Summer Trip 2008

The pictures are on the way ( I´m a bit tired and busy still.. ), but here´s a few more videos:

Ahoj -drinking in Latvia

Otters playing in Budapest Zoo

Castle Party camping site, featuring Walter the Italiano

This one is for my workmate Roope. German guy Florian describing his meeting with Roope :)

We are back at home, so this summer trip is officially over. It has been a very fun summer, but after so long journey it´s also nice to be at home.. for a while.

Thanks for all the people we met all over the Europe, you made the summer so special! Let´s try to keep in touch, and see you all some day :)

I will add some more pictures from the last days to blog probably tomorrow, and also upload more pictures to http://stnz.fi in a few days.

The ferry took us to Helsinki in 2 hours. Watching a movie the time flied, and we are right now at Helsinki harbour, ready to start the last part of our journey: 160km from Helsinki to Turku.

Its always sad to return from a long trip, already feeling a bit depressed for being back in Finland, the country I really dont love much... And every time Im more sure that I want to move out of Finland in near future, to somewhere in central or southern Europe.

There are good thing in returning to home and work, and I have been missing many of them. But, Im pretty sure in 2 days Im already wanting to be somewhere else :)

Grhm. The Tallinn ferries have really bad timetable. There are not much ferries at the afternoon, and all the companies are departing at the same time. As driving from Riga takes a few hours, it would be nice to have some ferries to choose from without leaving Riga really early.

This time we had only one good option, Tallink Superfast departing Tallinn at 15.30. After breaking most of the traffic rules of Estonia and Latvia we arrived to the check-in at 15.18, 8 minutes too late. That sucks. We changed our tickets to the next ferry, Tallink Star at 18.30, but now we have to spend a few hours in Tallinn..

I still dont like being at Tallinn very much. The city itself is nice, and so are the local people. The problem are the Finnish people and the image they give about Finland. Half of them come to Estonia to drink the cheap alcohol, and are totally wasted.. And the second half behaves like they have never been outside their home town..

But on the bright side, sure it was fun to drive like a headless monkey through Estonia and the centrum of Tallinn again after adapting the southern driving habits :)

I will really miss the fast-paced traffic of most European cities when we are back in Finland. 70-80kmh is perfectly suitable speed for city traffic, 30kmh in Helsinki and Turku is really annoying.

The other thing I will miss is the habit which almost all the drivers in most countries have: Warning about polices by blinking headlights. Makes driving much more relaxed when you dont have to watch the speed all the time, just keep it somehow inside allowed limits and slow down a bit when you see the blinks.

I wish the people in Finland had the habit of warning others of some blue-wearing homosexuals sitting in a bush with a radar.. :p

Not much to say about this day. At the morning we left Warsaw with Laura, dropping Agniezka´s keys to her workplace. Her cat tried to wake up everybody at early morning, without much success.. :p

Many hours of driving, and we arrived to Riga again. This time we are also staying at Karlis, just as the last time we were in Riga. A local couchsurfer girl had her birthday party tonight, so we visited there for a while and are now going to sleep..

We arrived to Warsaw a few hours ago, after surprisingly long and hot ride through Poland. 30-35C outside, and inside the car it gets really hot.

We are all really tired after staying at the campsite for days and not sleeping much at the festival, so after having a quick dinner its time to get to sleep..

Some pictures from Castle Party coming online later :)

Castle Party 2008 is over. Once again it was kinda sad to say good bye to all the friends and the festival. Until next year :)

Now we will start driving towards Warsaw and home, should be back in Finland at wednesday afternoon..

Kinda lazy day.. I was spending time near the tents until Laura woke up, and we went to have a dinner together. She was still feeling really bad due to her Polish breakfast, and went to sleep again after having some food. By the way, it was not the vodka, but some Italian limonade liqouer brought by our Italian friend Walther. Its tasting like limonade, but 28% and they had 2 liters of it.. no wonder.. poor Laura :p

After the dinner I have been walking around the castle with Walther, shooting some pictures etc.. Half an hour ago Laura was still feeling bad and sleeping when I went to get some new camera batteries etc from the tent :p

Yesterday was quite fun, until we noticec we had got burned by the sun quite badly while spending time on the swimming pool. The sunburns made me feel a bit bad and tired, so we ended up going to sleep early, around 8pm I guess.

Today Laura obviously tested a Polish breakfast with our local friends.. Vodka, cucumbers and bread is not the best possible breakfast for somebody not used to it, so she passed out around midday.. The Polish people are just happy and fine, so I guess it takes practice or something.. :p

Im being a bit bored, hanging around and waiting for Laura to get up.. The sunburns are getting better, but Im still trying to avoid being too much in the sun and covering myself with suncreme. I guess we are not leaving towards Warsaw and Finland today but tomorrow.

After the whiskey overdose given us by the Polish guys yesterday we went to the castle, got our tickets and some food. While the whiskey effect was wearing off, we started to feel quite bad because of the hangover, and didnt really feel like fixing it by drinking more..

We ended up going to rest for a while, and that turned out to be about three hours. A bit before midnight we woke up, hanging around next to the tents and going back to sleep. The night reminded me why its never a good idea to be sober at a festival.. Sleeping in a tent is not very comfortable, because its really cold and humid. Took me a few hours to get asleep..

Today we woke around 10, because the tent started feeling like a sauna. The weather is once again great, the sun is shining and its around 30 degrees. Trying again the same thing as yesterday, having a beer and relaxing by the swimming pool, this time without whiskey :)