I haven’t been on a real lecture in a while.

The last one was in Riga, in Latvian, about (amongst other things) theories regarding the year 2012. The language barrier was really bad, as my Latvian vocabulary is limited to say the least. I just couldn’t understand what was being said. So I was there watching the pretty pictures and trying to form some sort of a whole from what I saw, the scraps of Latvian I knew and the few borrowed words that kept coming up. Interesting to say the least.

Ah. Come to think of it, technically that wasn’t the last lecture I’ve been on. I was to that damn conference in Berlin the other week. But when you go and listen to a lecture held by someone you’ve been partying with the night before, it isn’t a real lecture. It just doesn’t count.

But lecture notes. Lecture notes. Lecture notes.

I’m not really the one you should come to about this subject. My history with them is more a series of tragedies than valuable advice.

I remember some years ago back at the University of Technology when I got officially introduced to some fellow student for the first time and they reply to my introduction with “Ah, yes! You! I actually remember you! You were the guy who was always drawing all those awesome pictures during the programming lectures three years ago. I sat behind you a couple of times and stared in awe. Do you still do that?”

I admit, I probably don’t have any written material left from Programming 101. But I do think that my artistic skills improved a lot. Learned a lot about shading and highlights.

But the programming courses weren’t something where taking the notes was really important anyways. You’d learn by doing the practical stuff and reading the tutorials when you did.

Things changed when I switched majors.

Did a complete 180 degree turn with that, from scientist to scholar. From engineering to cultural studies. And the switch from practice to theory became very apparent in how much got written down during the lectures. My notes from American History 101 fill a notebook from cover to cover. Which would be neat and all, but around this time I was really into mind-maps.

The end result is page after page of connections between terms, ideas, people, places, years and everything else.

When the time for the exams came, I looked back at the notebook and I have to admit that it looked like something out of a conspiracy theorist’s closet – wild lines connecting everything to everything else, with small notes sometimes explaining why they’re related. Plus seemingly unrelated notes in the margins.

The closest to actual information you could get out from them was something akin to “The Boy Scouts are influencing Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Southern Baptist Church via Mind-Control Satellites and Chloride in the tap water. THE CAPITAL IS IN FLOROS!”

I still managed to ace the exams, since, as a former Boy Scout, I did know the facts, even if my notes made it look like crazy-talk. But I did learn my lesson and eased with the mind-maps and tried to focus on actual information.

After that debacle, I switched to computers for my lecture note needs. A Mac laptop worked quite well at first, but its battery life started to go down. In the end, to save the battery I had to turn off the display and write my lecture notes blind, relying on muscle memory for the correct letters and sheer luck for the rest. The amount of typos was staggering, and again, come exam time, the notes were a bit hard to follow.

The era of using a computer for lecture notes really came to an end when they started upgrading the campus wireless network. Do you know how much more interesting it is to check on Facebook if someone’s cat has a new toy than write down the list of five most influential robber barons of all times. I do. So to keep myself interested in lectures, I left the computer home and went back to writing notes the old fashioned way.

And speaking of old-fashioned. During a more pretentious phase of my life I tried another tool for writing down my notes. When I say pretentious, I mean the time when I had a leather briefcase with me to the university and wore ties to lectures. Well, I still wear ties, but you get the point. Back then I tried using fountain pens for note-writing. And I tell you this, you do get rocking-looking notes with them and tend to focus on the relevant, as you want the notes to be as awesome as possible.

The thing with fountain pens is that once you screw something up, things escalate from bad to worse quite quickly. To summarize, ink stains can be really hard to get rid of. And there are situations where it becomes cheaper to buy a new shirt than try to clean an old one.

But being a worker drone these days, lecture notes and all that are a thing of the past for me. I must admit that I’ve really started appreciate the feel of a pen and some paper through work. Compared to word processors and well-thought-out emails, I find that I’m more creative when given a corner of a napkin, a pen and a face-to-face brainstorming session. Writing the basic ideas up in physical space as they come along really helps the brain focus on them.

And I guess that is the thing with writing lecture notes. No matter if it was blind-writing on a computer or making raving mad mind-maps on a notebook. When I’m focused on getting information from something and at the same time explain it to myself in some different way (like mind-maps), I form a more firm mental connection about it. Makes recollection so much easier later on.

PS. If you happen to have the list of the five most influential robber barons of all times, mind sending that to me? For some reason I don’t have it…

I’ve been thinking of writing a conference report here. But since it was just partying and meeting up with old friends and new Norwegians, I’ve been more or less stuck with it. So instead of a report, here are a few snippets from the past couple weeks that I feel like I should mention instead, in a collage-sort of a way.

It’s way more confusing like this, and I don’t have to spell out my real thoughts or have coherence about things.

–

It’s New Year’s Eve. I’m at Apollo, a quite large live music venue. I’m here with my sister. The music is thumping. I’ve been cast as her wingman for the evening. I just sort of was expecting for it to take longer. The first guy we approach is the catch. I’m in the completely wrong mood for partying in a too loud and too full a venue. So I head outside.

The air is brisk, the snow under my feet is crunching in a very pleasing fashion as I walk down the street with my summer shoes. It’s one of the times of the year that there are a lot of people out there, and they are actually friendly.

One of the three traditional big Finnish “drinking holidays” – New Year’s, Vappu (May Day, labor party thing), Juhannus (Midsummer). Days when the Finns are breaking the silent and gloomy -stereotype to the max.

It feels good to start a new year like this. Surrounded by strangers who are talking to you if you bother to initiate a conversation. In the chilling winter air. After doing the good deed. If I had a glass, I would raise it now in honor of new beginnings.

–

“Just imagine this when there weren’t any electric lights. No wonder that men flipped out, took their axe, drove their family out into the snow, and then went on with the drinking of the vodka and the burning of the sauna.”

It’s a Sunday evening a couple of weeks ago, I’m driving back from Tampere and taking a dark detour to get to a smaller Finnish town before returning to Helsinki. The guy talking is Pens, as usual. Our friend Mar is sleeping in the back seat. We went to Tampere yesterday to check out the new apartment of Mi&Mi, a horrifyingly cute couple that we’ve all known for ages.

And now we’re driving through the darkness, and Pens is making a good point.

Finland is a harsh lover. We’re so up north that when the winter comes, it really does. Thanks to the Golf Stream, we have the climate to grow crops here, but it doesn’t help with the darkness. It drains the life out of you to have 5 hours of sunlight per day. Not easy to like the effect this place has on you right about now.

–

It’s last Saturday, I’m in Berlin. The morning after the first night of partying. Feeling the need for some fresh air after breakfast. The weather outside is wonderful, just enough degrees on the minus side of Celsius and from what I’ve understood, it’s been snowing the past couple of days and that shows. But now the sky is clear.

I’ve had a nice breakfast and learned that the hostel reception won’t accept credit cards. The nearest ATM is less than a kilometer away. I could use some cash. I have a couple of options – Could go listen to lectures (this is a conference), go get my winter clothing and head out and get cash so I can buy snacks (you always need snacks) or just head out.

I get an amused smile from a passer-by, head-shaking in disbelief from some fellow conference goers and the hostel staff. Some guy even slows down in his car, rolls down the window and shouts “Respect!” before continuing his trip. Apparently going out without a coat or a wool cap in this nice warm weather is considered insanity here..

–

It’s New Year’s again. I eventually head to the taxi line – the reason not to take the bus tonight is that I need some neutral human interaction, and a long taxi line usually provides just that.

There is a young couple that at first doesn’t remember the name of the place they’re coming from, but eventually get their stories straight. A very grumpy guy who is heading to the same direction as I am. And an old man who is really living the motto of this blog – “If you have to choose between the truth and the legend, always print the legend”

He’s been everywhere, done everything. He is, by his own words, a world-class ballroom dancing champion who’s done shows in Vegas. He proves this by taking the young girl for a dance right there in the middle of the street as her boyfriend is standing there, looking amused. He has been a paramedic, and assures another lady in the line that he needs to help her keep her breasts warm. With his hands.

The line isn’t moving. I’m slowly starting to lose the feeling from my toes. I look at my shoes for a second and when I raise my head, the old man is sneaking into a cab somewhere ahead. He’s my new hero.

–

It’s the last day of the conference in Berlin, and I’m being asked to explain what Finland feels like and what sort of people the Finns are. I try my best to capture the way I’ve been raised, the feeling of being in between the East and the West. The modern way things work. The distance. The darkness. The depression deep within. I must be painting quite a grey picture as the guy born in the former East Germany feels sympathy.

–

It’s this morning, I’m talking with someone at work, praising how wonderful it is to be back in Finland. I don’t really know why I’m saying that, but I think I am starting to mean it.

To get back home from work today I had to use a shovel to get my car clear from behind a huge pile of snow and ice.

No, it didn’t snow today.

And my car was there only for two hours.

This and the fact that I had parked on a parking square didn’t stop the city workers from deciding that it’s okay to bury my poor blue Mitsubishi darling under the all snow they decided to clear from the street. I don’t think I’ve ever been this relieved to actually have a shovel in my car before. Well, there was that one time near the city dump, but I’d rather not talk about it.

Today it came to a use that was all good and respectable.

Took me about 20 minutes to get the damn thing cleared, and not just because of the wall of snow. Some trendy graphic-designer-looking guy had parked his car so that it blocked the only clear way out from behind the snow. The city workers must have had some relapse into humanity when they left that out, sadly this guy didn’t share the view.

When I had managed to dig up my car, he came walking to me, stepped in the car and moved it away, waving from the window, saying something like “oh, I hope I didn’t park you in there.”

I’m not a violent man, but I did get some not-so-creative ideas about my shovel and where it could be stored.

The really nasty thing about standing there in the snow for 20 minutes, shoveling, is that I tend to live in denial about the weather during these winter months. I wear my summer shoes and light pants whenever possible. I don’t use earmuffs, I don’t usually have a wool cap with me, I use a scarf only because it looks good. Last winter someone probably saw me walking in the snow wearing shorts and sandals. Unless it’s absolutely necessary I try to be more suited up for autumn or spring than winter. And since I have to spend about 10 minutes outdoors during my typical work day, a bit of winter doesn’t have time to bother me. Usually.

Two things were different today. First of all, there was that whole spending 20 minutes playing a St. Bernard to my car. And second… the “I don’t mind the weather” look is actually easier to pull when it is colder. This morning it was just maybe -3°C out there. The problem with the clothing isn’t the temperature. I can live with the chill.

It’s the shoes. They’re the killer.

Okay, technically it’s the snow.

You’ve heard the story how the Inuit have 600 words for different sorts of snow, right? The authenticity of that is something everyone can think of themselves, but “Loska”, the Finnish word for that awful watery snow (slush?) that forms around 0°C temperatures, is something that you should remember.

Remember it and have depressive nightmares about it.

Nightmares about it where you sink in it.

No matter how you try to balance or walk around it.

And it’s awful.

Bad-awful.

Bad.

That’s what you should be thinking when you hear the word “Loska”. That’s what my feet were thinking of when I finally got my car home. I almost thought I’d write a post about how the weather here is hell and I can’t stand it and I want to have tantrums and head somewhere warm where there are palm trees and stuff.

But as I hang my shoes and socks to dry, I must admit that there is one thing that’s awesome about all the snow and the temperature. Looking out the window, it’s still bright outside. Even when the sun hasn’t been up for hours. There is a slight mist in the air that refracts the light from the streetlights and nearby windows, and that gets reflected from the bright white snow covering everything. It’s an ambient glow that just flows in the air. And it’s just cold enough, that there are small particles of ice in the mist, that when they get in between you and a light source, they sparkle.

That, combined with the frost-covered trees that we have had for a week now, makes the winter landscape look like something unreal – straight out of a video game or a high-budget Hollywood animation.

I make a cup of hot chocolate, put on some completely unfitting music to play in the background and lean back in the sofa, letting my back muscles rest. They got some nice workout from the snow-shoveling and deserve a break.

There are a lot of ways to deal with the snow and the cold and the slush.

Sometimes it’s walking there, letting the whole atmosphere get to you and ignore the bad things about it.

Sometimes it’s cursing about it as loud as you can.

At the moment, being indoors, watching the cold from the protective circle of warmth the fireplace radiates feels just like the way to enjoy this.

I drink my hot drink and start pondering why I haven’t taken a nice pause like this in a while. Then I start remembering – I should be falling asleep soon if I want to be able to get up in time. In time so I can go to work early in the morning. Go there early so I can leave early. Early because I need to check in for the flight to Berlin at 15:45. And I haven’t even packed yet.

Okay, deep breaths. I can still do this, right? Even if I feel like I don’t have the time. What do you need for a weekend trip again? Spare pants? Toothbrush? Camera! Where is my camera? One more breath. Stay calm. Stop wasting your time. Focus and pack your damn bags.

I have the next entry about my Christmas trip already written, but since I’m such a tease (just ask anyone who has personal experience) I’d love to take a short break from that story, and write something else for one entry. A sort of an interlude so that the blog doesn’t get clogged over one theme. I’ll have to write about something else eventually, so I should do it now when I still have a back-up story in case I can’t get anything written in time.

And besides, I have to prove that my normal blog entries will be as incoherent as the travel stories are.

Helsinki. That’s the capital of Finland.

Finland, in case you’ve forgotten (and I don’t blame you if you have), is that strip of land between the old Soviet Block and the Western world. No, not East Germany. The one up north. Further north.. A bit east from Sweden.. And stop right there. Yeah, that place. The covered in snow and full of polar bears.

I’ve lived in this wonderful capital of the vast wilderness for some 28 years of my life. Spent a couple of years in Turku in between at a very low point of my life (was young, needed the money), and that left me in the position to speak about Helsinki without the naivety of someone who’s been here all his life. The sad thing is that I don’t really know anything to tell about the city.

To be frank, a random 5 year old kid from Berlin would probably rob me blind if I got into a bet with them on which one of us knew more about the history and sights of their home town.

My lack of things to tell can be broken into two components.

One. I live and always have lived in the outskirts of the city, in one of the nicer suburban neighborhoods. This means that I haven’t had that many reasons to go to the city center, ever. Plus it takes like 40 minutes get there by bus, plus the waiting at the bus stop.

This seclusion from the actual city means that I missed the whole “Did you hear about that house there? It used to be a secret Nazi base during the Second World War.” type history lesson of the city when I was a kid. I do know which two houses are haunted near the border of Vantaa, but I don’t think that counts as useful knowledge regarding Helsinki. And I haven’t had the chance to correct the mistake and gaining that local knowledge via the other natural way, since I’ve only been dating people who live outside the Ring Roads for my whole life.

For the foreigners, those Ring Roads define the borders of civilization here in Finland. Beyond Ring One, you’re in the countryside, and after crossing Ring Three, you’ve entered the “here be dragons” territory. The roads are inside the Greater Helsinki Area.

The other part of my lack of capability to tell things about Helsinki is the reality that Helsinki is a boring city. And it’s not just me. I’ve been working as a helping hand on a couple of conferences with international guests, and the biggest problem the organizers have faced in every case has been the same “Where can we take them when they’re not listening to the program?”

If you’re in luck and you have to show the city to someone who is interested in something very specific like the Bronze Age history of Finland or the Moomin, you can find them their niche spots to visit, but in general, Helsinki is a tough town. There is the Suomenlinna fort and a couple of really beautiful churches, but that’s it. We’re organizing another conference in May and know that a lot of the people who came to a conference here two years ago will be coming back so we’re in a pickle – we already showed them Suomenlinna and the churches the last time.

“On your right you can see pigeons.”

“That’s a building over there. It looks like a dirty white sugar cube. Most of the people I know hate it and wish it would spontaneously collapse.” (If you’re from Helsinki, you should know which one I’m talking about)

“And that’s a statue of someone. Maybe a president. We can go take a closer look at the sign there if you want to know for sure.”

“That looks like a place where Batman could hang out. No idea what it is.”

“And that’s one of our museums.” (No it wasn’t)

Whoa, this post is getting really depressing when I start remembering what sort of tour guide I’ve been to people visiting this place.

I better just take a short break and return to the blogging in a moment. Here’s something to watch while waiting. (It’s titled Helsinki, so I’m not even steering that far from the subject):

Ah. Much better.

Now to be honest, Helsinki isn’t all that bad. At least when you compare it to Turku (looks nice, but is a soulless husk) or Tampere (has nice people, but is even more boring than Helsinki, if possible). During the summer the weather here is nice, the people are pretty and there is a lot of green stuff all around.

And there are a couple of really awesome things in the city that I love to show people who come here.

First one is the tunnels. We might not have fancy catacombs or ancient sewers here. But we do have tunnels. Tunnels, parking garages, the metro tunnels, maintenance tunnels and even more tunnels. More underground space than you can shake a fist at. It’s pretty impossible to say how far they reach, since quite a lot of them are restricted to military personnel only. But even if you don’t use those, you can pretty much go all around the city center and beyond without ever seeing the sun. This might sound bad, but it’s a great thing in the winter months, when the sun isn’t up there anyways and the streets are covered by half a meter of snow.

The second awesome thing about the city I already forgot, but I’m sure there was one. I remembered it a while ago. Honest. And no, I wasn’t counting Suomenlinna as one. It was too obvious.

But I’d love to discover what there is here to see. And whoa, that was a lot of talk to get to the meat of the post.

Since I’m so hopelessly clueless about Helsinki, I’m going to take advantage of it. I think this is a fantasy everyone has about their home city – I’m going to spend time in Helsinki as a tourist this summer. Book a room at some hotel room in the city center. Get some tourist guidebooks. Go on one of those sight-seeing tours. Ask the people you meet for directions and get lost based on those directions. Possibly even get robbed. The whole nine yards.

Spending time where you live without being a local. A week in Helsinki as an outsider.

Anyone out there who wants to join me?