(Christmas trip 2009, part 5)
I’m slowly starting to run out of these small meta-blog paragraphs to start the entries with, but I guess that’s just a good thing as I don’t have to justify the existence of each and every entry by explaining how they will be just me rambling about my trip instead of being real blog entries.
There’s a trick to survive a night out with a group of rich people who are trying to get drunk. Or very drunk. It’s called “non-alcoholic beer” and I admit right here and now – it’s cheating and against the natural order of things. But not buying yourself alcoholic drinks when the people around you are doing that for you is a great way to survive. The non-beer slows the partying to a more bearable pace.
“Sorry, I’ll finish this beer I have here before I can consider drinking another round. Why don’t you lot drink that gin tonic you brought me as well.”
It’s a dirty trick, but it serves its purpose. I stayed witty and aware all through last night.
But even if alcohol was kept in check, I was up late last night. So when I wake up around nine, it’s onlybeen four hours of so of sleep. And standing up makes me instantly remember the second thing I’ve forgotten to take with me to this trip. Band-aids. The winter boots I have with me aren’t a perfect fit. They’re good in normal conditions, but after a long night on the dance floor, I have about 5 blisters on each foot. And one of them is really painful to walk with, so I limp downstairs and greet the always-helpful receptionist. She looks at me with pity in her eyes, I suspect the limping looks really nasty.
“Good morning there… You don’t happen to have any band-aids…? I seem to have gotten an UPI last night…”
“UPI?”
“Unidentified Party Injury. Actually just a blister on my big toe.”
“Sure, wait a moment. How big a band-aid do you need?” she smiles as she pulls out a med-kit.
She’s my saving angel, really. I return to my room, get some padding on the painful blister and go get breakfast. After filling my stomach with diet food goodness like bacon, sausages and other meat with eggs and stuff, I go and ask about what’s there to do at Tampere today.
“Well, today most of the bars will be open, so no need to try to figure out where to go. And there are the Tapanin tanssit everywhere, so you should more options than you need,” she’s already used to my questions, but I can only assume that the long night working is taking a toll. She’s not as bright and shiny as she was last night.
“How about during the day?”
“Well. No… Not really. No,” she wears the same expression of shame as she did yesterday when she last explained to me that there was nothing to do at Tampere.
I remember the rest of the blisters. “I take it that the pharmacies aren’t open today either?”
“There is one that should be, actually!”
Something good, at least. She again makes me a map so I can get there easily.
I go back to my room and sleep for a couple of hours more. It’s not enough, but better than nothing. I have an ominous feeling that the lack of sleep will come and bite me in the ass later-on.
When I check out from my room at noon, the receptionist has been replaced. Well, such is life. Would have been nice to say thanks to her for all the trouble, or at least a goodbye.
I walk out, and immediately remember why I was regretting the trip here yesterday. It’s still freezing outside. And there’s nothing open (except the pharmacy, which is nice). I walk around for a while, trying my luck with the local galleries and theaters and even consider for a moment of going to the movies. But decide against it as “there will be better adventures out here to be discovered!” – Shows just how little I know.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning in my mind ever since.
”Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, ”just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
Well, I don’t really feel like criticizing people that often. And it wasn’t actually my dad who said that. Nor was it said to me. Just something I read in a book. But it holds true. I’ve lived a sheltered life, so I it’s not my right to say about other people’s decisions – there always are things underneath that I will never know that serve as reasons for actions I don’t understand.
But still, for crying out loud, if you’re sitting in McDonald’s and telling your friends how Transformers 2 is the greatest movie ever because of the complicated and clever script that has things fitting the world history so perfectly, you should probably get some help.
There are two conversations that I overhear during the day. First one is about Transformers 2 being great, and the other one about travelling that at first sounds infinitely better. Someone is considering to go to Australia for a month. You know, the place where it’s summer just about now. When they start thinking how much they’ll miss Finland, I give up and head out again.
It’s the afternoon of December 26th, 2009 and I’m losing my faith in mankind once again.
The next few hours I spend walking around Tampere are utterly boring and nothing happens. No one wants to be outdoors, nothing is open. No matter how much I try to sugar-coat the last moments I spend walking the streets, they’re still nondescript. I end up at the railway station way before the train is scheduled to leave, and start writing the first entry to this blog. I find myself thinking that there won’t be a really nice narrative to it that will span through the whole trip to Tampere – nothing that would make a nice “whole” out of the individual entries.
That’s when I hear a friendly “Hi!” that sounds like it’s directed at me, and look up. Takes a moment to realize it’s the friendly face of the receptionist looking back at me from the crowd. When she sees that I notice her, she smiles one last time, waves at me a goodbye and heads towards a train leaving to Helsinki. I look at the timetable at the wall and notice how the bad weather is delaying the train to Jyväskylä for yet another 10 minutes.
I make last adjustments to the first post and consider for a moment if I should be going after the receptionist and heading back home. But I decide to go on with the original plan and take the train to Jyväskylä, the great unknown, since there will probably be something awesome happening there.
Shows just how little I know.