Becoming a fan

Oh, I'm so sad I missed this wonderful artist yesterday in Helsinki. Is he the new David Bowie? After all the female singer-song writers I love so much, it's good to get to know some exceptional male voices as well. I have crush (blush).

I love his voice but also his dandy style. This video below is really beautiful. 

Even though I'm becoming a Patrick fan, I'm waiting to hear Lana del Rey herself to sing this one (below) live in Helsinki in June - this time, I'm going. 

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.

Planet Ocean - the Beauty and the Beast

Unfortunately, I managed to see only one documentary film at the recent DocPoint film festival in Helsinki. But this documentary film is definitely worth watching. It's the extraordinary Planet Ocean by Yann-Arthus Bertrand and Michel Pitiot. It examines its subject, the ocean, from several perspectives and in addition to powerful music and beautiful images, it has a very strong message about the importance of protecting our oceans, the source of all life.

The beginning of the film is quite dramatic (see below), the narrator, with her soft voice, declaring that the ocean contains the origins of our own story, us, the mankind. We are descendants of the ocean and yet, we are super predators exploiting the limited resources of our planet and unable to see the elements of catastrophe surrounding us. The planet is ours, but where are we going?

Like the wonderful BBC series Blue Planet, the film shows us the wonders of the ocean and the audience cannot fail to understand that the ocean contains things that are unimaginable on land. The creatures of the deep sea are more mystical than you could ever see on a science-fiction film. We are far behind the imagination of the mother nature. Sea creatures are just fascinatingly weird and we know so little about them.

At the same time, the film makes obvious the connection between the life on land and the sea. The ocean controls our climate and nourishes us, it serves as means to transport goods and has played a role in making globalisation possible. From the early years of our civilisation, the ocean has expanded the minds of human beings and offered us opportunities in work and pleasure.

Yet, we have polluted the sea, destroyed the coral reefs, depleted its resources and still continue to overfish despite all the warning signs clearly visible to us.

After all the amazing and beautiful images of the sea, I couldn't help wiping a few tears from my eyes thinking of seriously endangered sea animals, dead birds' bodies filled with plastic, deep-water oil rigs. Is the only ocean we will know in the future the ocean shown in the pictures below and colourful colar reefs something we remember from "Finding Nemo"?

These photos are from the website of Local Philosophy.

Munan korvaajat

I've often used the excuse that baking without eggs and dairy products is so difficult that I can't be a vegan. Well, after a successful vegan cheesecake, vegan biscuits and now vegan cupcakes, I have to admit that life without eggs is possible. Actually, this whole vegan cooking and baking starts to be a nice hobby.

By the way, I love that in my Finnish vegan cook book, there is a section called "munan korvaajat". It means "egg substitutes", but it can also mean "dick substitutes", which always makes a single lady smile... Indeed, what could be a better dick substitute than some delicious cupcakes? :)

I've started reading a vegan blog Chef Chloe by Chloe Coscarelli who won the American reality show Cupcake Wars with her vegan cupcakes. I tried her raspberry tiramisu cupcake recipe with some adjustments. In this recipe she replaces eggs with baking soda and vinegar. The funny thing is that the cupcakes were of very nice texture but actually had an eggy taste. Weird, but the baking soda + vinegar combination worked!

Here's the recipe if you wanna try my version of it.

12 cupcakes:

3 dl flour

2,5 dl cane sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

0,5 teaspoon salt

2 dl almond milk

0,5 dl canola oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Mix separately dry ingredients and wet ingredients, then pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture. Fill your silicon muffin molds 2/3 full. Bake for about 15-18 minutes in 225°C.

Strawberry sauce (raspberries were expensive):

200 g frozen strawberries 

1,5 dl cane sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

some lemon juice

Mix together in a saucepan and let simmer for some minutes. Let cool. Cut off the tops of the cupcakes, make a little hole with your fingers and pour some sauce into the hole. Place the hat back on top of the cupcake.

Frosting:

some espresso

a bit of almond liquor (if you happen to have some)

50 g vegetable margarine

enough powdered sugar to get the right level of liquidity-solidity

Mix together until smooth. Make the cupcakes pretty.

I enjoyed these cupcakes in a great company of a friend who is moving to New York (very appropriate to eat cupcakes in such an occasion) and naturally with some (might have been a bottle of...) champagne.

Small is beautiful

There has been a long silence in the blog front recently, or more precisely, in my personal presence here. I think I have too big ambitions and not enough time. I see myself as a New Yorker journalist (apologies for all the New Yorker journalists) and then I try to write something here between work and yoga classes. As you might have seen, it's not working. From now on, I will be focusing on small things only, that's it, on small escapes, god dammit! Or they can, and certainly will, be big things, but I will write about them in a smallish way.

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The objective for the new year, in addition to enjoying small things, is to eat more vegan, do more yoga and find my inner Zen. Indeed, it's New Age stuff, baby! Well, to be honest, it's about things that increase my wellbeing - both mental and physical. Very simple (and selfish?). I get angry, upset or annoyed by things that I cannot change or have an impact on. Why bother? Hence, the thing about finding my inner Zen is about priorities of emotions and actions. (Next year, I might write a self-help book - not!)

This means focusing on the first two things on the following list. Number three is a lost case, I'll try not to waste time on those things too much.

1. Things that I can decide upon myself.

2. Things that I have an impact on.

3. Things that I can't influence.

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Small things, like telling about the small beautiful events that made my day. That should be the point of this blog because I don't have (concentration) skills or time or energy for anything else (please, I do research at work, I can't do it in my blog). 

Yesterday, I saw this amazing film "The Beasts of the Southern Wild". A wonderful and truly beautiful film with great music and an incredible young girl, Quevenzhané Wallis, as the main actress. This film really had a huge impact on me. It's a magical film that tells us about the connection between humans and the nature. It was so funny and so sad. It had a grasp of the real world in a fantastical way. It is a film that you need to talk about with a friend afterwards - and those are the best films.

Thoughts inspired by the Berliner Philharmoniker

A cosy November Saturday got a dose of glamour this evening as I went to a concert by Berliner Philharmoniker at the Helsinki Music Centre. Sir Simon Rattle was conducting the distinguished orchestra so the tickets were sold out immediately. I was alerted and got mine three minutes after the opening of the ticket sales on internet. Seven minutes later, there were no tickets left. The orchestra deserves its status as one of the best orchestras in the world; the playing was magnificent and the Finnish audience exalted (one gentleman was a bit more reserved).

It was a wonderful concert during which I processed several little ideas and thoughts (I did listen to the music as well and enjoyed greatly my seat of 85 Euros...). Here are some of my thoughts inspired by the music:

1) The gender balance in the orchestra: Of the around 30 players of wind instruments, three were women. All the contrabass players were men (two of which were Finnish and got a huge applause at the end when Simon Rattle shook their hands) as well as the percussionists. 4 women played violin compared to 24 men, and so on. The only female-dominated instrument was the harp (2 women, no men); in fact, I've never seen a man playing a harp. At the same time, music schools are full of girls and many more girls play some instrument in their youth than boys (or the boys are playing guitar dreaming of becoming the new Kurt Cobain or who ever is nowadays their music hero). So what is the reason for this bias? It seems to happen in many fields of culture (think of great chefs for example).

2) How are the musicians in the orchestra remunerated? Do they all get the same average monthly salary, even that guy playing the triangle? How can you make a living with a triangle anyway? (One of the questions I always ask myself in classical concerts.)

3) After the intermission, when the orchestra on the stage was significantly reduced, what did the rest of the group do? Went out to enjoy the Helsinki night life?

4) For whom were the three black and fancy Mercedes-Benz outside after the concert? Simon Rattle, ministers, the President? (I later found out that the attendees included the former president of Finland Tarja Halonen and the Minister of culture Paavo Arhinmäki who hitherto has shown little interest for classical music.) Very glamorous evening in general, for a second I amused myself with the idea of belonging to the cultural elite of Helsinki.

5) How does Instagram work? (I signed up today and the result is below)

6) Why couldn't the Finns dress like this more often? Men looked superb. Bravo! I actually felt that my own red dress was completely inappropriate (and my thighs looked fat in the white tights) - for once I could have put one of my fancy dresses on. Dammit! That's it for me being part of the cultural elite...

7) The guys playing tambourine, castanets, triangle and the cymbals looked like the Mexican mariachi guys at the end of the Ravel they were playing, and when I though of this I had to hold my laughter, but my shoulders were shaking. Hey teenagers, classical music can be fun!

8) I saw one of the jury members of the Finnish Idols and wondered what his last name is, Asko something. Starts with an s.

9) Are there any bald conductors? (I think the whirling hair makes them more charismatic.) And what do they do in any case? Simon Rattle was facing me during the concert, so I could observe him quite closely. This was really interesting and I saw he was gesturing not only with his hands and body but also with his face. But why is he regarded as one of the best conductors in the world? What is he gesturing there? What distinguishes a splendid conductor from an average one?

10) There was no pause between Ligeti and Wagner. That's why it took me so long to understand the programme. It was great anyhow. Wagner's prelude to Lohengrin was absolutely beautiful (see below, it reminded me a bit of Sibelius actually), while Ligeti was super interesting (the players were using ear plugs because of the high tones at some points).

What a great escape from autumn grayness...

Sahara escape

It was good to escape the cold and rainy Monday with some amazing Sahara blues in Korjaamo, one of my favourite places for live music and other cultural action in Helsinki.

Two hours of Tinariwen's music from Mali transported me to a cool night in the Saharan desert. Me dancing with some bedouins around the fire.

It was sleeting the next morning and the memory of Sahara blues was already fading, and today I saw the first sign advertising glögi, the spicy mulled wine served in Finland before Christmas. Oh dear, time is flying.

Gorillas in the Mist and a Stolen Heart

Seeing this article "Regard de singes, folie des hommes" on Le Monde website about a photo book (I obviously ordered it immediately) on mountain gorillas, I remembered my own unforgettable encounter with these gorgeous animals in Rwanda a few months ago. As a consequence, the need to share this experience here grew stronger.

A couple of years ago for some forgotten reason I got obsessed about mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei), but at the same time I thought that seeing them in the wild was just an unachievable dream (mostly for financial reasons). However, when I signed up for a scout camp in Burundi I immediately knew that I wouldn't travel that far in Africa without a little trip to the Virunga mountains on the border of Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo (RDC) and Uganda. Although this trip ruined my finances, this is exactly why I've been saving money in the past. Compared to the experience, 500 dollars for a gorilla permit was little money.

I prepared myself for this trip by watching the excellent film from the 1980s "Gorillas in the Mist" with Sigourney Weaver (see trailer of the film above). It tells the real story of the primatologist Dr. Dian Fossey who studied mountain gorillas in the Virungas and also played a significant role in saving the species from illegal poaching and likely extinction. Crying my eyes off with the film, I started being afraid that I have too high expectations for my own gorilla tracking experience. But here's what happened and how I lost my heart to our gorilla cousins.

The road from the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, to the village of Kinigi next to the Parc National des Volcans was surprisingly good and my driver and guide Ahmed with whom I travelled for one week was used to the sudden curves and misty mountain air. On the road, I also realized that the country is aptly called "le pays des milles collines", or the land of a thousand hills. Unfortunately, many of the hills are bald and cultivated, as almost all the land in this small country is used to support its population of around 10 million (one of the most densely populated places on earth!). (The hills continue on the other side of the border in Burundi where it seemed much greener in my opinion - hmm, grass is greener on the other side?)

By the way, it can be quite scary to organise such an expensive trip and pay a very high deposit beforehand to an unknown agency. Therefore, I can warmly recommend the trustworthy agency I used for part of my trip: AA Safaris and Tours. They were very helpful and responded to all my queries promptly (vegetarian food, modified itinerary, new departure date etc.). We also had good time with Ahmed on the road, even though half of the time I couldn't really understand what he was saying. In his African way, he arranged everything really well (though we had some disagreement about punctuality) and even at the moments of little despair he made it all work out. My all-inclusive 7-day tour in Rwanda and Uganda with budget accommodation cost 3,590 US dollars and though I'm still living on credit because of this trip, it was worth it.

On my first day in the national park I went for a shorter trek to see golden monkeys (see a photo above), an endemic and endangered primate living only in the Virunga mountains, a mountain range comprised of 5 volcanoes (the highest is Karisimbi reaching around 4500 m) in North-Western Rwanda. Recently this rare species has become a new tourist attraction after a long habituation precess whereby monkeys become more familiar with humans. As with the gorillas, this can help save the species from extinction when their economic value becomes evident for the local communities. It was great to observe these cute and playful animals, but I must confess that I was already thinking of the gorillas, which were on my programme the next day.

Visitors can spend time with one of the seven different habituated gorilla families in the Parc National des Volcans. Other places to see mountain gorillas are Uganda and RDC. In order to avoid bothering the animals too much, there is a limit of 8 tourists per gorilla family, equalling to total of 56 tourists per day in the park. This means that you need to book your gorilla permit in advance, especially in the peak season of July-August. The most famous group is the Susa group, which Dian Fossey studied; due to this fame this is also the group all the tourists want to see. My guess is that the experience is wonderful with any of the families, while the trekking time can vary depending on how far the group has moved up in the mountains.

On the morning of the trek, at 7 am the tourists assemble at the headquarters of the park. There was an amazing atmosphere of expectation and excitement. We were waiting for our guides to go through the hassle of registration and do their best to get their protégés in the Susa group. A local dance group was performing traditional dances (see above) and we took photos, drank tea and behaved like children on Christmas Eve. Older tourists wore their impeccable Indiana Jones gear; and all the hassle with the ankle protections against angry ants and stinging nettle seemed a bit exaggerated to me (I rolled my socks up and this was good enough).

I ended up in a group together with some elderly Brits (always excellent travel company with their smooth small talk, polite manners and good mood). In general, most of the people going gorilla tracking seemed to be over 50; I guess the 500 dollars permit puts off younger people travelling with a limited budget.

We were assigned the gorilla family of Hirwa (see above the members of the group), meaning the lucky one. We had two knowledgeable park guides who were constantly in contact with the park rangers tracking the gorillas up in the mountain. The gorillas change their base every night so the park rangers wake up at 4 am to find the family for the tourists and also for their own research.

We first walked through cultivated land and some eucalyptus forests and then arrived to the foot of the misty mountain. The lowest level of the mountain is bamboo forest, also the delicacy of the gorillas. On the way up, we came across huge footprints belonging to elephants, but unfortunately we didn't see any of them. It felt absurd that elephants could walk in the thick forest with steep hills. A park ranger with a rusty machine gun with him was also accompanying us. The gun wasn't against the guerilla groups causing trouble at the RDC side of the Virungas but against aggressive buffaloes. And the gun was certainly not against the gorillas (which are despite the look and intimidating size usually non-aggressive); in fact, I guess the rangers would rather shoot at a tourist than an endangered mountain gorilla. At least I probably would.

I had prepared myself for rain, muddy path, ants and nettles after reading Lonely Planet's description: "Gorilla tracking is no joy ride. The guides can generally find the gorillas within one to four hours of starting out, but this often involves a lot of strenuous effort scrambling through dense vegetation up steep, muddy hillsides, sometimes to altitudes of more than 3000m. At higher altitudes, you’ll also have to contend with the thick overgrowth of stinging nettles, which can easily penetrate light clothing. As if fiery skin rashes weren’t enough of a deterrent, it also rains a lot in this area, so the going can certainly get tough (and muddy) in parts. At this altitude the air can thin out quickly, so descend to lower altitudes if you develop an intense headache."

But in our case, it was just misty and moist, nothing a Finn isn't accustomed to in any case. All in all, it was a rather enjoyable walk of around 3 hours uphill. Some of the older Brits had however payed for porter to carry their little backpacks, but this would be completely unnecessary for anybody with a good health.

Then suddenly, we saw fresh gorilla dung on our path, heard some weird noises and even more suddenly we bumped into the silverback, the charismatic male leader of the Hirwa family. There he was with his 200 kg of body mass eating bamboo leaves (they are vegetarians!). Calmly he concentrated only on the food as we stood mouths open amazed by his cool and powerful presence in front of us. We moved on to see the rest of the family: two younger males were chasing each other around bamboos. After a little while the other one grabbed my leg. I wanted to cuddle him but the guide came to hush him away with grunting sounds; of course, we weren't allowed to approach them too much but it was hard to keep the distance of advised 7 metres as the gorillas were running around. Some of the gorillas were also moving above us (see my video below), somehow they were able to not fall through the tops of the light bamboo branches; the leaves fell on us and we waited for the moment when a gorilla would thud on the ground - it didn't. Then there were the baby twins, adorable like plush toys. When the silverback carried them around like a protecting father, we sighed and I had to hold my tears.

In fact, I was about to burst into tears several times during the 70 minutes we spent with the gorillas. The encounter and our sudden connection with the nature was somehow so magical and unimaginable. Still now, when I start describing this experience, my voice starts shaking and I get tears in my eyes. Definitely, seeing the mountain gorillas is one of the most magnificent moments of my life. Being truly in contact with animals and especially with these human-like animals is unusual for an urban denizen. The gorillas  are wonderful to look at as they are just purely beautiful, but then they also played around, showed a variety of emotions and feelings on their faces and made human-like gestures (farting, grabbing the balls, doing somersaults etc.), which made the observation even more special.

After our visiting time was over, I guess I wasn't the only one to whisper to the park rangers "can I just stay with you guys here...". I'm not at all surprised that Dian Fossey got so obsessed about these animals, putting them before humans. I understand this passionate regard towards them and they will always have a certain place in my heart (and in my bank account through WWF donations). It's impossible for me to think that some people would rather have a dead gorilla's hand as an ashtray in their living room (like portrayed in the Gorillas in the Mist) than have these intelligent and beautiful  creatures live peacefully in the mountains. It's a disgusting thought, like all the illegal wildlife trade taking place in the world.

The estimated number of mountain gorillas is around 790 at the moment. Their situation has improved as the social and political conditions in Rwanda and Uganda have grown more stable (during the Idi Amin years, soldiers killed wild animals for food in many national parks in Uganda) and the tourism has proved to be more profitable than poaching. Prior to 1999 the Parc National des Volcans was still out of bounds because of the armed conflict, the presence of Lord Resistance Army and the aftermath of the genocide; now it seemed very safe. A 500 USD permit (which I think has now been increased to 750 USD) is an appropriate price for the rich Westerners (the local people pay much less) if it helps preserving the wildlife in Africa. That's how I perceived the fee, a contribution to environmental conservation and an incentive for the local communities to develop sustainable tourism, i.e. not only an entrance fee.

I understood during this trip in Africa that nature gives me bigger kicks than culture, so I guess I will be doing more hiking and nature escapes in the future if possible. The next primates I want to see are the orangutans in Indonesia. But then, I only had a glimpse of lions in Uganda and that bothers me a bit. And I really want to do the Annapurna trek in Nepal. Of course, I should visit the national parks in Finland first. I can also imagine myself tenting in the Scottish highlands or doing yoga on a secluded beach in India. And now that I've written this, I really want to go to Rwanda again! Oh boy, the problem of travelling is the side-effect of even bigger craving for new trips.