We are back in our cottage. Nice to be back for the last stage of our Finnish holiday. In a week or so I will be in Italy. Then London. So we are back in our Finnish home for a week. I wrote a lot about me in these blogs. I also thought a lot about me during this trip. Had time with girls of course. I have been a good (and very generous in […]
I am reminded how east we are by a sign I see while jogging around the two of Lappeenranta where we are visiting two friends and their daughter: 208 km to Pietari (St. Petersburg). This is the last stop before returning to our cottage. We stay at a very nice and cosy light blue wooden house. Small (but not too small) garden. An apple tree. which is dropping its fruits on the green and wet […]
We are back in Tampere. Is this my alma mater? Where I got my PhD. Or does the alma mater remains the university where one get his or her first degree? (in my case Parma). Do not know and in truth do not care much. It is just nice to be back here. It is 21:56. Outside is almost dark. A wind coming from the west makes the scattered clouds fly fast over the town. […]
We are now travelling again East. We left Tampere this morning and searched for some time for National Road 6. On the exit from town we passed the hospital where Venla was born. We travel and travel. The girls are getting tired of the car and of changing place every day or second day. But they are good and continue with their strange way of communicating in Finnish with the mother and English among themselves. […]
We are in Jyväskylä, the tow where Katja and me lived about 10 years ago. Before Olga came to us. We visit Katja grand mother and are here for two nights. I take the chance and go for a long run as I want to visit the area where we used to live and Laajavuori and its intricate web of walking paths in the summer and cross country ski tracks in the winter. I am […]
After 14 hours by plane and 5 hours by train for me to reach the red wooden house on the top of the Niinikumpu hill is always a special moment. We always arrive by car from the railway station which is about 10 km away. We enter the garden through two very old and high pine trees and see the house front door of the house. It more than 10 years now that I come […]
Mi sento un po’ come uno dei personaggi di un racconto di Haruki Murakami. Sono le 5:44 del mattino. Mi giro e rigiro da un po’ nel letto senza successo: il sonno se ne e’ andato. Il fuso orario che non si e’ ancora adeguato all’Europa. I pensieri. Non so. Mi alzo. Metto l’orologio al polso. Cammino sulla punta dei piedi per evitare che il pavimento di legno scricchioli troppo e svegli Venla. Scendo in […]
‘Bingo!’, said the custom police woman at Singapore airport while looking my passport. She then looked at me and said, ‘So you are happy birthday boy’. ‘Yes, I am’. The place was quite empty. The few border police looked bored and were probably thinking about the end of the night shift. She called three other colleagues to look at my passport: born on 10.8.1967 and I pass entering Singapore on 10.08.2009. 42 years later. They […]
Only once in a while, while zapping an endless number of TV cable channels you come across a movie which is a little gem. Just once in a while. That is when time passes, you know that is getting late, that tomorrow morning will be an early wake up, but you do not care. It has happen tonight, here in Ha Noi, coming across ‘Once’ by Glen Carney. Had the same feelings I had when […]
There are two Zanzibar. One is the idea of Zanzibar. The second is Zanzibar itself. This is often the case with travelling destinations but it is still interesting, I think, to compare the idea of a place with the place itself. Thus when I was on the ferry on Saturday morning from Dar es Salaam I was thinking about the books and stories I red in the past which told of kind of magical places: […]