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...


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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.