So what you're saying is that you've accomplished absolutely nothing?

I have started a million different posts, but there are just so many things to tell you, my dear readers, that I haven't known where or how to begin...

Dude! No you haven't. You haven't even logged onto blogger for like two weeks. At least! Stop lying, woman.

Okay. So maybe life has taken over a little bit. I've had to travel here to Europe, do all this super-important stuff and shit and see all of these people who just need to be seen like right now.

Really? Stop lying. Last night you had time to watch Porky's for the umpteenth time in history, and what's all that urgent shopping you've been filling the closets with? You just couldn't run your busy life without that black, studded, leather handbag, or what?

Well... Necessities man. I also got some deodorant on that outing. Get off my back. It's not like I've chosen not to blog. Stuff has just been going on. Like crazy shit and such.

Oh yeah? Like what?

It has too! There was that one night when I went to turn on the television and wanted to change the channel for the first time, because one of those weird, Finnish, badly-produced interior 'decoration' shows was on, and all of the channels disappeared. I had to call my brother to find out that I was using the wrong remote - a remote that probably should not even work on the television but I now know will make all of the channels disappear and green text in some language I've never heard of appear and possibly will send a distress code to the Titanic and not the other way round - and that was a total pain. Took me like half an hour to even get to sit down.

The TELEVISION?!?! That's your big time-consuming important shiz? Come on!

Well. There was also that Irish construction worker who followed me and the ever-fabulous K (wanna date a gorgeous, intelligent 30-something chick? E-mail me) home from the bar to be unceremoniously dumped at the downstairs door (But now he knows where I live. Frikkin scary. Should maybe have considered that beforehand...). And then there was that whole night, the overly expensive, but not that nice wine, and the scandinavian markup on the food in that new restaurant, the drunken men hitting on us in a way they had dredged up from the eighties, the incredibly awkward attempt by that older woman to hit on me (she started by, literally, hitting me on the shoulder), and attempting to resolve why it is that people leave their houses without ever looking into a mirror (because mirrors, as everything else in Finland, are too damn expensive) especially if they are attempting to attract the opposite sex (or the same, but so very different anyway), was just totally something I can't even really blog about.

But that's just one night. Or Am I mistaken?

No.... But I went to the movies too and suffered through the mostly plotless Alice in Wonderland. All while the 3D glasses were really uncomfortably pressing on the bridge of my apparently not average shaped nose. And that was like supremely time consuming. Felt like years. Unlike with the A-team, which I also went to see, which totally rocked and made me believe in the power of cinema to once again numb one's brain completely.

And then your fingers broke?

What? No! But that just took up some time. What's your problem anyway. If I don't want to blog about my parents' new puppy who is just the cutest thing ever, and who I keep carrying around like a tiny helpless baby and giving kisses to, that's my business. It's hard to blog when you're being all Paris Hilton-y and toting around 8 pounds of the sweetest, cutest puppy ever.

Carrying a dog? As an explanation? I mean... I don't even really know how to respond to that. So maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should just let it go. 

Just breathe in and out and let it go.... let it go... let it go...

Wait! I haven't even told you about the whole debacle with me not liking Finnish coffee anymore and how much dust that has stirred up. Or me losing my voice to Finland. Or me going way over budget (damn expensive European countries, can't even buy decent shoes and stay within a very generous budget) on a budget I've imposed on myself to learn the value of money (obviously so far it has taught me to loathe budgets and be weirded out by people who impose such things on themselves and to always give myself way more wiggle room than I initially think is necessary whilst imposing anything on my own person. Damn budget! And that money is worth more here in Europe than in South Africa which makes life very difficult on everyone, and that everyone should rebel against this European value of money. Yah. Very deep and all.). Or how it is totally possible and even quite likely to forget how to clean a house, pack one's own groceries, or put gas in a car (Although this one is purely theoretical as no one is letting me drive. Bastards.). Or how tiring it feels to haul too many bottles of wine across town manually (i.e. without the helpful aid of a car or a husband). Or... how long it takes me every morning to fashion the new mohawk into something that both looks cool (but not in that teenager-way) and that will hold up in this surprisingly windy city I'm currently calling home-for-now-because-my-computer-is-here. We are inland for Zeus's sakes! What is the deal with this wind? Or how much I miss the Viking and think that he should totally be here to carry my stuff for me, and drive me to places (see, they let him drive to places).

Uhm... Yeah.... See, I've just remembered that I have this thing that started like 10 minutes ago and I should be going at this second. No time to waste. Chat to you later!

Wait, wait! What thing? There's no thing today! Why haven't I been invited? I want to go to a thing too!

Dammit.

Oh well, there's always golf. Aren't you just excited to bits to be reading about that?

The coolness itself. In case you were wondering. Not saying that you were, but just in case. Just to stop you wondering. Just to you know, stop you. Uh huh. Yep. Indeed. 

Am I missing something? Vol 1: Finland

julochka at moments of perfect clarity did this first. But as I am still teaching my mother how to use her Mac in ways other than finding things on Google or on Youtube (I was actually a little freaked out when she told me she knows what Youtube is and immediately had to find out whether I'm on there somewhere. Am not telling.), and as I was forced to kiss goodbye to the Hubby who had to return to SA yesterday, I'm left with little inspiration time to post anything on here. But hey, at least I finally responded to the comments on my last post, and made some suspicious ones on my siamese sister's and julochka's blogs.

Well, that just confirms that I still exist.

I can see from the notes I made yesterday (or actually this morning) that I thought it would be a splendid idea to give you an itemized account of sort of list the different things I miss, and some things I don't miss from the different places where I've lived, and make this into a series of posts. Now, I'm not sure how good this is really going to be, but I'm also thinking that making any list is always a nice distraction, and a good getaway from the task at hand - this currently being cleaning the apartment. I'm taking a day off from mother and from showing her how to get her pictures from her camera onto her Mac, and will instead be pretending to do some laundry of pants that can walk by themselves by now, and vacuuming up of little balls of something that will otherwise think they own this place. At the moment I'm still being looked up to as a fickle, largish god of wine, but I'm not sure how long it will be before the balls of something go all secular on me.

Being back in Finland, if only for a short while and out of reach of the balls of something but in the land of the actual and sometimes lovely, but mostly slightly scary and off-putting RWP (Real World People), has definitely brought back memories of things I used to consider essential, and could never ever live without, and things that I had completely forgotten about, and could never ever live amidst again, not to mention some new, refreshing, just-discovered acquaintances, which will be possibly later featured in a wholly different post.

Finnish coffee

I used to log kilos and kilos of Finnish coffee to Denmark. I realize no coffee grows in Finland and said coffee is actually from South America or Africa, but as I soon found out, the secret is in the roast, and that I prefer a light roast, which most other Finns do as well. Am I a Finnish Coffee snob (the kind looked down by Italians with Berlusconi spearheading the mock committee)? Yes, I am. But also, every time I return to Finland, upon that first sip from that first cup of Juhla Mokka I'm instantly taken back (in the best Proustian manner) to my teenage years, to the beginnings of my coffee addiction. Discovering coffee was one of the lovelier things from those years and has a lot to do with who I've become. Believe it or not. It just might be that I consist of nothing else than coffee, wine and burgers. A high functioning load of junk?

Nowadays, my Finnish coffee hoarding years are over. Turns out that if you try to smuggle transport a lot of coffee in your suitcase to a country sometimes talked of as the 'drug-gateway to the US' the little drug sniffing dog will sit by your bag at the airport and you end up explaining that there is in fact no cocaine hidden in the ten packets of coffee, and that you are transporting Colombian coffee to Mexico, because you like the roast and the shiny red packaging, only to end up having it stolen taken away from you by the customs officials. Still, Mexico did offer some very nice substitutes in the way of beans and roasts, and you can never go home again. And maybe you shouldn't even try.  

Liquor laws    

Regardless of the ubiquitousness of coffee in Finland (If a Finn asks you whether you'd like some coffee or tea you are to answer "yes" meaning "please fill a big honking mug with coffee and fast". Tea is automatically disregarded.), another precious liquid is a little tougher to come by. The state has monopoly on the sale of alcohol and this translates to no wine in grocery stores, and special state-owned shops (with rather annoying opening hours) called Alko, and a bad selection of tequilas. In recent years Alko seems to have upgraded their wine selection from the 4 different kinds I remember seeing on the shelves fifteen years ago, but the tequilas on offer are still too few and too white. Also, I really don't miss having to remember to go by an Alko at a decent hour, just to indulge in two bottles glasses of wine at night. Having to remember such details doesn't make me think twice about drinking, it makes me want to drink more. So there Finland. Take that!

Finnumor/ Cuisine 

Because of the Finnish language (and perhaps because we are not tall, blond and smiley like the Swedes, but tall, pasty white, and have deep set eyes that often make us look ominous. Think a blond Damien from the Omen) we have existed rather separately from all of the other cultures that surround us for quite a while now. This has resulted in a Finnish sense of humor, which I can completely survive without, but has also brought about a lovely culinary culture (also sneered at by Berlusconi) that I like to refer to as 'Bet you didn't know it was food?'

I love Karelian pies with egg butter 

and mämmi with cream

and real 100% rye bread with cheese

and 'plastic' cheese with cloudberry jam (my pic has lingonberries. Sadly.)

Yes, these dishes are all DELICIOUS. And every time I go away, I sorely miss them, and upon returning completely overindulge, resulting in weird tasting belches and bad, bad heartburn. No, the coffee has nothing to do with the heartburn. Don't even go there.

Walking around town

Seeing that in Johannesburg walking around is a major no no, spending time in Finland has really had a profound effect on how much I really appreciate the possibility of quickly 'stepping out to get a carton of milk', or the never-to-be-revealed-to-the-Hubby 'returning from a bar crawl by myself, on foot, at 4AM, with all of my valuables precariously hanging from my purse, and with the Canon around my neck'

Resulting in this kind of awesome photography action.

These are not my towels.

Saving the world made easy

I know I'm no environmental superstar/hero like my siamese sister, Vancouver's Enviro Girl (VEG), but Finland really makes recycling easy. Our apartment came with separate trash cans, and there is an equal assortment of such things downstairs to match the ones we have upstairs. Wine bottles are even recyclable, and not just as glass, but as actual bottles. Hurrah!

Honesty

This is both a negative and a positive side of Finland. Finns are quite possibly the most blunt people on earth. I have had to de-learn this to some extent, but alienating even complete strangers still comes fairly easy to me (none of you had thought this, correct?). In Finland honesty means that you can leave your wallet on a park bench and someone will surely call you and tell you to pick it up with all of your money still in it, but it also means that when you have just squeezed into that pair of pants the size of which you already feel is a new low, the sales assistant will helpfully remark that the store also carries the pants in plus-sizes. I miss being able to say what I want when I want and not get glared at. Unless of course I spoke to a complete stranger in the elevator, in a waiting room, a cafe, or a store, where you are simply to pretend like there is no one in there with you. Got it?

Knowledgeable service

I'm off to fetch my black leather Converse All Stars now, since the lady from the shop just called me, left a message both in Finnish and in English telling me my long awaited shoes, in my freakishly big size, have arrived (from somewhere else in Europe), and that they are keeping them for me until I can come and pick them up. And I don't think that I gave them the correct telephone number.

Next stop Denmark, or Mexico. I haven't decided yet.