Feelings

I wrote a list about memorable things in St.Pete last time in Finnish. I don´t always have time to write both in Finnish and in English and I know that there are few people in the audience who necessarily wouldn´t enjoy reading my blog in English only.. So, sorry for that! At least Shot and Joona are writing only in English..

I´ve been now few days back in Helsinki, which is great. Today I noticed that there are few annoying things that I got really used to during the stay in Russia. Annoying things such:

- Throwing accidentally paper and bio waste to the regular waste bin, even I should recycle them. In Russia there wasn´t recycling possibilities so I got used (didn´t accept it as a good thing though!) to throw paper, glass, metal, biowaste etc. to a regular bin....

- Watching out for icicles, even there are sooo few of them in Helsinki.

- Feeling first annoyed in the back of your head by the fact that your shoes will get ruined when you´re going out for a walk. Then annoyement changes to relief when you remember that they don´t use salt in Helsinki to keep the streets unslippery. They use sand here, which is better than salt in sooo many ways.

- Going out for a walk in the city and wondering where are all the old fat ladys with headscarfs and wondering who are these people walking with sticks around Töölönlahti. The image of hundereds of old fat russian ladys has burned in my brains. I just can´t get rid of it. Can´t.

- When buying food, there´s no need to buy 5 litre canisters of fresh water. The tapwater is drinkable, fresh and soo good in Finland..

- When jumping to a bus, you can´t get in from the backdoors and you can´t pay for the old fat lady selling the bus tickets. You have to go in from the frontdoor and pay the money to the driver while everyone else is waiting. And the ticket is not 20 rubels (= about 0,50 euros), it is 2,60 euros inside Helsinki. Damn.. But, paying with cellphone is possible and very easy, since my wallet is still full of rubles, not euros.. unfortunatelly...

- Watching anything from TV and understanding it all, everything is in Finnish or if the show is in some other language, there are Finnish subtitles. Love it.

- Walking in and getting slammed by the door because the guy walking in front of you didn´t held the door open for you. The unpoliteness is common. Once you step inside the boarders of Finland, don´t expect guys to hold door open for you, help you with heavy backs, give you a seat in a full metro or give you a compliment about the way you look. Just don´t. And feel veryvery happy when a Finnish guy does some of that to you, then he really likes you. Or he is a true gentleman.

Well, just few things.. Probably in few weeks I´ll be feeling and acting normally again. The next question is, when I will start to miss Russia?