Severe weather warning from Florence

I need to add here this warning I received in my Florentine email account. It fits so well with my previous entries about my problems with the slippery streets in Helsinki. Why didn't anybody warn me about these things in Finland???

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING

Weather forecasts for the next 24 hours report heavy snow falling all over the region of Tuscany, including Florence, and very low temperatures (as low as -10° C), so we recommend:

your utmost attention when walking on slippery and/or icy ground;

driving your car only if equipped with winter tyres or snow chains (as requested by the local authorities);

using the telephone number set up by the Comune di Firenze (Public Safety Service) in case of emergency

The Institute will salt all access roads (both for vehicles and pedestrians) and pavements.

In general, we recommend the utmost caution when driving or walking.

Arrivederci Firenze

The Economist wrote about PhD programmes a week ago and concluded that doing a PhD is waste of time. It was slightly discouraging to read such an article only a few days before I was finishing my thesis but, at the same time, I could only think that the last 3 and half years have been an excellent period in my life and living in Florence was an amazing experience. If I don't manage to translate my extended studies into economic benefits, at least I have had the opportunity to learn about Italian culture, admire painters from Giotto to Michelangelo, and visit dozens of beautiful Tuscan churches. So, I always have the plan B of becoming a tourist guide in Florence...

Of course, the whole autumn (my last one in Florence) was a huge nostalgic period when I was constantly thinking that I will have to give up my life in Florence that I had just now learnt to fully appreciate. Even those two months when I was the first one at the library at 8h30 when it opened (after a cappuccino and cornetto in San Domenico) and left around nine o'clock in the evening and hardly had the time to explore Florence, I was enjoying my stay.

During my last weekend, I strolled around the city to go through all my favourite spots of the city and walked up to San Miniato. It has the best view of Florence. The church itself is also amazing; so amazing that during one of the Florentine wars, Michelangelo protected the church with mattresses against the enemy's weapons. I sat inside for a while and in the comfortable isolation shed a few tears, out of happiness of having had such great last few months in Italy, beauty of the place and melancholy.

The last weeks in Florence were so busy that suddenly, via Cologne's Christmas market and Brussels, I was back in cold and snowy Finland, complaining about Senegalese tomatoes found in the supermarket and bad coffee found everywhere and drunk excessively. Later it was also snowing in Florence, something I've never seen. People who had stayed there posted images and Facebook comments on the chaos in the city. This video as well:

My Running History

When a discussion turns to physical activities or sports classes at school, it doesn’t leave anybody quiet. In most cases, looking back on those events doesn’t make you wonder why you haven’t skied during the last 15 years. I still remember very clearly the turning point when I learnt that any kind of athletic activity wasn’t my cup of tea. Every year at school we had a cross-country skiing competition (now I honestly think that all sorts of sports competitions for kids under 10 years old are a product of teachers’ sadistic mind), but the most important one took place when I was 7 years old (that is, my first skiing competition). I used my sisters’ old and miserable skies, called “Lasagne”, and indeed nomen est omen, the skies got stuck in the snow and even when going downhill I needed to push myself forward. I was the last one. I hated sports. I hated sports for the next 12 years that I spent in the Finnish school system.

Almost 20 years later, I thought I could start practising for a marathon (isn’t this a requirement for any successful person in today’s society?). I was living in the posh 16^th arrondissement of Paris and my professor gave a programme to exercise for a half-marathon. I began with 30 minutes. My old sport shoes (yes, I actually had a pair) gave me painful blisters but instead of giving up I used a third of my lousy trainee's salary to get a pair of Asics. I obeyed the programme and increased the running minutes even to 2 hours. I ran in Bois de Boulogne, equally popular for runners as for prostitutes. I didn’t mind the swaying vans or the cars stopping to negotiate a price with the prostitutes, the wood was a beautiful place to run around. I wasn’t yet ready for a half-marathon when the autumn came and I returned to Turku where the cold rain took over my motivation as a runner.

I started running again in Florence with the suitable weather conditions. First I ran around the stadium with many other runners, but when I moved to the centre I started running uphill to Piazzale Michelangelo where I ran through the tourist crowds that come to see the amazingly beautiful view and the copy of Michelangelo’s David. The view was a pleasure for me as well and I have to admit that I liked to show the tourists that what they came to visit from abroad, I saw every day even when doing sports.

Running in Berlin was more like my Bois de Boulogne experience except that prostitutes were replaced by the drug dealers in Hasenheide Park. While observing the prostitutes and drug dealers was interesting in both places, in Berlin hanging around in some of the cool cafés was more interesting than running in general (not that there are no cool cafés in Paris, but in Berlin I could actually afford them as well).

Listening to the same “running music” playlist, I also got to some weird suburbs in Boston. When Rammstein shouted “Du Hast” in Florence, I was somewhere close to the river or running downhill through the woods; when I heard Rammstein in Boston I was following a long stretch of asphalt street that took me past gas stations and ugly apartment blocks. I only went jogging once in Boston.

Now, in Tampere, the same playlist took me to a supermarket, then past a place where we had scout meetings, through a field where they have built some new houses recently, past the hill where I got stuck in the skiing competition, a little pond where I played after school with my friends, to a playground where they have replaced the cool (and probably a bit dangerous) carousel (man-shaped, a bit like giant whirligig) with some boring (and probably safer) basic playground stuff. I had run really fast in the hot afternoon and at home I threw up. I think I will never run a marathon, instead, I think Nordic walking is great if only it was acceptable (or not embarrassing) for young people or in the urban setting (so far, I have only practised it at our summer cottage in the countryside).

Via Karjalanpiirakka to Pecorino (Back to the Roots 2.)

Writing about a visit to a neighbourhood where I stayed during my first days in Boston, I unnecessarily titled my last entry as “Back to the Roots”. As a consequence, with my limited imagination, I am now troubling to describe with a different title my return back to Finland and eventually to Italy. Though I increasingly enjoyed Boston at the end of my stay, I was extremely happy to be onboard in the British Airways flight just the day before their strike begun and despite all the potential ash clouds hindering the air traffic over Europe. Returning back to the real roots...

While the weather forecasts for Florence were full of dark clouds, in mid-May I arrived to Finland that happened to be the warmest place in Europe at the moment. I had a Tampere-euphoria for three days that I spent in my beautiful hometown. The riverbanks offered picnic places for people enjoying the sun and I felt cosy when seeing drunken people in the early afternoon. Ah, Finland, so unpretentious, and the people, oh, so weird hair colours.

I stayed in Finland only for one week, just a perfect time for leaving in a state of premature homesickness and still having strong faith in our Eurovision song (I still think it’s great even though we didn’t make it to the final. However, I am a bit worried: what is happening to the world if you can’t make it to the Eurovision final even with a song by two beautiful blonds!).

My luggage full of summery silk dresses that had been useless in Berlin, I arrived to Florence airport where the casual conversation with an Italian co-passenger already led to an invitation for drinks (Italians, pfff...). How nice to return to a city where you know your way around, while the tourists around you are wondering how “grazie” should be pronounced or stay seated in the bus after arriving to the last stop. Just out of excitement and wonder if my rusty Italian was completely lost, I started short discussions with Italians who mostly responded in English (obviously quite lost that rusty Italian). I finished the academic year with 2/3 of my thesis but most importantly I took my time contemplating the Duomo with never-ending amaze, doing a passegiata around the city verifying that David was still in Piazza della Signoria, suffering a disappointment when a nice alternative café had been transformed into a boring place with no character and a shock when discovering a Ben & Jerry’s shop in the centre of Florence (ironically I noticed the place when eating ice cream in a gelato festival), and finally, feeling pure happiness in San Ambrogio market. How difficult to talk about Harvard and Boston without comparing the life there with our Florentine life that fills all the senses and gives satisfaction in so many levels. I found it hard to describe my life in Harvard not sounding completely unhappy with my stay there. Because that isn’t the case, I'm just so very happy with my life in Florence.

Introduction

As the weather in Berlin is getting greyer and I don’t have the immediate urge to gallop around Kreuzberg and discover bohemian cafés and cool terraces, I can once again try writing down my experiences in a foreign country. Moving from Florence to Berlin was a huge change in almost all possible ways.

1.) The first thing I had to do in Berlin in early June when we had just left the hot and sunny Florence was to buy trousers. The temperature was 20 degrees lower than in Italy but it wasn’t the only reason to make my silk dresses useless: to be fashionable (well, this concept hardly fits here) in the streets of Kreuzberg meant Converse shoes, oversized glasses, badly combined colours, and no bras.



2.) The change in daily diet was a remarkable one as well. During the first week in Berlin we seized the chance of trying out Vietnamese, Lebanese, Ethiopian, German, and Indian cuisine. What an excitement after two years in Florence where you have to look hard to find anything else than Italian food. However, after three months in Berlin, I was happy to fill my luggage with fresh pasta, olive oil, wine, and cheese from Italy.



Also the vegetarian life can be hard in Germany; everywhere you go, you smell sausages in the streets. Once the temptation of sausage takes over you, you end up queuing in front of the famous Curry 36 in Mehringdamm. Staring the greasy sausage with slight disgust and suffering from moral repentance should, however, put to you back on the right track again. After all, the veggie burgers in Bio Buffet in Marheinekehalle are much better comfort food!

3.) Even if I haven’t even finished reading about Florence and the renaissance, I have set my mind for this new historical setting. I’ve realized that I won’t perhaps ever again have the chance to live in a such amazing city as Florence and be surrounded by its absolutely magnificent history (the overuse of these adjectives is not exaggeration when we talk about the history of Florence) but the presence of Cold War in Berlin is equally fascinating if in a very different way. Visiting the Stasi Prison or reading about the Berlin wall takes you back to times that seem almost unrealistic. Whilst the stories on the Medici family, Michelangelo and Dante illustrate the glorious past of a city where humanism and renaissance were born, the history of Berlin is often upsetting.

Clothes, food and history – in addition to them, I will probably write a lot about cultural activities in this blog since another major change to Florence is the widening of the cultural scene. I’m not saying that I didn’t greatly enjoy of the high-quality classical concerts in Teatro Pergola, but now I can choose from the range of punk, rock and reggae. And as the tourist flows get smaller I will start the more meticulous exploration of museums and cultural venues of Berlin.