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.

The city on the move

At Engel's square, Eira. Looking South at the sea.

The perfect Easter weather continued still today and I couldn't resist going out even though my ankle was hurting pretty badly (can it be an inflammation?) after the 40km of running during the Easter holidays. My mum was as supportive as always, saying: "You shouldn't go to the half marathon with that little practice". She has difficulties in realizing that I might have changed from those school years when I hated sport. In contrast, my sister had an extra challenge for the Helsinki City Run, the goal of all this training: for every minute over her target time (i.e. 2h30 for a half-marathon for both of us), she'll donate 1 Euro for the protection of the Baltic Sea, and for every minute she'll run faster, she'll donate 50 cents. I decided to take this challenge as well - maybe giving an extra 5 Euros if I make it to the finish line in the first place.

The tower in the Sinebrychoff parc (or as the people here call it "Koff's parc"or just "Koffari"), built by the Russian brewery family in the early 19th century.

As for today, the city was on the move in their impeccable outdoor gear. Maybe I have mentioned this already, but I'm always amazed how the Finns invest in their outdoor clothing. The pejorative way of calling the Finns the "shell suit nation" (or more generally tracking suit nation) has got a new meaning as the people do their Sunday passegiata (the Italian way of having a walk and making an appearance in their best clothes) in expensive gore-tex clothes. Or maybe the shell suit nation has divided into two classes: the gore-tex nation and the shell suit nation. I did my passegiata, of course, in my vintage Gucci velvet skirt and Dior sun glasses (ah, what a snob!) that got their first spring appearance. But I think I did my fair share of shell suiting with those aforementioned 40km.

Anyhow, Eira and Punavuori looked gorgeous in the intense sun light. The Finnish flags are there because of the Mikael Agricola day (the guy who invented written Finnish in the 16th century), we are not that americanized (n.b. because we're quite americanized) that we'd have them around all the time.

The statue of Juhani Aho, a great Finnish author from the 19th century who also gave the name for my book club.

I quite like some of the recent additions to the neighbourhood. The wavy windows on the top floor are superbe.

Snow or La donna è mobile

Today, perfect weather for a Sunday walk and yesterday I even went running (exclamation point). Hah, just a day before I had written here about the impossibility of running in the snowy streets. But guess what, it was pretty great and I finally signed up for the half marathon as well. So, at least temporarily, I've won my snow and winter angst (maybe because in three days I'll be in the sun!). This is positive as my current running capacity seems to be 9 km...

Above: My neighbourhood, Eira.

Above: Uunisaari, just off the seaside boulevard, and connected by a little bridge during the winter.

The sea was amazingly beautiful in the pale winter light, so I decided to put here some photos of the snow and ice. (Again acting for the Finnish tourism industry...)

Snow angst gone for the moment but I'm note here yet:

From Brussels to Eira

Plans change. Mine for sure did! Instead of trying to learn some Flemish in Antwerp, as indicated in my last entry, I have now quit the academia for the time being and I'm living in Helsinki. Surprise, surprise!

New life, new city. Returning back to Finland after 4 and half years was bizarre but Helsinki turned out to be really fantastic - except for the outrageously priced espressos. I'm actually pretty excited about the place that seems to have changed quite a lot during the last couple of years. Moreover, I live in the most beautiful neighbourhood of the city, Eira, in the South by the sea. It is known for its foreign consulates and the Swedish-speaking elite though my friend keeps on mentioning about "the two doctors in Eira", the other one being the infamous True Finn MP Dr. Halla-aho who has shocked with his racist commentaries. (However, his dissertation was about historical nominal morphology of old church Slavonic, so does it really count?)

Yesterday I watched the obligatory reference for Eira, Aki Kaurismäki's wonderfully ironic film Calamari Union from 1985. In the film, fifteen guys named Frank and one called Pekka try to find their way from Kallio to Eira. The mental distance between Kallio, known for its social problems at the time (and still today, though it's more bohemian bourgeois nowadays), and Eira, described as the heavenly part of the city, is depicted in a great way. The taxi driver comments: "I don't drive as far as Eira". Finally, most of the guys die on this long way, some deviate from the route because of other reasons and two of them start rowing to Estonia instead. My mental and actual trip from Brussels to Eira was somewhat easier.

The first scene of the film is brilliant:

P.S. I figured out that I should update this blog before I forgot my password...