Becoming a "bobo"

It all happened very quickly. A dispute with my neighbours due to stepping on the still-a-bit-wet wax on the stairs, being annoyed, upset and desperate, questioning my relationship to Eira ("do I really belong here if my neighbours are so unfriendly..."), and finally taking the whole thing as a Sign.

The waxing scandal happened on a Wednesday and on the following Sunday I went to see an apartment that I then bought a couple of weeks later. Tadaa, surprise (at least for myself)!

And here I am writing this blog in my new kitchen in Käpylä. An action lady I am. An indebted action lady to be more correct. Were there signs or not that I should move from Eira, I now have twenty years to pay my mortgage. I take it as a sign of a deep serious turn in life. Hopefully it doesn't mean that I will be stuck here for the rest of my life. Although, I'm in the first floor that suits disabled elderly people perfectly... 

So, in less than one month, I transformed from an elitist Eira dweller to a bohemian bourgeois ("bobo") of Käpylä. So far there are no regrets, but I'm sure that in some time I will miss the sea and the beautiful neighbourhood of Eira - the most beautiful in Helsinki after all. 

On the day I was moving, I went for a morning coffee in Viiskulma's Brooklyn Café and said to the American waiter that they should open another branch in Käpylä. The guy replied that there might not be so many cafés in Käpylä (are there any?), but I would have nature close by. I guess he's the only person who could say something positive about me moving from Eira to Käpylä (well, he hadn't seen my charming place in Eira), except for my parents who are thrilled.

Hitherto, it has been quite impossible to get to know my new neighbourhood (or the surrounding nature for that matter) because the days are so dark and I've been immensely busy reading interior design magazines, painting the walls and trying to fit all my stuff here. One thing is for sure, I do not need any Christmas gifts, there's nothing material I can possibly need.

Except that...

Reading all those interior design magazines and moving around my furniture in the new living room, I feel that my stuff doesn't fit the atmosphere of the 1940s apartment. Hmm, I guess this blog will turn into a design blog for a moment or - as you can guess from the pace I post anything here - not!

And as for the fact of being adult: I luckily recruited an old friend from Florence to be my flatmate. Two bright PhD ladies, it will be cool! But before that, one month of holidays in Asia. One week to go, and a zen master will be writing here shortly... Shanti!

Brooklyn in Helsinki and one stop pub crawl

Just the previous day, I had complained that life is boring in Helsinki in the sense that you never encounter strangers the way that you would abroad or as a tourist in general. Obviously, one reason is that our everyday life is much more organised; we follow routines and we have put limits to our behaviour. For instance, I wouldn't join a group of 15 Americans for a pub crawl and then be locked out of my hostel (as I did in Barcelona, 2003), chat the night through with a cute bar tender with few other customers to serve (as in Catania, 2008), spend a fantastic day, including herbal sauna and a buddha statue park, with a middle-aged Kiwi (as in Vientiane, 2011), or accept an offer for a motorcycle trip from a handsome young guy sitting next to me in a café (in San Francisco, 2008). At home, we tend to be more reserved and this rarely gives room for adventures or improvised discussions. We try to avoid unnecessary talk with strangers and don't leave our comfort zone. It's a pity!

 Photos of Brooklyn Café from the Facebook page of Brooklyn Café.

Maybe it was the café, the very cute and cosy Brooklyn Café in Viiskulma, that made me act like in a real New York place. The owners of the café are sisters from Brooklyn and the cute waiters speak only a few words of Finnish, so it's not hard to imagine being in New York instead of Helsinki.

Having installed with my iPad in front of another iPad user (see, it really is like a hip place in Brooklyn), I soon engaged in a nice chat with this young man. He was writing his second novel, the first one, he showed me, was on sale in the café. He had written most of it in the corner table. Indeed, this café offers very nice atmosphere for hipster-like experiences in art and creative life. I would definitely write my novel there. But I don't need such an excuse to hang around there because it is probably my favourite café in my neighbourhood in any case and their great filter coffee is one of these wonderful little things making Saturday mornings a bit more glamorous.

                                                              Photo from the Facebook page of Brooklyn Café.

The conversation with the young author, and some tips for reading he gave me (and certainly I'll try to read his book "Nyt" as well), made me really happy and disproved my idea of the impossibility of an encounter in this city. It seems to be more about my own attitude, so in the future I'll try to be more open and act more like a tourist with a curious mind.

Actually, the touristy behaviour continued in the evening as we decided to do a Kallio pub crawl with my friends. After a hearty dinner at Ravintola Pelmenit, the great Kaurismäki-like Ukranian restaurant in Kallio, we headed to Pikku-Vallila. It is a super cute little bar with only a few tables in a pretty wooden house in a calm and residential wood house area of Helsinki, the so-called wood-Vallila. 

With one irritating guy at the next table (and then later, at our table) buying rounds of shots for the whole bar, our objective of a pub crawl somewhat shrank as we stayed in Pikku-Vallila until the wee hours. The cute and friendly bar tender made toasts for art and creativity and at the end, when he was pushing us out of the door, I said to him: "Thanks, it was a really nice evening", as if we had just had a house party in his living room. 

The photo is from this photo blog.

I should definitely go more often to Kallio-side of the city. Though I love my own beautiful neighbourhood, it is slightly bourgeois and boring in Eira and Punavuori. The funny bohemian atmosphere of Pikku-Vallila and the eccentric or purely weird people there are hard to find in my neighbourhood pub.