Part Trois And Also The Last One!: Another Round Of Shots Taken By Me All Over Helsinki. Obsessed With

We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape from us.

Anonymous

Now when it’s all cold, dark and so autumn like it’s good to remember the perfect first summer days..

Lisbon / Portugal blogs

Lisbon and Portugal isnpire hundreads of travel posts, bloggers and videos but there are a few that stand out for me which I check out regurarly. 

HERE TO GO TO

http://www.wheretwogoto.com/category/around-portugal/around-lisbon/

A travel blog for Portugal and outside of it. Good tips for day or weekend trips from Lisbon. Written by expat couple in English.

SALT OF PORTUGAL

https://saltofportugal.com/about/

Mainly about Lisbon and Portugal. Different themes you can search for posts produced by small group of posts. I like that concept how they create this thing together. Nice artwork. They also have their own voicemap tour of Lisbon! And scarfs inspired by Lisbon tiles.In English.

LISBON BY LIGHT

https://www.lisbonbylight.com/lisbon-stories/

This is lovely even though more like a design blog. I love the idea of ’stories of Lisbon’ as locals of the city, often artists. Great strories and inspirations.  Great way to discover portuguese brands and artists. Very ’arty’, very Lisboa.

THE LITTLE UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

http://www.littleupsidedowncake.com/category/lisbon-stories/

Like the name tells you already this about eating in Lisbon and elsewhere in the world. Another not a travel blog. You can look for recipes according to the time of the year, which is a fun idea. Love the posts of different cafés of Lisbon. Also stories behind the counter. Amazing photos!

LISBOA COOL / LISBON SECRETA / TIME OUT

Available in Portuguese as in English. These are all quite similar, commercial websites about Lisbon. Tips for visiting and learning more of it but also events, restaurants, cafes… Time Out comes out as a magazine once a week if you prefer.

VISUAL DIARY

https://www.lily.fi/blogit/visual-diary

In Finnish. Written by a graphic designer living in Lisbon for over 3 years. She writes about life, in general but especially in Lisbon. Great lists. Also about design. I love her photos. She also has a great instagram account worth following if you speak Finnish.

instagram

LISBON ME PLEASE / LISBOA LIVE / LISBOA COME

https://www.instagram.com/lisbon_me_please/

https://www.instagram.com/lisboalive/

https://www.instagram.com/lisboa.come/

Do you follow blogs about your home city /country? 

UMK25 Song Review: Sekaisin

Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK) is back and stronger than ever! We have seven new artists ready to compete for the trophy and the ticket to Basel in May! The third song keeps the quality strike even!

Costee - Sekaisin

Costee is man of 100 million streams and three studio albums under his belt. So a very familiar name in the Finnish music scene!

He started learning music at the age of 8 and he started his career in a band called Sima. His own record deal he signed in 2017 and it's been one hit after another since that. Now days he runs his own record company.

He is known to be an emotional man who is not afraid to be open. He tends to be into darker sounds and vision but lately there has been a more hopeful tune in his music. His UMK entry Sekaisin also fits into this description.

Sekaisin holds a strong contrast to the previous UMK25 entry Nelli's Hitaammin Hautaan. This one is dark with a good elektrobeat. The start is promising, building strongly.

1st chorus works but after that it goes downhill. It doesn't deliver the beginning's promises which is a damn shame.

A lot of people compare this to Benjamin from 2023 with his Hoida Mut but this doesn't reach the same hights and catch you in the same intensity.

Personally I'm not crazy about his voice and I think he pronounces lazily. But there is love for this one as it still holds top20 spot in Spotify Finnish charts so even if he's not winning the trophy he will be fine after UMK.

What do you think of the third UMK25 track and what are the chances of Costee to advance to ESC? Talk to me in the comments below!

Amsterdam in April. It was very grey so made it even more so. 

Oriente train station in Lisbon. Couldn’t decide in which colour I like it more...

Pics from magical Sintra! 

++++ Finland!

A few things I enjoy coming home to. For a change at least.

In general it's kind of nice to return to a country where I'm a citizen.. entitled to many things I've learnt to appreciate like health care for example. Friends and family come also handy as a safety net when everything just sucks big time. #imissyoutoo

Ice cream: better, cheaper and the selection of flavours waaay much wider.

Sauna

If you find a lake, river or whatever water system you can actually swim in it. 

Food: Carelian pies, devil's jam, salmiakki... yum, yum, yum! 

White nights in the summer time.

Life is so boring that I'll actually get some school stuff done #whatwasmyexcusebefore?

(Not my pic)

Being €uropean - the union and currency makes travelling so much easier.

I can get naked in women's locker room at the gym (at least at the gym I go here there are lockers insides of the lockers and if you don't use them people look at you like a crazy woman!)

Prices include the taxes.

Distances are shorter. 

No stranger, cashier or a salesman cares how I am - I can be as quiet and shy as I want!

On tv, commercials don't come in the middle of the scene, in the most inappropriate moment of all.

(Not my pic)

Online banking - seriously never had a need to go to bank this frequently. You can also draw cash from any ATM nevermind the bank you're actually using.

You can do all your shoppings in ONE store (food, cosmetics etc).

The products don't change places every week and if there's something really run out of stock it's something truly seasonal or something I can yell about to a poor staff as a customer :)

If you work on Sundays or on a holiday you'll get 2x hourly wage. 

Temperatures actually feel like what the thermometer shows... most of the times anyway. 

Houses are mice/rat free.

Tax system is easier.

A new hobby started! And yes filtered used but they are my first shots so give me a break! Wandered around in the streets and seacoast of Helsinki and this is what I got :)

What do you dream of?

Okay, time for some sort of closure I guess. Can’t belive that I made it and that it’s time to head home. I cannot help but to be sad about all of this coming to an end but I’m also so happy and grateful that this year happened to me at all.

For over a year I’ve tried to share not only the best part (and some of the bad ones too) of moving to Canada for a year but also the fabulousness of Montréal and Québec. The reasons why it was my dream to live in province in the first place, why I’ve loved my every #mtlmoment and also why I’d like to come back here someday. Still hundreads of things I would have loved to share with you more.. 

But in this last post I won’t be telling you what I’ve been up to for the last weeks either;  I won’t be praising the summer events of the city or the amazing  things I’ve had the chance to do here. They are awesome and definitely worth telling for but now I wanna talk about the bigger picture.

For the last weeks I’ve been walking around the streets of Montréal and a bit in Québec also, trying to notice everything, learn every building, street and a charming café by heart. It’s been hard to look at the city, my favourite places and neighbourhoods, where I’ve lived so much…without knowing if I’ll ever experience them again. Countless amounts of last looks and things I will miss about this city. Some bigger than others.

My postcard collection, used to be much larger thou..

I’ve felt very much like home here. Nevermind of my crappy French but there is this small québecoise that has been growing in me and I wouldn’t have wanted to live anywhere else in North America or in Canada. I have been able to explore and observe the culture and the country that I used to read about endlessly as a kid and which I’ve always been drawn to in ways that only travellers/wanderers/ or however you would like to call yourselves, like me can understand. And for a year I lived my dream. Which is pretty cool, I must say.

Not everything went as planned like nothing goes in life in general speking.. Not saying that Québec and Montréal are perfect. There are things which I totally don’t agree on or that make absolutely no sense to me. But they say that a foreign country isn’t supposed to make you, an outsider to feel comfortable to be in. Adapting to the strange ways and new environment is as awkward as it is giving. It educates not only about the country you live in but also about yourself and where you’re coming from. And I’m not talking about country borders here.

When I talk about my MTL year I cannot help but to mention Couchsurfing. There are other websites who function with the same idea. It is a personal opinion which one works for you the best if not at all. Google it if you're not familiar with the concept.

But I do wanna say that it is a community where you don’t have to travel or even have someone sleeping at your couch to participate the community in your hometown. Besides of the actual hosting and surfing thing, which I haven’t been able to do yet - there are a lot different kinds of events and activites going on, in some places more than others. And I can say for a personal experience that it is a great way to build your social circle as a newcomer.

A lot has been said, lots of negative stuff about Couchsurfing, and here I’m not talking about the exact website but this new way of travelling and meeting people. And I’ve had my share of some of the minor issues but during my year of discovery of CS I gotta say that there is a lot of good stuff here too.

In Montréal the community is very active and, even thou I haven’t discovered the other CS communities around the world yet. However I dare to say, this one is filled with the craziest and the most awesome activities which tells a lot about the members in the community too. With some of them I’ve been lucky enough to build lifelong friendships with.

(not my pic)

It is a community where I haven’t felt the need to explain myself, my spirit and my reasons to come here because most of the CS members understand the desire and even the need to move away to abroad or do intensive, long travels.  Which is the reason why I wanna keep participating in one way or another in Finland too. Or wherever I’ll be living in. 

In general, during this year I’ve put so much time on so many events and on countless amount of meet ups with perfect strangers which not all of them were good actually but in the end it was all worth it. I’ve met people, sometimes only once or twice..others may have already moved on, but some of them have expanded my horizon by their stories and personalities. I’ve heard people describing me as a courageous person for coming as far I have come and in the way I have but there are people out there who’ve gone much further and have pursued way crazier ideas in more extraordinary ways than I have in mine.

Even though this post is already too long I cannot leave out the industry I discovered and worked for the last six months. Who knew that you could make money by testing videogames or that being a Finnish speaker could be such an advantage in Montréal? I’ve truly enjoyed my time and I’m definitely keeping my options open of becoming a videogame tester again. But not for the job itself or how cool and easy it sounds but for the people who work there.  It’s a great job because of the social environment, how deeply you can feel like being a part of a team and the wonderful friends you make along the way. Even sometimes the people you weren’t the most closest to, are the ones you’ll remember for the rest of your life. 

A MASSIVE thank you btw to everyone who’s been living this experience with me, from all the way back home to Québec and beyond…new and old ones. No names necessary, you know who you are. Thank you for being part of my québecois experience. Never would have been able to do this on my own.

Now when I look at my empty room where I’ve lived for almost the entire year; the white walls that used to be covered by my Mtl and Québec postcards and my luggages (which I had to pack four times to get it right!)…. I cannot believe I’m really leaving. These 12 months feel now much bigger and longer than when looking at them in the calendar. Even thou Canada and Québec are a lot like Finland I have truly lived outside of my comfort zone here.

This is the longest period of time and furthest I’ve ever been from home. Without my support system, from friends and family to EU benefits which all of them I was used to having. I’m continuously searching for the right words to describe the spiritual change and growth in me but I’m starting to think that there isn’t any. I've come a long way from the first post I wrote a year ago. 

I can only encourage everyone to do the same, not the CS thing or Montréal thing or even the travelling thing but to pursue your dreams and step outside of your box for a moment. A lot of bad stuff can happen but so can a lot of good too. Concentrate on the positive side. Life is short and time is precious and limited.

I hope that with the posts here in my blog I’ve managed to open up a little bit what Montréal and Québec are all about and encouraged anyone who’s ever had the thought of travelling here to do so. Or made someone local to be a tourist in his/her city and country. 

It is a remarkable place and I’m proud that I was able to call it my home once.

Je me souviens. I remember.