I didn’t manage to catch up with my schedule yet, still lagging one day behind. But really, I’m trying to write this as fast as humanely possible. It just takes a while. Lot to digest. After all, it’s the last post before the blog has to take a dip into a whole new world. The travel report is over, only a day after Dī (my travel-companion-in-spirit, the one who was traveling from Geneva to Innsbruck while I went from Helsinki to Tampere and Jyväskylä) finished writing hers. The question I’m facing is – what will there be to write about tomorrow?

“Great. We’ll see you in 20 minutes. Want to go wait for us at Sokos?”

“Us” means Ry and her husband Neg. This used to be strange and rare back when I was younger. Meeting people for the first time in “real life” after knowing them only online. These days there’s nothing really weird about it anymore.  The reason I’m mentioning this is that I have never actually met Neg before. Not in flesh and blood at least, even if I’ve chatted with him online for years.

Ry I know better than Neg – met her a few times before, but originally got to know her online as well. Our meeting had something to do with the Eurovision song contest, an IRC channel dedicated to it and our distastes for some songs that were playing or something. Been friends ever since. Can’t remember what exactly happened, but this was back when Finland didn’t have any hope of ever winning it.

(No, that’s not an actual Eurovision song we’ve sent to the competition, but it’s not far from the horrid stuff we’ve tried to win with. Just had to give a sample and that’s quite an epitome.)

After the initial “Hi!” “Hi!” “You’ve been here what, ten minutes and you’re hitting on the Sokos staff already?” “Nah, she helped me pick out a new fragrance earlier, was just making a friendly conversation..” we go ahead with our plan to get some food at Harald.

I’ve heard great things about the restaurant over the years. If you go there, you apparently just have to try the tar ice cream they have on the dessert menu. I have my hopes up as we walk up the street, only to discover that the restaurant is closed for the Christmas holidays.

This fact holds true for the next few places on the “Oh well, if not Harald, then we at least can go to…” list as well.

Eventually we end up at a nice, small, out of the way Chinese/Japanese restaurant that serves quite nice chicken curry. Just what I need after freezing my fingers while we searched for a place that’s open. Our dinner conversations circle around two subjects – Virtuality and traveling. Neither are really that surprising, considering how we know each other and who we are.

It’s quite awesome that I get to include Ry to the story even if it’s by passing. She fits the underlying currents so perfectly. This is a woman that one day decided that she needed a change from her continental European life, packed up what she could fit in her car and drove to Finland. And been living here ever since. I can only give a respectful nod. My couple of days at Tampere and Jyväskylä get some perspective, no matter if I want it or not. I really should stop whining about the cold and enjoy the change a bit more.

We finish our meals and the couple follows me when I head back to the railway station. There is a big map of Jyväskylä there, and I show Ry and Neg all the places Ni had driven me the previous day and what I had learned about the town. I remember surprisingly much, but I must admit I am feeling a bit ashamed that I don’t think I thanked Ni enough for all the trouble she went through. Well, will have to remember to fix that later.

I bid the two farewell and step into the Intercity train to Helsinki. It’s running some 10 minutes late, and as the journey progress, I hear the 10 minutes turn into 20, then 30… Another typical day on the Finnish rails. This happens every winter.

I open my laptop and start writing down the stories and structuring my notes from the previous days. Thinking about everything that has happened. I have actually done something this Christmas, and I have a feeling that I may have discovered a part of me that likes doing this. I’ve been ignoring Finland way too much in the past years. Taking it for granted, maybe. I write down more thoughts and eventually catch up with the question.

What to do next? Once I’ve written the report about the trip, what will I have to write about? I’ve been on my adventure and I’ll have to go back. I’ll have to go home. Tomorrow is the 28th. Another day at the office.

I stop worrying about the looming problem and focus on what’s at hand. I still have the Christmas trip story to write. And I need a good way to end it.

Am I satisfied?

I admit to myself that I am. It has been a great few days. Maybe I should just end the story with bidding farewell to Ry and Neg. Symbolic way to say farewell to all the odd encounters and strange happenstances that made the trip what it was. And it was the last thing to really happen on the trip.

An elderly gentleman in the window seat in front of me stands up to get off the train at the next stop. A guy sitting next to the old man has to rise to let him pass. When the gentleman is gone, the guy turns to me and looks surprised.

“Petri?! What are you doing here? It’s been, what… 7 years since we last saw? What’s up?!”

Oh well. I guess I just have to decide that I’ll wrap up the story at some point. This is real life and in real life, things keep happening. There will be new days. There will be new, strange encounters. There will be new adventures. The Christmas trip needs an ending. This is a good one.

And tomorrow I’ll write about something else. Because things will happen. Things that are worth writing about.

Schedules are a bitch to keep. When I started writing this blog, my plan was “every other day, no exceptions”. Less than 10 posts into it and I’m failing that goal miserably. Decided to go to Tampere again this weekend (this time to see friends’ new apartment) and spent both Saturday and Sunday there. It’s not that the post wasn’t ready before midnight last night, but it, like every other post I write, needed some serious editing love before I could even think about publishing. Getting from the draft into a proper readable whole takes more time than the draft itself.

Everything comes to an end.

27th December, 2009. I’m sitting in the hotel-room somewhere in the grayness of Jyväskylä, looking at the remains of a faithful pair of jeans. They’ve served me well for the past years. They’ve been there for the good and the bad. For the depressive winter and the manic summer. A moment earlier I had been at the hotel restaurant, getting ready to enjoy yet another happy moment wearing them – an extremely filling breakfast. But everything comes to an end. The mistake I made was to force a slight split to get past a tactically placed houseplant with my tray of food. I’m quite sure that the couples in the nearest tables heard the sound of fabric ripping as well. The end didn’t come with a whimper.

When disaster like this strikes, you end up with a choice, a fork in the road. A fork, with two possible options in front of you. Either you do the fast retreat or the slow retreat. Getting away from the situation fast means less people will have a shot at noticing how you’re showing your bright white underwear, but you’ll draw more attention to yourself with all the rushing movement. Slow version has the probabilities reversed. More people, less attention. I took it slow and nonchalantly waltz out. Happy that I didn’t choose to wear the Snoopy boxers today.

So, here I am.

I’m quite sure that someone noticed what happened. More than just someone I guess. Dark gray and white contrast way too well. But the question “Did someone notice?” turns into “Do I really care?” as the world turns. Ends are just new beginnings, I bid the pants farewell after moping for way too long about it and move on. When I return to the breakfast table I get a couple of smiles from the people who probably know, but these things happen, so they don’t dwell on it.

I manage to get my delicious breakfast in the end and then return to my room.

Before I have to check out of the hotel, I have time to be amazed at the number of people I know from Jyväskylä. Social networking and announcing your travel routes causes me being treated with a number of “Are you kidding, what are you doing here” messages, but sadly, as many “Damn, I have to go to work today, why do you leave so early” ones. But it’s nice to know that in case I ever come back, I probably won’t have to spend a millisecond alone in this town.

I head out (read: I have to check out), walk around the town a bit (still freezing), toss my suitcase to the train station lockers (it’s heavy and not really practical in all the snow), and then I get suckered into my favorite pastime – shopping. In the past year I’ve probably spent more money on clothes than I have in the previous five years or so. It’s a small miracle that I manage to avoid buying any new ones from the local shopping center. I am tempted, I admit. The closest thing to a completely useless item I almost  buy this afternoon is the first book of Twilight Saga. There is a part of me that wants to get it and just read through it because it’s probably quite good.

The two items that do find their way into my shopping bag are an Audrey Hepburn wall calendar and a bottle of Acqua Di Gio. It’s not a huge secret that Audrey represents the ideal fantasy girl for me. A wonderful balance of the tomboyish and elegantly feminine. I have such a huge crush on her. And I had been missing a calendar for 2010. Simple, practical, just what I was needing, and pleases my aesthetics.

The Armani fragrance is a bit longer story. I’m usually the type to favor of stronger, musky ones like YSL’s M7, but lately I’ve been wearing them out of habit rather than thinking about it. And as the whole trip here has been about breaking habits (starting with the “I will stay home and be a hermit for Christmas”), I feel like I should be clearing out the mold in other ways as well.

“Hi. I need a new fragrance for me.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” I smile as I realize how many times I’ve admitted that not having a clue in the past days, “Maybe you can help me?”

“What do you usually use?”

“I’d like to get something different from that. Can you tell me something about the different products and what your opinions on them are?”

I seem to have found the local person to bother with my questions.

After the shopping spree I need a break, and head to the nearest McDonald’s. Here I buy myself a diet coke and connect to the WLAN. I talk with some few friends with my mind firmly set to the future already. Talking about the following week, organizing schedules, getting back to work. All that.

I’m admitting to myself that everything has to come to an end. Even this trip.

“Where are you at?” a message pops up.

It’s Ry, one of those people who live in Jyväskylä.

“At the Kauppakatu McDonald’s. Just resting my brain for a moment, then maybe a museum or something. Dunno. Kinda bored already.”

“When does your train leave?”

“In three hours. Depends on how late they’re running today.”

“Cool. This is a perfect excuse for us all to go to Harald! Hope you haven’t eaten at McDonald’s yet?”

“Like I’d actually eat here. Just here for the quality WLAN.”

“Great. We’ll see you in 20 minutes.”

Okay. Everything ends when it actually does end. Not a few hours before.

The possible audiences a blogger writes for can easily put into two categories. “You” and “not you”. Neither is really the optimal target group for a blog – if you write for others, you might end up in a situation where it starts feeling like a chore. You only aim to please a fickle reader you never really meet and get frustrated when you’re not getting the response you wanted. The other option is writing for yourself, which is good for the morale, but might degenerate the quality, possibly to the levels of “dear diary, here’s a picture of my cat sitting on my laundry, ain’t he funny.” So, neither path is really good, but you have to choose. I’ve usually gone with writing to an audience route, but I’ll admit here and now that this blog will be something I’ll be doing for myself. So you’ll probably end up facing cat-pics at some point. Sorry.

I haven’t been fully linear about my Christmas Trip. There is a bit that I skipped earlier, because it would have been sort of a pointless distraction. But I’d like to return to it now. Remember back when I was drying my hair back at the Hotel Ilves before heading out, chatting with friends online. I had this brief conversation with Ni, a friend from Helsinki, back then.

“Tampere? Weren’t you going to spend your holidays in Helsinki? What are you doing in Tampere?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, ”not a clue, really.”

“You’ve probably seen all our friends who live there, right?”

“Nope, none. They’re way too clever to be around when I come knocking.”

“Oh, so what’s on your program next?”

“Probably hitting the bars or something. Not much to do here. It gets worse tomorrow when I’m continuing to Jyväskylä.”

“Seriously? What on Earth are you going to do in JKL?”

“No idea about that, either. I’m going with the flow here. Last I heard there was nothing but snow there.”

“Sounds about right. Want to come get coffee tomorrow?”

“Whuh? I’m going to Jyv… Wait… What are you doing in Jyväskylä?” I was quite surprised, I admit.

“Oh, my folks live here. Visiting them for Christmas.”

We agreed to meet the next evening.

So, to return to the linear narrative and the 26th December (the “next evening”).

I bid Tampere and the wacky adventures I’ve had here a fond farewell and climb aboard the train to Jyväskylä. Not many people going my way, so no-one to talk to during the trip. Doesn’t really bother me this time, I have some work to do anyways. I try and enjoy the view for a while, but it’s a bit too dark outside and there’s only so much enjoyment one can have from random glimpses of snow in the darkness.

The train makes a stop at Jämsä and I get a sudden flashback from the previous night. It’s the bathroom of Groove. I’m taking a leak. And for some reason chatting with the DJ who is doing the same. He recommends that since I’m going to the direction of Jyväskylä, I should stop at Jämsä and go to some music venue there. He tells me there’s a famous Finnish band playing there on the 26th, that’s tonight.

I’m almost out the train when it hits me. I remember which band it was and quickly retreat back to my seat. Cold sweat rises on the thought of being stuck in Jämsä for the night, listening to this:

So, Jyväskylä it is.

The rest of the train ride is nice, smooth and quick. And in no time I find myself out in the brisk winter air of the vibrant university town, Jyväskylä. A sole reindeer statue is there to greet me, covered in untouched snow, reminding me how I’ve just moved further up north, and how things won’t be getting warmer any time soon. The vibrancy of the town quickly becomes apparent as it dawns on me that it’s the Christmas vacation and no self-respecting student would miss on the family Christmas dinner back home. And usually home is not in Jyväskylä for these people… Cue the frozen tumbleweed rolling along the empty street and some ominous harmonica music playing.

I start dragging myself through the snow along what probably is one of the the main streets of Jyväskylä and making my way to the hotel. After spending a night at Ilves, I have my hopes up for Jyväshovi (both being Sokos hotels after all). And while the place looks and feels okay, the difference is notable. Ilves was high-tech, steel and glass, and Jyväshovi is probably best described as “cozy”. Couple of floors, wooden interior, interesting placement of structural beams inside the room (no idea how you can see the television through a concrete pilar). The receptionist is friendly, but distant.

I have finally reached the low point of my trip. I actually want to go back to Tampere.

Saved by a phone call – Ni is parking her car nearby and asks if I’m ready to go get something to eat.

We head to Amarillo, order food, drink some glögi. It’s strange to meet Ni here. I can’t say that I know her at all. She’s still sort of a friend of a friend to me – We’ve seen only a couple of times and the only really common thread between us is the love for Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen (the book). But we get along. And I guess I’ve missed a familiar face. So time flies.

At some point after I’m finished eating my Giant Barbecue XXXL Burger (or something, can’t remember the name. Big-ass burger with bacon), Ni decides that I should get a grand tour of Jyväskylä. She’s here by car, so we wouldn’t have to freeze our ears off, and I don’t see a reason why not.

I must admit that seeing Jyväskylä like this makes a nice impression. It’s a small town and there’s not much to see, but it has a lot of open space and the architecture is modern. I feel privileged because of how much Ni can tell me about the place and sorry because I’m so tired I can’t remember what she tells me the next morning. I don’t think I could live here, it’s too quiet. But at least I’m no-longer longing to get away as fast as I can.

Ni drops me off near the hotel when I start dozing off in her car. I get to the hotel safe and sound, decide that I’ll have to put on something more party-appropriate, head to the closest nightclub, meet new people and have another great night.

But first, I need get out of these winter shoes and rest my feet a couple of moments.

I wake up the next morning.

Also. Dear diary, here is a picture of my cat, sitting on my jeans. Ain’t he funny.

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.

Reaching the five posts milestone should probably mark a spot where the blog’s themes, if any, should be quite apparent. Looking at those previous four posts, I think the blog’s about nothing but being whiny about the weather. In fact, it’s a downright depressed ranting of someone who has a personal beef with snow and cold.

Is it too late to change the direction this blog is heading?

Probably not, but to be truthful, I still have a lot of reporting to do from the trip to Tampere and beyond to do, so I’ll stay the course and whine.

It’s the evening of Christmas Day, I’m at Tampere after a spur-of-the-moment pact forced me out of the comfort of my home city. More precisely, I’m sitting in a pub called London, watching a group of guys dance to the beat of What is Love (or some other classic 90′s euro-dance song) and ripping their shirts off. Truth be told, this really isn’t all that surprising. It is something primordial that just happens when Finnish people are drunk and hear “good old dance hits” from the 90′s. I actually have a theory that any Finnish party out there can be saved by a well-timed application of Dr. Alban, Haddaway, 2 Unlimited or some other classic. This of course means that you accept “saved” meaning loads of drunken men on the dance floor.

And these guys are pretty much embracing the concept of drunken men on the dance floor, maybe even doing some more inappropriate things to it. So of course the next thing in the natural order of events is that they’re getting thrown out of the bar. You just don’t dance drunk and shirtless in a Finnish pub without repercussions. We are serious people.

Let me reveal to you a little secret, but handy rule that you should follow when confronted with a situation where a group of merry people are getting thrown out of a bar and you are sitting there, watching it go down: You should go and join them. So, I finish my drink as fast as I can, introduce myself and then me and my new friends are heading away from London and to the next possible party location. Their group consists of 3 Finnish guys, 2 Estonian girls and an Estonian guy. Awesome company. They accept me as one of their own in a second.

Ah, yeah, I didn’t talk the girls in this post yet, did I? Quick rundown. They’re the two I mentioned in the previous part as “A duo of surprisingly trendy girls is sitting in the corner”, and turns out they’re with the guys who were on the dance floor. One of them is the wife of one of the Finnish guys and the other is her niece. The Estonian guy is the boyfriend of the niece. And the two other Finnish guys are the husband of the sister of that one guy who is married to the Estonian and the other one is maybe this guy’s brother. I’m not really sure. And don’t ask me to repeat their names, I may remember like two. If forced.

It’s a real shame that the girls are Estonian, since they actually have some style and elegance. And this is a shame only because it would have been nice to write at this point of the story “and so finally I run into some stylish Finnish people on the trip”, but alas.

The girls decide that we should head to Gloria, a nightclub which is pretty much as far as you can get from London along the main street. Lots of slipping on the icy streets, singing and whining of “are we there yet” later, we are at the door, but since the wife and mother of three (as I later find out) doesn’t have her I.D. card with her, so the bouncer tells “Sorry, but you’re not getting in tonight.”

Don’t blame him, she looks young.

This isn’t the only bar we turned away from. The I.D. is a problem only at the first venue. Couple of the guys being too drunk turns out to be a big issue for  the bouncers. I think a sensible person would just ditch his new friends and go inside a nice and cozy bar after getting the second “Sorry, the rest of the group can come in, but he’s a bit too tipsy to come in” at a door. It just highlights how solid my brain is frozen at this point that I’m sticking with the group, that manages to end up at a random nightclub only after an eternity of walking in the cold.

The name of the place is eluding me because I really don’t care at this point, just want to get away from the chill. I think the feeling is shared by everyone in the group. You have to remember – it is nuclear winter out there. We do end up changing the nightclub/bar/pub we’re at a couple of times after this, but describing all that in detail would just be me repeating the story above a few times, so I’ll just let you know where we eventually decide to stay. A bar called Groove.

The hours fly by, and while I don’t tear my shirt off, I do spend a good deal of the evening on the dance floor, following the ultimate rule to male dancing: “if you dance, dance like there’s no-one watching.” Groove has a nice RnB/Hip Hop atmosphere to it and the DJ is playing everything great, from the current radio hits to older Eminem to real classics like Tricky. The Estonians start thanking me at some point (I’d say at the “handshaking phase of the evening” when you just have to shake hands with everyone and thank them for everything) for bringing them here – the music selection is just that awesome. I make a mental note to thank the receptionist for explaining the bars to me. By the morning I will have forgotten all about that note as I have other things to worry about.

I end up talking a lot with the girls as the guys are getting way too drunk to have a decent conversation with anymore. They’re originally from Tartu, one of the two Estonian cities I’ve actually been to. And I know my way around the place, so it’s fun to get a native view on what it’s really like. “Boring” seems to be the answer. But still, hearing stories of familiar places rekindles the flame I have for that city. I will have to go there again next summer for a couple of days at least. Road trip, anyone?

Eventually the night comes to an end and we part ways. I still have no idea what these people did for their living or what their names were. They hop in a cab and head home. I walk two blocks, smile and nod at the receptionist and head upstairs to the 14th floor to get some well-deserved rest.

I finally have the feeling that coming on this trip is going to be totally worth it.

So the typical mistake I make when blogging is that I try to formulate a brilliant post with some sort of a overall theme and structure. Something that arches through the whole post just like some arch-shaped thing that arches. A smart and witty beginning, a middle that builds up the point and an end that summarizes it all in just a couple of sentences. I promise to try and avoid that the best I can this time and just keep rambling what happened at Tampere, leaving you wondering why you spent time reading it and ending the whole thing mid-sentence.

There are some basic needs a man has to fill before he can let his guard down and focus on having fun. It is the evening of Christmas Day, I am sitting in a hotel room at Tampere, and most of those basic needs are well taken care of. There is the room itself (the need for shelter), the restaurant downstairs (the need for food), the sauna (the need for warmth) and my luggage (the need for clothing). The one thing missing is wireless internet access (the need for internet). That’s something that I’ll have to be fixing, stat.

I waltz down to the reception again. It’s only right that if I don’t have internet, the receptionist won’t have a chance to surf the web for latest celebrity gossip either on her work computer.

“Hello there again! I have some more questions… Does your hotel have WLAN?”

“Y…”

“Do I need some username / password -thing to access it?”

“Wel…”

“Is there something I need to…”

“Here, take this,” she cuts me off this time, “it’s all you need.”

She smiles and hands me a piece of paper with all the info I need.

Damn, she’s good.

So I make it like a weasel and find myself on the net only a couple of seconds later. I check the local websites to see if anything might be happening at Tampere tonight. No, still nothing. I log on to my IM program see if any of my friends from Tampere are online. Nope. They’re surprisingly smart and thus nowhere near here today. Or the internet for that matter. Damn normal people.

I complain about the cold to someone via IM, he asks what on Earth am I doing at Tampere anyways and why on Earth am I online at a hotel when I should be doing something. I am not sure how to answer, so I claim I’m here to have fun and just waiting for my hair to dry before heading out. Technically true, but not really. There is a hair-dryer in the room. But it’s an excuse to stay indoors in the fuzzyness instead of dying from hypothermia by walking out the door. Things start dawning on me, slowly.. What am I doing here that I couldn’t have done at home? I lean back and think about it while channel surfing for a moment. Japanese anime on Nelonen, news on BBC, some sports on some sport channel.

I have a pact to uphold. Go out there, find adventure. Not just lounge about. I suit up, take the elevator downstairs and return to my source of information on all things Tampere.

“Hi!”

I admit, the cheerful attitude of hers is contageous

“Hiya. You had that list of places that are open?”

“Yes, it’s somewhere here. What would you like to do? Eat, drink, dance?”

“No idea. Pretty much open for anything, as I really don’t know what I’m doing here. What can you tell me about those places?” I’m not really giving her any opportunity to spend her evening at work in peace and quiet. She’ll have to earn those holiday bonuses.

And oh boy, she’s earned every penny. After a very long conversation, I have a map in my hands, with the most important bars and nightclubs of Tampere marked on it. And I know their style and what sort of people goes where, when and why. We somehow figure out that London pub or Henry’s will be my bar of choice for the beginning of the evening and then branch out from there. I thank her and walk out. My testicles respond to the temperature by hiding. Yeah, still freezing out here. Henry’s is closer and would be the sane choice, so of course I walk the extra block and go to London. On the way there I almost slip and break my neck three times.

And it’s closed.

I am shocked. Was the receptionist wrong?

I stagger back to Henry’s – it’s closed as well. Something’s off. I look at the time, and to my surprise it’s not nine, but eight.

Oops.

So, I have an hour to spare. My first instinct is of course to go back and annoy the receptionist a bit longer, but I choose against it. It’s not about conforming into my typical patterns, this time. The air is cold, so I don’t want to stay outside any more than absolutely necessary. I look around and find a restaurant-type place nearby. For some reason, I start talking about the weather with the bartender and the discussion then turns to Finnish movies and how there hasn’t been any quality in them for years.

There is a very special place in Hell somewhere.

Tucked away behind the lakes of fire and disembowelment chambers so that normal people who get tortured for eternity can’t even see it. I don’t have the slightest clue to what horrible sins one must commit to end up in there, but it’s a big room with nothing but a gigantic screen in it. And you’re tied in front of it, and they play Finnish military farces on that big screen, non-stop.  For all eternity. And you have to watch. These movies are a unique art-form in the sense that they are funny as long as you’re too young to understand the jokes. Once you grow up enough to get it, you’re too old for them. There is really no other explanation than them being some form of Hellish design.

We talk about Uuno Turhapuro and Vääpeli Körmy for a while, I get something light to eat, read the newspaper and then it’s time to get back on track with the adventuring. Henry’s is still empty and I don’t want to be alone for a minute longer, so I walk back towards London. This time I actually slip on the way, but sadly don’t break anything, so this story doesn’t turn into a medical drama with hot nurses and Vicodin-addicted doctors. Just me, at Tampere.

There is quite many people at London when I get there. A duo of surprisingly trendy girls is sitting in the corner and four guys are dancing to Dr. Alban on the dance floor without their shirts. I go get myself a drink and decide to

I’ll continue with the story after New Year’s.

The easy thing to do next, after posting a fun lighthearted travel report, would be to start writing some stuff with a clear agenda – And to be fully honest with you, I’d love to talk about the way franchises have spread out so that everything is always the same, no matter where you go. Or something really strong and clear like that. But I’ll stick to the plan and write about my trip away from a Christmas in Helsinki.

Quick recap: There I am, in the middle of the busiest street of Tampere, in the afternoon (the traditional rush-hour time in Finland), and there is not a soul in sight. My hotel is only a short trip away, near the river and there is no point in not walking the distance. I think I see about 7 cars and 3 more people on the way. Two of them are Brits who walk from the train station to the hotel with me. Welcome to Tampere, hope you enjoy your stay, we won’t be around to make sure you do.

I get my room key card, spend a good moment figuring out the elevator system and head to my room as soon as I get over the shame of not understanding modern technology. The first thing there I’m greeted by a television screen. I dismiss the welcome message on the screen and Disney Channel pops up. An episode of Cars Toons where some old pick up truck is imagining itself as the main character of The Fast and The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift. Some sort of a low-point must have been reached when they came up with that idea.

I stare in disbelief for a few moments at the 3D animated version of the bastard stepchild of a Vin Diesel movie and decide to head downstairs and get something to eat before I feel too sick to even consider. I go past the Amarillo tex-mex bar and to the Fransmanni restaurant. Both of them are part of the S-Ryhmä group, same as the hotel, and really are the reason I wanted to add an agenda to this post at some point. But I’ll skip the rant with a passing mention that there are really well-thought out franchises and brands that hail from Finland and Sweden that don’t have anything to be shamed about in comparison to the American ones that people usually blame for the emerging monoculturalism. Just travel the Baltics for a moment or two.

I sit down in a quiet corner table and order some food. A nice compilation of jazz and swing songs is playing in the background. When I arrive I’m the only one around, but am soon joined by a Japanese businessman, carrying a shiny briefcase and looking very stern and important. He sits in the table next to me, leaving his briefcase almost in my reach and starts looking through the menu. Now, remember the whole jazz soundtrack playing in the background and this being a hotel restaurant with a high class atmosphere. The waitress fumbles, or something like that happens (I have no idea what exactly, I was looking outside at this point) and suddenly the Japanese man is standing up and walking away from his table, talking loudly to the waitress who might be apologizing or explaining in response while backing away.

There lies the briefcase in my reach, there is a distraction that feels oh-so-well choreographed. There is the angry, important-looking Japanese man and there is the cool soundtrack. Everything sort of falls into place in my mind – I let the scenario of me snatching the case or switching it with a duplicate play in my head a few times. It’s so perfectly Ocean’s Eleven that when I let myself return from my fantasies, I have a stupid grin on my face. Being a friend of heist movies is rewarding sometimes, it seems. The Japanese man calms down and everything sort of cools off.

And happiness finally finds me, wearing the guise of good food and an unintentional movie genre reference. I walk back to the reception, where a pretty receptionist is stuck working through the holiday weekend, and worse – she’s stuck helping me through the day.

“Hiya,” I say with a wide, happy smile. The smile would be a warning sign if you knew me, but the poor girl doesn’t.

“Hello. Anything I can help you with?”

“Well, depends. Do you know if there is anything to do here today?”

“Well, not much, but we’ve been putting together a list, one moment!” she’s visibly happy that someone’s asking after the hard work that has been done, pulls out a paper and starts telling me which bars are open in the evening. I listen, smile and nod. And then ask the question that makes her smile drain from her lips and feel embarrassment for her home town.

“No, I mean is there anything to do today, during the daytime? Some art stuff happening in the parks or I don’t know, something?”

“Oh…Well. No, I don’t know about that.”

We ponder for a while if there is anything happening, checking the local newspaper and all, but the city is pretty literally dead. The only things she can think to do before the bars open is hang around at the hotel restaurant or go to the sauna section. She apologizes, I tell her not to worry and head out to explore the city.

My background with Tampere is a pleasant one. There are no ex girlfriends here, no bad work experiences, just a lot of friends who live here. I’ve come to the city several times before and I shouldn’t be a stranger to the place. But truth be told, I’ve never really had the chance to wander around and get the feel of the city.

I do what I always do in a new city – Make a mental note where the hotel is, pick a direction, walk, find awesome. It usually works pretty well. And this gives me a chance to finally formulate a map of all the places I had been to on my previous visits. I head towards Pyynikki, and somehow manage to take a wrong turn and miss the view tower (which might actually be open, unlike everything else). I see lots of pretty buildings, freezing my ears off. (note to self: buy ear muffs) But otherwise the trip is pretty uneventful.

On the way back I realize the first thing that I’ve forgotten to take with me – ice skates. There is a rink open, and I remember thinking, half-joking at the time, if I should take them with me. I watch couples enjoy the evening moment and a father teaching a kid skate for the first time. It’s nice to think that all the presents this Christmas weren’t video games or DVDs.

I am clearly getting into the winter mood. It’s a time for warmth, beauty and happiness. I find myself thinking of the cute receptionist on my way back to the hotel and how I want to ask her something when I see her again. She’s sitting at the reception desk when I get there. I walk to her, and manage to get words formed from underneath the mask of ice and snow covering my face.

“You mentioned something about the hotel having a sauna?”

First posts and all that. Lots of pressure. Need to set the over-all themes and moods and things like that. My previous big blog started with “I’m single again” and ended up being about my life as a nerd. So, they matter.

I’m at the Tampere railway station, waiting for my train to Jyväskylä to arrive. The weather is close to what postcard-makers have their wet dreams over – brisk, cold, snowy. Very snowy. The sort of snowy that covers statues just perfectly so that you still see the form, but it still conveys the image of purity with the white veil that hangs on it and says “perfect to ski here, mate!” in an Australian accent.

Your friends who get the postcards you send to them made in this weather will look at them and gasp in awe – “Oh dear, Poodles. The Wellingtons are in such a pretty place. Should we go there as well next year?” They won’t, of course since they have to deal with that nasty sex scandal when the winter comes. So your secret will stay safe. Those magical postcard moments come with a price. Why do they think there was no-one in the picture of that beautiful building draped in snow? It’s so damn cold and windy no-one sane would go outside.

I’ll get to my current situation in a few posts time, hopefully, but let’s rewind a couple of days and get to the beginning of this all. Xmas Eve. I’m sitting home, getting ready to spend the next couple of days in Christmas bliss – listening to hip-hop and pop punk, drinking Pepsi Max and re-reading Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan. Someone on this Earth needs to uphold the important holiday traditions, so why not me. I start chatting with a friend on Facebook and the next thing I know I’ve made a pact with her to get the Hell away from where we’re currently at (I’m in Helsinki, she’s in Geneve) on the first train that leaves on Christmas Day and reporting what happens on our trips via the Internet. There are few things that I’m very vulnerable to. One of them is crazy ideas like this.

So, quick reservation of train tickets, book rooms at hotels and pack the bag. On Christmas Day I wobble to the train station around noon. The only people around are a bunch of Romani kids flirting with each other and trying to get smokes from passer-bys. Few moments later more people start arriving. Black, gray, black, dark brown, blue jeans. Occasional young blonde thing in a white coat. A blur of people dressed in camouflage from being noticed rush by. This is Helsinki on Christmas Day. Hurry, worry, anxiety. People call their friends how they’ve missed the train and swear how everything is shit. How the timetables on the internet weren’t accurate (even if they were) and how now the Christmas is ruined because of it. A guy in a pilot jacket with a big dog exchanges glances with the dark-skinned workers rushing through the station.

The train arrives. I get a seat opposite to a young woman who is knitting socks for her godchildren. First sign of Finns being more than just dark and depressed on this trip. She’s going to Hämeenlinna, so she’s there only for the first half of my trip to Tampere. We don’t talk much or anything like that. Just small-talk, laughing at the situations that rise in the train (and there are a lot of those). The usual stuff. It feels so normal while it’s going on that you don’t even realize how out of place it is in a Finnish travel environment. She hops off at Hämeenlinna. For a moment I wonder if I should have gone there instead of Tampere.

I really start missing the woman when the seat she leaves vacant is filled by some kid who keeps telling his dad stories of what he saw on the Duudsonit DVD set he had gotten for a Christmas present from his mom (apparently the parents are divorced and the kid was with the mom for Christmas Eve and heads to dad’s place for the rest of the holidays). His father protests and says he doesn’t want to hear about it. But still the kid continues. He’s so fascinated by the people who had put hooks into their skin and pulled a car several meters with wires tied to the hooks that he doesn’t realize how awkward his dad is being about it. The dad’s too old and too proper for that shit, and his ex-wife is ruining his kid with that garbage when he’s not there to keep guard. He will probably make them ski and play some video games when they get to where-ever they were going. Just so that he can keep control of how fast they are aging.

To distract myself from the kid, I put on some music and I find myself thinking how awesome Tampere will be. Full of Christmas festivities, parks filled with performances and art. Maybe a Christmas Day market. At least a lot of people who are doing interesting stuff. And a beautiful weather.

At this point, imagine a fast cut some hour or so forward, to me standing in the middle of the empty main street of Tampere, wind blowing snow everywhere. No cars or people are in sight. And it’s getting dark (even though it’s like 3pm)

Suddenly I wonder if I really should have hopped off at Hämeenlinna instead. The magic post-card moment is peeling my face off with it’s magical postcardness.