lots of useless stories.
I write this msg again using notepad on my dads computer which does not have any net access, or in internet terms no axx. Also i am sitting in my room here at my great aunts house hundledup on the desk as the room im in is quite cosy if you know what i mean. This morning dad, Gordon(the persons house we are staying at) and i all ventured to the Royal Air Force (RAF) museum. I did not suggest the trip but as your travelling its best to keep an open mind to things andgo with the flow. Thus we ventured there and i was quite taken back by the amount of planes, helicopters and bombs on display. Sometimes is quite easy to forget the times we live in, and thatonly about 60years ago the world was a vastly different place. Its actually quite scary to thinkof what our parents had to go through during the wars and how basically everyone was effectedin some way.
The otherthing which i noticed whilst walking amounst old spitfire, hurricane and fighter jetswas the amount of effort which went into the design, planning and construction of machines whichwere basically design to kill people. Its quite astonishing the amount of brain power which wentinto this and in a disturbing way it shows the great capabilities people can think of in timesof emergency and when the environment is in chaos. I guess there is no other better motivationto that your decisions could save your own life and the life of your friends and family. However,is also disturbing that we can only put our minds together in the time of war. Some of our greatestscientific discoveries are basically because of war. The reason we can fly to around the world in22hrs and be in england the next day is sadly because of the ideas and inventions created duringwar time. Things such as even the internet were created due to military reasons.Why can we as people come up with such inventive and ingeniously designed products and machines which actually help/solve simple neccessities such as food, health and shelter. It seems we only can in times where we are tested to thebrink of destruction. Maybe war is good for us? hehe i dont think so. Anyways i should reallychange the subject as it actually makes me quite angry at the amount of money we spend on thisshit and not on people who are dying. But then again.....thats just how we live and i am asguilty as the next person in not helping people other then myself. Its how our society survivesin its current form i guess.
Hmm enough of the rambles..though it does feel very good to get things like this out of my mind. Its good to be thinking atleast slightly outside of the square. By square i mean my own life/problems/head. I guess i should talk about the last few days in helsinki too, they were to mequite entertaining.
So on the 12th (wednesday) after catching the train from tampere with seriously 9 bags, we arrivedat my uncles house which was unoccupied as he and his wife were at their summer cottage. Now Pertii'shouse is located about 30km outside helsinki so another one of my uncles called Suli came and pickedus all up and drove us around helsinki to see the touristy sites. I am very greatful to their generousity.Both Suli and Rya picked us up, drove us everywhere and took us to sites all in their own time. Rya is also the 'worrier' of the family and lovingly worried about us the entire time, its quite cute. Anyways, afterseeing some awesome old buildings and churches the oldies retired and i was given some time to do somewalking around the city by myself which was definately a good thing. You see i have been around my parentsand everyone for quite a few weeks and its a good thing to have some time to yourself and do/see thingswhich you want too see. So i walked all around the city observing finnish people doing theirfinnish things which i find ammusing in its self for no particular reason. It was good to walk aroundas the city is quite small and you can basically walk everywhere. I was wishing that i had my bmxto ride as i could basically cover everything in the city in 1 day i think. Bikes are quite a big thinghere in europe. Though i have NEVER seen anyone ride a bmx, they all ride those old fashioned people bikes...with like curved handlebars and the ones u see in the old movies, its quite strange. Even youngpeople ride them....no mountain bikes it seems....there must be some reason for it but im yet to discoverit. So after a few hours of walking i made my way back to Suli's place and met up with everyone again. Sulithen drove us back to our place (pertti's) and along came the next day.....
I must say who ever is reading this is quite dedicated. I cant really say im all that interesting andthese little stories are hopefully some what entertaining but thats being optimistic at its greatest. Eitherway, carry on old chum.
The next day a first cousin of mine Sami was nice enough to organise a ticket to his favourite icehockey game for me and it was the semi-finals and the decider game. HIFK was his team and he has been a fan forsomething like 25years. Sami i think is quite a misunderstood person in the time i got to know him he opened up quite alot to me...maybe due to alchole intoxication but eitherway he made quite alot of sense.He is a man who has a shaved head and is covered in tatoos. All his arms are covered with pictures and hisneck has a tatoo of his name and his wifes and on the otherside the symbol of his icehockey team. He alsohas their logo on his underwrist. So as you can see he is quite the fan. Now the other interesting thing about Sami is that he is an ex-skinhead. No fucking joke. I did somewhat know of this faintly from someconversation i overheard but he actually has like White Power tatoos on his upper arms and also some tatoos relating to germany/hitler. One thing about travelling and in life in general is that you should never judgepeople by what they look like. So when i met him i had an open mind and did not think about the tatoos or anything.I think Sami also liked this as he seem to be able to talk to me about his tatoos and stuff without muchhesitation. That is after the first few hours of meeting eachother. Another thing which helped thesituation was probaly the aid of alchole. Finnish people drink. Fuck finnish people drink themselves stupid.This is another area which i kept an open mind. Australians drink..yes..they get wasted one night and wakeup feeling like shit and usually dont do it for a while. Finnish men...they drink for days sometimes weeks. Im not actually kidding. They litterally get drunk.....sleep...then drink again...and again and again. Nowi guess its there life style. After talking to quite alot of drunks..i mean they were obviously drunk, slurringdrooling, yelling, shouting, getting agitated and agressive etc its part of thier life. Not many countriesin the world have 4-5months where they only see sunlight for 4hours. Where its acutally dark for the majorityof the day. It would be depressing, theres nothing to do, you cant do as much compared to summer. So they drink. They blatantly admit to it. They drink themselves stupid, become obnoxious and then drink somemore. Now all 4 of my uncles have had drinking problems in their lives. Like have been alcholics and i would say a lot of male fins still have this problem. I dont think the younger generation is quite as badbut the older generation it is pretty different to australia.
Anyways back to the story. Sami picked me up from his dads house (Pertti's) and we went to the shopsbought some food, more booze and mixing drinks. We then proceeded to his house and opened some freshbeers. Sami generiously basically paid for everything. Including all taxi trips that night, alot ofbooze and was very hospitable. At about 4 o'clockpm one of his nice mates also a ex-skinhead tookus to town and we met up with another mate and went to the official ice hockey teams bar. Therewe listened to some music, had more beers, breathed in alot of smoke and then made our way to the game.By this time i had had more alchole then in the entire time i had been in finland. So we went to the sellout game and i watched Sami's team unfortunatly go down 1-0 to a team called HPK i think. After the gamewe headed out to this pub a tram ride away from the stadium. Now this pub.....was in the strangest place and u bascially had to know of it to find it, it was not obvious from the street. It was also tiny. Probaly fit about 30people max (that would be heaps crowded) and all the patrons knew eachother and some were even from the game. There we proceeded to drink more Koff and Karhu beers (finnish beers). After this pub we then walked to a pub i remember the nameof called 'East/West Pub' This pub was a bit bigger and more lively then the other pub but again it was definately a local pub where everyone new eachother atleast by look. It also had a cover chargebut Sami easily used the excuse that i was Australian and the bouncer let us in for free and wasreally friendly. After consuming more drinks here...there was finnish karoke and i think i was probaly the youngest person there and also maybe the first australian too. The good things aboutthese places was they were real finnish pubs. Places where normal tourists, one wouldnt find and two probaly wouldnt want to come. But i loved the atmosphere and tried to soak up the finnish culture.After a few more drinks i became friendly with quite a few people and a very drunk finnish elderlylady got me up for a short dance. After this Sami convienitly didnt help me as the drunkn ladycontinued to speak finnish to me and stood aproximately 2cm from my face. Hehe was quite funny. After this pub we went to another place but decided not to go in and call it quits..it was roughlyjust after midnight and we caught a taxi back to Sami's, he went and drank more booze and i wentto bed about an hours later.
The next morning after having a decent enough sleep i went down stairs and Sami's neighbour i wasintroduced too started drinking with Sami. By this time Sami was up and drinking without a hitch.They both somehow managed to convince his neighbours wife to drive us to the shops (about midday) and we then went to the pub there and drank some more. At this time i didnt have the biggest hangoverbut after another pint of beer, some kind of wierd schnaps shot and a milky drink i had quite the headache. Sami's neighbour by this time was totally drunk and proceeded to yell profanities and becomethe typical drunk hehe, was very entertaining. We then got a lift back to Sami's and they bothdrank a bit more. By this time Sami and i had had a deep and meaningful and both were happy wehad met eachother. He knew of my father being Jewish and all and said that he never meant to harmor anything to our family and i believed him. I think it was good for Sami to have jewish family it probaly was confronting for him and good for his head. He is an ex-skin head, he was basicallyone of the head honcho's for the Helsinki Skins. He told me heaps of stuff he had done which i wontsay...but overall he is a very generous person and means well. The reason i knew of his past was becausewhen my sister and her friend were backpacking around europe, they stayed at Sami's place and were greeted to walls filled with nazi signs, pro-germany and hitler posters. Though again Sami was hospitable to them knowing they were both jewish. Suli and Rya then showed up at his placeand it was time for me to go to the airport. I have to say i owe Sami quite a bit as he showed meparts of helsinki i dont think i would of ever seen/thought about and it was quite the experience. Maybe i can show him around Sydney if he ever comes, but there is noway i can last aslong as he can when drinking...as he put it..im basically a pansie, hehe compared to him i definately am.
So i got on the plane and left to england.
The flight was a short three hours and definatelycopeable with a headache. After touching down i went to coustoms and as normal asked a fewquestions about my stay in england/london. After showing my passport the lady sternly askedme questions like how long my stay here will be, when do u have to go back to australia etc. After saying that i will be here about 3-4weeks she asked if i had a return ticket. As soonas i said no, her eyes light (or is it lite) up and she became even more stern with me. I alsoanswered the question 'When do u have to be back in Australia' with the reply that i had savedup money and didnt actually have to go back to work as i was a casual and just wanted to travel.Again i think this spelt alarm bells in her head. I had to show her some proof of funds which idid but again she wasnt too happy. THANKFULLY my dad had written down the address of Gordonand Diane and their phone number, i gave this to her and she went away and i took a seat. Whilsti waited, i introduce myself to this other lady sitting next to me. As she said she could hardlyspeak any english and i learnt she was spanish. The impression i got from her was that she wasa lovely good natured person but unfortunately lacked english skills and i believe she toohad been told to wait as they checked out information about her. I felt quite sorry for the lady.After about 20mins of trying to communicate with her the person looking after me came backasked a few more question and was quite alot happier. As i later found out she had also interogatedDiane and also my mum on the phone hehe. She asked a few more question which i answered 'correctly'and i was able to go and enter england!!. I said farewell to the spanish lady and i hope nowshe is alright. So i finially had arrived in london allowed in the country and was happy tosee both goron and dad waiting for me as i came out of customs. And the rest they say is history....well not really cause it was only a few days ago. But i have to say i have typedso much tonight and i believe its time for bed. Thankyou for listening and if i dont seeyou later, good day, good evening and goodnight.
Joely
ps. not the most reflective post but good to get this out as i really needed too!
cyas
The otherthing which i noticed whilst walking amounst old spitfire, hurricane and fighter jetswas the amount of effort which went into the design, planning and construction of machines whichwere basically design to kill people. Its quite astonishing the amount of brain power which wentinto this and in a disturbing way it shows the great capabilities people can think of in timesof emergency and when the environment is in chaos. I guess there is no other better motivationto that your decisions could save your own life and the life of your friends and family. However,is also disturbing that we can only put our minds together in the time of war. Some of our greatestscientific discoveries are basically because of war. The reason we can fly to around the world in22hrs and be in england the next day is sadly because of the ideas and inventions created duringwar time. Things such as even the internet were created due to military reasons.Why can we as people come up with such inventive and ingeniously designed products and machines which actually help/solve simple neccessities such as food, health and shelter. It seems we only can in times where we are tested to thebrink of destruction. Maybe war is good for us? hehe i dont think so. Anyways i should reallychange the subject as it actually makes me quite angry at the amount of money we spend on thisshit and not on people who are dying. But then again.....thats just how we live and i am asguilty as the next person in not helping people other then myself. Its how our society survivesin its current form i guess.
Hmm enough of the rambles..though it does feel very good to get things like this out of my mind. Its good to be thinking atleast slightly outside of the square. By square i mean my own life/problems/head. I guess i should talk about the last few days in helsinki too, they were to mequite entertaining.
So on the 12th (wednesday) after catching the train from tampere with seriously 9 bags, we arrivedat my uncles house which was unoccupied as he and his wife were at their summer cottage. Now Pertii'shouse is located about 30km outside helsinki so another one of my uncles called Suli came and pickedus all up and drove us around helsinki to see the touristy sites. I am very greatful to their generousity.Both Suli and Rya picked us up, drove us everywhere and took us to sites all in their own time. Rya is also the 'worrier' of the family and lovingly worried about us the entire time, its quite cute. Anyways, afterseeing some awesome old buildings and churches the oldies retired and i was given some time to do somewalking around the city by myself which was definately a good thing. You see i have been around my parentsand everyone for quite a few weeks and its a good thing to have some time to yourself and do/see thingswhich you want too see. So i walked all around the city observing finnish people doing theirfinnish things which i find ammusing in its self for no particular reason. It was good to walk aroundas the city is quite small and you can basically walk everywhere. I was wishing that i had my bmxto ride as i could basically cover everything in the city in 1 day i think. Bikes are quite a big thinghere in europe. Though i have NEVER seen anyone ride a bmx, they all ride those old fashioned people bikes...with like curved handlebars and the ones u see in the old movies, its quite strange. Even youngpeople ride them....no mountain bikes it seems....there must be some reason for it but im yet to discoverit. So after a few hours of walking i made my way back to Suli's place and met up with everyone again. Sulithen drove us back to our place (pertti's) and along came the next day.....
I must say who ever is reading this is quite dedicated. I cant really say im all that interesting andthese little stories are hopefully some what entertaining but thats being optimistic at its greatest. Eitherway, carry on old chum.
The next day a first cousin of mine Sami was nice enough to organise a ticket to his favourite icehockey game for me and it was the semi-finals and the decider game. HIFK was his team and he has been a fan forsomething like 25years. Sami i think is quite a misunderstood person in the time i got to know him he opened up quite alot to me...maybe due to alchole intoxication but eitherway he made quite alot of sense.He is a man who has a shaved head and is covered in tatoos. All his arms are covered with pictures and hisneck has a tatoo of his name and his wifes and on the otherside the symbol of his icehockey team. He alsohas their logo on his underwrist. So as you can see he is quite the fan. Now the other interesting thing about Sami is that he is an ex-skinhead. No fucking joke. I did somewhat know of this faintly from someconversation i overheard but he actually has like White Power tatoos on his upper arms and also some tatoos relating to germany/hitler. One thing about travelling and in life in general is that you should never judgepeople by what they look like. So when i met him i had an open mind and did not think about the tatoos or anything.I think Sami also liked this as he seem to be able to talk to me about his tatoos and stuff without muchhesitation. That is after the first few hours of meeting eachother. Another thing which helped thesituation was probaly the aid of alchole. Finnish people drink. Fuck finnish people drink themselves stupid.This is another area which i kept an open mind. Australians drink..yes..they get wasted one night and wakeup feeling like shit and usually dont do it for a while. Finnish men...they drink for days sometimes weeks. Im not actually kidding. They litterally get drunk.....sleep...then drink again...and again and again. Nowi guess its there life style. After talking to quite alot of drunks..i mean they were obviously drunk, slurringdrooling, yelling, shouting, getting agitated and agressive etc its part of thier life. Not many countriesin the world have 4-5months where they only see sunlight for 4hours. Where its acutally dark for the majorityof the day. It would be depressing, theres nothing to do, you cant do as much compared to summer. So they drink. They blatantly admit to it. They drink themselves stupid, become obnoxious and then drink somemore. Now all 4 of my uncles have had drinking problems in their lives. Like have been alcholics and i would say a lot of male fins still have this problem. I dont think the younger generation is quite as badbut the older generation it is pretty different to australia.
Anyways back to the story. Sami picked me up from his dads house (Pertti's) and we went to the shopsbought some food, more booze and mixing drinks. We then proceeded to his house and opened some freshbeers. Sami generiously basically paid for everything. Including all taxi trips that night, alot ofbooze and was very hospitable. At about 4 o'clockpm one of his nice mates also a ex-skinhead tookus to town and we met up with another mate and went to the official ice hockey teams bar. Therewe listened to some music, had more beers, breathed in alot of smoke and then made our way to the game.By this time i had had more alchole then in the entire time i had been in finland. So we went to the sellout game and i watched Sami's team unfortunatly go down 1-0 to a team called HPK i think. After the gamewe headed out to this pub a tram ride away from the stadium. Now this pub.....was in the strangest place and u bascially had to know of it to find it, it was not obvious from the street. It was also tiny. Probaly fit about 30people max (that would be heaps crowded) and all the patrons knew eachother and some were even from the game. There we proceeded to drink more Koff and Karhu beers (finnish beers). After this pub we then walked to a pub i remember the nameof called 'East/West Pub' This pub was a bit bigger and more lively then the other pub but again it was definately a local pub where everyone new eachother atleast by look. It also had a cover chargebut Sami easily used the excuse that i was Australian and the bouncer let us in for free and wasreally friendly. After consuming more drinks here...there was finnish karoke and i think i was probaly the youngest person there and also maybe the first australian too. The good things aboutthese places was they were real finnish pubs. Places where normal tourists, one wouldnt find and two probaly wouldnt want to come. But i loved the atmosphere and tried to soak up the finnish culture.After a few more drinks i became friendly with quite a few people and a very drunk finnish elderlylady got me up for a short dance. After this Sami convienitly didnt help me as the drunkn ladycontinued to speak finnish to me and stood aproximately 2cm from my face. Hehe was quite funny. After this pub we went to another place but decided not to go in and call it quits..it was roughlyjust after midnight and we caught a taxi back to Sami's, he went and drank more booze and i wentto bed about an hours later.
The next morning after having a decent enough sleep i went down stairs and Sami's neighbour i wasintroduced too started drinking with Sami. By this time Sami was up and drinking without a hitch.They both somehow managed to convince his neighbours wife to drive us to the shops (about midday) and we then went to the pub there and drank some more. At this time i didnt have the biggest hangoverbut after another pint of beer, some kind of wierd schnaps shot and a milky drink i had quite the headache. Sami's neighbour by this time was totally drunk and proceeded to yell profanities and becomethe typical drunk hehe, was very entertaining. We then got a lift back to Sami's and they bothdrank a bit more. By this time Sami and i had had a deep and meaningful and both were happy wehad met eachother. He knew of my father being Jewish and all and said that he never meant to harmor anything to our family and i believed him. I think it was good for Sami to have jewish family it probaly was confronting for him and good for his head. He is an ex-skin head, he was basicallyone of the head honcho's for the Helsinki Skins. He told me heaps of stuff he had done which i wontsay...but overall he is a very generous person and means well. The reason i knew of his past was becausewhen my sister and her friend were backpacking around europe, they stayed at Sami's place and were greeted to walls filled with nazi signs, pro-germany and hitler posters. Though again Sami was hospitable to them knowing they were both jewish. Suli and Rya then showed up at his placeand it was time for me to go to the airport. I have to say i owe Sami quite a bit as he showed meparts of helsinki i dont think i would of ever seen/thought about and it was quite the experience. Maybe i can show him around Sydney if he ever comes, but there is noway i can last aslong as he can when drinking...as he put it..im basically a pansie, hehe compared to him i definately am.
So i got on the plane and left to england.
The flight was a short three hours and definatelycopeable with a headache. After touching down i went to coustoms and as normal asked a fewquestions about my stay in england/london. After showing my passport the lady sternly askedme questions like how long my stay here will be, when do u have to go back to australia etc. After saying that i will be here about 3-4weeks she asked if i had a return ticket. As soonas i said no, her eyes light (or is it lite) up and she became even more stern with me. I alsoanswered the question 'When do u have to be back in Australia' with the reply that i had savedup money and didnt actually have to go back to work as i was a casual and just wanted to travel.Again i think this spelt alarm bells in her head. I had to show her some proof of funds which idid but again she wasnt too happy. THANKFULLY my dad had written down the address of Gordonand Diane and their phone number, i gave this to her and she went away and i took a seat. Whilsti waited, i introduce myself to this other lady sitting next to me. As she said she could hardlyspeak any english and i learnt she was spanish. The impression i got from her was that she wasa lovely good natured person but unfortunately lacked english skills and i believe she toohad been told to wait as they checked out information about her. I felt quite sorry for the lady.After about 20mins of trying to communicate with her the person looking after me came backasked a few more question and was quite alot happier. As i later found out she had also interogatedDiane and also my mum on the phone hehe. She asked a few more question which i answered 'correctly'and i was able to go and enter england!!. I said farewell to the spanish lady and i hope nowshe is alright. So i finially had arrived in london allowed in the country and was happy tosee both goron and dad waiting for me as i came out of customs. And the rest they say is history....well not really cause it was only a few days ago. But i have to say i have typedso much tonight and i believe its time for bed. Thankyou for listening and if i dont seeyou later, good day, good evening and goodnight.
Joely
ps. not the most reflective post but good to get this out as i really needed too!
cyas
posted by Joely at 4:52 pm
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