30/10/09 - ...or an Underwater Hairdryer

Once again I find myself in the incredible position of missing British drivers. I arrived in Peru without any mishaps and found the drivers are just as dire as in Ecuador. They may as well duct tape their horn buttons down.

On the way to the hotel we stopped at a set of lights where a somewhat surreal event occured. A man wearing a helmet and carrying a hula-hoop walked out onto the pedestrian crossing, span on his head for half a minute before bowing and walking away. I'm going to assume that he is a typical Peruvian.

At the hotel I found my room was nice enough save for the single glazed window, which considering the incredible enthusiasm with which these people hit their horns, has as much merit as a pedal-powered wheelchair. It is at times like these that I'm glad I have ear plugs with me.

In the evening I went for dinner in the bar where I meet an Austrlian couple who have just finished a tour and two Peruvians who work in the tourist industry. As it turns out I turned up on the last day of a fiesta celebrating Lima so we went out to the Plaza de Armas where there was a concert going on. We were three white people among a sea of Peruvians and I find myself in the strange position of being among the tallest people in the country. This was useful in seeing the boyband that was on stage. Apparently they are poplular here as everyone knew the words. I wasn't particularly impressed with the music but being in the beautiful plaza with thousands upon thousands of people made up for it. It was recommended that I not take my camera with me but at this point I wish I had.

My only negative comment about the concert is that the Peruvians don't seem to know some of the standard concert actions such as swaying lighters for slow songs, jumping up and down like a crazed person and whistling, all of which Michael, the Australian guy who was at this point somewhat inebriated, failed to teach them despite his best efforts. He can really whistle though. That hurt. Needless to say his actions managed to clear us a considerable space to stand in. Cesar, the Peruvian man we met, was much amused by his actions.

From now on I'm not sure how often I'll have access to the internet so my blog entries for the next month will probably come in clumps and at random times. Sorry about that.

25/10/09 - TeleferiQo

This morning I met Kim from New Zealand and Sandra from Germany. There is a lift called the TeleferiQo that carries you from Quito up the East side of the Pichincha Volcano so that you can climb to it's peak. This lift has been off for a while now so Kim and Sandra had decided to climb it instead. Seeing as I had a day off from Spanish I decided to join them. After all, it was only a four and half thousand foot climb... Incredibly this only started to seem like a bad plan when Kim revealed that she skied constantly and Sandra mentioned that she studied sports at university. I regard myself as fit but come on...

We got a taxi to the entrance of the TeleferiQo where we were told that we weren't allowed to climb up that way for some reason unknown by mortal man. This is where our taxi driver turned out to be really cool as after arguing with the lady at the booth for a while took us to a nearby village where we could get to it for no additional cost and managed to get the security guard stationed there to let us past. The beginning or our climb, therefore, began in a small village on a steep hill. The locals were very friendly. They weren't used to seeing foreigners. There is definitely an inverse relationship between how much people like tourists and how many they see.

After we left the village behind and wandered through some forest tracks (all alarmingly vertical) we came to the road that goes under the TeleferiQo and crawled under the wire fence to gain access. In your face booth lady person.

After following this road for a while we came to where it ended and the small tracks began and off we went. Have I mentioned how vertical these tracks were starting to get? About an hour from the top my lungs were burning and my heart was racing. Thankfully we found a 55 year old Brazillian climbing the mountain too so I altruistically volunteered to move at his pace. Eventually he turned back because he was getting dizzy from the thinner air and I was left to complete the now ridiculously vertical remaining part of the trek alone. Seriously, I was climbing at some points.

By the time I reached the top my lungs were fine but my legs burned like a thousand suns. I used what little Spanish I knew to find out where the girls were and went off to find them. Most the photos I'm posting are from the top. I'd like to show you my collection steadily climbing the mountain to show that this thing really is quite big but the upload speed constraints prevent me from doing so.

After eating the snacks we brought we began the descent. Y'know what direction is awesome? Down. Down is completely awesome. I could have run it save for the bits where we basically slid our way. Going down made us wonder how we got up at some places. Anyway, it took us four hours to climb it and only one hour to get down.

We chose to leave by passing the lady in the booth rather than going back through the village. Hah.

24/10/09 - BBQ

Today I noticed how easy it is to meet people while travelling. You can go up to any random traveler and introduce yourself and you're off. You don't even seem insane. This is especially noticeable at dinner in the hostel. Tonight was a BBQ and I found myself surrounded by a Spaniard called Enrique, an Australian called Harley, a German called Dored, a Swiss called Patrick (from my sample of two I've come to the conclusion that all males from Switzerland are called Patrick) and a Swede called Gustav. Enrique was surprised by the fact that in this hostel at least everyone speaks English rather than Spanish. It is a good intermediary language but I feel really lazy when considering that Harley and I were the only ones who couldn't speak several languages.

That is all.

21/10/09 - A Small Guitar

I've booked Spanish lessons now so I'll be doing four hours a day, except Sunday, until I leave. This means that once again I wont be posting many blog entries unless something interesting happens.

Of note today was meeting the first Scot of my trip. His name is Ally and he is from Edinburgh. It seems odd to me that I've met so many English and Irish people but so few Scots. Clearly more of us need to go travelling.

I didn't do very much today because of a fairly epic thunderstorm, but dinner was good. I would never have though of putting blackberry sauce on pork fillets but it was delicious.

After dinner an Andean band came to play on the terrace. One of them had what must be the worlds smallest guitar. I imagine it has a name but I don't know what it is. Regardless, it had 10 strings and the guy was absolutely going for it. Very entertaining to watch. The music was good too.

20/10/09 - Lonesome George

We were woken earlier than usual today so I managed to get some shots of the sunrise in the harbour from the deck of our boat. I don't think I've used that sentence before.

The idea was to go to the science centre to see the giant tortoises before those of us who were leaving had to rush off to the airport. Having not managed to get any decent shots of turtles I was pleased to get the opportunity to photograph tortoises instead.

We got to the centre using pickup truck taxis and I experienced riding in the back of one for the first time.

At the centre we saw lot of giant tortoises but only managed to see the most famous one, Lonesome George, from a distance. He was found alone on an island and was brought to the centre for breeding purposes being the last of a particular subspecies of tortoise in the world. His subspecies will probably go extinct, however, as he basically refuses to get it on with any other tortoises. Apparently when the females are in heat you can watch them chase George around his enclosure. That must be a chase scene on par with watching sea lions chase each other on land.

As you can clearly tell by the look in his eyes, this guy is the complete opposite of George. He does the chasing.

Visitors to the centre are allowed to get very close to some of the tortoises, and as a result they have become so used to humans they actually pose for photographs.

After having a look around five of us set off to the airport to fly back to Quito. At the airport, which is a very small affair, we met another woman who had been travelling on the Flamingo and she was amazed at how calm we all were in the boarding time as we were quite happily sitting in the cafe eating apple pie. This is the first time I've ever had a last call for boarding a plane. Of course boarding it did consist of walking around the corner. This trip has had a lot of firsts.

19/10/2009 - Post Office at the End of the World

We were told that we would be visiting a post office on Floreana. It wasn't exactly what we expected. This is how messages were sent when they islands were originally being used by whalers, pirates and so on. It relies on whomever visits taking the mail that is addressed to where they are going. I have a couple for Scotland to deliver when I get home so I hope the people don't mind a fairly epic wait.

Further along the island we went into the cave that an English sailor, who was not a particularly good sailor as it turned out, used when he was abandoned on the island. He survived for five years here and spent most of it drunk. He traded the vegetables he grew for what he needed which was mostly alcohol.

We then went to the other side of the island and we were able to see flamingos. Apparently we were fortunate in coming during this time of the year because at all other times they don't live here and we wouldn't have seen any. For the photos of the flamingos I had to test just how effective my camera's digital zoom was. At the 32 times zoom the picture still seems to hold up pretty well.

After lunch we went snorkelling for the last time and my pictures are finally decent. I've posted one of a brightly coloured fish below.

In the evening we had another long but much calmer journey back to Santa Cruz.

18/10/2009 - Taki

Today we awoke at the island called Espanola. We saw more different species here than on any of the other islands and I have loads of photos of which you'll see three. Sorry about that.

The first is a shot of a blue footed boobie looking after its two young. When food is plentiful they will raise both of their offspring, but if it is scarce then the older one is left to die. This time around, however, both should survive.

This next shot is one of the seemingly endless pictures of sea lions I have amassed. I chose this one because it captures just how sorted they seem to have thei lives. They spend the vast majority of their time sunbathing if everytime we showed up is any indication. Of course they might just assume this pose to mock us everytime tourists arrive on the island... Even when they are in the water they look like they are enjoying themselves. When I went snorkelling later on one seemed to take great pleasure in shooting underneath me at high speed. It must be fun to move that quickly in water.

The last photograph for the moment is what I think is a nice shot of a pelican doing not much.


After the island trip and lunch we went to a long stretch of beach which is available for use by tourists. We spent several hours looking around and swimming while also sunbathing alongside what was upwards of 100 sea lions when I counted. Seriously, this seems to be their primary reason to exist. Eat to sunbathe.

After a few hours we saw one of the bigger cruise boats arrive and then deploy dingy after dingy of people which headed towards the beach which was about the time we decided to leave.

In the evening more travelling was done but the water (initially) wasn't as choppy as last night so we played some games. The first was a clapping game Patrick showed us which was a remarkable amount of fun.

You sit in a ring around a table with your hands in front of you. You then put your right hand over the left arm of the person to your right. Next the first player claps the table with one hand. If he claps once the next hand in line has to clap and so on. Two claps reverses direction, and three claps skips a hand. If you miss a clap or clap when you aren't meant to that hand is out. Last hand remaining is the winner. This sounds simple but because your hands are all scrambled and it moves quickly you get mixed up.

After this we played a card game brought by Amir called Taki. When I pointed out that it was just Uno he responded with, "No, it is Taki". Regardless of how many people turned up and said we were playing Uno he responded in this way. It seemed important to him that it was an Israeli game. Joy asked if on the last card we have to say, "Taki". "We say 'last card' but say what you want". I was amused.

Our evening ended when the water got rougher and all of us who were on chairs rather than the benches at the side were hurled unceremoniously about the room.

17/10/09 - Rough Seas

I slept well and awoke to more good food. The island Santa Fe was today's destination so we set out to travel there after a look around another part of Santa Cruz. The weather was good (glorious by my standards) so most of us were sprawled or seated somewhere on the deck.

By some unknown logical process, Joe had decided that the best place to lie on a boat moving quickly over rough seas was underneath the massive bunch of bananas. When the first fell and hit him in the crotch I thought he would move but he apparently thought this was a fluke. Ten minutes later when another two fell simultaneously he decided that perhaps he should move and came to sit next to me. I was just finished thinking that clearly there are only so many bananas to the groin one man is willing to take when a frigatebird, a group of which was flying with the boat, crapped all over him. He took this remarkably well despite the fact the rest of us were pissing ourselves with laughter and went off for a shower

I think this is a reasonable enough bridge to tell you about frigatebirds. They are black coloured birds that are unable to land on water because their feathers are not covered in oil, so to survive they steal from other birds by grabbing onto their tails to try and make them regurgitate their food. Delightful. The males have a red pouch on their fronts that they inflate in what I consider an amusing fashion but the female frigatebirds find attractive.

Once we reached Santa Fe we went for a walk along a rocky path and passed many, many more animals, including this baby sea lion.

At this point I'll mention that I'm amazed by how completely unbothered all the species on the Galapagos are by humans. The Galapagos Hawk is the only real predator on the islands so most species have no defence against, well, anything really. This is how the birds the blue footed boobies came to be named. The name indicates stupidity because they wouldn't flee, so people could just walk up and grab them (the name also spawned a large number of fairly obvious merchandising opportunities).

Afterwards we went snorkelling and I'm getting a bit better. The picture below is not actually of me posing, rather I had just shoved my arms up to keep me underwater. Honest.

In the evening once we had eaten we set out on a very rough journey to the next island that took six hours. There was much feeling terrible all around and most of us came to the conclusion that lying down and not moving helped immensely so we were again spread all over the boat. Before going to bed I talked to Amir for a while and learned a bit about Israel. At the age of 18 for three years if you are male and two if you are female everyone has to perform compulsary military service. After this most people go travelling to "clear their heads" as he put it. He also mentioned that the country is very beautiful with many different environments, and that, while not at war, it is one of the safest countries to be in.

16/10/09 - I'm on a Boat

After getting up at 4am and trying to gather my things together by the light of my phone so as not to wake anyone (next time I'll remember to leave my headtorch out) I headed downstairs to get the Carpedm car to the airport. Here I met Joy, a woman from Holland who as it turned out was doing the same tour as me on the same boat, the Flamingo.

When we got to the airport the driver, Ivan, took a picture of us standing in front of his car which I imagine will be added to the wall in the Carpedm shop. There are hundreds of pictures of the travellers who took his car all over the wall.

Even though the flight to the Galapagos Islands was in two parts it didn't take very long so we arrived some time before noon. At the airport we met up with our tourguide Marcos as well as three other people who were doing the same tour; Joe from Australia, and Sera and Jessica from Colorado. A short bus jouney later we arrived at the docks where we were greeted by a group of sea lions.
As you can tell from the photograph they were ecstatic to see us.

On the Flamingo we met the five other poeple who were doing the tour with us. Patrick and Sandy from Switzerland, and Amir, Omri and Doron from Israel. The accomodation was two to a cabin with an en suite bathroom and I ended up staying with Doron. The image below is from the deck and from left to right there is Joe, Jessica (behind the pillar) and Sera.

Once we had unpacked we ate lunch which turned out to be excellent. My expectations of the food I'd be eating as a backpacker have turned out to be completely wrong so far. I've yet to have a meal that wasn't good (except for those on the planes).

After lunch we were shown around the first island of our tour called Santa Cruz. There are a lot of different animals and birds around the islands and I shall try to go into some detail about a few of them later on but for now here is an image of a land iguana.

Snorkelling came after the island and it is harder than expected in choppy water so it'll take some time for me to get used to it. My hope is to be competent at taking underwater pictures by the end as opposed to being competent (incredibly so I might add) at inhaling salt water.

In the evening we went out to the town for a while and we got to experience a boat ride in complete darkness. The view of the stars was amazing. I've never seen them so clearly before. I could get used to this.

15/10/09 - Change of Plan

I was awoken at 2am today because someone who will remain unnamed sent me a text apparently failing to recall that I was 5 hours behind...

Once I got up and had breakfast I went to the Carpedm tour operator in the hostel to find out when a decently priced Galapagos tour was available. As it turns out that would be now, so I'm off tomorrow. My initial plan had been to learn some Spanish first but I was assured that the tour guides speak English so I'll learn when I get back. I'll leave it to your deductive reasoning what time I have to get up at tomorrow for my flight. Booking this at the last minute has had the minor problem of me running into all my daily withdrawal limits so I'm spreading the cost across all the cards I have. Fun times.

In the afternoon I went for a walk up what seemed like a nearly endless flight of stairs. There was a cafe at the top caled Mosaico which, though fairly expensive, had a stunning view of the city, even better than the view from the hostel.

Despite the fact that the Wi-fi here is free it is quite slow so I wont be posting very many pictures for a while, I'll try to get them up at some point. Also, I wont be updating the blog until I get back in 5 days time.

14/10/09 - A Long Journey Continued...

Up at 4am again (could they not arrange flights at more sensible times?) to get the bus to the airport. The first flight went entirely without incident, but my cunning plan of sleeping during the 2nd 11hour long flight was for naught. I was seated next to a woman called Anna and her 1 year old son Gabrielle.

We established quickly that she spoke only French and Spanish with very limited English so I started to pull upon my French reserves from 7 years ago. Of course, all that I could initially think of was "Je voudrais vous donner mon opinion sur les vetements" (please excuse any spelling errors here). Stupid bloody French lessons. Eventually some useful phrases came back to me and we could communicate a little.

She was a pleasant woman and Gabrielle was as charming as 1 year old can be. It was only one piece of bread he hurled at me and he only nearly spilled that drink over my trousers, and I'm sure finding great interest in the buttons of my shirt after having drooled thoroughly over his hands was a sign of affection. It wasn't really so bad, but it was not restful.

We arrived in Quito on time and I immediately noted how much it must suck to live in the houses which are right next to the runway. The next thing of note was that the drivers in Ecuador appear to have learned only one thing in their lessons. The emergency stop.

It is insane. Indicating is for lesser beings, hence the need for the emergency stop. They just go for it horns blaring and to hell with whoever else happens to be there. This seems even more ridiculous when the vehicle next to me in the car park was a truck with a wooden box on the back filled with garden chairs that a family seemed to have occupied.

I arrived at The Secret Garden alive, though, and it is a nice place. I got my room, met the people I was sharing with and then went to the roof for some food. My camera completely fails to capture how spectacular the view is from up there, but I'll post a photo anyway.

13/10/09 - A Long Journey

Once again I was up at 4am to get my flight back to London. Tuomo was awesome in that he also got up at 4am to take me to the airport before going to work. I'm very thankful for this because if I thought the price of public transport or parking was bad, the cost of taxis stunned me. It would have cost me 66 euros to get to the ariport by taxi which at this point is essentially £66. Finland is a realy beautiful country but they seem to been doing their damnest to ensure that noone can see it.

The flight was eary which was good but the food during the flight was dire. I asked for the bacon roll but they managed to get this mixed up with some cream cheese/apricot abomination which I failed to notice until I took a bite.

When I arrived in Heathrow I followed the sign for hotel reservations which led me outside to the bus stops perplexingly enough so I asked the first driver I found if he knew where I should have gone. It turns out the signs didn't go in remotely the right direction. They must have changed the layout recently.

At the hotel desk I must have looked wealthy because without batting and eyelid the guy told me that it costs £350 and up to stay the night at the airport hotels. After colecting my jaw from the floor I managed to find a more reasonably priced room at a mere £113 a bit further from the airport. The room was nice but all I wanted was a place to sleep...

11/10/09 - Munchkin

Today Tuomo, Antti and I went bowling. This something else I haven't done in years and it took me a while to get the hang of it again. Antti was in the same boat so Tuomo decimated us in the first game but in the second he only beat me by two points to win. Meeting Annti again has allowed me to confrim that in dress and mannerisms he is in fact the Finnish version of Ross.

Afterwards we went back to Tuomo's house and had lunch. It was again delicious and I am at this point certain that Tuomo doesn't count it as food if it doesn't have chillis in it. All the meals I've eaten here have been spicey to some degree, ranging from moderately spicey to "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" at one point.

We then spent some of the evening playing Munchkin again, just the Cthulhu version this time, and I took some photographs to give an idea of what it is like. If you click on the images you should be able to read any small print.


Great fun.

When Antti went home I had what will be my last sauna of my stay and, going second this time, it was at 110 degrees celcius. Not a problem.

10/10/09 - Finland

Today Tuomo and Anni were out for most of the day at a friend's child's baptism. Seeing as the weather has improved again I went for a walk around Kirkkonummi, the municipality where they live. From the picture you can begin to see what I mean by having forrests all around the houses.

I thought I'd also take some time to mention some of the notable (although I guess minor) differences in Finland from Scotland.

In Finland all signs and writing on packaging is written in both Finnish and Swedish (during the war they had Russian as well) making them very intimidating to someone who can understand neither.

Locks on doors all turn the opposite way to those back home so I spent the first couple of days here looking like a complete tool every time I tried to go through a door. They also always have double doors leading outside to help prevent losing heat when it is cold (October to February).

Houses don't have a standard design here. A few close by can be built in a similar fashion but in general all the houses look very different and have completely different room plans. I haven't been in two houses with the same layout.

New houses, including Tuomo and Anni's, don't have landlines, instead everyone uses their mobiles.

This next one is not exclusive to Finland but seeing as we don't have this in my house I thought I'd mention it;

Heated. Tile.Flooring.

The difference made when going into a tiled bathroom on a cold morning and having the floor warmer than your feet is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Back home going from the sanctuary of a warm bed to a freezing floor, then from the sanctuary of a warm shower to a freezing floor is one of the worst things about winter...

Moving swiftly onwards.

Salmiakki. This is liquorice with ammonium chloride added to give a spicey flavour. I personally can't stand the stuff but everyone here seems to love it. They can't get enough of it. The picture below is just what I found lying around the kitchen. This is their national sweet. The box in the middle says "Sisu" using old stlye capital and lower case versions of the letter "s".

5/10/09 - Back to Normal

The weather has finally turned and it is now wet, cold and dark. I feel right at home. Combined with the fact that Tuomo and Anni are back at work now my exploration of Finland will have to be put on hold.

This doesn't mean I'll be bored, however, as I have access to the internet, the stuff I brought with me on my netbook and this wall. The majority of it is in English and interests me so it could theoretically last weeks. I've also begun to learn Spanish in preparation for South America. I imagine I'll regret saying this but compared to learning Japanese, Spanish looks like it will be relatively easy.

Seeing as I came to Finland to meet Antti and Tuomo I'm not particularly bothered about being stuck indoors, but I'm aware that me reading books and learning Spanish is not exactly the material required to write epic sagas so I wont be posting again until something of note happens which with the weather forecast might be several days.

4/10/09 - Lazy Day

Seeing as we were up until a silly time in the morning we had a lazy day so I've not much to write about. In the evening we had more good cooking for dinner and then muffins were made. If I ever learned to bake I'd end up the size of a small moon.

I'm getting used to the sauna now. Note that it is pronounced "sowna". Pronouncing it the way we do serves only to amuse them.

3/10/09 - Pulla

To begin with I shall explain what pulla is. You mix milk, egg, butter and flour until it forms a paste that no longer sticks to your fingers, then you leave it for an hour. Next roll the mix out and sprinkle chocolate and sugar over it before rolling it into a tube and cutting it up (at this point the desire to eat some becomes overwhelming so you eat the end bits). Finally glaze the pieces using egg and put them in the oven.

I thought they had made an excessive amount (not that I was about to complain) but it turns out that when you make pulla inexplicably large numbers of people appear at your door and take some. Who knew?

I'd describe the taste as similar to a hot cross bun but with chocolate throughout it. It was delicious and I was in very real danger or eating it all. Thankfully it is just as popular with everyone else so I was saved from that particular "problem".

When Tuomo and Anni's friends turned up pizza was also made and the consumption of vast amounts of food began.

(Left) a picture of Anni.

We spent some of the time playing a card game called Munchkin which was mixed with an expansion deck Munchkin Cthulhu. This game is hilarious (at least it is to those who know the material it is a parody of: D&D and Arkham Horror respectively). One of my favourite cards, and one which conveys the flavour of the game quite well, was the Cross Bow. This consisted of a bow with an angry face. As you may have guessed Munchkin is a silly game.

(Right) a picture of Tuomo who seems to instinctively strike this pose when being photographed, regardless of what he is doing at the time.

2/10/09 - Super Pancake

Today we went shopping in preparation for Saturday when some of Tuomo and Anni's friends are coming over. Tuomo and Anni will be making Pulla I've never had this of course so I've no idea what it tastes like.

Afterwards we headed out to a mansion called Hvitträsk. Before we got there I came to the conclusion that the Finns have been lying about their weather in autumn to keep people out. It was once again a glorious day.


The mansion was designed by three Finnish architects for they and their families to live in at the beginning of the 20th century. It turned out to be yet another beautiful buildling (I'm going to have to start using other adjectives to describe them). They seem to have a theme going on here.


Later on we went for a walk through the local forrest. It is great having this much space to explore. It is a little too late in the year now, but earlier many people pick mushrooms and berries which grow around here in vast quantities. There are large boulders strewn about and, before ice ages were understood, it was believed (naturally) that mean spirited ogres threw them when they were angry and that is how they came to be in such random locations. The one below was very easy to climb from the other side so we took some photos.


When we got back Tuomo (he is turning out to be a good cook) made what he calls a super pancake. It is essentially just a pancake but made in an entire baking tray rather than in a pan. Apparently what we call pancakes is called something else in Finland.

1/10/09 - Helsinki 2

Tuomo continued my tour of Helsinki today. Seeing as I had mentioned that I hadn't been on a tram in a very long time (if ever, I can't recall if I have...) we used that as our main mode of transportation once we had parked in the city. We stopped at the National History Museum which apparently gets less tourists than it would like because the building looks like a church which scares them off. Kirkkonummi has apparently been populated for 10000 years which I find somewhat impressive.

There were exhibits based on prehistory, "The Realm" (when Christianity turned up), the enlightened period and on treasure which was just about Finland's currency. The section on the 20th century wasn't open yet which is a shame because I would be interested in learning more about the Winter War. For those of you who don't know about it, this motivational poster sums it up.


After the museum we went to see an unusual church. It is built into rocks and has a circular ceiling with glass panels which makes it look somewhat like a crashed UFO. Inside there was man playing the piano. The music wasn't religious in nature and it was very pleasant making it possibly the first time I've ever enjoyed being in a church.

Afterwards we wandered the city for a while longer before headed back to Tuomo's place. We were both stunned by the cost parking for the day had built up to. And I thought the cost of public transport had been bad...

In the evening we rented the Dark Knight because neither Tuomo nor Anni had seen it. Anni liked it but said it was too long. Tuomo also enjoyed it but spent most of the film wondering if the bat voice Christian Bale used was the same as the one in Batman Begins. It isn't and I have no idea what he was thinking when he chose this or why noone called him on it. I hope he changes it for the next one.

30/9/09 - Aku Ankka

Aku Ankka is what they call Donald Duck in Finland, and here he is a big deal. For about 50 years comics about him have been coming out, and yearly annuals are collected in the same way some of us in Scotland collect the Broons or Oor Wullie. It was only at the checkout of the supermarket we went to that I realised how differently we regarded him, however. I'd never imagined seeing Donald Duck with a gun.

As for the supermarket, it was pretty much the same as what we have over here.

For most of the day Tuomo and I went for a walk to the coastal area south of where he lives. Seeing as there was the possibilty of running into an apparently annoying type of fly we were completely geared up to repel them including wearing ridiculous netted jackets. As it turned out the cold must have killed all the flies as we ran into none of them. I'm glad we realised this before anyone saw us. With the jackets off I could see much better. We didn't stay too long at the coast because it was bloody freezing, but we were there long enough to confirm that Finland seems to lack sand beaches.

In the evening we watched a film called Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. It is a Finnish film created by amateurs over about 6 years and is a parody of Star Trek and Babalon 5. I'm not entirely sure if it is legal to use all of those ships, but if you ever wanted to see the ships from both series in a massive battle against each other you should check it out. It has quite a few funny moments, one on my favourite being Mr Dwarf's line, "I guess it is a passable day to die." What Tuomo seemed to find most amusing about the film was how toned down the swearing was in the english subtitles as opposed to what was being said in Finish.