Liar liar liar pants on fire.

I just arrived back home (aka to my apartment, I pretty much only feel I'm home when I'm moving from one place to another) yesterday morning and so far I've managed to do nothing but the following: 1) eat, 2) sleep. Considering that I have three essays to write and my bachelor's that is probably not such a good thing. The first essay's deadline was today. I was too sick to attend the lecture so I decided not to give back my essay either. The fact that I haven't even read the book it's supposed to be about and thus haven't actually written a word either have nothing to do with giving the finger to the deadline, of course. I wish I could say my conscience was even remotely concerned but honestly, I stopped caring once my feet touched the airport surface in Edinburgh.

Traveling can sometimes be kinda dangerous, it sometimes makes you realise how crappy and useless your life is at the place you would like to call home but really can't. I would love to tell my studies and responsibilities here to just fuck off but I'm too big of a sissy to actually do that. Most of the time I'm simply too conscientious to even try and make myself actually happy. A psychologist asked me last week what I'm satisfied with in my life. I could think of 29388 things that make me smile and instantly bring a temporary feeling of happiness but I couldn't really come up with anything in my current life situation I'd be actually satisfied with, not a thing. It was shocking. I need to start setting myself actual goals. I know I've accomplished a lot and that I'm far from a loser but in my own eyes I'm still merely half of what I could be.

We didn't actually manage to go back to Edinburgh before Monday night in the end but ended up staying in Glasgow for two more days. We met this incredibly sweet and hilarious Swiss guy with whom we went to see Yeasayer play live at 02 ABC. The gig was amazing, and even though I felt like fainting in my feverish state (I've had some sort of a killer flu bug ever since the weekend) I couldn't keep myself from dancing and jamming. When we finally did reach the airport after slouching, coughing, napping and eating shitloads of Tesco's delicious tuna salad, instead of sleeping we ended up talking to some Finnish girl who was studying photography near Edinburgh until 6am.


Basically an epitome of all we did on our trip.


I've been tired.


Yeasayer.

I have no clue what I'm gonna end up doing with my life now. I'm not sure if I'm able to talk myself into concentrating on school for just a little while more. Probably. But do I want to?

Hold your hair back.

I'm sitting at our hostel's lounge room in Glasgow and my head's doing its best to kill me after last night's nightly ventures. I just dragged both me and Terhi's stuff downstairs from the 6th or 7th floor only to check us both out, about Terhi's whereabouts I have no clue. I know she's better than fine, though, wherever she's at. That doesn't keep me from kicking her huge arse if she doesn't show up soon, pretty much the opposite.

Glasgow in general has been a pretty weird experience. Yesterday was great, first we went to Primark just to immediately get into a state we normally call Lidl psychosis, aka got so very overwhelmed by every piece of clothing that we basically went utterly insane for a few hours and ended up buying too much stuff to actually fit our backpacks. After that we went out to have a few drinks, randomly met some Swedish guys, and in the end ended up clubbing at Bamboo which seems to be one of the most popular clubs here, for a very good reason. My feet are sore from dancing and my brains sore from not-thinking-but-drinking but I'm still glad to say hangovers abroad aren't nearly as bad as those at home. I'm pretty sure it's just an attitude thing.

The night before yesterday wasn't all that great, I haven't really had any negative experiences from couchsurfing before but that night was pretty much one of the creepiest ever in my life. I actually had to send a text before I fell asleep that if I hadn't texted my sister back before 2pm the next day, I'm probably dead or lying somewhere in a basement in chains. Fortunately we did actually wake up all of our limbs still attached and very much alive. Never before have I fallen asleep next to someone with a knife-shaped hair needle in her hand, just in case.

I think I'm gonna take a nap now on one of the huge couches here, they have been inviting me to jump on them for a long time now. Then it's Edinburgh time again. The most important thing right now is that I'm still alive, not just breathing. Although right now just the breathing part is something I'm so bloody thankful for.

She only loves in stereo.

I'm sitting at some internet cafe here in Edinburgh, we're apparently leaving for Glasgow tomorrow to meet some electro artist dude who's gonna host us for a couple days. Until now we've been staying at the most gorgeous flat in the UK probably, a wonderfully bubbly girl called Laura kindly offered us her bed for a couple nights. I love Edinburgh, every building looks like a great piece of history somehow, and Scottish people all seem to be amazingly good-looking. No complaints here.

Ediburgh in all its colours:







Me and Terhi have pro skills in fridge poetry.

I've actually been feeling pretty good for almost a week now excluding the few dark anxious moods, which I have to say is both surprising and optimism-raising. In a way I still don't give a shit about anything that happens to or around me, but I don't really see it as a bad thing anymore. Although I'm not sure if various experiences would've been of more value if I actually felt something.

I guess it's time to get drunk now. Apparently we're heading to some dubstep party later on tonight. Yay. Can I just stay here for, say, a year?

The next time you say "forever".

I'm not sure if being overemotional counts as being emotionally crippled but it sure feels crippling at times. I'm pretty used to telling myself to calm down whether the feelings I've evolved are positively or negatively charged, but actually relaxing is another matter. I simply don't seem have the attention span to take things slow. I want and need explosions in the sky (pun intended), even if the chances of seeing fireworks instead of shooting stars were impossibly small. This side of me is something I'd hate to lose for it would mean not experiencing such deep highs and lows (I consider the lows worth the highs) but it's extremely tiring to be and feel this way. Even I have trouble keeping up with my rollercoaster heart and mind, so I guess it's not really reasonable to expect other people to be any good at it, either. I'm not saying I'm going to stop expecting that, though, some day I'll either find someone fast enough and/or become easier to keep up with.

The day after tomorrow I'm (hopefully) gonna be in Scotland, and I haven't even had the time to print out my flight tickets yet. I don't have a clue where we're staying (Crystal Castles in Glasgow on the 19th!) or what we're even planning to do once we arrive there, but that's pretty much the best thing about this trip. I'm pretty excited to see what bizarre things me and my best yet utterly bonkers midget-sized friend are gonna end up experiencing this time, life has a tendency of throwing weird people and situations in our direction especially when we are together. Either way, the next week's gonna be a much-needed break from my hilariously miserable life here in Tampere. Come what may?

How high can you score?

I just got back from Jurva yesterday, where I spent my midsummer weekend. People always have all these high expectations for the fest, it never ceases to annoy me. It's the same thing with every public holiday, but especially this one. It seems kinda ridiculous when you hear people planning six months in advance where they're gonna spend their next generally useless midsummer hols. I'm not sure if it's just me but I've never experienced anything out of the ordinary during midsummer, people just get way more drunk than usual, normally somewhere in the countryside. Which means it's like any other weekend, only with more booze and out of the city. Yay? I'm not saying I didn't have fun, I did, and normally do enjoy my time every year, it's just that I'm not willing to spend huge amounts of time and/or money planning something extraordinary for a weekend that will normally end up covered in puke and grass stains. It's like a rock festival without any bands. Pointless.

Anyway, my midsummer weekend was altogether very nice and much less crazy than I had expected, which was good after spending almost a week abroad with no sleep and too much intoxicants. Our group, consisting of maybe 10-15 people, mostly just spent a few nights playing Super Smash Bros, sitting outside on the grass, drinking beer and talking bullshit, dancing barefooted, grilling and listening to great music.

I could say the same thing about my trip, actually: it was lovely and a lot less bonkers than I thought it would be. We didn't actually spend any time in Germany before we got there the night before our flight, but went straight to the Netherlands, Utrecht to be exact. I really liked the city, it was somehow really homely and small (in a good way) even though it's a city of nearly 300 000 people. Kinda like the Tampere of Holland, heh. Our hostel was also nice, we had a great big garden on our backyard where we spend a lot of time just relaxing and eating Terhi's krokett pastries. After Utrecht we headed to Deventer to meet a friend of Terhi's, Maarten, who kindly offered us a bed for the night. Maarten's apartment was fantastic, I wish I could live with a view like that as well. Two terraces on the roof, and I don't even have one on the fifth floor! The time flew by too fast and soon we were sitting on a train back to Düsseldorf. We had no idea what was waiting for us there, we arrived to the city just as Germany and Ghana were playing, and after Germany won, the whole place went utterly nuts. People were rioting and dancing on the streets, and each and every person had the Deutschland flag somewhere on his/her body, more often than not on every place of their body. I'm not a huge football fan and I don't think my company was either, but we all got so intoxicated by the mad party mood that we pretty much spent all night just walking around the nightly Düsseldorf laughing, having some drinks and watching crazy Germans, before our bus to the airport left at 03:30 a.m. After landing back to Finland I headed straight to Jurva.


Utrecht.


Düsseldorf.


The streets of Düsseldorf around 2am.

Damn I was looking forward to just watching Lie to Me and eating warm toast in bed. Alone. In quiet. It's not that I mind all this haste, it's just that it's been too long since I spent some time by myself. Since the 1st of May I've practically been running around like a headless chicken, and that really shows in my (nonexistant) ability to just sit down and relax. The last time I was alone was before our trip, and it was only for one day, I can't remember when was the last time before that. Either way, during that day I felt so anxious I was basically going nuts and running around in circles. I need to learn how to enjoy routine life again, not only because I have to since I'm starting my work tomorrow, but also because I think it's pretty essential to be able to enjoy your time alone, in peace. I've gotten sorta sick of this chaos that is constantly present in my life. Every day is different, I have no routines, I mostly have no idea what time it is or even what day. I have no day rhythm whatsoever. I'm sure this all will change radically during the next few weeks, and even though I'm already freaking out about my 10-hour work shift on Sunday, it's about time I got back to living like a human being instead of an ADHD slug.

There's the smell of big changes in the air. We'll see what happens. All I know is that I've decided to buy an acoustic guitar and that I miss Henry. Enough said.

I'm like a mirror, I'm nothing till you look at me.

I've fallen in love with so many places in my life that I already lost count years ago. There was this small village in Southern Germany I spent one summer in, Eberhardzell, that in all its beauty took my breath away on a daily basis, and there was Brisbane that managed to make me feel like home even though I hardly spent one week there, and Brighton, whose foggy shores drift like photographs through my head whenever I think about the city, and of course Ljubljana, and so many more cities and villages and just plain buildings, streets and cafés. However, I'm more than happy to say my current place of residence is also a place I'm still, after years of feeling this way, head over granny kicking heels in love with. Tampere has, for some reason, always felt like home to me, even when I was a kid and my visits to my sister's place here only lasted for a few weeks or days. This was and is just the right size and kind of place for someone like me to build a life in, there's always something new to go and experience but at the same time the city has this familiar, homely vibe in the background that brings enough comfort to make one feel safe. I understand how people who've lived here for their entire lives might feel differently about this, but coming from a really small town, I haven't yet been forced to face the overall smallness of the city and its social circles.

I'm leaving for Düsseldorf the day after tomorrow. Well, I'm leaving for Düsseldorf airport the day after tomorrow. I have no idea where we're heading after that, we haven't booked any kind of hotels or hostels or anything and actually have no clue whether we're even staying in Germany or heading straight to Holland to visit some guy Terhi knows that I've never met. The whole trip is pretty much wide open, our only plan is to make it back to the airport on Thursday so we can get back home, aka so we can unwillingly drag our asses back to this country at least two of us three traveling companions mostly spend our time wanting out of. In every case, I'm excited to get away from my life here for a while. I hope I won't get too caught up in being abroad, I always do, and then I can't concentrate on anything else but planning how and when to get out of Finland the next time, and usually the next time can't be more than a few months away. Fact is I have to work through July and August and have no chance of getting anywhere from Tampere before school starts. I mean, I already know I'll probably be leaving for Germany to work before Christmas, but that's fucking six months away. (I know I sound ridiculous.)

I'm going out with my sister tonight to see Street Dance 3D. Dance movies are always the same, there's always some goodie-goodie girl who does ballet who falls in love with some badass hiphop guy, on comes the traditional Romeo&Juliet bullshit storyline, and then at the end the two combine their styles creating something ecstatically wonderful, after which life is good and love never dies. This doesn't really bother me, though, because the dance scenes are usually so bloody awesome. And tonight the film's in 3D! This should be something to remember when I'm old and wrinkled. At least when I break my hip and can't ever pretend to be a street dancer ever again.

My Tampere: