Songs of a Wayfarer

Arctic hysteria

2010-10-19T18:31:00.002+02:00

This semester in my studies, I've decided to concentrate on contemporary Finnish choral music. Last week, I arrived at class with a piece I had chosen for its absurd text: a poem about an unfortunate (Finnish) family whose story goes somewhat like this: the wife runs away with a Swede, the uncle goes to work in Kazakhstan, builds a sauna, burns it during a drinking spree and kills himself, the aunt has hallucinations of Jesus on the potato shed, the sons commit various crimes abroad and end up in jail, the daughter is abandoned by her husband with seven children, the family dog howls himself to death and the house is left to ruin. All this set to a cappella choir might not sound like a very beautiful piece, and believe me, it isn't. "What a great piece!" our professor smiled: "Finally something else to sing about Finland besides Lapland and the nature! This is the dark side of Finnish society!" And, of course, he was completely right.

What my professor calls Arctic hysteria might very well be something to understand only if you've lived here during autumn. The nights get longer, the weather colder, and bit by bit people start to go a bit nuts. Weirdly enough, instead of letting themselves relax during the harsh winter, people tend to work even longer and harder. And I can definitely tell you that, during the build-up to the Christmas period, choral conductors all go a little nuts. Talking with a friend and colleague some days ago on the phone, we realised that among the "choral conducting circles", talking about your free weekend seems so rare it's almost embarrassing when it happens. We're also often complaining of too much to do because, unlike orchestras which often have professional people taking care of the practical matters, choirs rely on their conductors to do a lot of the practical work in addition to actually choosing the repertoire and conducting the rehearsals and performances. This can be anything from making reservations for concert halls, checking the programmes for spelling mistakes, playing through parts on the piano and recording them for the singers to practise with, picking up scores from the store, etc etc.

I'm not complaining, because I love my job. As a freelancer, I have worked for 14 different choral organisations this year, including the three choirs I regularly conduct. It's great! It's also too much, I know, but it's not exceptional among conductors. Besides, everybody also knows that Helsinki is not a cheap place to live in, not to mention the possibility to have a holiday abroad once in a while, and we all need the euros our choirs can afford to pay us. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, given the huge amount of stress conductors (and musicians in general) encounter during a year, and given that many musicians are also highly impulsive and emotional people, the term Arctic Hysteria is something which now and then describes us very well.

Having said all this, I must admit I have lately become increasingly interested in a lifestyle which manages to combine a bit of hysterical running around, complaining about the weather and the price of everything, and also a bit of taking it easy and not stressing it that much. My motto for this semester was "one thing at a time, with breaks in between" and until now, I think I've managed to make it work quite well. To top it all, I was hit by a bad flu recently, and was forced to cancel various work-related things I had been looking forward to. As a result, it's been just me, the magazines, the books, and the dust-balls for several days now. And you wouldn't believe the weird things I've been able to do!

First of all, I've sat on the sofa and looked at the flat and the things around me. This is my home, and I like it a lot. The rent is absurdly high, but since I've decided to pull through with it I might as well be able to actually enjoy being at home once in a while! Today, I made myself tea and slowly watched the lemon juice swirling around in the cup and mixing together with the darker tea. I've dozed off and woken up laughing at some crazy dream I didn't remember anymore. I've browsed through our bookshelves and rediscovered stuff I had forgotten I owned. I've read magazines. Magazines!! I've reorganised our Finnish music scores into a new system. I've skyped with my sister in New York.

The list goes on and on, but the point is, I feel like I have bit by bit truly discovered the joys of being at home. It's almost embarrassing to admit it, but it's also something I've truly had to teach myself: to not be a little ashamed of taking a break for myself once in a while. Okay, so once I get going again I'll have days packed with three rehearsals, and I'll try to spend the time between the rehearsals preparing for next day's rehearsals. And of course, being a student does not mean lazying around - there's always new music to study and now projects to plan. However, I can't help feeling that after six years of concentrating entirely on reading about repertoire and voice production, standing in front of the mirror waving my hands about, singing through thousands of scores etc, it's time to learn something new about being a healthy and happy musician.

I believe that, for a musician, and most importantly for a conductor, you have to keep your mind occupied and your thoughts alive. My piano teacher once told me that music is not like a painting - it keeps evolving in your fingers and mind and is never really "ready" in the sense that a great painting is. And she was right: I can't hang an accomplished rehearsal up on the wall because next week everything might change again. Worse than that, I can't even perform to friends or relatives by myself, because I will always need musicians in front of me to release the knowledge I have been able to get from some magnificent teachers. However, as opposed to a pianist who might have to go through some rigorous physical warm-ups before she or he is able to perform a long-forgotten piece again, the conductor's most important task is to keep the mind active and stored with knowledge. A colleague recently posted as his status on Facebook: "How much is a Bach motet deposited in the vault of my brain worth?". Impossible to say. But once you know a Bach motet by heart, the chances are it will stay with you your entire life, as so many other wonderful wonderful choral pieces, and you'll be able to share them with as many choirs as you like.

Speaking of Bach: I recently stepped in for a friend to conduct her choir's rehearsal of the Christmas Oratorio. As so often happens, I was forced to leave my preparing work to the last minute and was then surprised by a very tight schedule. Other things came up, and before I knew it, I was standing in front of the choir without having opened the score once at home. As one of my conducting teachers once said: "You will never be able to avoid situations where you have to conduct from sight. It's just one part of this job." But then I realised that, after all, I was not conduct from sight. I have sung the Christmas oratorio for years as a small boy, and so I was able to conduct the rehearsal by remembering all those rehearsals so many years ago. My point: we really need to learn how to take it easy. Some things happen by themselves, some don't (and if you're not always on top shape, give yourself a break), but too many things happen by forcing them to - like having a burn-out.

Musicians - whether they are professionals or amateurs - want to have a happy person in front of them during a rehearsal. Happy as in smiling, yes, but also happy as in mentally balanced, present and, in general, satisfied with one's life. Can someone who spends every minute of his life studying a score, stressing about his choir's tenor situation or planning the next rehearsal, be happy? We all need outlets. My own are doing fun things with the people closest to me, reading fiction and, more recently, yoga. I have really started believing that reading a wonderful book, taking a walk in the park, going to the movies with my family, or just spending a cozy afternoon at home, waiting for dinner to be ready, is just as important to me and my work as studying posture and hand movements in front of a mirror. And once in a while, it's okay to get a little arctically hysterical....

Eeh-sul-mee

2010-08-10T21:35:00.003+02:00

As often before, the urge to start blogging again came to my mind during a long train trip. I've just returned from visiting Iisalmi (pronounced: see the title of this post), Finland's 48th largest city. Tucked all the way in Northern Savonia, it's a six hour trip away. Situated between a cluster of lakes (duh), it's a small town centred around a marketplace. A couple of churches, the main headquarters of the Olvi beer brewery and a statue of the Finnish writer Juhani Aho (who was born nearby) might not sound too exciting, but there is a cultural centre with a great city library. There wasn't a lot going on when we decided to take the walk "down town" yesterday, but that's probably (hopefully) because a lot of families are still on holiday. However, I did manage to see one of the city's weirder sights: the restaurant Kuappi, which, with only 8 square metres, is the smallest restaurant in the world (look it up on the Guinness Book of Records if you don't believe me).

Anyway, it's not very convenient to blog during a train trip without your laptop - iPhone or no iPhone - and of course I had brought entertainment with me as always. But isn't it always the same story on long trips? First of all, I can never decide how many books would be too much for six hours. Two? More like one and 1/7, seeing as I was going on board with an almost-finished crime novel (Sara Paretsky: Hardball) as well as a candidate for this year's Booker Prize (Andrea Levy: The Long Song). It's always like this: I want to finish the first novel and start the other one, but then on the other hand I like having a little space between books for allowing my brain to reset. However, if I leave too much time in between, will it make sense starting the next book anymore if we'll be almost arriving? This in turn clashes with another reading principle of mine: allow yourself time to be able to properly read yourself into a new novel when starting it. But does that mean I'll have to rush the ending of the first novel, thereby reading too quickly to be able to actually follow up on what's happening and enjoy the ending? In the end (and you might have noticed I'm a bit freaky when it comes to reading habits) it's easiest to just put both books aside and pick up the crossword puzzle.

But then what? It's always fun to have company while travelling, but I seemed to have got a seat in the children's compartment (oh joy) and it was either chubby 10-year old boys playing with their tray tables or young mothers caught up with their babies. A couple of girls dressed in leggings and something looking like a canvas screen scurried through the carriage swearing at each other. One of the other persons travelling alone was a woman who glanced at me suspiciously whenever I tried to make out what she was reading. Another lady behind me was concentrating on her packed lunch until she complained to the conductor that she wanted a seat facing the way we were going.

It was then that a stroke of luck finally hit me: Mikko's father had given me a pair of earphones in Iisalmi to replace the (two) pairs I had managed to lose. They were old, he warned me, but they'd probably serve their purpose. Alas, as soon as I forced the uncomfortable things into my ears, I heard something like a constant whispery sound, which didn't sound very promising. Hitting "play" on a random choral piece from my music library, I was greeted by a haunting sound which sounded nothing like the Netherlands Radio Choir I was supposed to be listening, but rather like the Kouvola Ghost Choir bellowing from some place very underground. In frustration, I was tucking the useless earphones into the last place I'd look for them afterwards - one of the buttoned pockets of my shorts - and my hand came upon another pair of earphones, this time one of the iPhone earphones I had lost! Hardly believing it, I thrust my hand into the other buttoned pocket - and found the other pair. I had been looking for these Apple earphones at home for over a week, and now suddenly here they were, travelling with me all along!

The joy was short-lived. The trouble with all these iPods and digital music players is that there's just too much to choose from. I like to hit the shuffle button and let the device choose something from my music library for me, but more than often this means I get hit with a string of pieces which goes something like this: A Brahms chorus followed by the latest Five corners quintet jazz number, followed by a Mozart aria which precedes Ella Fitzgerald falling in love, probably injected with some random recitative from a Bach cantata ("Und Gott sprach: Let's do it, let's fall in love...!?"). This is too much for even the most open-minded of musicians, so it's often necessary to choose an album to listen to. Too much of an effort. Back to the crossword. It's too difficult. What is this picture supposed to resemble? For which grid is this clue, across or down? How am I supposed to know the first name of all these obscure celebrities? On to the sudoku then. It's too easy. 5,4,6,7,1,3,9,8. What's missing? 2. I paid a visit to the restaurant car, ordered dinner and came across the dreaded swearing leggings girls. By now, one of them was using such vile language and in such a loud voice I was tempted to start flinging my lukewarm meatballs at her. On the other side, two shabby-looking young men were probably on their 16th beers. Airport bars, restaurant cars - oh, the romance of travelling. Are we there yet?

In the end, I did decide to finish the Paretsky and move on to the Long Song, which made the last hour of the trip pass very quickly. The next long trip will be to the United States next week, but thankfully I won't have to stock up on that much entertainment because this time I will have company. Good night everyone, please keep reading and let's hope I'll be actually able to update this blog more regularly from now on!

Life everlasting

2010-02-10T22:23:00.001+01:00

I’m just returning home from Tampere on the fast Pendolino, which I was very glad to catch since it was late on its way from Oulu. Normally, the train I take back from the rehearsals of the Tampere Philharmonic Choir is the slower InterCity, which is usually hauntingly empty. I tend to occupy two seats and sort of half lie down, gazing at the accumulated rubbish from the day’s journeys and starting from my seat as the attendant comes to ask me whether I’d like anything from the circulating minibistro wagon. With trains crashing into buildings, ceilings falling right off the roof on top of shocked passangers and more trains cancelled than there are cranky staff members, this certainly hasn’t been a good year for the national railway. Still, you have to admire the self-irony one of the announcers at the Helsinki central railway station demonstrated today as she burst into laughter midway through her announcement. “Dear passengers, the Pendolino which was SUPPOSED to depart to Pieksämäki an hour ago and which was afterwards SUPPOSED to be replaced by a different set of wagons----“ and there she broke off with a giggle and abruptly switched off the microphone. Everyone on the platform burst into laughter, and two minutes later the same voice boomed across the station: “Dear passengers, this is an announcement about the Pendolino train to Pieksämäki….” and there she broke off again, possibly still quite unable to control herself.

Whether on the train, the metro or the tram, the first thing on my mind as I travel home after a choir rehearsal is usually the rehearsal itself. Right now, I feel pleased with the way the TPK has been making progress with the mother of all masses, Beethoven’s missa solemnis. The concert with the Tampere Philharmonic will take place this Easter. Today, we chewed our way through the central movement of the work, the Credo. 20 minutes long and with various different sections, it’s a real showpiece for big choirs who aren’t intimidated by the very long and high notes occurring in almost every part. Next week, we’ll start working on the final fugue of the Credo, which is something which I’ve never seen or heard anything like. As one prominent Finnish choral conductor has put it: “The final fugue of the Missa Solemnis Credo is the nastiest piece I have ever had to conduct”.

Seven minutes of pure euphoria set to music, the “everlasting life” section of the Credo would make any experienced or even professional choral singer cringe. First, there’s the whole of the first half of the mass to work through, and then suddenly the orchestra falls way into the background while the choir takes centre stage with its two parallel themes. The first three pages or so are excrutiating for the sopranos, who stay way above the staff lines for the majority of the exposition. Three majestic Amen chords, and suddenly the orchestra goes wild, ups the tempo, and the choir is back again – this time with some really devilish and syncopated coloraturae in every part “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamen” while each part takes its turn skipping along with the “et vitam venturi” theme, this time in a much faster and jumpier mode. Modulations galore, the fast intervals in the separate parts might remind you of someone practising rodeo on a particularly jumpy donkey. The drums and brass section join the fun, the notes seem to just fly by on the page (“where are we?!?”) and then we come to the real climax: on a high E flat major chord (sopranos on a high B flat), the tempo changes into Grave, dynamics fff, and by the time we finally finish, the tenors will be lying flat on the floor, the basses will be searching for their vocal chords amid the audience, the altos will be readjusting their hairdos and probably more than one soprano will be waving a white flag at the conductor.

So, all in all: can’t wait for next week’s rehearsal!

Beginnings

2010-01-24T22:22:00.004+01:00

When your head is stuck in a score all day long, it's easy to forget about all the other fascinating things people are studying and working on all around you - like, for example, world history. I've always found history a fascinating subject, albeit a pretty overwhelming one. With too many ancient civilizations, confusing wars, political puzzles and surprising shifts of power to deal with, where do you start to understand all the mess which has happened before today? Visiting a friend in Hong Kong several years ago, I came upon the New Penguin History of The World in a bookshop. Unoriginally titled and 1232 pages thick, I thought this would be a book to own, and so I got it - only to stash it in a corner of my bookshelf behind "Metro maps of the world" for quite some time.

But, lo and behold! The New Penguin History of the World has finally made an appearance outside the bookshelf and my latest mission is to have the thing read and done with by the end of 2010 (or early 2016). One of the most important reasons to finally read this book is to have a clearer overview of history so as to be able to read fiction more easily. Of course, almost all fiction is set in the past, and lately it seems you're bound to make it onto the Booker prize shortlist as long as you set your novel faaaaaar back - consider Amitav Ghosh's superb Sea of Poppies, set in 19th century India, or this year's winner, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (I haven't begun it yet).

The book I'm now reading is Salman Rushdie's latest. Titled The Enchantress of Florence, it's actually set partly in the Mughal Empire and the Republic of Florence. We're talking about the 15th century here, but Republic of Florence? Isn't Florence a city? What exactly were the borders of the Mughal Empire in the 1400s? Enter Penguin's New History of the World. Setting Rushdie aside for a while, I sit up, brace my stomach muscles and plunge the bricklike book onto myself, opening at page 1. Book One: Before History - Beginnings (the book begins). "Where does History begin? It is tempting to reply "In the beginning"" - skip ahead a few pages to chapter one: The Foundations. That sounds more like it. "Scholars have long talked about Ice Ages". ICE AGES? Chapter two: Homo sapiens. Oh dear. How far do I have to read before I get to Indian princesses, ancient glittering cities like Samarkand or the Medici dynasty? That would probably be page 540: Europe's assault on the world. This is going to be a long read!

However, even the prehistoric beginnings of the book turn out to be fascinating. I learn about geological changes which happened "abruptly" - they took between 5 and 10 millenia - and civilizations which "quickly" established themselves all over the world - that is, in several hundred thousand years. Suddenly, a wristwatch looks absurd to me.

Falling stars

2010-01-17T20:14:00.004+01:00

There's nothing like a good book, and one of the fun parts of reading is looking up words on my Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. We used to use the huge blue books during or English lessons at school. I can just see some of our English teachers right now: a Santa Claus look-alike who once got a student's pencil stuck in his beard and turned red, our bald teacher who year after year shoved American literature down our throats ("This term, we're going to discuss the American dream in literature!" - groans from the whole class: "AGAIN?") and a our red-haired favourite who used to answer almost all questions with the words "shut up" or "go to hell". Anyway, where was I?

The books I have been reading lately have been rich in language, making me consult my dictionary on words such as augury, prurient, trowel and stentorian. The trouble is, what to do when I can't lug the thing along all day? Opposed to the delights of broadening my vocabulary, there's nothing as annoying as finding a misprint in the book you're reading. I don't know about you, but I get the creeps reading a sentence like "they scurried up the gnagway like mice" or "on the way to met his deadly enemy Kashat he strode out so fast and vigorously that his son and the other two men had difficulty keeping up with him." Some people shy away from books that are thicker than their 2 cm, but I enjoy a book with so many characters they have to be somehow summarised first - so that, before the novel even begins, the reader is presented with labyrinthine family trees. One of the books I read a while ago actually had a misprint in the family tree itself, making it very confusing for me to figure out how one of the protagonists could have been born in 1935 when his parents began talking about having children only four years later. It took a couple of hundred pages for me to define the correct date of birth (1940) and correct it with one angry scribble.

I might require absolute concentration with a book, but watching a movie while doing something else isn't too big of a challenge. Just yesterday I spent most of the duration of the fantastic movie Avatar fumbling with my 3D-glasses and trying to sort out the black candy from the colourful candy by holding them up towards the lit screen. And right now, I'm actually watching The Painted Veil on television (it has a slow plot). A cup of tea I'm about to have will probably make me sleepless for a few more hours, but then I can enjoy the relaxed weekend moments a little longer. Starting tomorrow, it'll be back to work with a pile of music to study: Bruckner's E minor mass for choral conducting on Wednesday and Thursday and more Beethoven for the Tampere Philharmonic Choir. There'll also be preparation work to do for Kaamos and SOL, and of course the Slovenian Chamber Choir's program for the concert in March has also been neglected for too long - Schumann, Rautavaara, Poulenc... the list goes on and on.

It's interesting how so many composers seem to have been obsessed by stars. One of the songs in the Slovenian program is Schumann's "An die Sterne" ("To the stars"), in which the poet wonders whether the stars we see are familiar with the feelings we experience on our planet: joy and passion, sorrow and pain. Taneyev's beautiful setting "Stars" to the text of Polonsky reflects on how stars signify rebirth and, at the same time, death. I recently read the biography of the Finnish composer Toivo Kuula, and it turns out he spent a fortune on a huge telescope to watch the stars. As many sopranos have found out, Beethoven took the melodies of his choral compositions to their highest possible point so as to create a symbol for the heavens and, of course, stars. In Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's chilling novel "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich", one of the convicts talks about his belief that stars are born when the old moon is broken every night. New stars are needed, because "Stars fall every now and then and the holes have to be filled up".

That's a nice way to look at it.

Who's who?

2010-01-10T19:22:00.007+01:00

Finding myself with four hours’ spare time in Lahti last Thursday, I headed to the main library, which proved a pleasant surprise with its large music section, sound proofed piano rooms – one of which I rented for the cost of 1€ - and its helpful staff. I certainly hope the piano room was sound proofed, by the way, because otherwise the library’s clients got to endure a performance of me humming the (very high) violin solo of the Benedictus from Beethoven’s Missa solemnis to my own accompaniment. Having a look at the choral section, I was delighted to find a thick book called “Who’s who in choral music”. Published just a few years ago, the book presents over a thousand people from all around the world who have made significant contributions to the choral scene. It’s either that or they’re the editors’ closest friends.

Anyway, since I had nothing but time, I decided to go through the whole list of names and make a note of people I have heard of. From the 1044 names, about 120 rang a bell. And out of these 120, I established a personal connection with 30 persons (this includes people who have conducted a concert I have sung and/or are on my Facebook friend list). Thirty might not seem like much to you, but let me really stress that the book presented a range of people so vast it included Chinese arts managers, people with the obscure job description “clinician” (which, you have to admit, brings more to mind someone in the field of medicine than musicians) and editors of a choral magazine somewhere unheard of.

If browsing “who’s who” didn’t feel quite satisfying, it at least made time pass quicker, and so I was soon trudging through the icy snow back to the Lahti theatre house to resume conducting stage rehearsals of Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci, which will have its premiere together with Cavalleria Rusticana in just over a week. It was one of the coldest days of this winter until now. The trees were white with snow, the sky was a beautiful blue and the sun was beginning to set. Not everybody was happy with the weather. “I always said I was born in the wrong country, out here with these bloody polar bears!!!” screeched our lovable director before settling down in her black robes to supervise the proceedings of the rehearsal.

We were at the final scene, where Pagliacco loses his marbles in the middle of the performance and stabs his wife Nedda and her lover to death infront of an (understandably) bewildered audience (that would be the choir I have been coaching all of last autumn!). The killings had to be rehearsed over and over again, with “STOP!”, “CUT!” and “you’re supposed to stab her, not break her neck!” booming around us from the director’s microphone. The singers performing the parts of the murder victims were having problems concerning the direction they were supposed to fall after they had been stabbed. They went swaying and crashing in different directions so many times that Nedda called a halt to the proceedings and went to get herself something to strap to her knees for protection. After many retakes of the scene – one of which ended in unintentional laughter because the doomed lovers had accidentally almost fallen on each other, with the raving Pagliacco stuck under their limbs – we were finally done.

With this year involving quite a lot of travelling in and outside Finland, it’s a relief to once again own a device for listening to music on the go. One of my newest evening pastimes is compiling playlists from my iTunes library. I actually began a playlist called Best of Bach, but soon realised the task was pretty absurd. When I feel like it, I can just select Bach as composer and probably anything the machine randomly plays by him will be some of the best stuff ever composed! Another thing I have discovered are podcasts. Until now, I have subscribed to two pretty good ones: BBC’s “From our own correspondent” and the Guardian’s “Book of the week”, in which the hosts of the program keep dishing out book recommendations so fast I can’t keep up with the typing.

To end this post, can I just complain about the outrageously short time it takes particles of dust to unite and create all these grey ugly balls flying on the floor? I just found another one although I’ve just vacuumed the flat. According to Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust), “approximately 6 mg/m²/day of house dust is formed in private households”. Well, say that in English, and it probably means a lot of dust. I sometimes wonder whether dust somehow gathers at an exponential speed, with one of the factors being the frequency of vacuum cleaning – the more often you sweep the floor, the faster you’ll have more dust..?

Whatever. The Beach is on tonight, so I can watch that and imagine I’m somewhere far from all this dust and this endless web of “who’s who” we're all supposed to master so well.

Steady as usual

2010-01-05T21:23:00.003+01:00

I’ve just finished an impressive novel by one of Britain’s newest writers, Sarah Waters. I’d heard of her before, but now that her latest book “The Little Stranger” was shorlisted for the Booker Prize last year, I decided it was time to find out whether she was any good. As it turned out, the book was a great read – an old-fashioned haunted house –story with doors slamming shut, scribbles appearing on walls and telephones ringing in the middle of the night. Some of the scenes were so creepy I woke up after a restless night, calling out “what was that sound!??!” instead of a more usual “thank God for the snooze button”.

While on vacation in snowy Iisalmi, one of the books I brought along was “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë. Loyal to my new reading strategy (don’t read the book description on the back before you’ve finished the novel), I began the book without the faintest clue what it was about. Heights – that’s a geographical term for a sort of mountainous region, isn’t it? But wuthering? Use that in a sentence! So, with only vague conceptions of some sweeping love story to guide me, I found Wuthering Heights (which, by the way, is the name of the house in which the story is set. Sorry if I spoiled it for you!) a truly shocking and even disturbing read, featuring physical and psychological violence, cruel characters, necrophilia (ew) and even a hint at incest. While Northern Savonia slept, I scratched my eyes, turned page after page and wondered whether the front door was properly locked.

Had we stayed any longer away from Helsinki, I would probably have started even speaking English with a touch of Savonian dialect – (“how ooware you? I’m so gleeyad to ssee you!”). Down here, things have been proceeding steadily as usual. Well... we had a couple of train cars go wild and crash themselves into the railway station, passengers on the Silja Europa ferry from Stockholm to Turku didn’t quite get what they paid for when they realised the ship had been going in circles all night because of a faulty rudder, and oh did I mention the mysterious flooding at the main metro station which still hasn’t been opened up to traffic again? Otherwise we’re fine, so touch wood.

Musically speaking, 2010 promises to be an action-packed year, possibly even outdoing the adrenalin and euphoria of last year’s international competitions, beautiful a cappella concerts and one big chunk of workload carrying the title: Mozart’s Requiem. Kaamos will begin rehearsing new a cappella repertoire next week, including Bruckner, Purcell, Poulenc and contemporary Finnish works. The ladies of Diafonia, no doubt still ecstatic about the success of their first traditional Christmas concert (pun intended), will get working on – among others – a very special hymn which was composed at a prison camp in Indonesia during the second world war. (I just need to find the music first). A very important event will take place on next week’s Thursday, when I will conduct my first rehearsal with the student choir Savolaisen Osakunnan Laulajat.

In addition to these three choirs, I will be visiting conductor at the Tampere Philharmonic Choir, preparing them for a performance of Beethoven’s larger-than-life Missa Solemnis. I’m expecting lots of high notes, an army of red faces, frantic waving about with my arms and some breathless train rides back home to Helsinki. Rehearsals with the Lahti opera chorus are over, but there are still stage rehearsals left before the premiere, which is in two weeks. I will be in Lahti at the end of the week to see how rehearsals are getting along. In addition, I have been asked to conduct the Slovenian Chamber Choir and the Chamber Choir Ave in Ljubljana this year. Stay tuned for updates on how work will progress with these two fantastic ensembles!

So as not to finish off too boastfully, let me assure you my life is (still) full of embarassing moments. One of them happened while I was visiting this year’s first Bodypump session. Needless to say, my performance at the lesson itself was top class, but after the session, I couldn’t find my underpants upon leaving the shower. I went through the contents of my locker several times. I’ve lost towels, shampoo and a lock before, but considering the temperature outside, this was one thing I didn’t want to lose - I just had to find those pants! The university fitness staff had recently warned against a thief who was breaking into the lockers, which is why I left my phone and money at the counter during the lesson – this, however seemed highly unexpected. I was just contemplating the possibility of a secret admirer when the pants revealed themselves from inside my work-out bag (so sorry, not much of a story after all, although I can see from your faces you were expecting more - maybe next time). Upon leaving, I said good-bye to my fellow bodypumpers – nobody replied.

The Arrival

2009-05-29T21:17:00.002+02:00

Written last Sunday.

It’s a good thing my grandmother has switched to digital photography, because otherwise her film rolls would probably have been all used up by the time her airplane began approaching Helsinki-Vantaa airport (making the air traffic radars go crazy with their beeping noises and flashing lights) after her long trip from Quito. I can just picture my father, standing in the arrivals hall holding his camera. Mother and firstborn son reunited through two camera lenses pointed at each other at the very moment the doors slid open and the terminal was filled with the echoing voice of my grandmother letting out an exuberant ”Yoohoo!”

I have to imagine her arrival, because I myself was spending the weekend at the Vaasa Choir Festival with the Krysostomos Chamber Choir. We travelled six hours in a bus driven by one of our sopranos Maija, who had properly adorned the windshield with icons and the choir’s mascot, a ceramic chicken called Sylvi. We’re on our way back now, and have spent most of the time discussing pregnancy and the Muppet show, looking out for rainbows and fancy mansions across the Ostrobotnia region, and stopping for refreshments (our first stop at an ice cream kiosk came quite quickly – it was situated at Vaasa’s main square, 200 metres from our hotel).

On the way to Vaasa two days ago, we made an excursion to Eurohamsteri, one of the most curious stores I have ever been in. Just outside the town of Parkano, the store feels like a giant hall hosting some sort of jumble sale. About half a minute after setting foot inside it, I got lost from the rest of our group and found myself browsing shelves and shelves of vases (3€), t-shirts with Finland’s emblem printed on them (4,99€), dog leashes (19,99€), and cheap angel sculptures (I didn’t bother to look). There is no logic to the way things are piled up: fluffy soft toys are to be found next to rolls of duct tape, and right next to the hair-dye products is a collection of some really tempting sweets produced by ”Mr Willy”. We opted for the jelly balls, which were somewhat harder than your average jelly balls, but still very tasty.

There’s nothing more refreshing than a spontaneous shopping spree, and in this respect, Vaasa’s ”Rewell Center” mall provided. The Center, which brought rebels to my mind every time someone spoke its name, was also one of the venues of the festival – various groups, from barbershop ensembles to operatic choirs form Russia, took part in the ”non-stop choir marathon” right in the middle of the center. We listened for a while before hitting the shops. The downside of paying with cards has always been the fact you really have no idea how much money you are spending. This morning, I tried to log on to my bank account through the internet, but for some reason it was inaccessible. It’s maybe just as well, but when I get through again, I’m going to look out for suspicious-sounding transfers. Last time, I found a payment to ”Oriental Catering Express”, and unless this is a pseudonym for my local Alepa, I have no idea what that's all about!

A million sunglasses

2009-05-13T22:18:00.003+02:00

”Please put these on”, says the woman who is always part of the team; typing numbers, adjusting lights, and mechanically repeating everything her colleague says. I am given a pair of huge adjustable sunglasses and lie down on a paper-covered chair, staring at the ceiling through my fancy new accessory. When was the last time I was at the dentist? Whenever it was, this certainly is the first time I’ve been made to look like an astronaut with a cramp in his jaw. Shit, one of my buttons is open – but I’m hardly going to start fumbling with my trousers now. On the radio, there’s a discussion going on about the fish-life in the Helsinki region. The interviewer sounds bored (”Em, so you were talking about this new species found in the Vantaanjoki river; what would you say was the most ideal environment for the fish to breed?”), but not as bored as the interviewee (”I’d say… Nurmijärvi”).

I’m concentrating hard on trying to make the dentist switch channels, but my telepathic skills obviously need brushing up (unlike my teeth, by the way, which get quite a vigorous brush twice a day – family members tend to rush behind the shower curtain to take cover whenever I put a toothbrush in my mouth). I wouldn’t mind listening, for example, to Finland’s entry for the Eurovision contest this year. When I realised even members of my choir were ”Losing Control” over the song, I decided to look it up on YouTube. ”It’s such a catchy tune this year”, gasps one of my sopranos, ”I think we really might have chances!”. Grudgingly, I return everyone back to Planet Earth and the task at hand: trying to finally master the alto part for ”Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. It’s just three weeks to Diafonia’s spring concert.

The performance is quite an event for two reasons: first of all, it’s the first time these 13 ladies from the Diakonia College are performing anywhere outside the walls of the institute. Second of all, the concert will be arranged in co-operation with the choir of the Helsinki Policewomen conducted by Airi. Needless to say, the concert requires a couple of joint rehearsals for preparing our grande finale. Timidly at first, but confidently, we arrive on time at the Malmi police station, which, I must say, isn’t the first place you’d imagine finding a choir rehearsing ”My favourite things”. Combining the efficient and crisp organisation of the Policewomen’s Choir with the inspired enthusiasm of Diafonia, the concert is bound to be a success!

Tuesdays are Kaamos-days as well, and from the music class of the Diakonia Institute it’s just a short drive to the concrete jungle of Pasila on bus number 23. I’m the only one with the key to the chapel, but today it looks like everyone would prefer to rehearse out in the sunshine. However, we decide it’s best to get sanctuary inside from the football-kicking hooligans who have also realised it’s a good day to be outside. I can’t believe we are all present (all except one, of course) and after a short discussion about last week’s concert and the subsequent review in Helsingin Sanomat, we get down to perfecting our program for the Tampereen Sävel vocal music festival in June. Our Danish might sound like Norwegian, but boy does it sound good (a very objective opinion, of course) when almost all of the choir is present. Rautavaara’s Credo gains an even more rhythmical quality through the banging of the football outside.

Next day, maybe inspired by my visit to the dentist, I decide to go shopping for sunglasses. And this time I don’t mean those clips you attach to your glasses – I tried those once, but if anyone ever saw me wearing them, you’re probably joking. They must be the most impractical things ever – impossible to get on straight, pressing down on your nose and dangling on one ear. A guy passed us recently looking like a pirate with the other lens covering his mouth. Exactly my point! Not to mention how they always get lost. As it turns out, I end up getting a new pair of regular glasses as well.

And now we come to something which has always bothered me – I try too much to see things through the eyes of others. Which practically means that I want to make quick decisions at the optician’s, because my worst fear is that the girl attending to me will start getting bored and frustrated at this fussy young man who just can’t bloody decide what sort of glasses would look best. Oh yes, she’s smiling, sure, and happily bringing me set after set of fancy frames she thinks would suit me, but I can see that she’ll only last for 10 minutes, or 12 at the most. ”I’m sorry, but could I just perhaps please try those once more, I just can’t seem to make up my mind…” I pathetically whimper, and she hands them over with a slightly more tensed smile, and am I just imagining it or is she glancing at her watch? ”Those certainly look elegant on you.” What’s her work like anyway? She must be bored with me already. Not really caring anymore that my choice will affect the way I look for quite a long time, I make a quick decision and almost run out to the street for a breath of fresh air.

Being a boring fish up in boring Nurmijärvi must be so much better than wandering aimlessly on Aleksanterinkatu, trying to get a grip on which way to go next, and having millions of sunglasses dancing in your head.

Undressing neighbours

2009-05-04T22:10:00.003+02:00

Let’s face it: nothing lasts forever, and in my case this means my honeymoon with Vaasanhovi is coming to an end. I am, of course, talking about the house I live in and the surrounding neighbourhood, which certainly doesn’t live up to the whiff of aristocracy suggested by its name. When I moved here two years ago in September, all the hustle and bustle associated with the district of Kallio seemed like jolly good fun to me. Okay, my room is hardly big enough to accommodate anything bigger than my bed (which has started to feel pretty cramped lately), but the apartment was tidy, convenient for living with a flatmate and, at least according to Helsinki’s outrageous standards, cheap. The walls were beyond disgusting, and there were bullet-holes in the bigger room, but we cheerfully set to the task of tearing the crackling brownish wallpaper down, filling up the holes, and splashing some new paint around. Have I mentioned I signed the contract for this flat without ever having been in it? No matter! After returning from Austria with a Styrian hat on my head and an “Ich liebe dich” –card in my wallet (yes, it’s still there), spending two months without a speck of privacy at my parent’s place and taking a look at some really horrible flats all over the suburbs, I would probably have been ready to sign a contract for a live-in cupboard on the moon.

I felt all chic and urbanised after spending nine months in a Central European town where the rent was paid in cash (and off the record), grocery shops shut their doors every time you blinked and frequent bank holidays meant an obligatory escape to the cow-filled hills. Kallio’s smelly cheap bars passed for alternative entertainment. Sure, white-cum-grayish was not all that beautiful, but the houses had their own gruff charm. Somebody smashing bottles in S-market was all part of a bigger adventure. Time flies by, and what used to feel “not all that bad” seems increasingly absurd now: tripping over drunk people on the way home and dodging exhibitionists who choose the neighbour’s tiny patch of grass to urinate on. Things on my street tend to change very quickly – yesterday’s fast food eatery is today’s Thai massage parlour, and instead of Turkish men promising salami in your pizza and delivering It with minced meat, you have oriental girls scurrying about in their skimpy and brightly-coloured garments. On the other side of the street, some made-up girl is taking a break from her own strip-tease show and having a cigarette. It’s getting a little embarrassing to give instructions to visitors: “Take a right turn at Hotgirls and you’ll find me right next to the sex megastore!”

Then, of course, there are the neighbours. Fortunately, they like to keep to themselves – our most significant contact with them was when they called the police to knock on our door at 11 pm on a Saturday night for disturbing their quiet with “uncontrolled partying” (it was the night of our housewarming party: okay, so we might have had one or two loud moments including Arabic pop competing with jazzy lounge-music, but by the time the police arrived – probably expecting to see a bunch of knife-waving heroin addicts - we were sipping wine, listening to The Real Group and discussing Brahms). There’s the red-haired woman who walks about with a constant worried look, just dying to find trouble she can report to someone (she looks at me with dismay every time I pass her cheerfully by and say hello). And let’s not forget the fat guy who likes to stroll about the stairway in his bathrobe (probably on his way to the sauna – or, more probably, out for a drink?). There is that one cheerful young bookish-looking girl who lives on the top floor – she must be the one who called the police and raised hell after catching unknown intruders having sex in our attic. I still feel sorry for the woman I accidentally caught stark naked while exploring our communal rooms one day. She let out a sort of squeal of fright and made a dash for the sauna before I could apologise. Still, we managed to have a casual chat about the new washing machine afterwards while hanging our clothes to dry – let’s just say it was sort of akward.

Call me unadventurous and boring, but it’s time to find some place not quite so lively. The first place to look, then, would be today’s special living section of the newspaper. The main article is all about Tallinn’s apartments having become affordable once again, but I don’t quite see the charm of crossing the sea just to get the day started. I get distracted, and start thinking about all the other stuff people have been talking about lately. It seems Helsinki’s residents have developed some sort of obsession towards rabbits, which do scurry about some more parklike areas outside downtown, but really I don’t see what the fuss is all about.
Then, of course, there’s our very own version of “Strictly Come Dancing” (Tanssii Tähtien Kanssa), which is all the rage. The couple of times I’ve been part of the studio audience have been quite a lot of fun – my favourite part is waving my empty glass about and trying to get the attention of the staff which runs all over the place pouring wine to an audience meant to be drunk and cheer their favourites towards stardom. We all left behind a huge pile of rubbish on the 1st of May, but on a brighter note, it looks like we’ve left the worst days of street dust behind us. Just having my window open made me want to go out and get some of those disposable breathing masks which seem to be making a comeback in fashion.

Be as it may, even if it would be easy to find a place to live here, where to find the time for looking around and eventually moving? My summer plans have got completely out of hand already, and with all the end-of-the-term performances coming up there’s hardly any time to get home in between to get the right music. There’ll be more on these choral activities in the next posts. It’s time for me to go put my bed back together. Good night!

Short stories

2009-03-13T22:05:00.006+01:00

It's Friday evening, and for the first times in weeks I'm home fairly early, and alone. Even my flatmate Julia is at a master class in Italy - when she returns, she'll find a clean bathroom and some ham which I didn't eat up despite her kind note urging me to do so. After having a drink down town with a colleague, I start thinking of things to do. Should I get out the 25 scores for the conducting competition in two weeks? They're already so full of markings in red, blue, phosphorous yellow, pencil, and brownish (oh wait, that's coffee) that I'll probably be better off conducting everything by heart in Ljubljana. How about grabbing one of those bottles which have been unopened in my cupboard since I got them on my exam last November, and gulping down champagne while listening to slow Finnish pop music (with the lights out, of course). I could also light candles, make myself a cup of tea and finally get that Ian McEwan novel started.

Then again, I could just get into bed. This afternoon, it took me about two seconds to fall asleep and start laughing at some absurd flashes of a dream which probably would have been a good one if I hadn't woken up, realising I didn't have time to sleep at 3 pm. Maybe I could try to find that dream again? But then it hits me. I'll write a blog post! After all, it's been ages since the last one.

My blog posts are rarely centred on some certain theme or subject because I don't like to restrict myself to only one story when so many happen every day. This morning's first story was a classic, at least for everyone who regularly commutes using tram line number 8: musical chairs. It's fun to speculate on exactly WHERE that disgusting smell is coming from - is it that fishy-looking man with the plastic bags over there? Did someone pee under the seats? Or maybe I'm just imagining it? No, I can't be, because that girl across me is holding her newspaper against her nose (that can't smell much better, can it?). And, for the six stops it takes me to get to the Academy, the masses travel from the front of the tram to the rear, and back again, finding no escape and looking like they're about to be sick. I smile at the thought of my friend Sanna's mother, who once walked up to the driver and told him to do something about this smell or give her her money back.

Today, I'm up early, and the kitchen staff is spared my traditional T-house queueing dance (although I do visit them to indulge my newest addiction - the warm cinnamon rolls have me nearly banging on the door of the cafeteria before they open). This time, my neighbour is rehearsing a piece I know very well: Erkki Melartin's "Sade" (Rain) for piano solo. It takes me a while to build all sorts of mental fences and blockades around my mind before I can get my inner ear tuned to Schütz, Slovenian contemporary music, Mendelssohn and Poulenc. At least this time, I didn't get the lunatic accordeon player who makes that abrupt fortissimo hoover sound with the instrument every single time he/she plays a wrong note (which is OFTEN).

Slightly annoying: an article I'm interested is published in a 1982 edition of a music magazine, but our library only has the magazine's issues since 1983. Well, there are worse things. The sun is shining very brightly, but I suppose it's still too early to get out that spring coat I bought at the Selfridges sale in London. At least I have new shoes again, but they get wet while I'm caught in snowy Otaniemi at eight in the evening. I get pretty pissed off at someone, but I don't dare give details in such a public way. I didn't know there were so many rabbits in Lauttasaari. At my local supermarket, I cause something of a spectacle by not being able to decide which till to go to - this causes much laughter and even competition among the cashiers! You might have realised I'm already skipping through various small stories from the past weeks.

In a weekend in January, everything falls into place as I am sucked into a vortex of Kaija Koo and tequila at a nightclub in Kuopio. Before that, however, a man passes out right infront of the door of our room, and I have to call the hotel reception and ask someone to come and drag him away so we can get out. I watch as a shy woman in a red Sokos uniform bends down and says "You see, you really can't stay there, mister, people are stuck in their rooms...", but the only reply is a snore. I wonder whether this is everyday hotel routine in other countries as well.

I hope I'll have time to write some other small short stories for you soon. I've just finished my tea, a lullaby by Scandinavian Music Group is playing, and I think I'll still make a short trip into Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love". That leaves the champagne and candles, but I'll save those for an evening when there's company.

Lightbursts

2008-12-07T21:19:00.002+01:00

At 3 A.M. on Sunday morning, I woke up, got out of bed and walked to my window like I often do if I'm awake in the middle of the night. The first thing I saw when I opened the blinds was a man and a woman having a tender moment against the fence of a small patch of grass just opposite our house. Apparently, Kallion B12 - our local bar - had just closed, and these two were kissing each other with such intense passion I thought they were going to do each other harm. Limbs were flying all over the place, not to mention the woman's immense hairdo. Smiling, I closed the blinds and went back to bed.

Several hours later, at 9 A.M., I got up to put on the computer and open the blinds. I half-expected to find my new favourite couple lying exhausted on the grass, clinging to each other. However, the streets were deserted. A bicycle had toppled over on the pavement and the tram - inexplicably, a stray number 9 - flashed by. I lied in bed on my back, listening to an average performance of a Händel aria from Naxos's online music library, and pieced together scattered thoughts from the year. For the first time in ages the sky had turned blue, and the sun started to show itself, illuminating first Julia's room, then the flowers I had put to be watered in the kitchen, and then my room.

On Friday, I had my last day of work of the year at the Adult Education Centre. The occasion was a concert with the theme "Songs about Helsinki". A big choir was put together, and I conducted songs like "Stadin Kundi" and "Helsinki-valssi" with a newly-found swinging vigour I thought was not going to work this week. Now, staff and students are packing up to move to various locations in Helsinki, and the whole building is going to be closed for refurbishment until 2010. This is not such a bad thing, since some of the classrooms look like something straight out of a war film from Bosnia, and there's an embarrassing smell of sewage all over the place. Not to mention the men's toilets, which are just dreadful.

Meanwhile, I haven't figured out a lot about 2008 yet, except that it was definitely:
The Year Everyone Commits (engagements and weddings galore!),
The Year of Bad News (don't get me started),
The Year of Happy News (definitely very happy news :),
The Year of Concerts (Go Kaamos). Also consider:
The Year of the Entrance Exams (Need I explain?),
The Year of Mixed Signals (no comment),
The Year of The Grandmothers (both in one year!),
The Year of Great Books (One exception: The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher),
The Year of Confusing Circumstances (I'll get back on this one),
The Year of Scares (muggings, riding accidents etc... beware 2009)
The Year of Family and Friends (<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3)
The Me & Myself Year (.. oh never mind)
The Strange Year (they just keep getting stranger....)
The "Everything's Fine" Year (it is, actually...)
The Year I Lost my Umbrella (seriously, it accompanied me for a long time)
The Year of Weddings (oh, I mentioned that one already..)
The Neverending Year (this one was surely longer than the previous ones?)
The Year of Coffee (too much, probably :()

That's enough for now. It's 11 P.M. and somewhere tonight, two lovebirds will find each other in some scrummy bar in this city where we live. And maybe they'll go home, take a pen and open their diaries. What they might write could be: "I thought this year was going to be the most boring year of my life, but yesterday I met somebody, and I feel alive again for the first time in 2008. Tomorrow, I'm meeting him again at the same bar. I don't care if we have only 27 hours of light in all of December. I couldn't care less about this gloomy city now. I'm only thinking: what shall I wear?"

November mode

2008-11-12T21:02:00.004+01:00

People have different favourite seasons, but at least up here I think everyone agrees that this has to be some sort of extra bonus. When you're battling through sheets of pouring water, sitting in a bus with no clue as to which street you're on, dodging broken umbrellas and drying yourself constantly, there's not much question as to what month it is. Some other side effects of November mode I've experienced this week include: cursing the fact that one of the escalators at the metro station is closed for maintenance DURING RUSH HOUR, standing in pouring rain waiting for the tram in Pasila and not wanting to squeeze myself into the crowd under the roof for fear of getting accused of sexual harassment and wondering whether my filthy windows are about to fly through the walls with the wind howling outside. Oh, and running to a rehearsal with tomato sauce somewhere inside my clothes after a messy accident in the kitchen.

Of course, it's not only the weather which can get you gloomy. Try this: one of your dearest friends falls off her horse and breaks her back. Honestly, November is such an absurd month you have to laugh at yourself. Since everyone is walking around looking like a wet dog anyway, why not join in the fun? Who needs an umbrella when you've got hair? Of course, for choral conductors, the hilarious stress of the imminent Christmas season just adds a bit of spice to the fun. Gulping down some really horrible coffee with Mikko today at the Academy, with Anna angry at us for being such "nicotine addicts", the three of us have a conversation which pretty much sums up what we can expect over the next days. "One week before the concert, every day is a small catastrophe and nothing goes like you want it to", Anna explains. "Then, on the morning of the concert - disaster strikes". There are nods across the table and I shudder at another gulp of coffee.

"But afterwards!", we conclude: "After the concert, you feel so euphoric!". And she's absolutely right. We are studying for a profession which is incredibly much fun, but even the best of jobs can get your frame of mind wobbling. Will all this organising never end? Calendars for next year are already filling up ("I forgot which year it is yesterday", Anna announces). Halls and churches have to be reserved, music organised for the singers, programmes written and sent forward, players and accompanists arranged, songs rearranged, etc. I was supposed to inform my boss at the Adult Educaton Centre what we'll be performing on the 6th of May next year and woke up to the fact I haven't yet planned our coming Christmas concert. But is it really worth to break your head over every single singer who gets a cold at the worst time, or realises he can't come to the most important performance of the year because of a vacation? The answer is no!!

At our conducting lesson today, several of us seemed to have had a telepathic connection overnight, and the Vocal Ensemble got to experience our very own ad hoc "Toivo Kuula festival" (in case you didn't understand, three of us happened to bring along music from the same composer). Usually, when we are sitting at the feedback session, watching ourselves conduct with anything but our hands (my own new speciality: the head-nod.... watch me now, here it comes.. WHOOSH!! Did you see that?? Hit rewind!), we all realise it's actually more fun to observe and comment on anything but the actual music. Edward likes my new jumper, while Ruut is shocked: "what am I wearing??" (the camera tends to distort the colours). Meanwhile, someone praises Florian's new hairdo while others try to restore order. I flip at someone for not pressing the "record" button at the right time and someone tries to explain it's not such a big deal. Today, it's Airi's turn to play our traditional "dash-and-grab" game with the DVD machine, which tends to close up right after opening, leaving us a microsecond to grab our disc back before losing our fingers.

There'll probably be a lot more to laugh about next week, but in the meanwhile: November! You've got to love it :)

Rainstorm

2008-11-02T19:33:00.002+01:00

It's inevitable. One day, it will start raining in my room - and when it does, it won't be pouring water, but half-used Labello sticks. Oh, and tuning forks. My room is ten sq m big, I have twelve drawers and only so many coat pockets. Why is it so easy to lose things? From now on, I'll have to ask at the counter if Labello comes in packages of 100 sticks. If they look at me strangely, I'll say something about stocking up for Armageddon and customers' rights.

It's been a while since the last blog post. After a beautiful September came October with its rainstorms straight from the Flood. The funny thing about our winter light is that, no matter how bright the sky is on a clear day, you'll probably still need to keep your lamps burning. Keeping physically active is probably not such a bad idea, if only to keep your eyes open, and so I have decided to explore the many different sports & fitness possibilities offered by the university.

My first excursion was to a half-hour session recommended for people who haven't done a lot of moving lately, and so I thought this would be something suitable for me. On the contrary, the rather slow and meditative pace of the lesson made me almost fall asleep, and so a few days later I confidently arrived at an Afro dancing lesson. The African beats, rhythms and wild movements soon got me hopping around the hall together with about forty female students, which I didn't think much about until the teacher suggested we shake our boobs with a bit more vigor. Happens what happens, next Friday will see me flapping my hands around with no less enthusiasm.

On the travel front, things have been extremely active. This past month has seen Dea and me queuing over an hour for immigration in Miami, depending on American Airlines for nourishment, taking one of the scariest chair lifts ever, spending quality time with our cousins, uncle and grandmother, crying over the non-existence of a Starbucks in Terminal E and spending the last hours of a 24h trip behind a screaming baby. Meanwhile, Hamsa and Carlos have been flying all over the place - from Iceland to the Ukraine via Finland: Carlos cursing Icelandair for the delay which made him miss a daytime landing in Reykjavik and Hamsa joining the bulging masses at Kiev's metro stations.

After a family reunion, I walked home today with some really exotic gifts from Iceland's Blue Lagoon spa: a bottle of algae & mineral shampoo and a bottle of algae & mineral shower gel. I have to admit I'm extremely curious as to what the effect of a shower with this stuff will be. I see myself confidently walking into my lesson with some very wind-blown hair full of solid minerals raining out of it, seaweed on my neck and volcanic sulfur blowing out of my ears. Suddenly, Hair & Shoulders is just so last season - however, I still have half a bottle to use up before opening my souvenirs.

As for studies and work, it's all the same old fun. However, now it's Sunday evening, and before the clock starts ticking on Monday, there are some more moments to lie down and read, listen to music, have a chat with my new flatmate Julia, and listen to Sarah Palin making a fool of herself. Then, the lights will go off and I'll dip into newly changed sheets.

Flipping

2008-07-29T21:00:00.006+02:00

It looks like I'm not the only one who has devoted some thought to one of summer's ultimate phenomena: flip-flops. Run a Wikipedia search, and you'll get a lengthy article with a brief history on the flip-flop, and even some health-related concerns about the flip-flop. For me, this it the first summer I have truly got used to wearing them. Before, I used to always find the idea of something rubbery between my toes somewhat skin-crawling, but since getting a pair in Italy a month ago, I don't really feel like wearing anything else.

It's not always easy, though: it took me a while to learn how to walk down stairs without that constant, well - flip-flopping banging all over the stairway. For some reason, the one on my right foot often tends to simply decide to tag along and I find myself taking a few steps back to retrieve it. This can sometimes be dangerous, as I learned during an incident while walking in Damascus. If I had needed one more second to get the damned thing back on my foot in the middle of Malki street I probably would have been run over instantly by the furiously honking cars.

But talking about summer, wouldn't it be so easy to just get used to this pace of life? My last days have followed a very loose routine consisting of waking up, walking to the park with my book, having lunch when I'm hungry, going out again, taking a look at something work-related (but often not), visiting the library, seeing friends in the evening, and going back to sleep past midnight. I think I've looked at my watch about twice during the last week. Yesterday, I had something scheduled for five o'clock. I had written it out on my calendar and all, but when I got a confused phone call some time after five, it took me a while to even understand what was going on.

I opened the suitcase with my old clothes. While some of the things went straight to UFF, quite many of the t-shirts inside were simply indispensable. Like the Cantores Minores American tour '98 -shirt. Or the fantastic "Zivi im Dienst" -shirt Annika gave me when I was working at DSH. It smells a little weird, but that's no surprise considering where it's been. One of the shirts was a Christmas gift from my grandmother many years ago. We all opened our packages to find these shirts with printed pictures of a volcano erupting. It's no surprise that, while the rest of Quito's population flocked inside with their gas masks to escape the rain of ash, my grandmother ran outside with her legendary Minolta camera, cursing because she couldn't get closer to the action. The picture on my shirt is already quite faded.

After reading so many fantastic books in English (Ian McEwan's Atonement was reread in two days and I instantly rented the movie and jumped on the bus to Pauli's and Iina's, who were so surprised by my spontaneous visit they weren't even at home yet when I arrived in Siltamäki, clutching the dvd), I thought I'd try something Finnish for a change. The book I took out looked promising enough but when I started reading it, it took me a while to get used to reading in Finnish - and what's more, the story was about a man who finds a troll and takes him in to live with him. A spectacular adventure highlighting the conflicts between man-made society and nature ensues... that's if you believe the back cover. What's the opposite of "page-turning"?

While my parents are working in Middle Finland, Dea is on some international cultural youth camp in Russia. We all thought she'd be in Nizhnyi Novgorod, but apparently the delegations were picked up from the train station and taken on a four-hour bus ride in some direction. It all sounds a little bit like our trip to Yuzhno Sakhalinsk back in 2003. Even the cities sound alike, with that sexy zhhhh blowing through one's teeth when one pronounces them.

Our temporary flatmate Johanna, who seems to be unable to decide whether she wants to work in the UN or at Stockmann's underwear department, was supposed to leave only tomorrow. However, I arrived home yesterday to find our corridor looking very empty without her shoes, and a handwritten note on the table next to the keys. And so the flat is all mine for a while now. I've been spending some time in front of the mirror examining some sort of strange bite on my neck. It doesn't look bad, but all these stories about tics swimming all the way to mess up your brain are enough to send me flying to Marianne so she can have a look at it. On the other hand, she probably has her hands full examining Markus's finger. Apparently he lost a nail yesterday during a night out. How do you do that? Mikko and him tried to explain it to me at lunch today, but it sounded like a complicated story.

The sound of rubber slapping against your heels is so addictive I now wish I had a reason to go out tonight wearing my flip-flops and one of my outgrown t-shirts with a faded picture on it. But maybe that's a reason in itself to go out?

Limited issue

2008-07-24T20:51:00.003+02:00

I need a new frying pan. The one I own is an old one from my parents, and I wouldn't be surprised if they told me it's the one they used to fry eggs during their student years in the Soviet Union - probably with that nostalgic expression they get when they talk about queueing for toilet paper on the streets of Moscow. However, my temporary flatmate told me today it's a perfect frying pan, so what's the point in getting new stuff when most of our things are anyway going to outlive us all.

Isn't it worth thinking about, though? Where all our things end up. Or, for that matter, how they have ended up here in my room. Open your mind, and every thing seems to have a story. Like the KLM World Business Class cosmetics box I was given in 2003 for taking care of an abandoned child. When My Favourite Lithuanian Person began singing in choirs as a child, she hardly would have known that in ten years she would give the black file binder she was holding to her friend while leaving Bologna. Could Cecil Robert E. have imagined that his complete set of Dickens would end up in his great-grandson's bookshelf in Finland?

Sometimes, we even give stuff to ourselves. I opened a stowed-away suitcase at my parents' place today. It was labelled "DANI'S STUFF 23.9.2006" and full of- well, my stuff! But where will my books be after a hundred years? Or, for that matter, my diaries? I really need to think about this, since my diaries have become so personal in the last years that even I'm not allowed to read everything.

While I was thinking about coming home from the long trip, I realised I was really thinking about this street and this district, which really is a city inside a city like they say. I actually missed the view from my window, down half of Kustaankatu towards the main street where the trams rattle towards Töölö; the cheap bars with their ridiculous names (Garbage Bank, anyone? Or how about a drink at Evening School?), pizzerias and kebab eateries, the red brick apartment blocks, the Thai massage parlours, all the single people just passing their time on the streets (or passing out).

I'll be happy to stay in this part of town for a while. There is something about it that suits me well. And when I feel like it, I can escape the noise and walk to the park with my book and an ice cream, take the tram to Töölönlahti and put my feet in the water, or take the bus to the northern suburbs and watch a movie with my friends. I did all of these things today and can't wait to see what I'll do tomorrow. When you're young, on holiday, and have a charged Travel Card, there are no limits!

Syria's view

2008-07-10T12:43:00.001+02:00

For me, Syria is the Land of the Aunties. There’s Auntie Diala, my real aunt. There are Aunties Huda and Hiam, my grandfather’s sisters – one sweeter than the other and each competing for title of shortest woman on the planet. It makes you want to pick them up and cuddle them while they tell you stories about childhood summers on a Baghdad farm in the late thirties.

And then of course there’s Auntie Hind, who isn’t really my aunt: she’s my mother’s very best childhood friend. Her Auntie-ness is, however, official, since we’re listed as family members even on Facebook. My sister and I sometimes contemplate running for cover when she approaches, but eventually realise there is no escaping her very strong displays of affection. The key is to just relax and let your body go limp, because no part of the body is spared when Auntie Hind makes her attack. We are left with our shirts the other way around and our hair in a complete mess.

Auntie Hind shuttles between Syria and Canada, and her house in Damascus is in the middle of the oldest part of town. Lunch or dinner there with all our family is always one of the highlights of our trip, and the invitations qualify as events themselves:
“Come for dinner on Sunday!”
To which my sister and I: “But Auntie Hind, on Sunday we’ve promised to…”
“Stop! Halas (that’s Arabic for “enough”)! Cancel everything! See you on Sunday!” A couple of crushing hugs and demands to my mother about adopting us, and Hind always gets her way in the end.

Driving in Syria is like a voyage on another spectacular planet. The only colours you see are different shades of brown, a little bit of green here and there, and the huge blue cloudless sky above. Once you approach a city, the first thing you’ll probably see are half-finished apartment blocks which were probably started on years ago but have now been abandonded because of lack of money. The traffic gets more chaotic, and eventually you arrive to the centre of town, which is usually marked by a clocktower. There is hardly any water, and if there ever was any, it’s anyway nearly all dried up in the midsummer.

The region around Damascus is full of majestic hills rising from the desert, and many of them have ancient Christian convents on the summit. Further inland, there is nothing but desert, with few main roads crisscrossing it. Here, the saddest thing you’ll see is all the rubbish which has accumulated over the years and lies all over the place as an ugly reminder of all the cars which have passed through over decades. Once you get your eyes off that, you’ll see whole ancient ruined cities rising out of nowhere. Roman, Byzantine and Muslim sites, Crusader castles… it’s like driving through a history lesson where everything is empty, waiting to be explored.

Even more fascinating are the people living here: some days ago, we visited a single mother with four children, living in an ancient house that looked like a beehive and was all in all not that much bigger than my room. The house was in a tiny village on a road that led to nowhere. The mattresses were all piled up, ready to be taken down at night, and there was a very old black and white television set in one corner. The children were transfixed by having foreigners over. The boys proudly demonstrated their skills like writing and making cart-wheels. The girls just couldn’t have enough of having their pictures taken, rearranging their shawls and dresses with serious expressions before giving us the green light to press the button.

Of course, life in the capital city couldn’t be more different. Iraqi refugees are still arriving and Damascus keeps growing. The latest news on the political scene is the alleged nuclear reactor Syria was building in the northeast of the country before Israel bombed it to the ground. And then there’s always the US accusing Syria of not controlling the Iraqi border against insurgents. “It’s five hundred kilometres of sand!” my grandmother screamed at the television while we were watching a CNN exclusive report called “Syria’s view”. “I’d like to see them trying to control it!”

However, most people don’t really seem that interested. There are other things to do than worry about politics! Like the new shops which keep opening up: Miss Sixty, Mango, Villeroy & Boch to name a few. Or how to bypass the tight internet censorship which doesn’t let Syrians access their Facebook accounts or read blogs like this one. Most people use invisible Chinese servers, but even these tend to clog up. As for entertainment, a Turkish soap opera called Noor is all the rage.

This new arrival might not have caused a revolution in Turkey, but its dubbed version is certainly THE programme to watch in the Arabic countries today. A friend told me that in Jordan, 70% of newborn babies are being named after the main characters. Episodes are screened several times a day, but like my grandmother says, it’s one of those series which you can miss ten episodes of and still be able to follow without problems. We’d been home from the airport only for some hours, and already my twelve-year old cousin Rama was bringing me up to date with the storyline. “The man loves the woman who is married, and the woman who is married to another man loves him, but then the first man ties up the woman who is married and tells her he won’t let her go before she agrees to divorce the man she is married to.” Without having seen one episode yet, I was instantly hooked.

Neighbouring countries go up in flames, the world’s greatest super-power keeps coming up with new synonyms to “terrorist state” and an Israeli bomb drops in the middle of the desert, but people here shrug the dust off and keep being more hospitable and friendlier than ever. The people in these lands have been the same for thousands of years, and to keep up with tradition, we’ll be knocking on Auntie Hind’s door in the Christian Quarter after some days.

Corking it

2008-06-29T14:53:00.005+02:00

When I was thirteen years old, the world was rocked by a movie about a pair of doomed lovers on a sinking ship. At that time, a movie ticket in Helsinki cost about 30-35 Finnish marks, but when Titanic arrived, the price was raised to 50 marks - it was said this price made justice to the staggering length of the movie: over three hours. And we all loved it. Regardless of age, nationality, sex or nautical miles travelled, Titanic had us all gaping at the Ship that Sank, singing our on-going hearts out with Celine Dion, almost wetting our pants when the lights of the Titanic flickered and went out forever, and whooping out loud when Kate Winslet spat on the face of her husband-to-be.

Titanic is the movie which, possibly, for people of my generation, provided the first experience of bawling in a movie theatre and made it completely normal to go to watch the same movie five times. And even now, when listening to "My Heart will go on", we remember one of the highlights of the nineties, an event nobody could have missed. My mother once told me one of her friends living in Kuwait, who never had time to watch a single movie, watched Titanic - even though this meant she fast-forwarded through most of it.

I'm writing this in my father's aunt's house in Vienna, where I've been staying with my parents and my father's cousin for some days. Biologically speaking, she's not really his aunt, but it's a long story and I'll elaborate on it another time (if you've been familiar with my blog for a longer time, you'll know I say this frequently). Right now, my father's other cousin (who, biologically speaking, really IS his cousin) arrived with his wife and their adopted son, and we're getting ready for a barbecue in the garden.

It's boiling hot, but of course not as hot as in Damascus, where we'll travel tomorrow, and certainly not as hot as Venice, which was something of a disappointment with its infuriating masses of tourists and lousy customer service - some stretches of the city made you feel like you were in some freakily huge amusement park, while the calmer parts of the city were much nicer, especially if you found a street shady enough to prevent your sunburn from getting any worse. This presented some interesting challenges to our street-navigating ("We were supposed to cross that canal but we'll stay in the shade and turn left instead").

The 12 hour train trip from the Santa Luzia train station was uneventful. A blonde female tourist carrying a huge red rucksack, a black smart briefcase and a plastic bag stuffed with umbrellas approached me on the platform to ask how she would know how to find her wagon. I explained to her there would be plates with the carriage numbers hanging on the doors, and she seemed genuinely surprised when I corrected her and told her she didn't have a seat: she would be travelling in a bed ("Where do you see BED?" she asked, and I pointed at the Italian: Letto).

I assumed she was American, but a chain-ring hanging from her chaotic rucksack screamed CANADA! With an enthusiasm very characteristic of North American people on their first trip to Europe (I sometimes feel like they reply "Yes, I LOVE it" to whatever you ask), she suggested taking a picture with the two of us (I had known her for about two minutes) and when she started approaching one of the crazy Russian fans travelling to Austria for the football match, wanting to ask her if she would take a picture, I stopped her and suggested she go to the station to get herself some water, instead, because the trip would be long ("When will we arrive?" Honestly, I don't know how she had survived all the trip until now - and what was the meaning of all those UMBRELLAS? She looked like she had an allergy to rain, or maybe someone had told her umbrellas were hot merchandise in Italy).

The approaching train saved me from having to go through any more embarassing small talk ("I'm going to Syria in a week to see my grandmother", I said. "Serbia?" came the reply) and I quickly found my seating compartment, which was already occupied by a Malaysian man studying in Cork. "Kohk. You know, Ailan? Ailan? Kohk?" "Ireland", I translated to the arrogant Bolivian couple who couldn't stop staring at the guy and looked like they were ready to take the next plane back to La Paz. They got off pretty soon, but the guy from Kohk kept asking me for advice, even waking me up in the middle of the night in a fit of panic: "What time is it in Austria? Same as Italy????!?!???"

And so, these are just some of the things I'm remembering - Titanic, and the absurd people you meet on night trains - while I prepare myself for barbecue with my biological and non-biological relatives, as well as the football match and, finally, tomorrow morning's flight.

Verdi in Verona

2008-06-20T14:37:00.002+02:00

I arrived in beautiful Verona some hours ago, rattling on the Regionale from Bologna Centrale with my pockets full of used handkerchiefs, my t-shirt wet from sweat and my bag stuffed with Mirga's fantastic pastries (recipe: empty fridge, throw everything in a pan, wrap it up in dough and shove it into the oven). Because I haven't slept last night due to a blocked nose, I almost fall asleep on the bus to the youth hostel, while the four-wheel suitcase of a Japanese tourist takes a life of its own. Summer has finally arrived to Italy, with today being the second hot day on the trip, which has just entered its third week.

Yesterday was Mirga's last day of her Erasmus year in Bologna, and we celebrated it by hiking out to the church of San Luca, on a beautiful meadowy hill outside the city. The half-nude couples (of mixed orientation) frolicking in the grass made our quartet look boringly innocent - we, however, kept our clothes firmly on and our eyes on the views, which reminded Mirga and me of the landscapes in Austria.

Last night was spent preparing the culinary delights mentioned above and cleaning up Mirga's room, which happened faster than we thought but still was no small task. While her Romanian-pop-on-full-volume-blasting flatmates snored in the other rooms, we were packing up an electronic piano and throwing unnecessary paperwork in the rubbish. Mirga continued this while I wrapped myself in my very pink sheets to begin an utterly sleepless night, enforced by the howling trains passing a few metres from our window on Via Masserenti.

And so now, I am alone for a couple of days, a feeling, I must say, not quite unwelcome after two weeks of meeting so many good friends from over a year ago. I plan on spending them by discovering this beautiful city (however, also steering clear of the Romeo & Juliet kitch-factor, which IS substantial here - Romeo bus tours anyone?), trying to create dams for all this liquid streaming out of me, and immersing myself further in John Irving's wonderful novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany". Tonight, I'll go to see Aida at the Verona amphitheatre with a group of Finnish girls I met in Bologna yesterday. No need to say we have quite a lot of mutual friends as they all are fans of choral music.

Raining

2008-06-07T21:36:00.003+02:00

It's raining again. The drops started falling on my face as I was walking down Leonhardstrasse after helping Mirga carry her suitcase to where she's staying until Thursday, when we'll travel to Bologna together. On Merangasse, I almost instinctively turned to the left. The sun was beginning to set and Scandinavian Music Group's "Lopulta olemme kuitenkin yksin" was playing on my iPod. I am back in Graz.

I am now at home at Yvette's place and the rain is getting stronger by the minute. Right now, it has boiled to a raging downpour which sounds like it will crash through the glass roof of the balcony. I have agreed to meet a friend at Pastis which is only a few blocks away but if I leave now I'll arrive looking like my sponge does after I take a shower.

Which reminds me I just have to tell you about Yvette's shower! The handle has a crack in it, and as a result, the water shoots sideways instead of downwards. You should try cleaning yourself in such a shower some time, it's a blast. Just like being on candid camera! Right now, my Mexican friend is crawling over a huge poster of a satellite image of Graz. I picked it up today on Herrengasse, asked how much the poster cost and was offered one for free. was thrilled.

As I walk in this city's beautiful parks, browse the shops, meet friends with whom I share memories and make a beeline for the yoghurt department of Spar, I can't help thinking how lucky I am to have such a place where I feel so comfortable, such a home away from home where I know the people and the places and the way of life. One friend today told me that her best year in Austria has been the year when Thomas and I were exchange students in the Kunstuni because she used to go out much more. Nice words, which also made me miss Thomas a little bit.

The rain has stopped now, and I'm going for a drink in Pastis like I used to do.

Summertime

2008-06-01T21:40:00.008+02:00

After one of the most depressing winters in Finnish memory (there's nothing wrong with a rainy November - unless it lasts five months..) came the most exciting and surprising spring ever, but still nothing compares to the summer which finally arrived this week. Whether on a walk from Otaniemi to Lauttasaari, on the metro from Kamppi to Vuosaari, or on a tram from Kallio to Töölö, Helsinki looks beautiful when people spill out onto the terraces for a drink in the sun or into the parks for a picnic. And let's not forget the ever-increasing tourists who embark from their Scandinavian Special and Northern Delights cruises to roam around the city for a day, looking somewhat hopeless following their brisk and banner-waving guides.

Every day of this season seems so priceless that it would seem a shame not to celebrate it as much as one can with people who know how to have fun. Some weeks ago, a successful major exam of a wonderful friend and colleague was followed by an after-party which stretched well into the night and saw us riding from restaurant to bar to nightclub on taxi, feeling like the wealthiest citizens of one of the most expensive cities in the world. Next morning's communal pizza moment in Kaisaniemi was as therapeutic as it was fun. Some days later, an impromptu dinner and wine moment at the new home of friends in Kruununhaka.

Last Thursday, our school's summer party had students, teachers and even janitors celebrating in a boat, sipping wine and dancing to the beat of a band called Mykaboom. There was something wrong with the sound system settings and one could hardly make out the voices of the very enthusiastic singers. Somehow, the four last mohicans from this celebration ended up toasting the beginning of the summer in Manala, which is where all roads seem to lead for the after-party groups looking for reasonable food.

Throw in yesterday's picnic in Torkkelinmäki, Helsinki's perfect fairytale setting which seems even more special because it is surrounded by the chaos of Kallio's tram track renovations, and you've got the ingredients for a couple of days spent recovering in bed, with a light summer breeze and the drunken voices of Vaasankatu drifting through the open window.

As far as reading is concerned: after finishing one of the most compelling novels in a while, Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" (instant rereading material), I seem to be specialising in books with strange titles. Patrick Gale's "The Aerodynamics of Pork" was not only one of the worst books in recent fictional memory, it neither had anything to do with aerodynamics nor did it feature a pig. Currently, "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" by Paul Torday seems much more promising. The only thing which bothers me is the use of the article before the name of the country, but that's just me as always.

Ordinary things

2008-05-20T22:42:00.002+02:00

I really enjoy doing ordinary things. Like having coffee and reading the newspaper in the morning. Using public transport. Paying the phone bill. Taking my suit to the dry cleaner’s because a friend accidentally spilt beer on me at a party the previous night. Having a first of May picnic in Kaivopuisto. Spending Friday night with friends. Buying toilet paper. Walking to the Schlossberg on Sunday.
I enjoy doing these normal things because I’m sometimes fed up of feeling like an exception to the rule.

At day care, I was the boy who couldn’t speak a word of Finnish. At elementary school, I could speak Finnish but was still different. I can still hear my overweight and overenthusiastic teacher: “Why don’t you tell the class something about your family, Dani? What sort of food do you eat at home? Children: Dani’s from a DIFFERENT CULTURE. That means he doesn’t necessarily think about things the same way we do”. (I heard she was later fired). On top of all this, I could play the piano, so sometimes whole lessons were spent listening to me accompanying myself while I sang the latest Disney classics. It’s no wonder some people hated me. I can’t really say I was thrilled about myself, either.

It’s difficult not to stand out when you spend your childhood singing sacred music in a boys’ choir, seeing your grandparents once in a blue moon and being familiar with Arabic swear words. Even as an adult, being in a profession many people don’t quite understand and studying a subject nobody knows even exists creates mild suspicion. I remember my school music lessons like yesterday. I was usually the only boy who was able to sing in tune. I remember seriously considering speaking through the songs to avoid uncomfortable looks. Some time later, somebody told me the books I enjoyed reading were meant to be for girls because the main protagonist was a woman who solved mysteries with her feminine colleagues. I got rid of the books at once and made an effort at getting something more acceptable to read. This was difficult, because it seems that boys between 10 and 12 aren’t supposed to read anything but comics and football books. I chose Dickens.

Things have changed since then – or have they? Why does a man who earns his living helping people of all ages express themselves through music seem more out of place than a man who spends his living on drinks? We always seem to look for things which make a person different from us – especially if the person has some qualities we find difficult to understand because we’re afraid to admit our own insecurity. Feelings and thoughts may differ, but our lives are not all that different, especially concerning practical things. There’s nothing remarkable about taking a taxi late at night, paying the rent, or going for a walk in the park. Everyone does it!

I might have spent my childhood listening to Italian opera and watching Little House on the Prairie, but I also enjoy a good Finnish pop song any time. I might know Mozart’s Requiem and Bach’s Matthew Passion by heart from beginning to the end, but I also go to the movies, read a good thriller or enjoy sudoku. My best friends may be church organists, choral conductors or orthodox cantors (or all three things at once), but we have just as much fun at a night club as anybody else. I might like yellow, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have exactly the same feelings as the guy next door who likes blue.

Maybe my teacher in elementary school should have thought of how I would feel about her always pointing me out. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy all the attention as a child – who wouldn’t? – but I can’t help thinking whether she was one of the reasons why it took me too many years to realise there are people who see life just like I do, and spend their free time just like I do, and don’t even flinch when I tell them I think the only thing that will make me feel better now is a Schütz motet. Then again, maybe she should have given her curriculum more thought.

Sick bay

2008-05-12T21:15:00.002+02:00

My home looks like a bag of lemons has exploded in it. There are yellow pieces of lemon everywhere - nice round slices juicy cubes small wedges and especially lemon seeds all over the place. The lemon is going everywhere - in my tea, my water and my pizza. At least I can try to imagine it will make this stinging pain in my throat go away. I have emptied my medicine bag (which needed sorting out anyway, you never know what you'll fine inside it - cough tablets from 1997 or perhaps a used razor blade) and have a variety of pills and powders decorating my room.

My table is a mess. Harp music my teacher lent me to go through and see what I'd like to play. Post-its filled with scribbled calculations on my financing strategy for the summer (not a very fool-proof strategy). Mikko Heiniö's haunting "Luceat" for mixed choir, open at the place where not one chord seems to be easy to tune. A broken cup I got as a present two days ago, lying next to a tube of superglue with which I have successfully reattached the handle. A wonderful recording of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" I was listening to earlier.

My iPod. A withered white rose I got from my singers two weeks ago. The vase has no more water in it. The newest issue of the Sulasol magazine, an important newsletter on the latest happenings in the choir world. My best friend's picture inside a ball on the front page with his quote: "Choral singing is hip!". Him telling me to shut up when I tease him through messenger. Emails from my cousins in Ecuador and Germany on my laptop screen, part of coordinating the next big family event in October.

My address book. I have just crossed out two addresses - one in Lauttasaari and one in Töölö, and added new ones in Kruununhaka. Someone completely new has been also added. How many people use an address book anymore? A bag full of things my parents brought from their weekend in France (mostly chocolate from the duty free). A blue IKEA bag full of dirty laundry. An unidentified pile of important papers and music - must go through that tomorrow morning.

My bed, with clean sheets. A framed poster of Madama Butterfly above it. A plant I haven't watered in months but it's still going strong. An open window, a late tram rattles by on Helsinginkatu. Capris is still open and some people are hanging out on the other side of the street. A city quickly waking up to the idea of the summer. The moon, shining down on millions of people in cities deserts jungles ships mountains towns tents. My flatmate preparing popcorn and sitting down to watch ice hockey. Me pressing PUBLISH POST and cutting another lemon in half.

New shoes

2008-05-03T22:31:00.007+02:00

As I was taking the metro to the entrance exams to the choral conducting class of the Sibelius Academy last week, I realised I needed new shoes. I decided I wouldn't postpone getting them any longer, because something told me that tomorrow there would be nothing left of my old shoes anymore. I needed new ones today. And so, after the exams were over, I walked into one of the shoe stores in Kamppi, picked up a dark brown pair, put the old shoes in the new box, carried them with me to Ruoholahti, and threw them into the garbage bin.

It was so easy. And yet – take a moment with me to think of these old shoes of mine. I had managed to wear them for two years. I wore these shoes on the ten-hour flight from Hong Kong to Helsinki. They were the only thing between my feet and the boiling ground during my five-day adventure through Eastern Turkey in 2006. I had these shoes on when I arrived at Merangasse 52, Graz for the very first time. They have accompanied me on countless conducting lessons and choir rehearsals, they have been on my feet on airplanes, trains and buses. I have felt them wear themselves out day by day.

And now picture these shoes all abandoned and alone in a waste basket, with nobody to see them off into oblivion but me, looking at two brown disfigured objects and finding my mind filling up with memories like it always does at the most improbable moments. I feel like striking a wild farewell dance in front of the trash, but then I remember I’m in the real world, where this would look somewhat suspicious. I turn around and leave them there.

A very exciting and busy spring is coming to an end. While March was dominated by preparations for the debut concert of Kamarikuoro Kaamos, April was the month of the Entrance Exams, which, in the end, went very well. The results will be announced in June, by which time I’ll be in Graz, spending a well-earned vacation which will eventually include Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic and Syria in six weeks.

Every year, I tell myself I want to spend most of the summer in Finland. Then, at some point, everything snaps and I find myself escaping abroad for a long stretch of time. However, there will be plenty of time to enjoy the Finnish summer when I return from the trip. I'm looking forward to having a Schlossbergtorte at Strehly with my Austrian colleagues, having a picnic with friends in the Stadtpark, taking the night train from Graz to Bologna, celebrating a wedding at a city outside Prague, flying Austrian Airlines flight 841 from VIE to DAM for the hundredth time, getting lost in the old city of Aleppo and lying on the sofa next to my grandmother and her cat.

And, what’s more, I’ll be wearing my new shoes all the way.

The pictures on this post were taken on the last days of winter in March 08.

Staff meeting

2008-03-09T21:19:00.004+01:00

Part of the deal for working at the Helsinki Adult Education Centre involves two major staff meetings a year. Conveniently, these always take place on a Sunday, which of course makes us all leap into the air from joy for coming to work on a free day without pay. Call it a bonus, call it moral duty - I call it walking through slush on Helsinginkatu at 11:57, an invisible pillow still stuck to the back of my head and the whiff of pizza catching my nose as I pass Capris, our regular Sunday pizzeria.

We are divided into groups according to subject. The music teachers crowd into the classroom and we are welcomed by our head of staff, a pleasant and slightly disoriented woman who has been doing this for God knows how many years. Now, although we all are musicians, you can imagine the variety of personalities on display, particularly as we are talking about a Sunday, which somehow always brings out new sides in people who might seem completely normal on an ordinary day of work.

I spot people in my age group and join them for an hour of what is supposed to be a conversation on how to develop musical subjects at the education centre, but turns out to be a pretty boring mixture of practical things to discuss. First, we all introduce ourselves to each other. There are some new faces. A vigorous-looking young woman dressed all in black announces she gives singing lessons in jazz and pop. There is a middle-aged woman with freaky hair and an extremely haunting and bellowing voice. She, also, teaches singing, but classical, she hastens to add.

We have the theory teachers, the pianists, the violinists, and then something completely unexpected: an older man with a moustache rises gracefully from his chair, and tells everyone with a thick Russian accent: "I am the conductor of Helsinki's Balalaika Orchestra". I almost fall of my chair while others seem completely unmoved. Helsinki's WHAT?????!?!?! I must be still dreaming.

Some of these people I know and some are completely new. As I rise to introduce myself as the wacky choral conductor in the house, I have a hard time keeping from laughing as a thousand balalaikas strike up a boisterous tune in my head. Some people look at me with an approving nod ("yes, we have heard SUCH wonderful things about your work here", "what type of music do you specialise in" and "you're younger than my grandson!"....) but many couldn't care less - they just want to get this over with and go home.

Actually, the main reason I have come is to find out what will happen next year, when this whole building will be shut down for renovating and all of our courses will be exiled and relocated all over the place. However, when the time comes to talk about this, there are too many questions and hardly any answers: "Yes we're still working on this", "Yes we understand you wouldn't want to have to work too far out" and "Yes well I'm afraid there isn't anything quite concrete yes, you see, but there still is time". I start to wonder whether I should start knocking on some doors myself and secure a place for my choir to keep rehearsing in 2009 as well.

Some advertisement is made about courses which are being arranged for us, the staff. There will be some courses on accompaniment for those who need to brush up their piano skills. The dark woman is going to give some coaching on phrasing in jazz music. She stresses the importance of this, especially for choral conductors, and I try to sink lower into my chair.

As we are going through some more practicalities ("How to write an efficient and informative text about your course") the singing teacher with the bad hair day provides me with the best laugh of the day. "Excuse me", she begins, sounding very important. "But it says here we should avoid using capital letters in the texts. What does this mean? If I am correct, in the Finnish language sentences tend to begin with capital letters." I almost fall off my chair once again and check my watch.

Our head of staff ecstatically announces what will come next in the program: a lecture about teaching in a multicultural society, held by some expert on multiculturalism who will enlighten us all on the challenges and blessings of multiculturalism. I decide I have been learning about multiculturalism since 1984, grab my coat and head to Capris for a pizza.

Hugging a tree

2008-02-27T20:26:00.007+01:00

Rumbling on a full tram number 10 towards Meilahti, I witness a pleasant scene. A small boy, about eight years old (or maybe twelve, I'm never that good at estimating these things), complains to his mother about not being able to sit on the way home. A considerably older woman decides to start a chat with the child from her seat. How nice, I think. Social interaction between strangers using public transport. My favourite subject. The woman asks the boy where he lives, what he will have for dinner, the usual. The boy is distracted for a while, but soon once again complains about not being able to sit. I smile, wondering whether the lady will let the boy sit on her lap or something like that.

"You know", she starts, "When I was young, young people weren't allowed to sit in the tram. Not even children!!" I begin speculating on what decade we are talking about, but she raises an agitated finger into the air and drastically changes her tone of voice. "There were women; officers in the tram! And they screamed at every young person or child who was about to take a seat! Those were the days!!" My smile is gone as my mind is flooded by the freak image of some frighteningly huge woman brandishing her whip at cowering passengers. Gratefully, I scurry out of the tram at my stop.

A pigeon patiently waits for the train from Vienna at Budapest's Keleti railway station.

Rewind to just about ten hours earlier, and I am in a very horizontal position, holding my alarm clock above my sleepy eyes with both hands after silencing the device with a quick dash of my left hand (strange, now that I think of it. My right hand is usually much nearer to it). I want to check the time - which is also strange, as one would expect me to know what time it is since I set the alarm myself. The alarm clock decides to take matters into its own hands by dropping from my lazy hands straight onto my face.

I use my right hand to open the window blinds, and the room is flooded by light. It is 7:35. The sky is blue, the sun has just risen, and the air is tingling with the promise of spring. Rubbing my forehead, which is still sore from the alarm clock, I smile and get myself ready for another day of work. A week ago, I was strolling along one of Budapest's main avenues with my Hungarian muse, having another hot chocolate after another latte after another hot chocolate, browsing second-hand music stores and learning useful local phrases such as "Hello", "Thanks", "Let's go" and "Oh my God".

Petra on her birthday.

At the university, a social lunch break is interrupted by a wild impromptu performance of a contemporary piece for double bass and violin. All of us, who are either nibbling on some seriously scary fish dish, toying with their cauliflower gratine or sipping lukewarm coffee with disgusting lumps of sugar melting at the bottom of the cup, cannot avoid being reminded that it's time for "Aikamme Kamarimusiikkia", a festival arranged at our university every year to glorify and promote contemporary chamber music.

These surprise attacks in the middle of lunch are designed to entice potential audience members to attend a concert in the evening ("If you are hungry for more, tonight at seven! Concert hall! Bring your friends!"), but to me, they bring back flashbacks from three years earlier, when I made the "mistake" of being trapped into actively taking part in the festival and found myself desperately rearranging the pages of my music (and at the same time wondering whether it really made any difference), performing a piece for cello, celesta and violin, and banging away at a Bösendorfer I had first vandalised with a roll of scotch tape. (I wrote a detailed account on this blog on March 7th, 2005...). Oh well. Long live freedom of expression, and all that!

And, actually, I must say I would have missed out on some nice memories if I hadn't taken part in the festival - like the rehearsal camp in Koli national park, where I hugged a tree considerably smaller than the one above and dazzled the hotel receptionist with my karaoke interpretation of Finnish evergreen love songs (am I really boasting about this?). And I still play chamber music with one of my friends I got to know then, but thankfully, it's not all that contemporary - it's Brahms.

Snapshots of hair (or: a day in Hämeenlinna)

2008-02-13T22:41:00.008+01:00

Ever since I came back from Austria and discovered the Salon Smart Look behind the Bristol movie theatre, getting a haircut has been something of a social event I find myself looking forward to. It's so sad to think that cashiers, bankers and accountants are going to be replaced by machines. Instead of communicating with technology, people should communicate with each other more actively. I really enjoy testing the way people react to unexpected human contact. In the metro today, I was having a terribly boring phone conversation, and started rolling my eyes and making "bla bla" -movements with my hand to random people sitting across me. They didn't show even a flicker of a smile, probably thinking I couldn't possibly be addressing them.

Anyway, back to the point! My favourite hair salon. It's so small it took me a while to get used to where it was because I kept walking past it. Usually, I get my hair cut by a woman from Northern Kazakhstan who insists on speaking to me in Russian ever since she found out I understand the language. Married to a Finn, all the rest of her family is still back at home, where she once had aspiring hopes to become a choral conductor but flunked the entrance exam to the conservatory.

This time, I am not greeted by my favourite Kazakhstani, but by the owner of the place, Husam from Palestine. He instantly remembers me and greets me in Arabic, which throws me off track since I have just been mentally rehearsing my Russian basics. In no time, I am swept into a chair by his half-Lebanese wife, who gets working on the mess on my head at once. Bit by bit, we get into the flow of conversation and I start asking her about the Lebanese community in Helsinki.

"I can't stand the owners of Farouge" (this is Helsinki's only Lebanese restaurant), she begins, while the hair starts showering around my shoulders. "They are so snobbish! One time, we took some friends there and spent 400 euros on dinner, and they didn't even give us coffee on the house". She speaks to me in Finnish, but she says the last three words in English. While I process the idea of spending so much money on a dinner, she tells her husband something about their three-year old son in Arabic and I suddenly feel like I'm at home, but not this home.

"Anyway, you know what I mean - just plain snobbish", she continues. I tell her my uncle and his wife live in a town in Lebanon, and she almost cuts half my ear off. "WHAT? No way! My aunt lives in Beit Mary, that's just next to your uncle then!" I start asking her about her childhood - was it spent in Lebanon? "Yes, but when I was about ten years old, I moved to Cyprus with my grandmother because of the civil war". I expect to hear stories of desolate refugee camps, starving families and harsh conditions in the Cypriotic countryside.

"It was the best time of my life!!!!" At a push of her leg, I am suddenly pumped higher up on the chair so she can reach my neck better. "There was nothing to worry about - the only thing that existed was the beach and I spent all of my days there after school. No use learning the language - who needs it anyway?" she tells me in fluent Finnish. I am captivated by her story. I want to know what happened next, but suddenly the talk turns to her brother.

"My brother is in Switzerland now, but he wants to come here to study." I ask what he's doing there. "Well, he's working as a bartender", she raises her voice over the buzz of the shaving machine. "And, he has a woman there!" A click, and the machine is off - she looks at my reflection and says "Well, of course there's a woman. Why else would anyone want to go to Switzerland?". I smile, first because of the way she stresses the word "woman", but mostly because I am thinking of clean cities and wonderful Alpine landscapes, and I wonder to myself, who would want to come HERE.

As always, I refuse to have anything liquid or semi-liquid put in my hair and get out of the chair. My new acquaintance is sweeping my hair away when I leave. Another customer tells her to "say hello to the Kazakhstani woman, tell her I am the one whose son has the same name as hers". I hear there is a new Iraqi girl working here. As I walk back into the grey streets of downtown Helsinki, I think to myself I might hear her story next time I need a haircut.

My Wednesday

2008-02-06T21:08:00.000+01:00

Wednesday. The third day. Reassuringly similar week after week. We think to ourselves: if I can survive Wednesday, I'll be halfway to the weekend. Magnificent Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesday. Or, possibly, Miserable Monday, Terrible Tuesday, Woeful Wednesday. If Wednesday is a good day, consider the week a success. If not, please let me sleep until the vacations. Monday gets the week started, Tuesday makes it tick, but what about Wednesday? Every Wednesday, my alarm clock rings at 7:30 and I'm in the metro at around 8:45. Lunch at 12, lesson at 14:30. Quick trip home. Out to the pink main building of the Adult Education Centre at 16:30. Back home at 20:00, often via Alepa for dinner. Blogging at home.

Or is Wednesday always like last week? The routine is the same, but what happens between the lines of my calendar? Anything at all. I realise the walls on my metro station are a dirty yellow and wonder to myself how often they are cleaned. I am surprised by somebody on my way to fill up the water bottle before locking myself in the classroom and taking out my music. My friend persuades me to prolong my lunch break and have a cup of coffee with him. The sky is blue outside and I decide to see what movies are playing this week, although I know I won't go because the prices have gone up so much. I dash to Wayne's Coffee for some spontaneous gossiping and catching up on life. On my way back, my friend I've known for about 14 years waves at me vigorously - she is taking the escalator in the other direction and her wide open smile is contageous. At work, I have a chat with someone new and friendly while picking the seeds out of my mandarina.

It's very easy to think every day is just like the one before, but it's also wrong. Everyday routine is an important part of life, but so is our imagination. I might be standing in front of thirty people, telling them what I'd like to hear next, but actually I am somewhere else. I am exploring a memory my mind just crash-zoomed into for no apparent reason: I am 16, wearing a HomeBoy T-shirt and taking out my yellow Nokia phone from my new gray trousers, reading an SMS from the person I met on the escalators today. I am younger, telling my parents I never want to become a musician because musicians have to make movements which music and that looks idiotic, and now I am back in front of my choir and I laugh at what I have said as a child.

Wouldn't that be a nice idea, to meet yourself as a child and say look, this is what you're going to become. You're going to wear glasses and drink coffee every day. Your pet hamster will die in your hands next year, and at the same time you will fall in love, and when you're twenty your life will go through a significant change, and when you're a little older you'll suddenly find an ambition and determination in yourself that you don't quite yet have. You will meet someone on your way to a rehearsal and suddenly won't find the line between friendship and something more. Someone important will ring your doorbell and walk into your life just like that while you are cleaning your shower's drain, and then, later, in another country, you will do something very brave but the floor will fall from under your feet (but I can't prepare you for that). On a bright summer's day, you will say goodbye, get into a car and brace yourself for tears, but it will take some months before they come. Just before turning 24, you'll be reminded that plans are useless because your feelings can't be put on a map and this is a good thing.

Maybe one day, this will be possible, but I wouldn't know that yet. Next Wednesday will be just another Wednesday, but who knows what I will be able to tell myself then? Only one thing is certain: the alarm clock will ring at 7:30 and the sun will set a little later, which means I'll just catch the last rays of light on my way to work.

This post is for all my friends I never planned to meet and for everyone who thinks life is predictable :)

Hibernating

2008-01-30T21:12:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I had a short encounter with my elderly neighbour. She's very short and uses a Russian scarf to cover her hair. I don't think she can see very well, because when she talks to me, she doesn't seem to know whether to look at my eyes or at my hands. I've tried to concentrate and see if I detect a whiff of alcohol on her breath, but I don't. She told me her back was giving her a hard time and she had just come from the doctor's. When I asked her whether everything was okay, she looked absolutely terrified and told me "Well.. you know.. the doctor... it's never nice to go to the doctor" and I was sure she was going to cry. She fumbled with my coat-sleeve and wished me a nice day and I stayed alone in the elevator staring at my empty expression on the mirror and I wanted to scream, press the stop button, sound the alarm, whatever, to break the silence in that small ugly space.

At the school hall last week, a sleepy-looking girl I've chatted with only once before asked me how I was doing. This happens quite rarely, so I was a bit taken aback and stuttered something very vague and uncertain about having felt better. She froze in her steps, looked deep into my eyes, and said "Yes..... yes, I think I know what you mean... that's exactly how I feel, too" and disappeared down the staircase. This morning, I was talking with someone who's having a hard time right now, and at the end, when I pushed back my chair and got up, she smiled and said "I already feel much better after talking to you". Sometimes, I wonder about how little people actually talk to each other, especially at times when talking is the only thing that can make you feel better.

We are six billion people here, and even though some of us hide it pretty well, everyone has feelings, broken hearts, bad days, life-changing crises, empty bank accounts, whatever - so let's stop thinking we don't have anyone to talk to. Whether it's your teacher, some random guy who sat opposite your seat in the metro or the expressionless person at the cashier, everybody wants somebody to listen to their worries and give them some solution, even if it's something as unoriginal as "well, time helps". Everybody understands how you feel. Especially up here at this time of year, when we are all walking with wet snow in our hair, our heads still in bed and our feelings in a heavy knot at the bottom of our stomach.

I'm just asking myself: how long are we going to be stuck in this November blues, weather and attitude? What happened to December and January? Did I sleep through them? I've become so disoriented in time that today I actually promised someone at work that I'd take care of something before Christmas, only to receive a dry reply: "Yes, well Christmas is quite far off, isn't it". I started laughing at my own stupidity, but only got worried glances as a reply.

By the way, there's been something that feels like hair stuck at the back of my throat the whole time I've been writing this. How's that for a mood-killer. I've drunk so much water to make it go away I'll probably spend the night in the bathroom. I've tried rinsing and even gargling (I don't know how to gargle but I made a quick pathetic attempt and it sounded more or less adequate). I've stood in front of the mirror with my jaw on the floor to visually pinpoint where it is. It's like someone stuck a piece of duct tape there. It's not going away. Great. I'll probably never fall asleep.

Intermezzo

2008-01-23T20:56:00.000+01:00

Aaaaaah, the orchestral Intermezzo from Mascagni's opera "Cavalleria Rusticana". What a perfect piece to remind oneself that the best music is the music which makes you smile, even when you are hurrying down the escalator at the metro station during the morning rush hour. It takes only that first grand melodic phrase - the violins over the lush harp accompaniment - to sweep you off your feet. Suddenly everything smells good, the colours you see look richer, and everyone at the platform - the sharp office workers, the irritating schoolchildren, the Somali immigrants (on the opposite platform), the smelly drunkards and the phlegmatic cleaning lady start singing their heart out along with you. What better piece to play on an endless loop of repeats when you are in love - - which I'm not, but preparing is half the fun!

It's been a great day. The sun showed itself for some moments, and at sunset (16:09), when I was coming home for a short breather, the sky turned violet above my house. I seem to have found some supernatural telepathic channel to people's minds and they kept telling me just the things I wanted to hear and agreed with everything I said.

Ruoholahti just after sunrise.

At work in the evening, I don't know what magical button I pressed, but suddenly, everyone sang cleaner and sounder than ever before. And with what emotion! While rehearsing one of the prettiest Finnish folk songs I know, the choir just let it all out, and suddenly we were surrounded by thick green birches, a cuckoo called in the distance, the lake was a shimmering blue, it was spring in Karelia, and everything outside our room, the trams rumbling by on the other side of the windows and the people playing ice hockey on the sports field, was like something from a different planet.

This is not Karelia, but Graz's Schlossberg, my own lost paradise :)

I want my singers to feel proud of their hobby and be happy that, in addition to sitting in an office all day (or whatever it is they do), their week includes three hours where they can leave their everyday worries, pressures and careers outside together with their coats, and become artists. Music is the best form of escapism. Who could do without it. Listening to Mascagni's wonderful Intermezzo is easier, cheaper and has a faster effect on the mind than booking a flight to Mexico City to "revive oneself far from home at these low prices and watch the world awake from winter" (I'm still getting these "Spring Moment" emails from Lufthansa).

And this is me flying to Frankfurt just over a year ago!

Oh God, what is this Danish pop which suddenly started playing on my iTunes library - Anne Linnet? Seriously, it sounds like someone having a go at a minority language from the remote mountains of Bhutan with a local plucked instrument from the middle ages for accompaniment. Now I remember, my fellow blogger friend from Århus sent me this piece. Well, I just nominated her as most likely to have the best taste in music on Facebook, so maybe I'll get to like this eventually :)

Music is great. Sleeping, too. Good night!

"Spring moments"

2008-01-16T20:44:00.000+01:00

Darkness affects us all in this city. Sometimes I think it's only a matter of time before those Finnish design head lamps hit the market. I'm thinking big: just picture for yourself lamps with built-in umbrellas, or even better, a super-glass shield to protect from that wind and all the nasty things it brings with it. People would really look fab in those (not that anyone would be able to see them)! My mother was recently looking for her glasses (like always) when she exclaimed "I can't see a thing! It's too dark in this country!". My neighbour in Graz was telling me about his visit here when he said "If it would be situated on the Mediterranean coast, Helsinki would be the perfect place to live".

Anyway, I was brooding on these thoughts when Lufthansa's latest newsletter hit my inbox. Dear Mr Juris, it started. It may be winter outside, but in our hearts there is spring. (in our hearts there is spring? who wrote this?). Yes, winter will still be here for a while but that doesn't stop us from dreaming of the spring. (How about some synonyms for variety?) To make you long for it even more, we now present our Spring Moments campaign. In other words it's time to start thinking about where you would like to meet the spring this year. (Where I would like to meet spring? Meet spring?? Well, at least not in Almaty from 1074€ nor Nanjing from 859€ - Nanjing??? Where is that?)

I've been thinking about how, the older we get, the more we are expected to be able to see into our future. As if it's not enough to know where we are going to be five months from now at 11:53, it's now becoming almost obligatory to have schedules for October 2011 ready at hand. I already have something scheduled for March 2009, and a friend from London called me today to panic about something called a "Three-year-plan" she is supposed to come up with. It's not uncommon to read things like "The project is expected to be completed in 2015" or "2054 (MMLIV) will be a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar".

Okay, I'm really stretching this far, I know. But it's still always worth remembering that life is what's happening now, when you are in bed realising you're not going to fall asleep just yet but you don't mind just thinking about stuff for a while, or when you stop to help someone who almost blacks out at the subway escalators. Who cares about 2009. Who cares about 2008? Such big numbers. Can I go back to 0?

In my work, I meet many people. I see them for perhaps three hours a week and I think I can tell you many things about them when they are at their precious hobby. I can tell you who feels more comfortable sitting next to whom, who prefers singing in foreign languages and who can't bring himself to pronounce English adequately. I know who feels especially happy but also who has had a bad day. I know who is afraid of loud sounds and who can't stop talking. But I don't know who these people are when they go home. Sometimes though, it's nice to think that somebody is cooking a dinner for her family, beaming because she finally started singing in a choir again for the first time since elementary school. But how do I know? The same person might be lying awake in bed alone, wondering how she will survive another dark day tomorrow.

I hope not, but if that's the case, she'll be happy to know Lufthansa's prices to Vancouver are now as low as 908€.

A tale of two cities

2007-12-23T21:47:00.000+01:00

Many people like to think of Christmas as an event full of unchanged traditions and rituals - a familiar celebration where everything is done like last Christmas. For me, every Christmas feels different from the last. The tree looks the same as last year and the candles are once again burning, but life changes quickly, and so does the context in which Christmas is celebrated.

Last week, the blanket of snow covering Graz created a peaceful setting for a short and memorable visit to a place I still called home less than half a year ago. Apart from the more obvious things (new faces instead of familiar ones, worsened service in Thomawirt), the city had a whole new feeling to it now that I have left it behind me - perhaps not for good, but at least for now. The smells, sounds and sights of Graz still remind me of my year there. The things that happened are written on the streets and I imagine that the people I miss are behind the same windows. The city seems the same as it was when I left it.

However, I am no longer there. When I walk along the wonderful streets of the old town, I am not rushing to a lesson but killing time before an meeting at the café. When I go to the rehearsals of familiar choirs, I don't know what to do with myself, because I have no task to accomplish there and suddenly I don't feel like small talk, why is everybody asking me whether it was easy to go back, what answer do they want to hear? I am using my Austrian number, but the phone calls I am getting are from Finland. I can listen to my favourite song, but it will never sound the same as that day when I walked down Morellenfeldgasse. The cooks at the Mensa are familiar but the clientele has changed. I climb the Schlossberg not for a Sunday walk, but to say goodbye.

I feel like rushing up the dark wooden stairs, opening the door to my home and running into the first room on the left, but it is now inhabited by Polish students who have labeled our mailbox with strange names. I walk around Hilmteich with a good friend but the fresh air doesn't feel the same as when I went there in January, listening to Tapiolan Kuoro on my iPod. I hug the people I know and feel so happy to see them, but something is missing, and look: there is that Latin boy who dated my Romanian flatmate and now waves at me like he sees me every day, and I can not live in two places at the same time, and "yes I'll come over for a weekend in the spring" and "yes of course I'll see you soon" but I don't know whether I will because I ran out of excuses to go back, now that I have brought all my last clothes home and seen the people I needed to see. And when I am on my way to the Hauptbahnhof, nobody is seeing me off, and the only person worried about me missing my train is a blind lady who listens to my speech and says one would never guess I am a foreigner, I sound like a native.

And maybe this was a bad idea anyway, maybe I am strange to have wanted to go back so soon, but I said I would and I did, and while I am lying in bed with a terrible cough, everywhere people are going about their everyday lives: "I need to make sure I get a class for practising tomorrow" or "I haven't stocked up for the weekend in Spar"; and this used to be my life, too, I used to do these things, and I can't believe the conducting lessons are still at exactly the same time and place, and I am sitting there feeling bad because I have not looked at the pieces, and I get a text message from Helsinki and remember where I am, and I reply at once because I am no longer a student here, nobody can tell me off for using my phone in the middle of a lesson, and I don't know whether this is funny or sad but there is a smile on my face so I suppose I am very happy. I am happy I am where I am now, a visitor at home, detached but not distant.

My life is back where it was before, it is here in the north where I go to Stockmann and Akateeminen for presents and it is a different language I use at work. I walk through wind and sleet in the late evening and feel the sea very nearby. I meet people I didn't know before but still seem to recognise them when I look at their picture which was taken ten years ago. I collect my thoughts on the tram between Kallio and Töölö and listen to music on the way, and I know that now comes the climax of the piece, the sopranos are going to soar high up and the rest of the singers will burst into a fantastic fortissimo chord, but I do not turn down the volume, I do not care, I want to feel the music bursting through my head, I want it to lift me off the ground and high up where I might be able to see all the way to Austria. I want this feeling to last just a while longer.

Defining

2007-12-06T23:33:00.000+01:00

I have been reading past posts to get a feel of this blog again - it's not always easy to start posting after a long break. It is time to once again ask myself: what do I want readers to expect when they read this? A sweeping epic about a fleeting life, complete with dramatic elements? A comical take on life's quirkiest moments, including various sidekicks to complete the picture? A breathtaking insight into life in the Far North? What the heck. Thanks for reading, and welcome to the latest edition of Songs of a Wayfarer.

Finland turned 90 today, and the rainy morning found me dashing down Kustaankatu with my arms all over the place at 8:17. I was aiming for the 8:24 tram, which actually arrived at 8:22, its flashy green-yellowy presence a near-blinding vision in the darkness. At Meilahti church, the chamber choir Kaamos had its very first official performance, assisting at mass. Sadly, it seemed like the priest didn't quite register our presence and was about to plunge forward with the service just as we were about to start. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with determined bashes to the tuning fork, sharp intakes of breath and some very wild sign language.

Back at home, changing the sheets was just about all I could manage before collapsing on the bed, now much more inviting. Lunch was modest: noodles with a soft-boiled egg. At some point, I completed an online test by Helsingin Sanomat to see who really deserves the Finnish citizenship. I got 33% of the questions right and, apparently, should be exiled without further notice.

In the evening, we headed through the rain (did I mention it rained all day) to classy Ristorante Gastone for our double birthday family dinner. The food was excellent and filling (I can still feel the oily pasta rumbling in my tummy and a piece of mud cake stuck to my throat) and the digestive walk (through the rain) came in useful afterwards. Back at home, I realised I was still alone, so I tuned in to the third season of Lost, a recent present from Pauli and Iina, on J's television.

By the way, if you're on Facebook, now you can tune into Dani's happenings between pokes, friend requests and hurling sheep. This is because I finally figured out the complex system of importing blogs to my profile (I found the button "import external blog"). Apparently, even the pictures come up there, so, hurray. Another reason to waste all your life online. Good night my readers, old and new :)!

My November

2007-12-05T23:08:00.000+01:00

The subtitle of this blog is "Meditations on the rich fabric of life", and the past weeks, with their heavy darkness, rainy days, solitary windows gleaming through the gloom and long nights spent turning under the covers for reasons which seem irritatingly out of mind's reach, certainly make up a very convenient season for as much meditating as you like.

However, this is not the first November in Finland, and it certainly will not be the last. No matter how unnatural it may seem, darkness and rain (and wind and cold) probably are not all that meaningless as we would like to think. As we struggle to keep up with our tasks, rush halfway across town cursing the public transport all the way, and plunge from deadline to concert to assignment to lessons to further deadlines, it is good to remember that this is meant to be a time for self-reflection. So it's dark outside and I don't feel like doing anything: then why do anything except take a moment, lie down and just let the thoughts come. After all, another year of hard work is coming to an end. Surely everyone can afford some moments of peace.

For me, 2007 seems like a year of many milestones. It's easy to say this after every year, but this time I really think there is no comparison to the past twelve months, during which I lived in two different cities, met a huge amount of people who became very important figures for me in very different ways, and confronted turns of events which affected our family.

Only since coming back to Finland in the summer, it feels like things have been picking up pace at a great speed. I moved in with a friend to a new part of town. I finally founded my own choir, and our first performance is in a month. I went to my cousin's wedding in Germany. I also attended my grandfather's memorial concert in Damascus, less than a month ago. I found that the oldest of friends can still feel like the newest of friends, and that there are few things more valuable than friendship. I also found out that you can call many places home. It can be the place you think about when you listen to "Unta da Lindn" with the lights turned off and tears in your eyes. But usually you know the real one when you touch down at the airport, with the midnight sun about to set, and underneath you: the glimmering Baltic Sea, the house you grew up in, and the people you played with when you were a child.

In this endless darkness, it is the small things which become flashes of light to make the day feel easier. Sometimes, the smallest of joys is enough to set in motion a train of thoughts which can make all the difference between a smiling face and an empty face. This is what I thought just a while ago when I was chatting with Petra online and she complained about her laptop which I remember using on her blue sofa at our home on Merangasse, where I will be in exactly a week. Or when I got an SMS from a friend who was on her way from Italy to Lithuania by bus, with six pieces of luggage, telling me how fantastic Schütz's music is. But actually, the joys are all not all that far. They are where you are: on the way home from the metro station, at the rehearsals, in your room and at the grocery store. It doesn't take that many people to make you happy. Sometimes it can be just you.

Soon the days will start getting longer again. As summer approaches, happy things, laughter, friends and family will start feeling like things to be taken for granted, things which are always there. There is no better time than this to appreciate this quite nice and agreeable life we are living.

Updates

2007-10-25T21:03:00.000+02:00

A phone call to a friend in Graz last weekend put me back in touch with all the latest news from there and brought me up to date on activities of cpmg, Gesangsverein Trofaiach, Frauenstimmung Lassnitzhöhe, Gesangsforum Gleisdorf, and many other choirs.

In the same way, I am now going to bring this blog up to date. I've had a lot of work in the last days, with Helsinkikuoro, Kaamos, Dominante, Murtosointu and the yet unnamed staff choir at the Diakoniaopisto taking pretty much all my weekday evenings. I have stuck to a rigid schedule, heading out the door at eight o'clock and spending the mornings studying, preparing for rehearsals, having buckets of coffee at the cafeteria, and socialising with colleagues at lunchtime.

If you think this sounds like the words of someone who's stressed out and on the verge of a nervous breakdown: think again! I'm serious about everything I'm working on now and enjoying my everyday routine. (Okay, there was one day this week when I felt I would rather have been lying on a beach somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, but just one).

While this is what goes on in the weekdays, on weekends I turn the off-button and hide all the music (except for catching up on some paperwork). Saturday is cleaning and laundry day, on Sunday a good breakfast and a walk. There have also been nice evenings with friends, as well as dives into Helsinki's nightlife (in my case, it pretty much revolves around one bar: Kampin Teerenpeli). And let's not forget!!! Now already three times: BodyPump, my latest hobby! It's a lot of fun to move along to techno versions of latest pop hits while swinging tens of kilos (ignore this exaggeration) all around you in sync with the other people at the gym. I especially like the moment in the end when we lie down on the floor to stretch out - while others probably use this time to do some last work with their bodies, I like the legs-and-arms-splayed-out position because of the sense of emotional drama it gives the moment.

At home, everything is perfectly fine, and my room is starting to look like what it will probably look like for now. Unfortunately, I learned that my bedside wall is very hard the hard way when I chipped of a piece of it while trying to hammer a nail in. I guess I'll have to think of something else -> posters?

Good night.

Momentous days

2007-09-28T19:26:00.000+02:00

Last week's word would probably be self-reflection. As pointed out by fellow wayfarer Melissa, it's in the air. Well, but I won't bore you with more of that. You know what I mean!

Last weekend, Carlos, Dea and I flew to Germany to my cousin Andy's wedding. Finnair cancelled the flight about two hours before we headed to the airport, and we were, as it so wittily said on our new ticket, "involuntarily rerouted" via Frankfurt, that absolute monster of an airport. While us aviation freaks kept gaping at the machinery outside, Dea almost made us miss our connecting flight trying to find the right lip-gloss from the duty free. After a 25-minute hop to Nürnberg, our traditional race against time began as we made a dash to the U-Bahn and arrived at the Hauptbahnhof five minutes before the train to Bamberg left the station with us panting and sweating inside it.

Frankfurt, seen from the plane.
The wedding was a huge family event, and on Saturday there were no less than nine people with the surname Juris scurrying around a lawn outside Lichtenfels, frantically photographing each other and sobbing their hearts out as Imke and Andy got hitched. The "Jesus loves you" -guitar-accompanied communal songs (swaying optional) were accompanied by some Bavarian drinking songs when an Oktoberfest-barge sailed past us on the river. After the essential steps, a dash was made towards the tables, which were heavy with delicious cakes (I think I tried about six of them). Imke M. Be...x, welcome to our family! I haven't managed to update the family tree yet.

Hark to hear this blissful sigh, expressed by my very romantic sister.
I suppose weddings are typically places for single people to make some serious catches, but apart from a constantly giggling nurse with a scary tattoo on her neck, I was pretty much left to myself. Dea, on the other hand, had her hands full escaping from one of her same-aged fellow visitors, who was brave enough to come and ask me whether my sister had a boyfriend.

On our way back on Monday, we managed to do some hit'n'run-shopping in Nürnberg, and a couple of hours later we were back at home. On Tuesday, I secretly celebrated the anniversary of my departure to Graz. This would probably go under our word of the week. And maybe it's a coincidence that about six people from my second hometown have contacted me since Tuesday. Or maybe not? My year there seems a frighteningly perfect cycle (perfect in the sense that it is logical, not that it always felt perfect), that maybe it's no surprise that, exactly a year after starting it, I still feel something like ripples hitting me after my most memorable plunge yet. But I am very lucky, because I am happier than ever in Helsinki.

What else has passed through my mind this week? I need a haircut. I want to learn the names of all my singers by next week. At Wednesday's rehearsal, I could identify 20 people out of 35, and that's only two weeks after taking over the choir. I'm very pleased! I still need some furniture, and I also want to start decorating my walls. Somehow, a packet of chocolate biscuits has been annihilated while writing this entry. I also just threw some sheep at friends in Facebook - somehow my evenings just don't seem right without this dubious activity anymore.

Neutral

2007-09-20T06:45:00.000+02:00

It's 7:45 in the morning and I am sitting in my room in this new flat where J and I have now soon lived for three weeks. Although this is a busy part of town, I can't see too big of a rush on Kustaankatu, nor on the small slice of Helsinginkatu visible from here. I just finished my glass of orange juice and am considering a refill. J is still asleep, probably exhausted from his trip to Tallinn with his Japanese guests.

I myself am travelling to Germany tomorrow to attend my cousin's wedding. My last visit to Bamberg was last February, something of a strange time - maybe one could say a sort of calm before the storm or. How incredible to realise it was barely half a year ago. This will probably be a totally different visit. My father and sister are coming, too, and what's best, we'll see my uncle and his wife, who travelled all the way from Quito. My mother is in Damascus, visiting her family which is going through a rough time.

I have quite a long day ahead! At ten, a totally useless course where we don't really need to worry yet if we don't know the theme for our final written presentation but actually it would be good if we could hold a little speech about our subject right now. After that, a chamber music rehearsal, and then our choral conducting group lesson (goodie). This reminds me of a friend's birthday today - I should stop somewhere on my way and get him a card. Afterwards, I'll be rumbling across the bridges of Lauttasaari as bus 103 takes me on my six-times-monthly trip to Otaniemi (it actually only lasts 15 minutes) and end the day by conducting a rehearsal of Murtosointu (Schütz, Brahms, Komulainen, Tormis). In between, I'll hopefully have time to take care of some things which would otherwise crash upon me when I come back.

Suddenly, Duruflé's Requiem starts playing on my computer, and I am instantly transported to Chorforum Gleisdorf's rehearsals in that slightly stuffy but spacious school classroom, with me on the grand piano and Natasha tying up her hair for some serious conduting action. "Where shall we begin?" "How about this wonderful melody here?" "Oh yes, play the melody... Daaa daaa daaa daaa daaaaaaa daaaaa.." A postcard with the Graz opera house on it arrived from Petra the other day (she was visiting), and lately I have also been receiving the rehearsal schedules of cpmg by email. They probably forgot to take me off their mailing list, but I don't mind. As a matter of fact, WHOA! Today is their first rehearsal after the summer!

Speaking of rehearsals, yesterday was my second session with one of my new choirs, and while it did go very well, I have to admit my self-confidence shook just that tiny bit when I realised we were ten singers less than the first time. Well, maybe they just all caught that flu which is going around. An interesting observation, by the way: it really makes a difference if a choir rehearsal ends at 20 or 21. Used to the latter, Wednesday seems a pleasure, because I arrive home at 20:10 and practically have a whole day left before sleep takes over!

We've switched from Duruflé to Vaughan Williams. I probably should kick myself up from this chair, have something to eat, take a shower, and go out the door. Guess what, it started raining again.

Life rocks.

2007-09-13T21:43:00.000+02:00

Accompanied by the delightful sounds streaming through my window (just now, a very drunk man banging on a door and cursing a woman at the top of his voice), I am reading an advertisement which just came in our door - it looks like someone called Sahsa (you read right) is starting a new restaurant right below us (Ravintola Pelmenit), which opens next Monday at six in the morning. I especially like the post scriptum: "Please bring this invitation, but don't bring any money!". Definitely worth checking out.

Today, J finally got rid of that shower curtain - it'll be nice to be able to shower now without having to constantly peel what feels like soggy newspaper from around my neck. Our next project is to find fitting shelves for our kitchen cupboards - something which has proven to be difficult as the sizes on sale are just that teeny weeny bit too small (we've already returned two sets to the store). Also, I wouldn't mind if our landlady finally gave me a key which actually opens our basement so I can finally use the communal washing machine and do something about this pile of dirty clothes on my floor.

Anyway, perhaps now is a good time to remind everyone that yes, I have now started a new life in Kallio, that squirmy, trendy, filthy, vibrant, hot, whatever-you-want-to-call-it neighbourhood between the metro stations of Hakaniemi and Sörnäinen. Well, officially our building is located in Alppiharju, but since I can see Helsinginkatu, which separates us from Kallio, from my window, I guess this is more Kallio than Alppiharju. As I am sitting now, I have the metro station to my left, tram number eight right ahead of me, and several buses to the right. Welcome!

Actually, it's pretty cool. On average, the smallest apartments in Helsinki are located right on these streets (ours has 44 square metres), so it's filled with young single adults. J and I haven't made a tour of the local bars yet, but since most of them advertise their happy hour (a very misleading concept, don't you think?) at 9 in the morning, I guess they cater for a slightly different customership than hardworking students. Or maybe not. Anyway, we have everything we need here - plenty of grocery stores, sports facilities (I'm trying to sound convincing here), and culture (predominantly Thai).

What can I say about my room? Well, it's not quite ready yet. The shelves have been tightly (fingers crossed) screwed to the wall, and I must say it felt really nice to finally take out all my books and other things out from their boxes after almost a year. In Graz, I was often asked why I didn't have any books ("Don't you read?"). Watch me now, everyone, as I display rows and rows of Dickens, ancient copies of Hesse and a small but significant comic book section! Turn green with envy, o sceptical ones, at my collection of choral and operatic scores! Gaze in awe at my... okay that's enough. You get the idea!

Our doors tend to behave erratically - close one, and another one on the other side of the apartment pops open with a snap. On the other hand, closing the doors to my room is no easy task since they like to open again on their own, so there you have it.

My flatmate has a bigger room, and a piano. Otherwise, our belongings don't differ that much - we even have the same Murakami books on display. Oh, and by the way, I just have to boast about our bathroom's refreshening system - an ingenious spraying device J installed on our wall. Welcome to try it!

Skies

2007-08-31T20:26:00.000+02:00

The other day on the bus, a group of schoolchildren were telling jokes to each other: "How do you make the brains of a blonde the size of a pea? By pumping them full of air!" and I suddenly found myself turning around to smile at them. I hadn't heard that one! And did you know the London Gay Men's Chorus has recorded a Christmas CD titled "Make the Yuletide Gay"? That made me laugh, too.

Now that my new home has been stripped naked, had its holes stuffed, been repainted and scrubbed clean, it is ready for J and me to move into. Starting Monday, I will be occupying a room in a small flat at the corner of two streets with a dubious reputation. However, I don't care about the slightly suspicious (and loud) neighbours nor the occasional nose-cringing whiff on my way to the metro ("What's that smell"...) - in two hours the contract will commence and the room will be mine, all 28 cubic metres of it, from the vast view to the broken blinds, from the doors which close with a click to the two power sockets which hopefully work.

I must say I'll be happy to not have to rummage dark, dangerous attics for my stuff anymore. Everything will be in one place where I can find it: my opera scores (collected since the early 90's), my books (although drastic cutbacks will have to be done in the fiction department), my movies (including the first season of Lost which was Found today), my photo albums... and much more. I know people who prefer a more ascetic lifestyle, constantly getting rid of their practically non-existent property, but what can I do. I love my stuff.

My life online has made a dramatic swerve to Facebook, something I'm getting seriously addicted to. Well, real life will kick into full gear next week. I mean, I really did want to have sufficient employment, but five choirs? I'll let you know when I start getting all mixed up with the repertoires (I see it already: "Bach motets?? But weren't we supposed to rehearse "I just called to say I love you?") or counting absent sopranos in my sleep. Yesterday, I visited our studies coordinator to plan next year's studies. To say all my explanations on what I did in Graz were confusing would be an overstatement, but okay, she just started the job. Good for her that I marched in with everything planned. Not so good for me that some of the courses I'm supposed to get done don't exist anymore. Apparently, it's because I started studying already in 2004 - now this really makes me feel old.

By the way, don't you just love the Finnish sky. There's really nothing like it.

Before & After

2007-08-22T21:11:00.000+02:00

What is it exactly about sitting in an airplane which is about to take off that gives me a rush of adrenalin? It gives a little lurch and then starts pulling back from the gate, and suddenly we’re rushing past many other planes carrying so many other small people to anywhere on the globe. The next minute, the clouds are not above us but beneath us and everything looks different and we are moving faster than I can imagine. I glue my feet to the floor of the plane but this seems ridiculous since there is only air under me anyway. The grey rainy weather is replaced by the bluest sky with a floor of fluffy whiteness. I am nowhere and everywhere at once.

South African Airways flight SA235 to Johannesburg cues right behind us for takeoff.

As a perfect soundtrack to these thoughts of mine, the sopranos of the Rodolfus Choir are soaring high above the rest of the ensemble in a heavenly a cappella transcription of Wagner’s “Im Treibhaus”. I am the only one in the house who can hear them through these headphones. The week has already brought work with it, ranging from phone calls from over-enthusiastic doctors dreaming of a creative hobby: (“You know, nothing serious… just some fun with the colleagues… it doesn’t have to be every week… How many singers? Oh, the choir doesn’t exist yet!”) to jobs which sound slightly more realistic. I’ll have to keep a firm hold on my neck on the coming days so as not to be sucked into a vortex of lots of yeses, of courses and this sounds goods and finding myself with an impossibly packed schedule. Actually, strike that. I already have.

A postcard from Italy (the third this month) arrived the other day from Petra, and by pure coincidence, Thomas dropped me a line by email as well. Actually, it was pretty much more than a line – or what do you call a long sausage of 193 words with hardly any punctuation thrown in? They both seem to be doing fine.

This temporary residence at the family’s is coming to an end and I will be moving to my new home in Kallio (actually Harju, but these definitions tend to get quite vague in those parts of town) in just over a week. I'm really excited about living in a different region of Helsinki! The flat is completely fine, except for the walls, which will get a proper makeover from J, me, and our near-sighted, small-sized landlady next week. I will also definitely have to get a new lamp for my room (somehow a blazing red pattern of light and shadow on my walls doesn't quite suit me) and bookshelves. The nearest metro station is just two blocks away, and there are nice views onto Helsinginkatu. As we will be on the fifth floor, our neighbours (an extremely run-down bar and two seedy sex stores) probably won't bother us too much.

Reminiscing

2007-08-09T20:00:00.000+02:00

I wonder how many times exactly I have been here? Certainly at least three times a year since, probably, about 1997. Over the years, the landscape has changed a little (due to the cutting down of trees), the main building has been expanded, the oldest two buildings where I spent countless nights as a soprano have been shut down due to mould, and the reception staff has changed – but it’s still the Raseborg institute, where Cantores Minores comes twice a year for an intensive couple of days of rehearsals. We used to come her a lot with the choir of the German school, as well. By the way, the pressure in my room’s shower hose is so strong it could probably be used as a murder weapon.

Now that I start to think of it, some of my memories from this place reach back to days which now seem ridiculously distant yet still make me smile like the small boy I was then – rowing with Miska and Ville to the far end of the Kvarnträsket lake and getting stuck in the weeds, inventing countless ways of dodging the bedtime wardens and sneaking into other peoples’ rooms, definitely also some private teary moments because of something stupid a friend had told me, and – can it really be – one of the first times I ever conducted a group of singers. I remember rehearsing parts for all the greatest oratorios, from Bach to Brahms.

And now I myself am one of the teachers at the course, drilling sixteenth-note coloraturae (coloraturi?) into the heads of adolescents, telling the younger boys off for throwing garbage on the floor and discussing teenage mentality with people who used to be my teachers and now are my colleagues. It’s actually a pretty impressive feeling, but it also makes me feel a little old. Yesterday, I swam in the lake, which was wonderful. Today I spent the afternoon break sun-bathing on the grass, reading a good book, hearing and seeing airplanes making their approach to Helsinki’s airport.

Leaving J in charge of our apartment hunt and reluctantly separating myself from Prison Break’s 1st season DVD box, I took the train to Karjaa on Tuesday afternoon. Tomorrow I’ll have to be back in Helsinki to make it to Dominante’s rehearsal in Hämeenlinna – we’re off to London next week. I’m pretty excited about the trip. It will be great to perform in Albert Hall, and of course London is simply a city one has to visit regularly, if only for the Waterstones bookstore. My last visit was in 2005 and I’m looking forward to navigating the Tube again, having fast food at Camden Town, visiting some fantastic museum and just taking in the multicultural atmosphere.

Well over a month has passed since leaving Graz and, although adapting back home was easier than I expected, I am still missing it and probably, in some way, always will. Last night, I dreamed I was on my way there on the train, but somehow I never got there. I got stuck in Frohnleiten and suddenly going to Graz just wasn’t possible. A friend gave me an understanding smile. I wonder whether she would like to tell me something. It made me want to go there right away.

I can imagine our empty home, with the kitchen and bathroom walls gleaming with a fresh layer of paint. I wonder whether Petra gave my weights to anybody or whether they are still in my room. I wonder whether there is anything left there – if it were only a stray piece of garbage - to indicate that somebody has lived, laughed, sung, written, grown, eaten, read, cried, loved, talked and slept there for what seems like several years. The next person to move in to the flat and to take my room – will that person feel something special in the air when he opens the door, something almost magical? Did I feel anything the first day I entered that room? I seem to remember feeling something. But I’m just being melodramatic now, as always. Probably the only thing left in the room is that stupid yellow unexplained helmet stuck on a high shelf in my cupboard. But, yes... I’m pretty sure Petra left the weights.

Helsinki Hunting

2007-08-02T18:02:00.001+02:00

The alarm clock rings shortly past 8 and I struggle to my feet after less than 6 hours' sleep - emails, Wikipedia, Prison Break and the newest Harry Potter have kept me awake until late. A kiwi, newspaper, and a shower. It's about 15 degrees outside and it looks like rain again. My eighth day of apartment-hunting in Helsinki has begun.

After having my eye-sight checked (which seems to have actually improved slightly - something I never knew could happen), I return home and make the usual search through new flats which have appeared on the online search service overnight. One of them catches my attention, I make a call and find out it is scheduled to be viewed in an hour. I call my future flatmate J and, tummies filled with a second breakfast and our travel cards freshly loaded, we are soon on our way.

Pajamäki seen from space.
12:00 Flat 1 - space: 51 sq m - rent: 580€/month
The bus trip to the small residential area of Pajamäki takes about half an hour, but the very cheap price is worth seeing the place. We are greeted by a blunt realtor who eyes us suspiciously when we tell him we're looking for a shared flat. There are about seven other people interested in the place but the realtor doesn't seem too keen on answering questions and so we all shuffle around the empty rooms in a sort of embarrassed silence. The outline of the apartment is just what we're looking for: two separate rooms, a big enough kitchen, and a recently remade bathroom.

The entrance is dark and ominous but the rooms have enough light and views to the positively wildlifelike surroundings. There is a lot of space in the way of cupboards and even a spacious storage room. The leaflet advertises fantastic services in the area - we see a small grocery, a pharmacy and a shabby pub. The realtor hands out applications and rudely tells someone on the phone that the apartment is not available anymore. Halfway into filling in her details, an obese woman looks like she's going to cry when she hears no pets whatsoever are allowed in the flat, but the realtor doesn't look very interested in hearing the biographies of her cats. We fill in our application. The bus back downtown makes so many abrupt curves and stops I almost start feeling nauseous.

13:00
We set up camp at mBar. While J hooks up his laptop, I get our orders. The bartender splatters herself with yoghurt while making a blueberry smoothie and curses: "I just bought this in Beverly Hills!" (I can't make out whether she means the actual Los Angeles district or some new boutique I haven't yet heard of). We check out apartments which look interesting and make some calls. More often than not, we are forced to leave messages on answering machines or, in one case, leave a request for a return call for the third time to the same person. Where are all these realtors who advertise their services all over the net? Some apartments look very interesting (a spacious flat in Hakaniemi, a ridiculously cheap place in Herttoniemi) and we decide to follow their trail. Some give us goosepumps (a furnished dump in Itäkeskus) and we move on. Today has not been a very successful day in terms of getting new dates for viewings, but we are confident - it's only the beginning of August, after all. We are not desperate yet.

16:30 Flat 2 - space: 39 sq m - rent: 695€/month
A late lunch with Dad in Kamppi, and I head towards Eerikinkatu to view our next target. We are a small group standing at the entrance, waiting. We are pleasant with each other, but let's not forget we are also rivals in an ever-heating race to find a place in one of the most expensive capital cities in Europe. The neighbourhood is a bit seedy but extremely central, and I could well imagine living this close to everything. After waiting for a while, I call J and ask him what's taking him so long and he tells me he's already inside the apartment. I realise our group is standing at the wrong building and we all scramble towards the right one, jay-walking on our way (there is a sense of urgency now - every man for himself!!).

It's like in all of these central apartments: between thirty and forty people queuing at the entrance to get a peek, the realtor unenthusiastically handing out leaflets (she knows the apartment will be taken anyway so why put any effort into it) and everyone ecstatically filling out applications for dear life. The flat is not in extremely good condition. It is small, but not as claustrophobia-inducing as we had feared. One of the rooms is smaller than the other one, but the kitchen is fine. There are no cupboards whatsoever but the bathroom seems comfortable. The realtor receives our application and tells us she'll talk with the owner by Monday. We don't have too high hopes, seeing the pile of filled-out applications in her hand. We don't stay for too long - the next flat is waiting.

18:00 Flat 3 - space: 64 sq m - rent: 730€/month
The third apartment is located in the suburb of Pukinmäki (roughly translates into Goat's Hill) and we take a commuter train from the central railway station. During the fifteen-minute trip, a local is giving her Spanish guests a detailed description of the places we are passing. Her Spanish is absolutely flawless and I almost let out a laugh when she refers to Kallio, the quirky and bohème neighbourhood we are passing, as Las Rocas. Pukinmäki is no paradise. The tunnel under the tracks brings up scary images of after-midnight muggings and there's a meeting of local drunks at the station bar. However, we are determined to see this place: after all, it's bigger than the rest, the price is reasonable, and there are three rooms.

A five-minute walk brings us to the building. I check out the nearest bus stop's timetables. There are two lines to the centre and also a nightbus. Soon, the handful of people waiting outside are let in and we climb the stairs to the last floor. The first signs are not good - we look into the first room on the right and almost let out a scream. The floors are gray, with black zigzag stripes running through them. Looking left, we check out suspicious patches which look like the previous tenant's vomit. The realtor on this one doesn't look very confident but we plunge on.

Compared to the two tiny bedrooms, the sitting room seems too big and out of proportion. The kitchen is fine, so is the bathroom, but we return to the bedrooms to make a final verdict. The cupboards look very old and seem more like storage spaces for prison inmates. One of the rooms is shaped like a grand piano, making any reasonable placing of furniture impossible. A lady taps on one of the walls and it sounds like it's going to crash down. Behind us, a couple looking like they just escaped from a mental institution shoots blank looks at the air. We are prepared to move to the suburbs, but still feel like we've seen enough here and leave without filling in an application.

19:00
It is with a sense of relief that we arrive back at the Central railway station. Prospects are fine. Up to date, we have filled in four applications and one of them might even have chances of going through. We have only seen eight flats until now, and there surely are many more out there! And, after all, until something comes up, we both have roofs over our heads.

Savonlinna

2007-07-12T23:04:00.000+02:00

A post before I set off towards the Curonian Spit in Lithuania today (expect a detailed travel report in about a week) to get this blog back on its feet.

Built in the late 15th century, Olavinlinna is the world's northernmost medieval castle.

Yesterday, I returned from Savonlinna, where I spent a day and two nights at the famous opera festival. The last time I was there in 1992 (1993?) was the very first time I heard an entire opera (Aida), and I'd say fifteen years was enough of a wait for going to see performances at the breath-taking Olavinlinna castle once again. Since my friend Jarno has been spending the entire summer holidays working in the opera chorus there, I was able to stay with him and so there was nothing stopping me from heading out to the Finnish countryside.

And let me tell you that Finland is better than ever. Savonlinna, with a population of about 27 000, is probably one of the most unique places of its size anywhere. Okay, so the town is probably in something of a vegetative state during the winter, but the action kicks up in the summer, when countless musicians and art-lovers from the capital and all over the country arrive to enjoy the top-class performances. Apart from the opera, it was very pleasant to walk along Lake Saimaa, have coffee and a traditional lörtsy at the marketplace, and, of course, check out the vibrant nightlife which is a result of all those thousands of opera-lovers heading for a drink after struggling through the claustrophobic crouds on the bridge to the castle.

The downside, of course, is that the locals make full use of the high season to really rip the country off: a small plate of fried fish with a drop of mashed potatoes easily costs 16€, while, for the workers, rents for apartments soar to meet near-Helsinki standards. However, Savonlinna is worth visiting, since it is probably one of the symbols of the Finnish summer.

A seagull in Helsinki.

The operas I saw at the festival were previously unknown to me: Verdi's Macbeth, one of his earlier works, and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. Both performances were exceptional and credit must be given to all singers involved. Macbeth might not have the gripping melodies of Verdi's later masterpieces, but the oppressive atmosphere is fantastically conveyed in the music. I did my homework and read the original play on my way from Helsinki.

Donizetti is no Verdi, but the music had its great moments (not to mention a bravura harp solo in the second act!) and Cuban-American soprano Eglise Gutierrez certainly earned the standing ovation at the end of the night. For the second night, I arrived at the castle without a ticket and stood outside the entrance with a sign saying "I'll buy a ticket". Almost at once, I was approached by a German tour group trying to get rid of an extra ticket. Happy to speak German again, I tried to strike a conversation with them, but couldn't quite match up when they started raving about previous trips to see opera performances at Verona and Sydney.

Savonlinna's sky yesterday morning at 5:14.

After just one hour's sleep and a shockingly early breakfast at 24h Cafe Torppa (for some party-goers apparently a late night snack), I took the train back. It was difficult not to feel a rush of adrenalin as the Pendolino sped across the newly built track between Lahti and Kerava at a speed of 220 km/h. Finnish trains, by the way, are much more comfortable than Austrian ones.

Last days in Austria + return to Finland: a collage

2007-07-06T16:02:00.000+02:00

Our last days in Graz seemed to herald an apocalypse in a style close to magic realism. The complete power blackout in our flat was spooky enough, but this sudden shocking appearance on my laptop combined with my earphones ceasing to work was a little too much.

Our private fashion show.

Mirga conducting Frauenstimmung Lassnitzhöhe in a successful outdoor concert. The rain hardly bothered!

Miriam and Gerd relaxing at chor pro musica's summer party.

The Keys.

Day of departure...

Day of departure, nine months ago...

Arrival in Helsinki.

Black and white - a fragment of thoughts

2007-06-18T23:13:00.000+02:00

Last August, I wrote in this blog: "This might sound absurd, but as much as I am excited about flying to Austria on the 25.9., I have to say that I already can't wait for the day I'll come back!". If everything goes as planned, that day is less than two weeks away from now.

I've always been good at storing and archiving memories and lately I have been letting some important ones from the last nine months play through my mind like a movie. Sometimes when I'm in the tram, on my way to a rehearsal or just taking a nap, I listen to music and let it accompany my string of thoughts. Most of all, what I see is faces of people. Sometimes I look deep into their eyes. There are all sorts of memories: some among the best ones of my life but also bad ones, memories which I know will stay for me forever, and memories which may seem trivial and unimportant but actually define very well who I have become here. And sometimes a memory pops into my mind which I had thought I had forgotten - yet there it is, triggered by some little word, thought or sight.

I feel an incredible peace of mind right now. I'm getting ready for bed. The window is open and the curtains are drawn. It is raining outside and there have been some strikes of lightning. I've had a long and fulfilling day. Transfer Flatmate C gave me a cd of French jazz and I'm listening to it now. Two doors away in the kitchen, Thomas is cooking for a friend. My cell phone just announced the arrival of a text message but I'm in no hurry to read it. Earlier I got a huge surprise when I got a very unexpected postcard.

There are things I'm really looking forward to and things I'm afraid of. However, the near future seems irrelevant to now. I'm leaving in less than two weeks, but I'm not thinking about that now. Now is the best moment.

On cheese and underwear

2007-06-07T19:25:00.001+02:00

Once again, a Catholic Feiertag: a sure sign for the money on my mobile phone to run out, which it did today in the middle of a phone call, and also the perfect day to realise we haven't shopped adequately enough for tonight's dinner party which we're hoping to celebrate in the garden (as soon as it stops raining...). Well, it's not as bad as it sounds: with a little cooperation and scraping together leftovers from music students' fridges, I think we'll be able to put a nice banquet together.

A whole lot has been going on since my last entry. First of all, the Kunstuni hosted the Redoute, its yearly ball. The food was expensive, the salsa band didn't play nearly as long as we wanted it to and the musical performances on offer were so many as to overwhelm, but all in all this was a very successful evening. When we finally decided it was time to get Thomas home (4am), I suggested a detour to the Schlossberg to watch the sunrise, but the girls' shoes were not quite compatible with such a long walk.

Our flat.

Martin and Emma came to visit me for the weekend from Freiburg and Mainz, and we had a very enjoyable weekend. Apart from the Redoute, it included an evening at the theatre, something Petra and I have been planning since around the middle of last November. My memories of the weekend include a lot of sleeping (until around 14 one day) and nightlife, provided by the ever-reliable Thomawirt and Buddha bar.

18:00. Time for breakfast.

With little time left for me here in Graz, it feels like even the studies have taken on a wilder side. Under the initiative of some enthusiastic conducting students, our class is arranging an opera concert next Monday, where we will all get to role-play as conductors, accompanists and, of course, opera singers (I get to dramatically collapse on the floor at least twice during the evening). The evening will include scenes from works like Aida, The Barber of Seville and Turandot, and if we counted right, it'll be just a bit shorter than Wagner's Valkyrie. While the rehearsals admittedly been pretty chaotic, the project has also been huge fun. The Studiochor rehearsals are coming to a critical stage; I'm getting ready to perform my whole 15-minute harp solo repertoire I've worked on this year; Prinz gave out copies of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna for sixteen-part choir a cappella for us to study, and in general the university is buzzing with countless concert projects.

Martin starts his trip to Florence.

Despite all this hullaballoo, there has been plenty going on in terms of free time and leisure as well. Here at home, we are still all waiting for Jana to get rid of thatcheese (Anna suggested we all sign a petition and glue it on the fridge). Maria is leaving back home to Timisoara after tomorrow (you wouldn't think it, seeing how meticulously she is cleaning our toilet right now). Petra has been busy, among other things, negotiating with our landlady to make sure we all get our deposit for the flat back. As for Thomas, it seems like late nights out aren't the only place for him to get some action: take a look at these underpants he found among his laundry some days ago:

It might perplex you to know I was the first one to be suspected of this mistake (?) when Thomas came knocking on my door at midnight. After having a good laugh, we decided to leave these lovely undergarments hanging on the mirror of our bathroom to see who took them away first. For decency's sake I won't mention who the culprit was (although you might interpret the hint in the title of this post). But the funniest thing was to hear that Anna almost wrote a post-it next to them asking people to please be more discreet when they hung their laundry. Being discreet is very well, but with only two drying stands in our home and rain hitting our balcony every day, I also have my underwear mixed with some anonymous bras right now.

Serbo-Hungarian nights, part 2

2007-05-27T21:03:00.000+02:00

At last, the ever-present Catholic holidays have come to the rescue to provide us all with an extended weekend and the chance to get our bearings - more than necessary after last night's extended house party (20-08); more on that in a moment.

Lessingstrasse, one of our region's typical streets.

It's the city's biggest church and two blocks away from our flat, but yesterday was the first time I visited the Herz-Jesu-Kirche. For the wedding of one of her Russian acquaintances here in Graz, Nashata (letters mixed up to preserve anonymity) put together a "Russian choir" (read: a sextet made up of four Ukrainians, one Lithuanian and one disoriented Finn) to perform traditional Orthodox melodies during the ceremony. Afterwards, we were invited to the reception at Gasthaus Jöbstl but unfortunately I had to leave before the wedding couple even arrived.

Plans for a spectacular Russian-speaking party were hitched and I made my way down the steep streets of Waltendorf towards Merangasse where there wasn't much time left before the flat became a focal point in our city's "vibrant student-propelled nightlife" (quote: LP). Preparations involved: stopping our bathroom from flooding, trying to control our washing machine which tends to take a life of its own during our frequent "Pflegeleicht"-cycles, almost making the house come down while hammering both of my doors open, and turning one of the double rooms into a closed space where anything too space-taking or breakable was thrown in (unfortunately, since the room was already crammed to bursting point due to Anna's Czech visitors, this made Petra decide to evacuate the place).

Thomas being laid-back. Note flip-flops. I want those.

Accompanied by the rumbles of a fantastic thunderstorm, the guests started streaming in with their bring-alongs which ranged from quiche to tortilla to Greek (fruit) salad to Japanese meatballs - it felt like all nationalities were represented except for Austria itself. In general, the party was in full gear until well after midnight. A bunch of people took their leave as dawn approached, and the last survivors emptied my bed later in the morning. In general, I suppose you could call the evening a success.

After a chamber music rehearsal this morning (or wait, was it the afternoon), I came home to float in a sort of stupor. It felt very relaxing to walk around the flat in socks, let the fresh summer breeze in through the windows, know that my flatmates were at home although I couldn't hear a sound, and look forward to tomorrow, another saint's day. For the first time in weeks, my two replacement siblings gathered for a cozy moment on my bed (it is a very comfortable bed, you know) to meditate on the rich fabric of life. Afterwards, a jogging session. I went to get us a pizza for breakfast at around 19. Petra and Thomas, I am going to miss you more than anyone else here :(.

Pécs

Wait a minute - wasn't this supposed to be an entry about the rest of cpmg's trip? I was going to write about frighteningly unforgettable pyjama parties, concerts where time seemed to stand still as I got to conduct one of my favourite Finnish songs, heaps of greasy food to make your indigestion go into major overdrive for days (judging from what I've heard, I wasn't the only one who thought planning a night, say, out at the movies, was too much of a risk) and the Mundharmonikachor Laakirchen - I think I've found my calling.

Serbo-Hungarian nights, part 1

2007-05-21T00:24:00.001+02:00

I wouldn’t really be able to say I have gained a sharp insight into choral societies in Austria without having experienced an Austrian choir on a concert tour. The perfect opportunity for such an informative lesson in Central European group trips presented itself at the beginning of this year, when the exceptional chor pro musica graz (non-caps deliberate) invited me to join them for four days in Serbia and Hungary this week. What follows is an abridged version of my extremely accurate travel notes. Enjoy!
_______________________________________
Early on Thursday morning, struggling to keep awake after hosting a spontaneous Finnish-Spanish-Lithuanian-French dinner party the previous evening, I took the tram to meet the friendly singers of the choir. Since the drive to the Serbian city of Subotica was calculated to take eight hours, I expected there would be plenty of time to curl up, close my eyes and shut down for some hours, maybe also listen to some music – however, after just ten minutes of driving, the bus came to an abrupt halt, an over-enthusiastic soprano grabbed the microphone and announced: “I hab’ die Jause mitgbrocht!” (Austrian for “I brought the snacks!”) and everyone delightedly emptied the bus to have breakfast on a parking place in the outskirts of Graz.

Since, as in every socially respectable choir, cpmg also has several couples among its singers, some people had brought their children along for the fun. A 12-year-old girl told me her family had been on holiday in Finland three years ago and she proudly wanted to show me what she remembered of the language. It was with no little surprise that, as we crossed the Hungarian border, I listened to little Natalie list colours, food ingredients, names of countries, dishes and cutlery in Finnish. Her friend got jealous, they frantically dug out their notebooks, and I ended up giving both a crash course in some elementary basics.

We were about to learn how to introduce family members when the first Pinkelpause was announced, everyone once again swarmed out of the bus, and a very heterogenic queue formed at the door of the gas station’s unisex toilet. Once we got back on the road, the general atmosphere started to crisp up as people woke from their slumbers, and of course no choir bus trip would be complete without some impromptu singing – for Austrian choirs read: yodeling. Between highlights from "Heidi" and regular folk song arrangements, I had my hands busy documenting the happy atmosphere with my Sony and Nokia gadgets. Then, finally, the moment everyone had been waiting for: the mighty Lake Balaton showed itself through the bus windows, accompanied by sighs of “Uuuuh!”, “Na geeee schäään” and “Meeeeeei”, and we promptly stopped for lunch at its shores.

Things calmed down again considerably while the food was being allowed to digest, and for about an hour or so, total silence reigned as we sped ever eastward through Hungary’s rather boring scenery. We reached the Serbian border sooner than expected, crossed over, and, almost at once, found ourselves in Subotica’s outskirts. The city, Serbia’s fifth largest with about 100 000 inhabitants, looked somewhat morbid at first glance, but before getting the chance to explore, we were driven straight to the Studentski Centar, where our accommodation had been arranged. Located outside the centre, this student dormitory with its cracked facades and Yugopop blasting from the windows seemed like something out of Moscow’s suburbs, but fortunately the rooms were very comfortable.

After a lukewarm dinner, the trip’s gastronomic lowlight, at the Centar, we headed to the centre to take a look at the city we had just arrived in. The first challenge was to find a)a currency exchange and b)water bottles. With the help of our organist who spoke some of the local language (Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, or a mixture of all three – I’m still somewhat in the dark when it comes to the politics involved in the local lingo of the Balkans), we achieved our goal and soon found ourselves at the Trg Republice in front of the impressive town hall. Since there really wasn’t a choice, we had a couple of drinks, checked the city map to get an overview of where we were, and headed back for a good night’s sleep.

To be continued….

The Spontaneous Trip

2007-05-14T13:56:00.000+02:00

Last Thursday, the sudden re-emergence (is that without a hyphen?) of the idea to go to Leipzig kept bothering me all morning, and, deciding that there was only one satisfactory solution to my indecisiveness, I called ÖBB's efficient customer service, squeezed my eyes shut and dictated the credit card number, met Maiju at the mensa to get my backpack back (repeat those last two words in quick succession), informed a couple of friends and some teachers warning them about my vanhisment and, some hours later, set out.

For my first time here, ticket inspectors invaded the tram (my Stundenkarte was valid). The train trip to Vienna (always longer than I expected) was spent chatting with a freshly graduated singer from our university, a viola teacher from our university, and a businessman who, midway, realised the company he works for sponsors certain facilities of our university, so I guess you could say we were all magically linked together by coincidence. I dug out my iPod when the conversation turned to the wonderful world of parenting.

At Vienna's Südbahnhof, I headed to my platform only to find that the train standing there was heading to Moscow via Warsaw. Since Germany is not exactly in this direction, I went to the information desk to ask where my train was, but the clerk was adamant that the "Chopin" service to Russia was my train. Still very unbelieving, I went through all the wagons to see where they were headed. When I arrived to the last wagon and saw a group of drunk Russian teenagers smoking outside it, I thought that I was being played some very unamusing joke, but going back to the beginning of the train I found a wagon with a small noticeboard with Dresden written on it.

I was lucky to have a sleeping compartment all for myself. The ones next door were filled with women in their 50s on some sort of group tour. They lost no time in digging out their booze the minute we left the station, and kept walking past my open door and flashing frightening smiles at me, at which point I felt grateful the door could be locked. I spent some time awake in my compartment, listening to a very nice cd I got from a friend who compiled it for me as a late birthday present, writing and drawing in my journal, having a delicious Austrian yoghurt, enjoying the feeling of the railway tracks speeding under me, taking me with them wherever I wanted to go, and then turned off the light for the night.

We arrived some minutes late at Dresden, and since I anyway only had 7 minutes to catch the next one, I was practically out the door before we had ground to a halt at the Hauptbahnhof and ran for my life, reaching the bullet-age ICE train at the other side of the station at the very second the conductor blew his departure whistle. I reached Leipzig's railway station, one of the biggest in Europe, an hour later, after travelling for thirteen hours.

The two days spent in Leipzig with CM Swing were fun. The weather was extremely windy, and since we often had to walk past a construction site it sometimes felt like half of the city was stuck in our nostrils and throats. Central Globetrotters Hostel was located between a cannabis-themed shop called Kif Kif and a Sex store, and very near the railway station. The closing concert of the a cappella festival was impressive, hosting big names like The Real Group (on very bad form, it seemed to me) and the German group Basta, a group I definitely want to hear more from in the future.

On the trip back, I didn't have a sleeping compartment, but the compartment I was sitting in during the night-time trip was anyway empty (except for a hippie who joined me for some hours and asked me to wake him up when we were in Nürnberg) so I was actually able to sleep two hours straight before the Austrian border. The rest of the trip went remarkably quickly. I listened to Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony three times, read a little, stared out the window into the night, almost lost my glasses, and, at the crucial moment, tried to catch Bamberg's station dashing by for waving to my cousin.

Bright and modern Linz railway station wasn't my idea of the perfect place to spend an hour in the early morning, but I had no choice and spent it getting some coffee and breakfast and browsing magazines. On the last stretch of the trip, a woman with a speaking disorder started chatting with me. Since I was too tired to concentrate too much on the narrative, one misunderstanding led to another and soon she saw me as a poor boy studying music in Graz because it was better than studying in Germany - I only got to go home to Leipzig every two months but, yes, kept contact with my parents as often as possible.

Red

2007-05-04T23:01:00.000+02:00

I'm afraid I'm becoming addicted to coffee - no doubt a result of M's visit, during which we went to have one every day. After taking her to the taxi at eight in the morning, I made something I don't think I've ever done before: I got myself a latte and sat down to drink it while reading the newspaper. The next day, another ground-breaking first: I used our cafeteria's coffee vending machine. Only with 50 cents in my wallet, I went up to it, chose the cheapest drink and put my money in. I got a cup of warm milk. It was slightly disgusting but I sat outside to drink it anyway.

New drinking habits aside, there's nothing really revolutionary going on. M and I made a lot of long walks together, and on one of them we went to a small manor house outside town to listen to the Styrian Youth Choir give a recital including works by Debussy, Whitacre and Rautavaara. Now I'm really curious to see what I think about Finnish choirs and their conductors when I go back. You might not believe it but I actually felt something close to tear-wrenching feeling-at-home when the choir burst into Carinthian folk song arrangements like Wås kümmern mi die Sternlan and Håldje-du-i (a yodel). I love Austria! (This is not sarcasm)

I've been playing around with Google Earth and I learned how to draw and save paths into the satellite images. So, I went through my train trip log for the last seven months and sketched the routes I have travelled by rail during my stay here - check it out, I think it looks nice! I can't wait to add some more and watch the web of lines expand. No train trips in sight yet, though - I was considering going to Leipzig next weekend to support CM Swing at the a cappella contest there, but the trip lasts over 11 hours and costs more than a cheap flight from Helsinki to Berlin, so that plan was short-lived.

Okay so you might be one of those who just felt sorry for me because I don't have anything better to do with my free time - but the truth is, I have hardly had any free time these last days. That's fine with me, though. Petra and I were just discussing people's attitudes to Erasmus students here - it's way too often that professors and students see an exchange student and think "great, so this person has come here to party all year long and not study any further than taking a few lectures, into which he/she'll come completely wasted". I'll never forget those exchange students from Ireland at a hostel in Zagreb: "Oh, Erasmus too, eh? Well, you know what we mean when we say ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION! (annoying wink)".

Okay, so it's true that a lot of the exchange students here get no further than getting to know the shops, bars and nightclubs, and maybe one or two locals - an exotic event in itself ("It's always nice to go to have lunch at the mensa because you get to meet people who are from here" - no comment). But it's not fair for the ones who have really come here to study.

Sorry if this entry was boring. I'm having writer's block. Also, I'm afraid the entries are becoming increasingly self-centred- I used the word "I" thirty-one times today. You can count them if you like.

Yellow

2007-04-25T23:57:00.001+02:00

I've wanted to mention this for a long time, but a while ago I realised someone had put his or her toothbrush and toothpaste in the same cup where I keep mine. They have been there for so long now I'm starting to get interested - does this mean anything? A discreet attempt at flirting from one of my flatmates, perhaps? More probably ancient relics from previous inhabitants someone found and decided to put in with mine at random. Talking of previous inhabitants, you can imagine that we get a lot of mail addressed to people who have long ago moved back home. We have received everything from bank account statements to parish newsletters to letters from the gynaecologist. You might have noticed I'm tired out of my mind.

Thomas is back from Argentina, but he's bed-ridden with some exotic disease he picked up in the wilds of Patagonia (read: the flu). Symptoms are already visible in some of his flatmates, so if you want to pay a visit, do it now before we board down the flat and quarantine it. Anna had a scary accident with the bicycle today - I just don't understand how people have the courage to join the traffic of trams and cars with those things. Petra almost fell asleep at a lecture today, and as for the girls next room, the last I saw of them was in the morning when Maria got out her pots and pans to cook something yellow, and Jana told me I looked tired, as though this was the most unnatural thing at eight in the morning.

As for me, it's not long ago I was driven home from another rehearsal of Duruflé's Requiem in Gleisdorf, where I accompanied for Natasha who once again took control of the remarkably good amateur choir there, hair in its place (some strands flew out of the bun during the very adrenalin-filled third movement). Moving chronologically backwards, I voluntarily went to sing in the huge choir of our university, where the piece worked on was - surprise - Duruflé's Requiem (if you're going to get to know a piece, it's either all or nothing!!). Before that, a desperate attempt at a siesta at home which I gave up after twenty minutes. The first half of the day was spent at lessons for my major subject.

Sometimes I'm really astounded at peoples' behaviour. Yesterday, I was going to kick out someone from a class I had reserved for practising, but she seemed so desperate to stay in it, and I was not so desperate to get into it, so I told her to just stay there and did she say thank you? No, she complained about how shitty the whole reservation system was, how she never got to practise anywhere, and closed the door. Next time I see her I'm going to tell her exactly how ugly I think she is. Okay, so let's just all live in inpenetrable bubbles and mellow in our own mess, I mean who needs friendliness anyway, it's so overrated! All for one and one for one! Every man for himself!

I really should go to bed - just yesterday I was thinking about how nice people have been here, what wonderful people I have met, and how I feel like part of a bigger local community. I guess there are a lot of idiots out there, and who knows, maybe I was one of them for somebody else today. And now my reading lamp broke down! If I don't get a new one it will probably be an excuse for our landlady not to pay us back our 400€. Have I just written one of the most depressing posts ever? Maybe, but in spite of that I am still smiling. Hmm.

Green

2007-04-21T21:38:00.000+02:00

Wow, it's been a great week! Where to start. Well, first of all, the amazing summer weather here in Styria, das grüne Herz Österreichs, inspired me twice to go out the door, choose a direction, and follow it. Last Sunday, the last day of the easter vacations, I put on my jogging suit (if that's what you can call it) and followed the creek which practically springs from across the street, towards the suburbs of Ragnitz and the high-brow streets across the mansion-dotted Rückerlberg.

Yesterday, the hills were resuscitated when I followed the highway east of the centre and then abruptly swerved north to climb one of the region's many hills. In less than ten minutes, I felt like I was in the countryside: cosy middle-of-nowhere cottages were all the rage here, and not before long I heard cows mooing in the distance - but checking my map I saw I was still very much in Graz indeed. From up there, I could see far over Graz, and just when I spotted the airport, the Austrian 18 o'clock flight from Vienna swerved over the nearest hilltop and I followed its nearly 90-degree turn and approach to the runway.

There's nothing like a touch of hedonism to make a good week, and so this week I also indulged in some shopping - some new summer clothes, some of which came in a sealed bag labelled INTIMISSIMI. And nightlife, of course! Thursday's chor pro musica rehearsal was followed by the traditional visit to the nearest pub. Yesterday's dinner at the Indian restaurant "Hathi" was a lot spicier than last time I ate there, and so our small group headed to the bars to cool off. Practically everywhere was packed, but we finally got a table on one of the terraces of Freiheitsplatz - only to be told it was closing. We got lucky in nearby Buddha-bar (continuing our Asian theme for the evening), which seemed to attract an interestingly mixed crowd and served great (and expensive) cocktails.

Well but after all, the vacations are over and so the studies have also kicked off again. Once again, one of the most fun things is being asked to conduct choir rehearsals for friends. Apart from the above-mentioned cpmg, with which I got to conduct show-stoppers such as Rachmaninoff's "Bogoroditse Devo" and Bruckner's "Christus factus est", Natasha and I made a guest appearance today at Chorforum Gleisdorf, where we got down to business with Duruflé's Requiem (I love the way she always ties her hair together before a rehearsal with a very no-nonsense attitude). Tomorrow, I'll make a 30-minute trip to Frohnleiten, to help out with the rehearsal of the church choir there. Have I mentioned I enjoy what I do?

Here at home, things have been going very smoothly. I must say our kitchen is always very neat and tidy, and this probably owes much to everybody - the other day I left my dirty dishes on the sink, went back ten minutes later to wash up and found them clean. If anyone should come for a visit soon, let me just warn about the slightly disturbing smell coming from our fridge - Jana has been trying out some new cheeses. While Thomas is in Argentina, I have been sharing my fridge-space with Petra, whose sofa is even more chaotic than before as she struggles to meet an assignment deadline. The freshest wave of panic came an hour ago when she realised it includes a presentation with Microsoft Powerpoint, a program she has no idea how to use - Anna promised to help out. I guess this means we're not going to dance at Kulturhauskeller tonight as planned.

All in all, a very satisfactory week - I'm hoping the next one will be just as nice. I've come to think of this town as my home. I hear the names of streets and know in which districts they are. I understand how this place works and know what to do to fit in. I know the people and they know me: I know that if suddenly our landlady decided to renovate this flat and threw us all into the street I'd have at least thirty people to call. I feel like I belong here - then again I felt that the very first time I visited the city's official website - and I know that when I leave, it will not be for good. Nothing ever is, is it?

Damascene voices

2007-04-14T21:03:00.000+02:00

Yesterday evening, I was welcomed back to Graz by the powerful stench of cowdung at the airport and Austrian folk music blasting out of Radio Steiermark on the bus downtown. Rewind to an hour earlier, when I met Thomas at Vienna airport, starting his long long trip to Ushuaia, Argentina. Yet another hour earlier, I finally summoned the courage to ask my Syrian fellow passengers - a heavily maked-up mother with her daughter who was reading "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" with a pen in hand to underline unknown words (one of them was "intuitive") - where they were heading, and they turned out to be friends of my mother's aunt. Going back some hours more, our flight's absolutely terrifying purser Sieglinde Bussbaumer welcomed us on her flight "on behalf of the whole crow". Sounds like fun? Travelling is!

Vienna airport: Thomas, Transfer Flatmate C & company head for South America in Iberia's flight 3575 to Madrid.
Damascus in April is nothing like it is in the summer. I never thought I would need two warm blankets there and the raging hailstorms were like something out of science fiction. In general, the city seemed a lot more crowded and hectic than before - probably owing much to the over 1 million Iraqis who have decided to make Syria their new home. The general opinion in Damascus seems to be that this has contributed to a rise in the crime rate (usually very low for a city of this size) as well as prices of apartments shooting through the roof.

Pick your candidate! Election posters on Street Al-Malki.
Lonely Planet's city guides usually feature a "city talk" section about current hot conversation topics. If I were asked to write one on Damascus based on this latest trip, my top three current issues would probably be:
-"How many more refugees can this city take before it turns into New Baghdad?"
-"Plastic surgery: liplifts are all the newest rage! Has your neighbour already had one?"
-"US top politician Nancy Pelosi's visit: what effect do you think it will have on US foreign policy towards Syria?"

My grandparents' traditional "arrival countdown" in full swing.
The main sights and the essential Damascus walks seemed a bit "been there, done that" by now, but still there were new places to see this time as well, even if they were such dubious attractions as the reopened office of Iraqi Airways (absolutely packed, with outdated posters on the walls proclaiming "A trip to Iraq is an unforgettable experience"), the finally finished top-notch Four Seasons hotel (see quote of the day on sidebar) and a new American-style shopping mall in the suburbs of Kafarsuse (eerily empty).

Part of the Damascus skyline: The Four Seasons, with the hideous Damascus tower in the background.

Back here at home, I was greeted by a birthday present from Petra (see picture below), some leftover chocolate cake Thomas and his girlfriend had made and my bed, which was not quite the way I left it after her visit (no comment). This house has had a lot of visitors this month, and yesterday Maria and her visiting brother B were hosting a candlelight balcony party as I arrived. They had big plans to go to Vienna today, but nevertheless I saw them strolling on the street in the late afternoon near the Kunstuni, where I also saw a motorcyclist who had been hit by a tram - at the speed those things swerve into Leonhardstrasse from behind the corner, it's probably no wonder. Everything is very green now here and our garden is flourishing beautifully. I'll now go to see whether the bathroom is free, brush my teeth, and go to bed.

Pictures from Helsinki

2007-03-31T16:34:00.000+02:00

One of the most phlegmatic Saturdays in recent history is about to end. Okay, in the morning I did some window shopping and bought food. Have I mentioned that yoghurt here tastes really good? Anyway, but after that - nothing really. Right now, we are in for the night. Thomas, who just came to wish me good night, spent much of the day practising as usual, coming home only to prepare lunch for us (spaghetti with sausages). Petra, too, spent all day studying. When this happens, she spends hours on her sofa which is covered with her laptop, papers, folders, dictionaries, other books, whatever. Still, there is always space for me if I pop in for a chat (more often than not, these turn into therapy sessions - but who's counselling who?)!

The Czech girls have left home for the holidays. Anna's boyfriend came to pick her up yesterday and brought us a water boiler Petra and I inaugurated today by having some delicious tea Hamsa sent me a while ago (Brazilian Baía by Twinings - try it now!). Maria's boyfriend arrived last night from Romania and is staying for a week. We still have a bunch of chocolate profiterols she spent all of the previous night baking.

Things sprang to life at around nine when I was asked out for a pizza at Tropicana, a place I pass every day on my way to the Kunstuni. The thing is, every day I pass it I think to myself I will never be found in such a trashy place. Well, that's exactly where I found myself, sharing a pizza diavolo and discussing destiny. After that, a short stroll around the sidestreets of Merangasse. Perfect! It's probably true that we all need days like this sometimes. By the way, Carlos took these pictures some weeks ago in Helsinki. I took the one below, check it out!

As you can see, anyone hoping of becoming this year's Miss Lederhosen still has time to apply! Other top news stories in Graz include the officials declaring the Stadtpark is once again a safe place to walk through at night - it's too bad next day two police officers were assaulted there. There's a festival on Islamic culture going on this weekend, it might be worth checking out. Good night!

Thoughts on a Tuesday

2007-03-20T22:27:00.000+01:00

5:36
As I open my door to go to the toilet, I am blinded by the light in the corridor that nobody has switched off. The house is silent.

8:36
While drinking grapefruit juice and eating toast with cheese, I work on my presentation on Finnish a cappella - music, which is tomorrow. I have been sure of the pieces I want to present and the choirs I want to talk about, but now that it's tomorrow I'd like to just change everything. I'm afraid of boring everybody with Rautavaara and making my teacher frown at some really bad recordings.

11:55
At the counterpoint lesson, I always feel like I'm completely off track and suggest some very bizarre solutions to the problems, and still the teacher agrees with me every time. I don't know how I'm doing this since I am seriously clueless about what we're doing. S offers me chocolate waffles when I tell her I'm hungry. I take three.

13:07
Chicken fillet with curry sauce at the Mensa. Thomas has a rehearsal with his string quartet but he's with me anyway - after all, he needs to eat lunch just like the rest of us. I skip the piece of cake today. I like this day: it's varied, with different tasks and challenges, and I have a short train trip to look forward to. I feel more motivated than the last days.

14:58
Running from harp lesson to orchestral conducting, stopping at the copy machine to copy some music in a flash. Today, several people have called me - including two of my teachers! - and I have people I need to call. I get an SMS that puts a smile on my face and someone records a message on my answering machine from Turkey. I can't imagine life without a phone.

17:18
In the car with Erdmuthe from Gesangsverein Trofaiach, on our way to the rehearsal where I'm going to substitute for Natasha again. Sometimes, I am really bad at small talk. The social aspects of conducting choirs is one of the most attractive things in this line of work but let's face it - sometimes I wouldn't mind just arriving at the spot, doing the job, and leaving again without having to pretend to everyone how fascinated I am about the weather.

20:10
Waiting for the train back to Graz, a solitary dinner at Leoben's depressing railway station: sandwiches I packed at home and chocolate chip cookies from Spar. If this day was a movie, this would probably be the part where everyone hoped I got a happy ending.

22:05
Home. In the kitchen, we admire Thomas's dinner, a huge mess of congealed potato puree mixed with pieces of burned fish, and I get a hug from Petra who is still sick. We tell each other about our day, gossip about our flatmates (probably just as much as they gossip about us) and discuss the quality of Czech toilet paper. A happy ending if there ever was one!

Weekend

2007-03-17T23:04:00.000+01:00

Today's eight-hour Messiah-marathon rehearsal started promisingly when one of the altos burst into tears during the first five minutes. This provided a good opportunity for choral conducting students like me to brush up their people skills. In general though, the rehearsal went fine, and I have to say I have never ever seen so much food at a choir rehearsal. Everyone had packed lunch for an army and I came home so stuffed the only thing I could eat for dinner was a Marillenyoghurt Traum mit Pfirsisch (and some pieces of Milka's Nuss-Nougat Creme chocolate).

Maria, on the other hand, decided it was time for a gourmet dinner and invaded the kitchen by frying liver, the strong aroma of which delighted everyone in the house (the doors are being kept shut). Jana and Anna are off to ski tomorrow. They certainly seem to be making the most of their time here and are never at home. Thomas just came to my room to tell me about his hike outside Graz today, and the Hungarians (Petra's best friend is visiting) are probably somewhere out partying again, grabbing the attention of about 90% of the nightlife scene's male pairs of eyes (sorry for this sentence but it's really late and I'm not going to start taking it apart).

The last nights have been somewhat short - Thursday night was spent in Kulturhauskeller, much more pleasant because it was a bit emptier, yesterday in Propeller and watching a film at home. The alarm clock shall not sound tomorrow, but as soon as I get up it will be time to snap out of this neverending weekend atmosphere and get myself to KUG. There's work to do. Thomas and I have agreed to cook up our street's best pasta tomorrow evening - something of a once-monthly tradition. Unfortunately, Monday is again some sort of saint's day, which means I'll probably not have money on my cell phone, food stocks will run out and we will all despair in our boredom.

About me

2007-03-14T22:22:00.000+01:00

Recently, I dreamed I pushed someone off the platform to get hit by the metro, something I thought could only happen to me in my dreams. I also dreamed a childhood friend told me he didn't want to see me anymore because my lips were too red. I started using a wrist-watch less than a year ago.

I like grapefruit without sugar. According to iTunes, today I listened to my favourite song for the 102nd time. I have cried in an airplane. I hear voices. My grandmother sent me an email today. I used to feel like I always needed something to look forward to. I believe everyone should be hugged at least once a day. I eat too much chocolate.

I have been in love. I like singing along to female jazz singers before going to sleep. I like closing the door to my room and creating a world for myself. I like German choral music. I like making lists. I had schnitzel for lunch today. I remember peoples' hands as well as I remember their faces. If I won the lottery, I would buy a grand concert harp and save the rest for trips.

I'm left-handed. The feeling I hate most is disappointment. Many things excite me. My latest fascination with music is Strauss's opera "Salome". I grew up in a Northern European capital but I have several places to call "home". I am afraid of knives. I have never eaten sushi. I'm a cat-person. Tomorrow, I have something in my calendar from 13 to 14 and from 18 to 22.

I'm good at remembering and bad at hiding how I feel. I don't want to be defined or categorised (although it's the only thing I’m doing in this post). I have been to all continents except Australia. Airplanes fascinate me. As a child I dreamed of being a tram-driver. I have been moved to tears by a film. I analyse my dreams. Actually, I analyse pretty much everything.

I care about what others think of me. I try to make people happy and like it when it works. My life now is completely different from my life three years ago. My life tomorrow will be different from my life yesterday. Most of the time, I feel lucky. On the street, I spread my arms and pretend I'm flying if I feel like it.

Who are you?

Doors

2007-03-11T22:16:00.000+01:00

I don't know why every time I fry eggs for breakfast our frying-pan looks like a carton of paint exploded in it afterwards. All in all though, kitchen-wise we are doing fine. It's much tidier than it used to be (and I am not saying this to deliberately annoy our former flatmates who are reading this from Bucharest) and the fridge seems more spacious than before (it's been declared hoard-free - nothing more than short-term shoppings allowed!). Okay, so I recently threw away a lump of bread that had gone green and grown a beard, but I'll admit that one was on me.

Romanian honey. Be prepared for scary side effects.
Today, I went to sit in the garden with my book. I got some good ideas for pictures to make from there - one can see three of our windows from there. Before that, I had tried to get some practising done but with the sun shining outside and temperatures reaching 20 degrees this seemed like a crime. Jorge and I went to sun-bathe on the Schlossberg and afterwards I decided to venture into Graz's Westside on the other side of the Mur and get some train tickets from the station. It was dark when I came back and, as usual, I got to dodge the drug-dealers in the Stadtpark.

Explanation: the tomatoes in Spar were on sale.
When I told my flatmates where I was going I was swamped with money and culinary wishlists - the Hauptbahnhof Spar is the only place open on Sundays. It's a horribly crowded and unpleasant place but I plunged in to find milk for Maria, raspberry yoghurt for me and toast for Thomas, who has a fever and is walking around the house frightening everyone with his ghost-like appearance. I considered locking him in today after he threatened to go for a run.

French bacteria are not the only thing spreading here - Petra had the flu earlier but now it has been passed on to her roommate Anna. The light-switch of our bathroom is stuck and we can't turn the light off. We should probably call a technician before our landlady accuses us of damaging the flat and refuses to pay us back our 400€ deposits. She's looking for an excuse for that anyway. Our ground-floor neighbours may be invisible, but their notices to the rest of the house are getting more aggressive. Every time I stop to read them I am seriously afraid of the door opening and an ugly hand reaching for my neck and pulling me in. Their door must be sound-proof and probably nobody would hear me scream.*

However, light-switches are not the only things going crazy in this building. Petra and I got the shock of our lives yesterday when we were going out the front door on our way to the opera. She grabbed the handle of the very heavy door to pull it open (okay I should have opened the door for her but that's beside the point) when it came off, was flinged out of her hand and crashed onto the staircase, creating a minor earthquake on our street. It took us about five minutes to regain speech. Maybe this is a new attempt by the friendly owners of this building to lock the whole house in - it's nearly impossible to open the front door without the handle.

After the opera, I spent some time with the Spaniards watching boring football and eating the last hamburgers at the Jakominiplatz McDonald's, one of the most horrible places on earth. After that, it was Pastis with a very tired Finnish pseudo-mafia (do five people, two of who are American and one is Austrian, count?), after which I stopped by the cellar at KJH for the birthday party of Richard, who refused to let me go home and kept pouring strong drinks in my plastic cup.

*see how I contradict myself here - in the previous post I said one can occasionally hear voices from behind the door.

Short short story

2007-03-09T17:53:00.000+01:00

Our neighbours on the ground floor are the biggest mystery in this house. Nobody has ever seen them, yet we know someone is there because one can occasionally hear voices from their apartment. In front of their door is a bunch of old and mouldy rugs, and a sign says "beware of the dog" although nobody has ever seen or heard a pet in this house.

Recently, a notice appeared on their door, accusing their neighbours - that would be us - of stealing newspapers from in front of their door. Coming home today, I saw that somebody had posted another notice in a venomous tone, informing that maybe it would be best to first check with the newspaper itself to see whether there have been delivery problems before accusing neighbours of theft. The case is getting somewhat intriguing and I'm already waiting to see what our invisible neighbours reply in their next notice.

The sun is setting and the clouds just turned into whisps of pink, I'm posting a picture of it here.

A beginning

2007-03-05T22:18:00.000+01:00

Washing the dishes in the morning, Anna, one of our new flatmates, told me I looked like a doctor. I was so surprised I only now thought of asking her what exactly she meant. Something wrong with my style? The eyeglasses? Maybe the plastic gloves I was wearing (why do people make fun of me for using them? Isn't that what they're for?).

I was the first person to enter the library today, prompting an extra-enthusiastic "Guten MORGEN" from Frau Scherzer. After a couple of lessons, I came home to wash up (rough morning) and pick up Petra, still suffering from her headaches (my diagnosis: social stress aggravated by a new confusing situation at home) for lunch at the oh-so-romantic Mensa, where we were joined by Thomas, freshly back from France and already working 27 hours a day. The Finnish chicks were there, too.

A breather at home - I used it to throw out yesterday's pasta I had at midnight and clean the pot - and then it was out again to the KUG. I kicked out Transfer Flatmate C from a class which was reserved for me (sorry), after which I had another lesson. Then, the moment we had all been waiting for: our monthly stroll across the street to our landlady. On the way, we remembered we had forgot to bring along the receipts we always make her sign - after a debate at the front gate, Petra declared that if things went to court, we would all testify that we saw the others paying the money. There were no protests.

Of course, our landlady was especially sugary today because of the new flatmates. Us old cronies warned them not to be deceived by the false smiles and the oh-so-cute dog - they weren't going to get a summer discount. After our first casual house meeting afterwards, I went to conduct my first ever female choir rehearsal with the promising name "Frauenstimmung Lassitzhöhe" (One letter discarded to preserve anonimity). The set-up was the same as in previous similar situations here in Graz: I'm picked up by someone from the choir (Arrangements on the phone: "So I'll be the one in the white car with the license plate GU532CK - if you leave out the numbers it's Guck! Get it??") who drives me to the rehearsal, and on the way both try to think of entertaining conversation subjects (I usually ask one question about the choir's history and the subsequent ecstatic sermon is enough to let me not say another word the whole drive).

I really enjoyed the atmosphere at the rehearsal, and the women did a very good job sight-reading renaissance three-part music. During the second half of the rehearsal, I realised I was actually making jokes my teacher here makes. It looked like I was going to have to take the train back to Graz, something I was cursing in my mind when one of the singers enthusiastically told me she could drive me since it would give her a chance to show off her brand-new car, complete with a GPS machine (or whatever they're called) I knew how to interpret better than her ("I think Merangasse should be that red line there..." -"What, we have GPS in this car??").

Someone is in the kitchen. The light in Thomas's room is on, and in the corridor one can hear Petra chattering away in Hungarian. I am going to sleep.

Nightlife

2007-03-02T21:34:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening, chor pro musica was having another painstaking rehearsal of "Messiah" with me accompanying ("All we like sheep...", "And He shall purify...", "Hallelujah...", "What shall I make for dinner today..."). In the pause, one of the singers started giving out invitations. She came up to me and gave me one of the little purple envelopes. "I hope I got your name right", she said. She did. While others greedily ripped open their envelopes, I saved mine for later. When I opened it, I felt a strange sort of happiness that only seemingly small things make you feel - I am invited to a baptism and a garden party after that. It might appear a small thing but it still makes me smile to think about it. I can feel my "feminine" part stirring: what to put on?

After the rehearsal, I determinedly walked away before being sucked into the nearest pub with the general flow and headed home, stopping only at Rosamunde to get a kebab. We now have two new flatmates, both of them from the Czech Republic. One of them brought more things with her than I have ever seen, including boxes full of food! I hated to be the one to break the news to her and introduce our minisized fridge. Because of exclusively female arrangements I know nothing about, the grand rooms are going to be multicultural this time. It'll be a Hungro-Czech union next to a Romano-Czech princess paradise.

Otherwise, Petra and me have been walking around our silent house like zombies, desperately waiting for a prince to come and wake us from our slumber or an earthquake to bring some action into our lives. Maybe we shouldn't be complaining since next Monday will put us back in turbomode again, with my schedule full for 12 hours straight.

Transfer Flatmate C came by today, sporting a completely new look (hair, clothes, no eyeglasses) which made her completely unrecognisable. Something happened to me in the shower yesterday (very funny) and my neck has been hurting since. Oh well, I've been told one of my characteristic features is moving my eyes around without moving my head, so maybe this is life's way of laughing at me. Ha ha. My computer mouse has gone all tipsy on me - maybe the batteries are low.

Stoned

2007-02-28T21:16:00.000+01:00

Finally something to put a smile on my face. Nothing else than Israel's entry for this year's Eurovision contest - being held in May in Helsinki, of all places. Apparently, the piece is a protest against nuclear weapons and the refrain goes something like this: "And I don't wanna die, I wanna see the flowers bloom, don't wanna go kaput-kaboom." Hilarious! Maybe I should fly over to see the performance.

Lauttasaari, September 2003
It's not that there wouldn't be other things to smile about, but I think that it's time for the vacations to end. The trips have been made, there are no more nights out to look forward to, and my bank account has hit an all-time low. The party's over. This moment, for instance, I feel like I've been sitting at the computer doing lots of things and at the same time doing actually nothing at all. Google Earth is great but what's the point of gazing at Tirana from space? Sure, Wikipedia is a fun way of spending some time in cyberspace but what's the point. And I wasn't even able to listen to a choir concert I was really looking forward to on the Finnish radio. My motivation is gone.

South-Eastern Turkey, June 2006.
The other Finnish exchange students are going to spend the evening at Three Monkeys and although I was not going to go, now I think anything is better than spending another evening waiting until it's time for bed. And maybe there's something wrong with me anyway, since all the other foreign students always seem to spend time with each other. For everybody's sake, I hope I won't end up giving a sugary karaoke performance like last time. I'll probably be too sober for that anyway.

Napo Province, Ecuador, December 2005.
Well THIS entry really ended up being a bag of laughs. Especially when it's accompanied by the Real Group chirping away with "Everybody needs somebody to love yeeeeah".

Odd one out

2007-02-27T23:40:00.000+01:00

After weeks of keeping a harmonious and calm household together with Petra, we are now bracing ourselves for the three new exchange students arriving in the weekend and, of course, the return of Thomas from ze France. Of course it hasn't been just the two of us all of the month: Transfer Flatmate C will pick up her stuff any day now, and my sister was here visiting last week (you might notice her trail on my top 10 songlist). It's been fun, but ultimately this is not an apartment for two and so it'll be fun to have some life back here again.

26.2.2007 Train pictures chapter XXXIII.
However, the start of the new term also means we need to go through our supplies to see if we can last until the summer. Personally, my first investment would be a new air freshener spray for the toilet - the current one has been around for who knows how long and, if you ask me, actually makes the place smell much worse. And we're still dreaming of that mega-sized fridge.

22.2.2007 Zagreb central square's main attraction.
The two days in Vienna were nice. Highlights included a visit to the Syrian embassy (I couldn't believe they have those faded pastel-coloured posters the Ministry of Tourism has produced probably decades ago - my favourite is the one with the surfer, maybe Syria's short coastal strip will yet become the surfing community's mecca?), one of the best museums I have been in (Kunsthistorisches Museum) and an a cappella concert at the Musikverein. Lowlights: Viennese waiters and the rain.

23.6.2003 The Åland islands.
This blog will soon start its third year. I know quite a few people who don't feel very comfortable reading blogs - they much prefer personal emails or perhaps see blogs as a modern way for egoists to shout out about their world into cyberspace. I can't really compare blogging to writing emails - for me they are a world apart and I have never not written an email because I've thought "oh well, he/she can just as well read my blog". As for the purpose of keeping a blog: while this website may seem like a self-righteous online diary, rest assured that there is much more to my world than what you see here :) Thanks for reading!

Train diaries

2007-02-24T00:18:00.000+01:00

This moment, I am in the Romanian room listening to the music by Mahler which has given this blog its name. It's past midnight, Dea is asleep and Petra just came to show me an email our future flatmate sent her. There was initial confusion to their correspondence, which started some days ago, when Petra got an email titled "Hallo Anita". The matter was cleared and now we know something about the Czech girl who will arrive here on the first day of March.

Somewhere in Eastern Slovenia.
Her questions until now have been pretty straightforward, as have been our comments: "Is there a cd player in the room" ("Aaaargh, she probably doesn't have a laptop then to share in the internet costs"), "Can you tell me what there is in the apartment" ("Where to begin, the broken teacups or the spluttering vacuum cleaner...."), "I haven't got any reply from the landlady!! Is this normal?" ("How to break it to her...").

Somewhere in Upper Austria.
This last week has been full of train trips. Altogether, I have travelled over 1500 km during the last seven days. In the end, the rails have always brought me back home - safe, trustworthy and friendly Graz. The trip to Zagreb (how nicely the two city names go together) and back was nice. There is a nice feeling to passing passport checkpoints - the first stamp in my new one!! - and anonymously rolling on, not looking back, not looking forward, just seeing what it looks like outside at the moment.

Somewhere in Bavaria.
At our hostel on the outskirts of the city, we met an early bird who looked like a Chinese businessman (what was he doing in a mixed dorm), Kristiansandian Irene (we already knew she was Norwegian because we took a sneak peek at her postcards) who was on a six-month leave from work and in no hurry to get back home (my enthusiastic suggestion "You could even go to Turkey from here" was greeted by a blank stare and a "Yes, I could go to Australia if I wanted to"), Two English-speaking guys who suggested some joint programme (it didn't work out but they still followed us until the railway station) and a pair of slightly freakish Erasmus exchange students from the British isles ("You're also Erasmus?? Yeah, so you know what we mean when we say alcohol consumption huh??").

Maybe there'll be a post on Zagreb later but now it's time to sink into a dreamless sleep..

Concert cycles to die for

2007-02-17T23:37:00.000+01:00

An annoying thing about Austrian groceries' opening times is the fact that after sitting eight hours on a train, when the only thing you want to do is go straight home, you are forced to ask yourself what you want to eat tomorrow and after tomorrow for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and you should do it quickly before the shops close for the weekend. I actually saw a saleswoman pushing out a distraught customer from the railway station's Tabak (the local R-kioski) and lock the door - I could forget about stocking up on my mobile phone credit and public transport tickets, then.

I find it amusing that the German and Austrian state railways like to give their train services names. They range from the logical (one of the services from Graz to Vienna is called "Grazer Oper") to the absurd - yesterday I travelled on "Intercity Hollywood Megaplex Kino". Maybe a reference to a dream of making Linz Europe's movie powerhouse? Or, more likely, a tribute to the fantastic scenery seen from the megaplex of the wagon windows. Austria's mountainous landscapes win hands down over Germany's more down-to-earth views.

In the throes of a nap.
Unfortunately, the sun didn't really come out in Bamberg until yesterday, so Thursday's walk up to Michelsberg and the cathedral was a wet one. Bamberg has its own flair - where else can you find a quarter called "Little Venice" - but, as we were saying with Andy, it lacks a certain comopolitanism which, I'm happy to say, Graz has, even if you only thought of its share of African immigrants and ex-Yugoslavian beggars (something I wasn't expecting when I first arrived here). Every town has its charms and its setbacks and there's nothing like comparing them!

Somebody's wild imagination on display in a Bamberg bookstore.
The day before yesterday, Andy took out his treasure trove of Disney soundtracks and we burst into song together with our favourite damsels in distress: Ariel, Belle and Pocahontas to name a few. By the time we reached "A whole new world" I think we had seriously scared his girlfriend. Sometimes it's really bizarre to realise how many things we have in common although we have spent our childhoods in virtually different worlds.

A common view from a regionalzug. Avoid them at all costs.
Referring to the title of this post, some friends and I have had fun lately making up imaginary concert cycles a choir could present. Allow me to introduce some of them:
-"The Stalin prize winners - who were they?" (including Shostakovitch's oratorio "Song of the forest")
-"Allahu Akbar! Music from the Jihad heartlands"
-"Gala concert for the hearing impaired" (featuring theatrical elements)
-"0 points! The Eurovision losers in a new light"
-"Disney like you've never heard it before" (the most realistic yet)

Feel free to add.

Bambergesque

2007-02-14T14:31:00.000+01:00

Germany! Land of Bratwurst, Bach and Bayern. I arrived yesterday afternoon and am visiting my cousin Andy, the only person I have trouble keeping up with while walking. Our voices and manner of speech are so similar our closest family members can't tell them apart - proven once again yesterday when our grandmother from Quito asked me on the phone what I was planning to do with Dani.

The trip yesterday was comfortable. A woman sitting next to me on the train from Vienna to Nürnberg provided the first jaw-dropper of the day: while I was absorbed in a Finnish crossword puzzle, she casually asked me whether I was learning Finnish. (What does this say about my crossword solving skills). I was really impressed she recognised the language (maybe it was the many dots....:)!! As I was putting her in the right frame of things, she told me about a relative of hers who studies in Helsinki. He's a conductor I have worked with a couple of times. She flipped out of her mind but I kept my cool - after all, it's just a minor coincidence.

Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof is a railway station like any other in Germany but it holds a familiar atmosphere for me because I have been there quite often. As I was thinking about this, I realised the last time I was in Germany was three years ago, which I consider to be a lot of time. On the train to Bamberg, two teenage girls opposite me were totally absorbed with their nails and high school gossip. As we passed Fürth, yet another place I hold in dear memory for the jokes I used to make about the name of the place with a friend, I noticed the station platform hadn't changed at all since we were killing time with a group of comrades by taking whacky pictures there in 2002. I arrived in Bamberg just in time for a downpoar.

Today, my cousin left in the morning for his theatre project and I passed the time visiting shops (including one where, three years ago, I bought a box of cds which played a decisive role in making me realise what I wanted to become) and taking in the ambiance of this university town, which is a lot smaller than Graz. I also got my train ticket back home, the agent helpfully letting me know it would have cost a lot less had I bought it yesterday.

Small world

2007-02-12T08:46:00.000+01:00

For some reason, every time I leave Graz on the train, there is someone I know sitting in the same wagon. It was fun the last two times, but on Saturday I couldn't believe it when I saw someone I had only spoken to once (and whose name I didn't know) walking towards the empty seat opposite mine. I had been hoping for some relaxing time with my music and the scenery outside. Covering my face with both hands didn't help, so I had company until Selzthal, where I had to change trains. In the end, it was relatively harmless company - the only time I was bothered was when the loud techno basses blasting from his earphones created an unsettling background to Brahms's "Warum ist das Licht gegeben".

Pulling out of Graz Hauptbahnhof.
Linz, an industrial centre and Austria's third-largest city, was interesting to see, but didn't make a very big impression. Not for the first time, I had to argue with a waiter on what I was supposed to pay for my lunch - it drives me crazy when they bring you nice little side dishes in addition to what you have actually ordered and then you are expected to pay for them. I didn't give up without a fight (the restaurant manager was called in) but ended up dishing out the 3€ more. I realise I'm becoming more fearless in confronting people who make a lousy job of customer service. Yesterday, I exchanged some murderous looks and snappy replies at the ticket counter of Wien Westbahnhof. Then again, maybe I'm just becoming really rude.

Birds in Linz.
Yesterday, a friend introduced me to Aschach an der Donau (pop. 2000), a town, you might say, not on every backpacker's to-do list. All the better! Saturday evening was spent at a Latin household there (could it get any more bizarre).

One of Aschach's main thoroughfares.
It's hard not to think that, somehow, everything you read or watch or listen to is ultimately connected. It's the feeling I get when I arrive at a strange house and the music playing in the background is a piece I've been recently thinking about, or when Hermann Hesse mentions Händel's "Israel in Egypt" in his "Steppenwolf". Or, for example, when I'm driving past Graz airport and just happen to see an airplane with a friend inside. Life's full of coincidences.

Pictureless post

2007-02-07T23:15:00.000+01:00

Still no sign of the new exchange students, which means they'll probably arrive only at the end of the month. Our temporary flatmate "C", who is spending some weeks here on transfer to another apartment, is being extremely helpful with the household management and today we found ourselves ecstatically discussing shopping lists and the proper way to clean the floors like any old married couple. I'm almost getting used to the idea of having someone to eat with three times a day. And it's definitely the first time someone has liked my cooking so much it's on the wishlist for tomorrow's lunch.

I have also learned that when you have heart-sick French people in the house, playing love songs by Jacques Brel inevitably results in pitiful moaning, waving arms and, in the most drastic cases (seconds before bedtime), violent protests. Be warned!

Meanwhile, Petra has found a new best friend: her teacher from the intensive German course, who sends her midnight emails asking her to change the theme of next morning's presentation from the banning of smoking in restaurants to something "more current". After straining our grey cells for plausible subjects, the best ones we could come up with were illegal immigration - with our household members posing as "live examples" - and something with a title like "When 2 become 3: relationships during an exchange year".

Today in the university library, I listened to a previously unknown oratorio to me: Händel's "Israel in Egypt". I'm glad I finally got to know it and I'm adding it to the mental list of works I want to conduct one day. Händel gave an overwhelming majority of the music to the choir and there's a lot to have fun with, from the raging explosion of "He gave them hailstones for rain" to the deliciously titled "And with the blast of Thy nostrils". Another pleasant surprise among recently discovered pieces is Shostakovitch's oratorio "Song of the Forests", introduced to me by a friend.

In case you haven't noticed, the "What I'm listening to" -section on the sidebar has been given a fresh look. The list is updated every end of the week and on Monday you should be able to see that my playlists are also brimming with rediscovered timeless classics like Beethoven's sonata op.111 and Mozart's clarinet concerto.

Just kidding.

Winter holidays

2007-02-06T00:44:00.000+01:00

Some of you already know I have come back from my Alpine adventure weekend in Carinthia with all my bones intact and some fantastic pictures to share. The two nights were spent at a friend's family's house practically in the middle of nowhere (Sankt Jakob im Rosental but don't even think of looking for it unless you own a high-definition Michelin map of Austria like I do) next to a jaw-dropping mountain chain separating Austria from Slovenia.

Kärnten entertainment. The LP includes tear-jerking classics like "Wann I mei Dirndl tua gruassn" and wild instrumental music performed by the inspiring Spörk family.

We were lucky with the weather, which produced a winter wonderland for us and the hundreds of German, Italian and Slovenian tourists (My weekend included a crash course in interpreting vehicle registrations) who, like us, headed to the main ski resort in the Villach area: Mount Gerlitzen (easy on your larynx). We skipped the mainstream cable car and took the scenic (and very serpentine) road to the top (1909 m).

The views were magnificent: here the majestic Hohe Tauer -mountains, over there Slovenia's highest peak, Italy through that gap, The eel-shaped lakes of Carinthia, Klagenfurt airport behind them (not to mention Klagenfurt itself). The sight of eight-year olds plunging down the slopes with their skis and übercool teenagers looking like they were born with a snowboard at their feet was slightly intimidating, so I decided to take it easy first and practise my winter sports in a safer area (the landing strip of the aficionados).

View from the chair lift.

It has to be said I had a fantastic teacher and gradually we decided to brave skiing down from a higher altitude. Our goal was to make it all the way from the top at some point and the practising was going well at the start. Then I took a major tumble which sent my self-confidence down an abyss, and I decided to not risk it and went up to the summit without the skis - I'll admit this decision was influenced by the sight of a helicopter picking up an injured person from the mountain.

Next day, we drove even closer to the Slovenian border and walked through the forest to an inn where I had a very straightforward meal - a huge fresh sausage with some eye-cringingly sowerKraut. After that, it was back to Graz. The weekend tour also included Villach's giant new Interspar and the leafy suburbs of Klagenfurt (a city, it has to be said, not exactly blessed with a very poetic name).

Today I went up to the Schlossberg with a friend and it is fast becoming one of my favourite places anywhere. As if to underline my thoughts, I heard the words "Geah istas soo een faaaner Toog in Gräääz" behind me (I'm still working on my regional dialects). After that, I had the honour of giving two freshly arrived Finnish exchange students a tour of the downtown Spar (including a visit to the unfriendly cashier lady).

Winter weather on our balcony.

And then there was one

2007-02-01T17:18:00.000+01:00

All the concerts are over now and the vacations have officially begun. Our performance of Schnittke's Requiem in a church some way out of town was surprisingly well attended and something of a success. The most notable glitch was the "Sanctus" movement where a stray tenor soloist dragged the choir into a different pitch than the accompanying marimba and electrical bass - an unmissable opportunity for choral conductors to practise keeping up appearances in the most desperate situations.

The aftermath of the concert was celebrated in a charming restaurant called "Brot & Spiele" (not, as I first understood it, "Blut & Spiele"). The fact that it was situated in Graz's red light -district did nothing to disturb the ambiance. I had asked Thomas to wake me up before he left for France early in the morning yesterday. He did wake me up - to ask whether the cheese-slicer was in my room (probably one of the most absurd questions I have heard at seven in the morning).

Forces unite to find a missing resident of Merangasse.

Later in the day, the Romanians were picked up by Silvia's relatives living in Wiener Neustadt. To say they were reluctant to leave would be putting it mildly, but in the end they braved the task of carrying a neverending amount of bags down the stairs and said goodbye to their temporary home. Their 30-hour bus trip to Bucharest is about to begin - according to rumours, one of our double rooms is to remain a Romanian one.

And so I am left to guard the homestead - but not for long! Petra will come back before the 5th of this month and a friend is staying in Thomas's room temporarily until she finds a new place. Our holiday plans for tomorrow include scrubbing the floors. Hooray. Besides, what with our most non-cooperative landlady, nobody knows when the new exchange students will arrive. Hopefully tomorrow - we could use a helping hand with the cleaning! *Devilish laughter*........

Every blade of singing grass

2007-01-28T22:20:00.000+01:00

This is a BBC-like "Week in pictures"-post. I've also added a selection of highlights from the past seven days:

- Sight-reading Finnish choral music with two French people in my room and realising how much they enjoyed it.
- Gazing out at the dark snowy hilltops from the train to Leoben.
- First Schnittke Requiem rehearsal with the instrumentalists: the climaxing movement of the piece, Credo, is like an ecstatic cacophony suffused with, among others, latin rhythms on the drums and the sopranos braving an inhumanely high note.
- Being officially accepted in Graz's Spanish mafia (after initial skepticism over my "Ecuadorian lifestyle")
- Yesterday's concert with Chor Pro Musica Graz.
- This moment, listening to Sting's "I was brought to my senses" and getting my thoughts together.

Our front door during Graz's rainy season. Monday.

A tempting selection on a display screen. Leoben railway station. Tuesday.

View from my room. Friday.

Natasha and Adria taking a short pause from Schnittke.

chor pro musica graz backstage. Saturday.

Sunday morning on our balcony.

In Romania, they say that seeing an airplane in the sky means somebody loves you. My flatmates have stopped counting since they came to Graz.

Alternative partying OR Multicultural Graz: Part 1

2007-01-21T23:43:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was probably one of the most bizarre Saturday evenings I have spent during the exchange year until now. We were at a ball organised by the Hungarian community in Graz. Asked later what I thought about it, I replied: "It was like being in a ridiculous dream from which I wake up and think WHERE did that dream come from". That pretty much sums it up.

As I have mentioned before, our flat has some strong ties to Hungary and yesterday a commotion was raised when the girls found out about a Hungarian party somewhere outside of town. Two people from our flat already had other plans, so it was up to the rest of us to go and explore. There was some considerable drama, however, before we could leave - the party was going to be fancy, so the girls reached for their evening gowns and mascara, but in the end not all of us could cope with this heavy dress code and so three of us left the apartment with absolutely no idea what was waiting for us.

The party was out of town, so we were picked up by the girls' Hungarian friends in a car. Now, a ball might sound grand to anybody, but in reality the party was being held in shabby Restaurant Franz next to a gas station. A faded beauty in a golden dress wobbled past us tipsily on the parking lot and we could hear the ominous sound of oom-pah oom-pah coming from the building - reassured, we walked in.

I had just managed to think to myself "at least nobody knows I'm here" (my flatmates don't count in these things) when I was greeted by a loud "Dani, what are YOU doing here??!!??". As it turned out, some of my middle-aged colleagues from Chor Pro Musica Graz had come to the party as well. The place was full of excited Hungarians in their 40s to 70s, some in national costume, all of them living it up on the dance floor accompanied by a playback band consisting of three drunk men, one of them with an alarmingly Dschinghis Khan-like moustache.

Petra hit it off straight away, and in the end Silvia and I decided to join the hullabaloo and start dancing (it took some swigs of really bad wine - 1,50€ a glass - before we could muster the courage). Since we were non-Hungarians, Silvia had come up with a cover-up plan in the car ("I'll just say I'm Finnish, too - isn't Hungarian somehow related?"). However, the way we improvised wild Hungarian folk dances was probably convincing enough.

As it happened, our first song lasted about half an hour and was something of a medley of your favourite Hungarian hit songs. Many people sang along in total ecstasy and some songs had a certain dancing pattern to them which we imitated with a backlog of about 10 seconds. There were so many people spinning about that we were both constantly bashing each other into unknown elbows, knees and heels, but both escaped relatively unharmed. Every time we thought the piece was over, the wild Mongol cranked up the bass on his music box, a new song started, and the crowd cheered at the top of their lungs.

Taking a break from the dances, we checked out the cds the band was selling of their music. It was titled something like "The World's Most Ever Favourite Songs" and a closer inspection of the track list revealed pieces like "Shake It" and "The Road to Hell". We didn't think it was worth spending 10 euro on and sat down to finish our really shitty wine.

About an hour later, Silvia was on her seventh cigarette and I was on my third round of Snake III when Petra and her friends finally appeared from the "ballroom" and said we could leave. It was certainly experience - now I know what to expect next time!

The morning after: strolling up to the Schlossberg.

Cleaning rage

2007-01-20T01:42:00.000+01:00

Graz rooftops.

It started at ten in the evening with some casual dish-washing. First my own dishes, then I felt like doing something for the others so I washed their dishes as well. Then I found some more uncleaned dishes next to the stove and on our small kitchen table. Might as well wash those, too. More detergent, more washing.

Now that the dirty dishes were gone, the dirty surfaces of our kitchen were exposed in all their filthiness - round stains of all sizes from coffee cups and spilled juice, solidified ashes sticking to the table and greasy drops. They had to go, so I wet the cloth we use for cleaning the tables etc and started scrubbing. Then I put some forks and knives back to their drawers and, for the first time, realised how unorganised the drawer was from the inside - and dirty as well.

The girls were all at a party (albeit separate ones if I understood correctly) and Thomas was using my laptop to communicate with his girlfriend (he found a new programme called VoipDiscount and apparently it's better than Skype) - the flat was practically mine. Mine to do what I wanted in it and mine to make it look like I wanted. I had nothing better to do, so I took the drawer out and cleaned it. Next came the cupboards, stove and fridge.

Before I knew it, I was chasing the vacuum cleaner across the kitchen floor (it has huge cracks in it and food falls into them - it's really not a pretty sight unless you're a fan of last week's dinner's debris) and into the corridor. I made a trip to throw the garbage, then noticed huge piles of old newspapers and magazines right at our front door (how could I not see them before??) so I made some more trips downstairs to get rid of them, after hanging everyone's umbrellas neatly next to the door.

The only sounds were some muffled French from the Romanian room (the internet connection is the best there) and my own breathing, which, I realised, started getting louder and louder. I went into the bathroom and cleaned it. Sink, washing machine, bathtub, mirrors. The only thing I could think about was cleaning. Every other thought vanished, nothing was more important than this scrubbing and tidying.

I felt like screaming "somebody stop me!" but I don't think anyone would have. I was starting to sweat and feel uncomfortable - off with these outdoor clothes! I put the vacuum cleaner back in the storage room and attacked the toilet. Universal-Reiniger for the floors and WC-Reiniger for the seat. Watch me go!

Everything ends, though, and after a (lukewarm) shower I came to my room and realised what a mess it was, but I left it just as it was and sat down to my dinner and an episode of Lost. It's really late now. Good night.

Words

2007-01-17T23:59:00.000+01:00

In the Austrian dialect, there is a huge amount of words ending with an i. Aufi abi linksi rechtsi hubsi schwubsi schatzi babsi wischi waschi mitzi rutschi schlafi... As you can imagine, all essential words in any local conversation. I am also learning that "ich auch" translates into "i a" here and that the correct way of counting things begins with "oans zwa". But when you go into the details, it all gets so much more intriguing - my goal is not to leave Austria before I can differentiate between the different dialects and aurally separate a Steirer from an Oberösterreicher.

Moodiness is a strange thing. Often it just takes a few words to cheer you up or send your mood spiralling further into unfathomable abysses. Feeling a little glum today at choir rehearsal (maybe because my home-made lunch had been a real lowlight in the list of my most recent gastronomic creations) I sat munching on a mushy banana (see quote of the day on sidebar ->) when a soprano from the choir suddenly walked up to me and started chatting.

At first she seemed to just want to strike a conversation, but when I told her about my studies, she opened up her heart to me: "To tell you the truth, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't obligatory for the singers. I hate choirs. I can't STAND them. I used to sing in choirs a lot when I was small and now I just can't listen to them. It's horrible." Of course my first reaction was a certain degree of astonishment - I mean, if you had blue eyes, what would you reply to someone who came up to you and told you all blue-eyed people were disgusting?

But then suddenly I just felt like laughing out loud. This person (who, by the way, looked like a grasshopper with the head of a bee) just came out of nowhere and cheered me up just by telling me her simple opinion. But it got better - she started explaining that she could ONLY work in choirs where there were two times more men than women because women's voices were always so dominant in choirs (at this point I could still follow), and that she would prefer children to be added to the choirs to even out the heavy sound of adults (here I wasn't sure whether she was pulling my leg) and in general the worst thing for HER was that she of course was a coloratura soprano (I had a hard time keeping a straight face) and did those colleagues of hers really call themselves sopranos???

I really don't know how to explain why she cheered me up. I've been trying to, but I've erased lots of sentences until now. It's not that I thought she was a bag of laughs and made fun of her in my mind - quite on the contrary. Every once in a while (but quite rarely) people come from nowhere and surprise you with their words. I felt really refreshed. Nobody wants to hear the same routine sentences again and again.

Coming soon

2007-01-16T21:29:00.000+01:00

In just over two weeks, things are going to change radically at our flat. The winter semester is coming to a close and three of our fifty-second-hand beds will be bearing another set of disoriented exchange students. Of course the end of the semester also means a four-week vacation for all of us. Trips back to Bucharest are being arranged (train, bus or plane? The debate rages on!), amorous phone calls to France are getting longer by the day and one of us can't wait to find out who will share one of the huge double rooms with her (there are vague plans to commit murder in cold blood and elope with the writer of this blog - I'll keep you posted).

As for me, well, the plans are even vaguer. At the moment, there's no time for me to pay too much thought to the vacations (well, if you know me well you'll know this means the only thing missing is the minute schedule for day twelve). No but seriously, I don't even know where I will go. I'll have to pull myself together in the weekend and make an attack on the railway timetables and Google Earth.

Where to go? The choices are endless.

As I was saying, there's a lot to do right now, with three concerts coming up in the next two weeks and the usual study schedules chugging along on their slippery but steady tracks. I left before nine this morning, came back home, went out again to have lunch with Thomas, made some quick shopping at Spar, and went back to lessons. After orchestral conducting, I came home because I wanted to pay our downstairs neighbours for the internet. As it always happens, they were feeling talkative and I was there a whole hour discussing, among other things, the Middle East (they are both architects and have made archeological excavations somewhere in the region) and Helsinki's Jugendstil-architecture (they've seen it).

A little reluctantly yet with a steady will-power, I ran back up to get my things and left back to the university to do some work on my own - but not before Petra, who's enjoying her days alone in the flat studying for an important exam tomorrow, read my mind and stuffed a half-empty biscuit back into my hands with the somewhat robotic words "Mitnehmen! Zur Uni gehen! Essen!". In choral conducting class, we are working on Haydn's "Creation" as well as Schnittke's Requiem, which we're going to perform next week. A recent sneak peak into next semester's programme revealed two of the pieces we'll be working on: Frank Martin's a cappella mass and Stravinsky's "Les Noces". Next time I find myself thinking I would prefer to work on something completely unknown to me, I'll tell myself to shut up and treat myself to the hundreds of scores and cds in our library.

Back to the future

2007-01-14T23:18:00.001+01:00

Frankfurt airport's traditional boarding pass auction at full swing.

And so, as if at the push of a button, the days spent in Graz are counting again. I arrived home on Thursday evening to find the kitchen clean (maybe Petra's death threats on the cupboards helped), my house shoes where I left them (on this side of the bed under the black plastic chair) and my table empty (it had been used as a workspace for making a puzzle and all my things were in the bookshelf).

Friday was spent in the Kunstuni and Spar. Yesterday was celebrated with a marathon rehearsal of Schnittke's Requiem. In the evening, our flat's dark-haired duo from the pusta hosted one of their popular Hungarian evenings - missing one of these is hard, especially if you live with them. I was initiated into the popular tradition of drinking palinka, a home-made brandy which always flows copiously at these ethnic gatherings. Expecting nothing more than a little warm kindling in the stomach, the first swig took my voice away. It remained the evening's only swig.

After that, we headed to Kulturhauskeller, a bar/nightclub in a huge cellar just a few blocks away. It was absolutely packed with students and the music was so loud I couldn't hear anything for about ten minutes after leaving (I told you these were fun!).

At around four today, I was cooking spaghetti and the others were staring into space in a post-palinka/nightclub slumber when our landlady called and told us she needed something from our flat and could she come over now? Absolutely delighted, we sprang into action - the sacks of garbage were taken down, dishes were cleared away and I learned some new Romanian swear words. The result of the visit: one of us lost her writing table. It's good for her that she seems to be going around in a sort of ecstatic daze or she probably would not have dismissed the whole thing as "not a problem".

The only things I forgot at home are my toothbrush and notebook. I got a new one with a tongue-cleaner in the back. A toothbrush, that is.

Pausa

2007-01-05T23:48:00.000+01:00

I'm having a break from posting and it's possible I won't write anything until I go back to Graz next week. The vacations are coming to an end but there are still things to enjoy! And what with text messages arriving from Merangasse, the knowledge that bit by bit everyone is trickling back home, and lots of huge expectations on what's to come (the autumn raised the bar high), there are a lot of things to look forward to. But just like I felt three months ago, I'm excited about coming back in the autumn.

I finished a fantastic book and was very moved by it, then I watched the last episode of my favourite tv show and was also very moved by it. I've also got to know some really great songs from artists I'd like to find more from. Once more, you can check out my latest interests from the sidebar.

And I haven't done any of the work I brought with me to take a look at because I thought I'll have so much time when I won't know what to do with myself.

Well, this is the end of this lifesignal. See you!

Snapshots 2006

2006-12-31T17:10:00.000+01:00

For my last entry of the year, I made a compilation of some of my favourite snapshots form 2006. It was a busy year for my camera – the folder for 2006 contains about 4000 pictures – so picking the best ones out was not a piece of cake. Some of the snapshots were an obvious choice, while some were chosen just because they got my attention.

Yesterday at a party, a friend told me that 2006 had been his longest year. For me as well, it seems like every new year is longer than the previous one. It’s fantastic!!!

These pictures are in random order. Unless otherwise stated, they are taken by me. Please leave a comment if you like them- to see the original versions, just click on the pictures. Happy new year 2007!

This is Merangasse, my home street in Graz. It's definitely one of the best things 2006 gave me.

April in Helsinki. One of the first pictures I took with the new camera I got for my birthday. Some familiar sights can be seen in the background.

My flatmate Thomas in a good mood. This is in Thomawirt, a posh bar/restaurant around the corner from where we live. The picture was taken in early December.

Christmas eve 2006.

One of Graz's main attractions against a beautiful blue sky. Early December.

Another Töölönlahti picture. Spring.

Okay, here I am with my friends Sanna and Martin in Stanley, which is a settlement on the southern side of Hong Kong island. Martin and I had arrived from Helsinki this day and by the time this picture was taken, we had been awake for about 30 hours in a row. So what did we do? We went rowing in the South China Sea, of course! Oh and this one obviously wasn't taken by me.

August. A sudden rainstorm in the county of Sulkava, where we were spending a weekend at a friend's summer cottage, brought our outdoor activities to a halt. I love Finland.

This is Maiju in Riga. Our Ryanair escapade happened on the coldest weekend of the winter. While temperatures plummeted to -30 degrees celsius outside, we got to see a lot of the insides of Rigan shops and cafes.

The garrison church at Riihimäki quiets down after a long day of recordings. Dominante spent a weekend in March working on its next cd, which will hopefully come out soon.

This is one of my favourite family pictures of the year, taken in Damascus in June. Mummy, Dea and Solhi seem in the best of moods. Nana is covered by my sister but I love the way Grozney's tail makes an appearance. If that cat could talk, she'd tell you all about our family's emotional history. Make time for her.

Daddy took this picture of me leaving to Graz on the 25th of September. He should get a medal for all the pictures he has taken of people leaving in airplanes.

My hotel room (15€ a night) in the remote city of Sanliurfa in Turkey. My things are packed and I'm ready to go back to my grandparents in Syria - the next unforgettable twelve hours made up the wildest, scariest and most adrenalin-filled day of the year.

The daredevil in this picture is Mikko, with whom I spent two weeks in Ireland in August. Doolin, on the west coast.

My friends on a hike in Nuuksio national park, outside Helsinki. September.

I really like this one. Our traditional Christmas reunion.

Hong Kong's skyline at night. May.

Summit of Mount Nemrut in Turkey. I decided I would go there and I did.

More than words

2006-12-24T09:41:00.000+01:00

The Finnish coast from OS345 last Sunday. And no, it's not the summer.

Home sweet home. Merry Christmas to everyone who makes it a celebration. To those who don't, have a great day. It's a little freaky to think of all the things which have happened this year. Time flies, yes, but I think this was my favourite year ever. Roll on, 2004!

Christmas Lights

2006-12-12T23:21:00.000+01:00

It's getting really cold in Graz! I finally had the courage to take out my winter coat after a traumatic experience I had with it some weeks ago. The handle of the front zipper broke and I wasn't able to open the thing!! Once at home, Petra came to the rescue with a supply of safety pins. There were different colours to pick from but I went with black. Anyway, so this year's winter fashion is once again on display. Note black leather gloves!

Morning atmosphere... From my room window, I can see Austria's third-highest church spire.

A year ago today (and it wouldn't be exaggerating to say around this time) we arrived in Quito for spending Christmas with the family. I celebrated my "Ecuador-day" by listening to Hillsong Australia, writing this article in Wikipedia about Mariscal Sucre intl airport, checking current prices for plane tickets, and calling my grandmother. What would life be without memories of our best experiences ever.

Thomawirt, our favourite local restaurant/bar just around the corner, gets in the Christmas spirit.

Some other things I did during the last 24h:
-Explained my philosophical attitude to beards to Thomas and Silvia.
-Went into shock when I realised how soon I am going home.
-Attended a crisis meeting in the Hungarian room. Result: The fridge is now clearly divided into everyone's own "territory".
-Got a phone call I wasn't expecting from an important friend.
-Got a phone call I wasn't expecting (wrong number).
-Peeled carrots. For someone else!!
-Congratulated someone on a new member in our family.

12.12.2005 Seconds before touching down on UIO:s runway 35.

Vaihtelun vuoksi...

2006-12-11T01:00:00.000+01:00

Älkää pelästykö, mutta ajattelin että olisipa välillä hauska kokeilla tänne blogiin kirjoittamista suomeksi. Tämä kieltämättä vaatii tiettyä sopeutumista minultakin, mutta katsotaan, miltä tämä meistä (sinusta ja minusta) tuntuu.

Iltataivas Grazissa viime perjantaina.

Pienimuotoisissa eilisiltaisissa kekkereissämme (ok, tämä alkaa nyt jo tuntua oudolta) meni aika myöhään. Katsoimme Petran tietokoneelta elokuvaa "Speed", jonka olen nähnyt varmaankin kymmeniä kertoja jo (ihoni menee silti aina kananlihalle kun bussi nousee lentokoneen tavoin ilmaan), ja tarjosin kavereille suomalaista kossua. Näytti maistuvan!

Tänään olin suurimman osan päivästä kotona. Pesin kaksi pyykkikoneellista (käytin kuitenkin eri pesuainetta toisella kerralla - vaihtelun vuoksi), kirjoitin artikkeleita suomalaiseen Wikipediaan, kuurasin vessanpönttömme, jatkoin Muumi-kirjan lukemista, kuuntelin Beethovenin yhdeksännen sinfonian alusta loppuun ja improvisoin itselleni aika maittavan lounaan. Illalla olin myös puhelinyhteydessä Helsinkiin, sillä pikkusisko täytti tänään 16 vuotta!

Petra ja Thomas biletunnelmissa kotona.
Kokkasimme Thomasin kanssa järkyttävän ison määrän pastaa ja söimme (melkein) kaiken. Sen jälkeen lähdimme iltakävelylle keskustaan. Kävelimme Schlossbergin huipulle, josta näimme koko valaistun kaupungin. Kun olimme taas katutasolla, löysimme futuristisen hissin (ks. kuva alla) joka vei kellotornille. Meillä ei ollut tarvittavaa matkalippua, mutta astuimme huvin vuoksi hissiin ja painoimme nappia. Suureksi yllätykseksemme hissin lasiovet menivät silti kiinni ja hujahdimme takaisin Schlossbergin huipulle. Se oli niin jännää, että painoimme taas nappia ja olimme taas hetken päästä alhaalla. Meitä vastassa oli lipuntarkastajan näköinen herra, joka ei kuitenkaan helpotukseksemme pysäyttänyt meitä.

Tarkoitus oli ollut käydä joulutorilla juomassa glögiä, mutta ymmärrettävästi kojut olivat jo kiinni - olihan kello melkein 23. Kävelimme siis takaisin kotiin, jossa saimme nauttia vielä tunnin hiljaisuudesta ennen kuin Silvia, jolla on krooninen puheripuli, palasi sukulaistensa luota kotiin ja alkoi kertoa Wienin uskomattomista nähtävyyksistä. Hänen tätinsä ostaa hänelle joka viikonloppuna niin paljon ruokaa, että maanantaisin kukaan ei yleensä löydä mitään jääkaapista. Siitä tulee mieleen, että jääkaappimme toimii myös eräänlaisena mustana aukkona. En ole vieläkään löytänyt viime viikolla kadonnutta kurkkuani, ja toivottavasti en enää löydäkään.

Kello on jo aika paljon ja edessä on viimeinen viikko opintoja ennen kotimatkaa. Ehkäpä sitä pitäisi jo käydä nukkumaan. Minusta tuntuu että sänkyni perustana toimivat vaahtokuutiot alkavat pikkuhiljaa erkaantua toisistaan - täytyy pyytää kämppiksiä auttamaan jälleenrakentamisessa ennen kuin herään lakanaojasta.

Toivottavasti ei tullut liikaa kielivirheitä. Päivitin muuten taas linkit sivupalstalla! Hyvää yötä.

A musical entry

2006-12-06T22:41:00.000+01:00

Fumbling with the kitchen radio, Thomas found an all-new radio channel for us - it's a foreign station, maybe Slovenian? Anyway, so the soundtrack of our home no longer includes sugary teen pop stars sounding like somebody is trying to strangle them; instead, we've got great oldies like the Beatles and Elvis Presley to cook along to. All I can say is I hope I don't ever have to listen to any more Austropop at home. Let's not even go there!

Okay, so I might have been too hasty when I flatly crushed Schumann's choral music in this blog some entries ago. I got interested in some of his pieces for double chorus a cappella in a rehearsal of a choir where I'm sort of "assisting" (that includes working as a stand-in bass, accompanist and conducter all in one rehearsal) and yesterday I bought a brand-new recording of Schumann's a cappella output. It's not Brahms, but it'll do!

I just came home from our Kammerchor-rehearsal. We have a concert in January and there are a lot of evening- and night-related pieces in the programme, including an international selection of lullabies. I thought I was going to make a really intellectual impression when I walked up to my teacher after the rehearsal and suggested that the concert should be titled "Night". Well, as it turned out, that was the precise title of the concert, decided ages ago, and the pieces had been chosen based on it. I responded with a blank look, felt slightly embarassed, and walked home. When I just can't laugh at myself anymore I know I must be really tired.

Ligeti's "Reggel": one of the more meditative and tender endings in 20th century a cappella literature.

Three morning sentences

2006-12-05T08:16:00.000+01:00

I wish I was a morning person, but I'm afraid I'm not.

And I never knew tea could taste so horrible.

I hope the day gets better.