Questions and Quirks..but not a lot of wisdom?

discoveringwonderland — Mon, 5 Jul 2010 23:44:00 GMT

Having been in Finland a week there are a few things id like to point out...

1. Toast is a figment of your imagination

Naturally I have to start with food. At home I eat toast for breakfast almost every single day. but toast and, it seems, loaves of bread, are a foreign thing to the Finns. This is discovered to my horror the first morning after i arrived when, on entering the hostel common kitchen, i found no toaster.. and after asking the reception if there was one i was greeted with a confused um. It was reinforced wehn i went grocery shopping a few days later, and struggled to find the bread isle. It was tucked away in the corner of a shop dominated by milk, cheese and energy drinks. i have resorted to eating oven baked toast. Yum?

2. What is a Moomin?

Need i say more? Do YOU know what a Moomin is? I sure don't and im confronted with the albino hippo-lion everyday. From posters to cereal to juice and tv. Moomin is everywhere. There is even a Moomin Island. Dont belive me? Look it up.

3. Quirky is normal and normal is weird.

Maybe its the opposite where you come from. It is where i am from. But I've gotta tell you there is nothing quite like people watching at Helsinki central station wehn the Tuska Open Air Metal Festival is on. Suddenly the place is crowded with corsets, studded boots, long hair, coloured hair, lots of black clothing and netting and a whole range of clothing and styles that dont have names yet. There are also lots of guys with long hair here, and lots of girls with dreadlocks or strange haircuts. And i find that i really like it. I wish i was bold enough to do it. They also have the coolest range of high heel shoes and clothes here. I LOVE high heel shoes. If nothing else id spend all my money on the shoes they have here and be content.

Finland is weird... but i love it. Except for their lack of toasters. I think that would eventually kill me.

5 Days and Counting...

discoveringwonderland — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:07:00 GMT

After almost a year of planning, working, waiting and wondering my first real adventure is just 5 days away. I've been through different stages of emotion in my waiting process... Mostly impatience... apprehension...nervousness...excitement... and more impatience. Mostly because i leave in 5 days but i still have a uni exam to complete before i can completely give myself over to my new and improved life of travel.

So a brief of the trip? Me and one of my best friends- Alice, more affectionately known as Albie. We fly via bangkok on the way there and Hong Kong on the way back, unfortunately not with enough time to spare to explore either of these places. We plan to hit helsinki, move up to the lake country to a beautiful town called Savonlinna, then down to Turku, the old Swedish capital for some archipelago and a rock festival (Ruisrock!) and then train it up to the arctic circle past Rovaniemi to the end of the train line at a town called kemijarvi, then back down to Helsinki for a Muse concert, a visit to Estonia, and an afternoon at the markets before flying back home.

So why Finland? Well it all started out with a TV show that Alice's brother had on dvd. She watched it, laughed, showed me, and i laughed. Its called the Dudesons, and they're a bit like a Finnish version of Jackass i guess. So its wierd that either of us liked it, coz neither of us like Jackass..probably something to do with their Finglish, calling a baseball bat a "golfbat". Anyway, the more we watched the more we learnt about Finland, and the more intrigued we were by it. Some research of course ensued and we were both in love with this amazing natural gem of a country that is so out of the common travels for reasons neither of us could understand.

So we began to plan, and people questioned why we didnt do the generic Europe Grand Tour. I will do that one day, maybe next year. But This way i've done the trip that no one else has. Its not about ticking off a list to drop names as if it makes me more sophisticated or 'world wise'. Im more interested in the natural wonders of the world anyway. But i want to visit those places less travelled, the rest can wait..

From here to the Extremes and Everything in between

Questions and Quirks..but not a lot of wisdom?

1. Toast is a figment of your imagination

2. What is a Moomin?

3. Quirky is normal and normal is weird.

5 Days and Counting...