---------------------
Bar Llamas, Iso Roobertinkatu, Helsinki
Bar Loose, Annankatu 21, Helsinki


*Batman (and Rydman) live in my building. I swear. Photographic evidence will go online at some point to prove it, i promise.

Trip in Pics.

i thought i'd put up some pictures from places the train took me. My route was as follows: Helsinki-->Turku-->Stockholm-->Copenhagen-->Hamburg-->Berlin-->Prague-->Chotilsko. And heading back: Chotilsko-->Prague-->Nurnberg-->Copenhagen-->Stockholm-->Turku-->Helsinki. Sat on lots of trains, slept in random places and ate a lot of falafel and too much potatoes. All in all a great trip.

The sky and sea looked pretty, viewed from the ferry between Denmark and Germany. Our train actually boarded the ferry, which was cool.

We got to Berlin at around midnight. A lot of empty buildings and squats in East Berlin. A lot of cool street art, too. This was a wall we passed on our way to Ostbahnhof the next morning.

Randomly spotted this on the sidewalk. Walked across where the wall stood. Can't believe it was there for more than a quarter of a century.

To take a break from conferencing, we went tree-walking in a forest valley in Chotilsko. I'd never heard of this before, but the idea is pretty simple: You get strapped into a harness, which is attached to cables that connect from tree to tree. Then you walk on planks of wood and tightropes in the forest canopy and try not to look down. It was ridiculously cool.

We also took a break from conferencing in terms of enjoying a little pre-breakfast swig of (ridiculously bad) absinthe that i picked up in Prague. There was enough conference reading to make a sturdy makeshift table for three glasses of the green stuff. Paper put to good use. 

A meal to remember. We went out to a restaurant one night. The (only) vegan option on the menu was 'Stewed vegetables and french fries'. While stewed vegetables didn't induce happy rumbling in my tummy, the idea of french fries sure did. Hells yeah, potato in a form i haven't yet encountered on this trip! A spirit-crushing experience it was, then, to see my starchy arch nemesis, the soggy, mushy, bland, yellow tater in its most mundane form. Be that as it  may, the potato still beat the other half of the dynamic duo; The stewed vegetables were the legume equivalent of mystery meat. Icky.

On the way home i had a couple of hours to spend in Prague before catching my train to Nurnberg. It was the first sunny day in a long while, so i got a Czech version of a pita falafel and walked around the old part of town and sat in the sunshine. And enjoyed it so much i almost missed my train.

Night train from Nurnberg to Copenhagen. Got the compartment all to myself. The lovely ticket inspector told me i could sleep in all six beds if i wanted to. I slept in one. (but first i watched the season finale of Carnivale and couldn't sleep cause i thought Professor Lodz was outside my window).

Breakfast in Copenhagen, which rocked after a long night on the train. What rocked more was having enough time to swing by Urban Outfitters and finding the coolest woolly hat. 
Said hat might have had something to do with the dude at the train station later throwing coins at me. Le hobo hat. I likes.

Homeward bound. With inspired thoughts, muddy shoes  and significantly less absinth than i started out with.

Highlights and lowlights.

I like making lists. Here are two, of highlights and lowlights (in no particular order) of my InterRail escapade through Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Czech Republic, and the Friends of the Earth Big Happening in Chotilsko, Czech Republic, at the end of October. 

Highlights of the trip.

1. Seeing the windmills off the coast of Denmark. They look incredibly beautiful and in addition to being an affirmation of a brighter future they have a meditative serenity about them. Breath-taking.
2. Getting the sleeper train compartment all to myself. This was thanks to the lovely ticket inspector at Nurnberg, who thought that since I was travelling alone, I’d appreciate the security and privacy, rather than being woken up at three in the morning in Hamburg to a drunken stag party invading the compartment. Spot on.
3. Dancing and singing ’clowns on my left, jokers to my right’ at the closing party. Chilling after an intense four days of conferencing rocked, not in the least due to pitchers of wine, wasabi nuts, Czech beer, good people and a diverse set of Djs with seriously eclectic music sets.
4. The ’yes we can’ attitude of the Big Happening. If this doesn’t inspire you to save the world, I don’t know what will. Personally, I’m taking a lot back with me in terms of thoughts, energy and inspiration.
5. Having a great soundtrack on my iPod for the brilliant autumn scenery flashing past my train window. It’s like those cinematic moments when you gaze at strange lands and unfamiliar people, and the evening light washes everything in a soft glow and you feel like you’re right where you’re supposed to be at that point. And all the while your favourite music plays.
6. A total feeling of being out of normal time and place. All that mark their passing is the arrivals and departures of trains and the onset or waning of light. Feels really good to disconnect and just enjoy the ride.
7. Tree walking. Is that even what it’s called? A cross between mountaineering and monkeying in the forest canopy, this was a delightful new experience. Wonder if you can do this in Finland somewhere?
8. Loads of time to think. Really ponder. Like deep, meaningful, life-altering conversations with yourself.
9. Looking like a hobo. After a day in Prague, a six hour train journey, followed by a night train, followed by hauling backpack around dressed in an old German army jacket, muddy converse trainers and a superbly comfy woolly hat, seeing yourself in the mirror is brilliant. No wonder the passers-by throw change at you while you try to nap at the train station.
10. Spending Halloween on the Finland-Sweden ferryboat. Enough said.

Lowlights of the trip.

1. Potatoes. This is a relationship that has suffered considerable damage and needs to be carefully nurtured back to life, although right now it seems as if we might part ways for a good while.
2. Garlic. Which was EVERYWHERE. On your breakfast plate, in your potato chips, the exclusive ingredient of your lunch soup, in the tap water. Okay, maybe not the water, but everywhere else. For real. On the flipside, keeps the vampires at bay.
3. Mystery illness. I managed to avoid this, but my travel company was struck down by a mysterious case of flu/food poisoning/plague, which called for him to fly back and leave me in charge of the railroad escapade.
4. Not being able to be on the road for longer. Apologies go out to London, Glasgow, Brussels, Rotterdam and Frankfurt for not being able to wreak havoc in your neck of the woods and crash on your couch in a drunken stupor. Got you on my list for next time. Xxx
5. Spending Halloween on the Finland-Sweden ferryboat. Enough said.