green_amber

Get off coach. Two young women in unflattering garb are squabbling and swearing. Rude foreigners lunge for their luggage and run over my toes with their wheels. Where am I? Clearly not Finland any more..

Ring hotel for directions as did not manage to print off map. Am given them, wrongly, twice, by someone who clearly does not speak English but has pre-memorised a cheerfully regurgitated and unhelpful formula. Can I really be in hotel at £186 a night, where the "executive room " price does not only not include breakfast, but the promised dressing gown and slippers and cosmetics are all absent, the wi fi almost inaccessible, the swimming pool mouldy and dirty and the room clearly smells of old smoke? And a bowl of soup costs £7.25? Yep you guessed it - has to be London doesn't it?

OK, sour grapes, but it really was all a bit of a shock after 6 days of staying in lovely hotels (at less than half the price of this) staffed by perfect English speakers who cossetted and helped, surrounded by friendly polite good looking well educated people, who even on the return leg of a cheapo booze cruise from Estonia to a high alcohol tax society, did not shout, swear, fight, vomit or scream.

Why do we put up with this shit? (And now the TV is telling me how much booze is costing the NHS.Yes I know the Finns drink too. Indeed - it's why they're fun. So why do so many of them appear to be thin, healthy , fit and happy? I really noticed as soon as I got back the prevalence of fat unhealthy looking people. Not, I admit, only a London speciality..)

However it is true that Finland had more than its share of Goths and the heavy metal t-shirt and Linux brigade:-P No wonder it's fannish.(I wonder when/where next Finncon is? maybe I'll even go!)

Oh I had such a good time. My legs ache with walking. My knee is swollen, my luggage is bulging, my brain is exhausted and I've had the Best Time Evah. I love Finland, Finns, the weirdo language, the spirit of openness, the intelligent curiousity and the lack of stuffiness(the Dean of Faculty had a pony tail. Try that at Southampton. The Professor of Commercial Law leaned over in one session and said the whole faculty of law was in love with technology. Try THAT at any law school in the UK.)

It doesn't hurt that the whole of Finland seemed to like me too. People were lovely to me everywhere, from the guy in the kebab shop in Turku to the masseuse in Helsinki this morning who gave me her mobile number "just in case I wanted to ask any questions", to the taxi driver who turned out to be the only Jewish taxi driver in Helsinki and was off to study in Israel, and the academuic coincidentally next to me on the plane who also turned out to be researching in virtual worlds and gave me his card. As soon as i got back to London I stopped talking to random people, and they in turn looked surly and unhappy. I want to go back to Finland.

More written elsewhere I'll post later. (Yes in FINLAND I managed not to get the hotel wi fi network on my laptop for 3 days! pah! Ok even Helsinki Radisson City Centre isn't (quite) perfect.. Mysteriously I *could* get it fine on my Ipod Touch. (But I can't write more than a text coherently using the damn virtual keyboard.) Wassall that then then??)
..
I have blueberry vodka, cloudberry liqueur, free ice, and lingonberry jam and Finnish cheese. No rye bread tho , dammit! Some kind of cheering picnic may be in order? The salty liquorice is, however, All For Eeva. (Also I have an Estonian glass ring and a purple linen poncho thing and the Cutest Moomin Luggage Tag in the world - honestly, I'll have to photo it..)

Tallinn (Estonia) was superb if knackering and deserves a seperate post.

Best German Lesbian Pal tells me there's a chair going at` Helsinki :->

Notes:
No I am not paying for the hotel - BERR is. (Sorry Dave!)
I'm at a virtual worlds conf tomorrow which orobbaly means I can't even get to Chris Priest. Shame.

Anyone want to go see Dark Knight at the IMAX!!!!!