It's all about timing

Today I left the house happily (2 hours early) to go to my class in Dun Laoghaire. I do not have a car and as I might have mentioned before the public transport here is somewhat funny. If you do not live on the dart line for instance you need to travel all the way into town, then cross town for the nearest dart stop and then travel back south on the dart.
Well that was my intention today as well, but once I had purchased my ticket and started waiting for the train I found out that the trains would not run all the way to Dun Laoghaire and there were no connecting buses from the last stop.
I have to admit I am very inexperienced when it comes to taking the Dublin bus, but as it was the only solution left to me I ran out of the station and found a stop for a bus to Dun Laoghaire. The bus then took me on a lovely round trip of the southern parts of Dublin that were still unfamiliar to me. I had plenty of time to take in my surroundings as the bus stopped every 2 -3 minutes (no I am not making this up;). We did reach Dun Laoghaire after 59 minutes (yes I did not keep staring at my watch) and sadly way too late for my class (I am sure there are faster bus lines though). I went for a walk then waiting for the dart service to resume and would have kept quiet, if I would not have been greeted by this lovely advert on the train.

Well really it's all about timing sometimes;)

Pictures of Italy

We are back from our holidays. Italy was definitely an interesting, beautiful and somewhat surprising experience. Here a few impressions of the places we visited.

Rome:

As you can see this city has clearly been taken over by top class German pop (?) music. These posters of Tokio Hotel decorated almost every single tube station throughout Rome.



We were even more surprised that the rest of the advertisement space in the Roman tube stations is dedicated to good old Finland. Do they really promise a country of constant spring, or is my Italian letting me down here?


This was the most impressive experience in Rome. we visited the Pantheon. The light and the atmosphere was stunning and from a different world.


One more impression of Rome that needs no words.




Florence:

This was the best place to visit. A lot more approachable and relaxed than Rome and more really amazing ice cream places that even serve liquorice ice cream (that was one of the highlights for me in Florence).

Here are some impressions from Tuscany. There was so much to see that I feel a bit overwhelmed now. If you plan to visit all these beautiful medieval cities you definitely need a lot of time to explore and enjoy!

Volterra & Lucca

Siena & San Gimignano

Me in Poggibonsi

Five Minutes of Sunshine

Life has been busy, cold and full of rain over the last weeks. I am really ready for my holidays in a warm country:)
This weekend we managed to catch a few minutes of precious sunshine in Dun Laoghaire.
I just love the place; one day I will hopefully move there. The light was absolutely gorgeous.
Moments like this are the best preparation for another busy week.

Irish Easter Eggs

It’s a surprisingly cold Easter this year, but its absolutely wonderful to have a few days off!

This year it was a big challenge to find normal-sized Easter eggs to hide. With normal-sized I mean eggs that are smaller or the same size as an ordinary egg; well eggs really that you would be able to eat in one go, or maybe even have one or two of them with a nice cup of coffee.

I am still amazed with the Easter eggs here in Ireland. They come in a large square shaped cardboard box and on the package there are promises of a chocolate crunchy egg, or an Aero egg with nice little holes, but usually these packages contain one large dairy chocolate egg (not individually wrapped so it goes bad quite soon after you open the package, and really there is no hope to finish one of those in one go, even if you do share with your partner) and a chocolate bar or then a few miniature eggs (up to 4 eggs). So far I have not seen this kind of Easter egg tradition anywhere in the world, but lucky for us we did manage to get a few normal-sized creme eggs and a selection of yummy Lindor eggs.
The Easter egg hunt was a lot of fun (well it is a lot easier to hide many small eggs rather then one big square shaped package:)).

Leaving Finland – Reflections on Life in Ireland

This is a thoughtful weekend for me. Its now almost exactly two years since we emptied our flat in Helsinki, went through the mammoth task of re-organising tax, health insurance and the like and packed our bags in quite a hurry to leave Finland for good. I remember there was a lot of snow during our last week and we became masters in sliding down the icy courtyard, skillfully balancing moving boxes and pieces of furniture while avoiding the very slippery patches on the stone steps. We lived in an otherwise beautiful Jugendstil building with a gorgeous yard in the nice area of town, but it unfortunately proved to be rather difficult to move in and out of this flat, as cars would not be able to enter the courtyard and our flat was of course located in the stair case that was furthest away from the entrance of the yard, uphill and naturally on the top floor (no elevator).

After the moving ordeal we spent one last night a hotel excited that we soon would not have to put up with all the snow and cold any more and that moving into our furnished flat in Dublin should be a piece of cake. It actually was quite easy.

We arrived in Dublin just after the St Patrick’s weekend and lived out of the suitcase for the first month. Of course I had packed all the wrong things like a warm woolly coat: perfect for dry and very cold conditions, utterly useless for windy and moist weather;)
I think we learned our lesson fairly quickly. My wardrobe now solely consists of clothes that can be layered under waterproof jackets as the weather here changes every 5 minutes, which can be beautiful and sometimes annoying.

I am in love with the light here. Its light during the winter even on my way to and from work and we can be outside during every month of the year. We are happy with the move, but on weekends like today you come to realize that arriving might take a lot longer sometimes than just the physical move.

Oh and this is the second St Patrick’s weekend with dreadful weather. It seems to be part of the national celebration just like the fact that it almost always snows on May Day in Finland:).

Finally the sun...

Some impressions from a beautiful weekend in Dun Laoghaire!

its windy and rainy…and cold inside

…and it just does not stop.
I am constantly shivering; mainly when I am inside our apartment (with the heating on full heat) or in the office.
It has been wet and rainy for two months now and every morning that I wake up and don’t feel like sneezing (or like my throat for once isn’t aching, or I have nothing else to complain about☺), I hop on to the tram and am greeted by a stream of commuters blowing their noses and looking at me with teary eyes as if they are trying to tell me just how dreadful they feel and how fed up they are with constant wind and rain.

I have to say I miss the well-insulated apartments in Finland. Yes, it was cold on the outside, but once you got home you could hang out in a T-shirt and feel comfortable (you could also fill your bath tub with gallons of hot water and take endless hot bathes). Its bad how we tend to remember only the good things from a distance, but at weekends like this I just would love to dive into a hot warm bath (our immersion heater gives up when the tub is half full) and then spend an evening on my sofa without being wrapped up in two blankets and still shivering.
Just a thought☺

Irina Kolesnikova - Swan Lake & Nutcracker

For the first time on this blog I am actually lost for words (but that most certainly won't stop me from writing here anyway:)) .
We had the great privilege of watching Irina Kolesnikova dance the lead roles in Swan Lake and Nutcracker with St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre (SPBT). I had seen the company before and have liked their performance. It's a good package. The corps de ballet has strong technical skills (rows are a little off), costumes and the set are great, but what I really like about them, is that they really live their role on stage. The character role dancers are very strong and have tremendous acting skills.

So when I watched the theatre a few times I saw all this hype about their ballerina (who sadly did not dance in Dublin) and thought it was a bit much. Then I bought the recording of Swan Lake and have to admit got very curious. The recording is beautiful and Irina does have something very special to her; so I had to see her in person.

We were very lucky to see her in two very different performances. First we saw Swan Lake (an all-time second favourite of mine). Irina completely dazzled her audience. From the moment she entered the stage the air was electric! There were a few minor hiccups with her landings, but this was completely forgettable compared to her overall performance. She was a beautiful, fragile swan with fantastic lines; and a strong, seductive Odile with a lot of passion and fire in her eyes.

The next day we saw her completely transformed into a cheerful young girl enjoying Christmas and dreaming of her prince. She completely captured us again.

Needless to say that even though I never wanted to like her, I am now a huge fan and will not miss an opportunity to see her perform. You can see pictures and clips of her on her web site.

Its worth it!

Happy New Year!

This is the second time I start the New Year in Dublin. It’s a fantastic start so far.

Christmas has been nice, relaxed with family and too many, but very nice presents.
I spent a beautiful New Years Eve in Dublin: still getting used to the fact that there are hardly fireworks here (illegal). It seems that there is a lot more happening on the streets during Halloween.

I hope you all had a good start into the New Year. I am looking forward to another inspiring year here in Dublin.

This time I added some photos from my trip to Hanover to this blog. Who is to say that Hanover is ugly?

So much fun – Apocalyptica in Dublin

Another brilliant weekend! We went to see the long anticipated Apocalyptica gig at the Ambassador. It does not happen every day that a Finnish band makes it all the way to Dublin and seeing as Apocalyptica is one if our favourite bands for quite some time already; we were really looking forward to this evening.
On another note, I have to say that I am still coming to terms with the style of Irish men (at least here in Dublin): short hair (very short actually) and a hoody. I do sometimes miss the lovely hairy men that Tampere and Helsinki has to offer.
It was really great to see that there were so many men (and boys) with long hair at the gig on Saturday, clearly having a good time. Where are they all hiding during the week I wonder?
The band was superb. The set list was varied including many of the new tracks from the “Worlds Collide” album as well as older tracks and a good few cover songs. The boys had the crowd in their palm from the very beginning of the gig.
Well done!!!

The rest of the weekend went for Christmas shopping (thankfully only the final touches) and the company Christmas party, which was really fun and enjoyable (I did not know my fellow workmates could look that handsome).