"Howya horse?" - Lessons to be learnt

I learnt an important lesson today.
The correct answer to the question "Howya horse?" is not:

a) I am not a horse
b) I don't keep horses
c) What the hell are you talking about, I am still tired

... or d) I don't even like horses...

You will have to find out for yourselves how to answer this question in Dublin. Enjoy the completely unrelated photo of suburban Dublin.

P. S. Dear Sir; this blog entry is dedicated to you ;)

Blue Impressions from the Green Island

After writing the last post the weekend turned into a long lazy stretch of beautiful sunny days. It was the perfect weekend for endless walks by the sea and ice cream in the sun.

The green island can sparkle in the most beautiful shades of blue at times!

Irish Summer II - A Slight Chance of Rain

It has been a crazy week. To come back to the favourite subject in Ireland - no not sports or mortgages, but the weather - this week started off sunny and almost hot (you have to remember that the highest temperature ever measured in this area of the world is 32 °C), then changed to a very rainy autumn and it ended on a high note when this beautiful rainbow greeted me this evening.

A great way to kick off the weekend!

Another Week & Borrowed Words

"In life as in dance: Grace glides on blistered feet" Alice Abrams

Dancing through life

Life has been good, but at times a bit busy. Even after 2 years in this beautiful country it’s still hard to adapt to the work life at times.
The work hours are very different. Work starts later in the mornings than in Finland, which makes it hard to get out in good time.

For the first year I was busy catching up at work and forgot all about hobbies and socialising. Luckily these days are over. I now indulge regularly in taking dance classes and I really enjoy it. It’s a beautiful sensation to express myself again through my body. Dancing has done wonders for my spirits as well and also lifted the dark cloud of writer's block that was hanging over my head for a few months.

I am not quite ready to reach for the stars yet, but I am positively dancing through life!

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:).