So this is it

Greetings from Iceland.

I arrived the day before yesterday at around five. The country was not being particulary inviting, wrapped inside a solid dark grey shroud of clouds, greeting me with the occasional shower. It had been a long day of traveling and my mood was swinging every two minutes from some kind of sadness of leaving to wild and bouncy enthusiasm you always experience in foreign places.

I will try to avoid the complaints about being tired in the future, but that is how I most of all felt on that dark Friday afternoon. Nonetheless, I found to my apartment rather easily. Speaking of which, the place I am staying is quite interesting. The landlord had apparently just recently acquired this half of a little, three-floor, around-ten-room apartment. It does not look especially glorious from outside, but the insides have just been renovated, so he is apparently creating a little guesthousey place for foreign students. Not much is working yet, for example we are missing a fridge in main kitchen, a washing machine and an internet connection. Everything ought to be up and running in a few days, which is completely fine by me. I was one of the first arrivals anyway. Seeing the place helped me lighten up a bit, I liked it instantly.

After that I braced myself and navigated the short, few minute walk down to Laugavegur. It was surprisingly narrow and quiet for a friday afternoon in one of the most essential roads in a capital city. Just a couple of steps over the one way road gets you to the other side.

Taking the same road again in light resulted in the same discovery enthusiasm as the night before. The sea and Esja could be seen from a distance, inviting to take a closer look. I just might do a pedestrian sightseeing tour tomorrow and arm myself with a camera.

I also tested myself and took the not-so-long-walk-either to the mall Kringlan on 30th of December. Naturally, it was crowded beyond belief. There is apparently enough Icelanders to jam a rather big shopping centre.

So far I have managed to deal with people with my strange and varied mix of English, Swedish and really poor Icelandic. People have said that Icelanders generally will start speaking to you instantly in English if they notice you are struggling with the local language. So far I have managed to complete all my grocery store conversations without people speaking to me in English, so I think I might blend in someday. I slowly learning the pronounciation, but understanding rapid fire Icelandic conversations seems like a distant dream. Well, I've got to start somewhere.

Icelanders have also started the firework shows days ago. They've been flying around very plentifully already, so I don't really yet know what to expect from tonight. I think I will hike to Perlan to be able to spectate it properly. I wish everyone a good 2007 wherever you might be spending it!

Nothing about much, much about nothing

Note to self: do not pretend to be an accountant in the future. Does not suit you, sir.

Besides that, leaving Vaasa turned out to be pretty easy. A few handshakes, a little fewer hugs, some promises to be well and see again sometime, some respective "happy travels" to people going somewhere too. About 30 seconds after the last bye-byes I walked into a mall, where the loudspeakers were blasting Verve's Bittersweet Symphony. Nice timing, Verve. I smiled and felt very warm for the rest of the day. No ideas why, I don't normally even like that song all that much. It just fit the moment.

My Christmas formalities were spent at mom's. Just having some of the traditional foods, which I haven't really liked in years, and lying on the couch. Nice, and helped me forget the accounting hell. She finally seemed to get over the thought of me being away for half a year, if not longer. She spoke quite similarly a couple of years away when I moved away from home, so I suppose it shouldn't be too hard anymore. She's always been of the overprotective, overworrying kind, but I think she'll cope. It not like it should be a surprise to any parents that one day the children are bound to fly away from the nest.

Right now I'm located in Helsinki at dad's. Time to fill out the last forms and do evaluations about things I've surely forgotten. It shouldn't be much, but I don't really trust my ability to move. If I hadn't forgotten something, I wouldn't be me. I've got a worrying overload of stuff going with me, but luckily dad's gonna visit at some point. That, or more specifically his luggage quota, gives me an opportunity to swap my accessories from wintery to summery, so I don't need to take all the things eventually back myself. Still I don't like looking at that pile o' stuff. There's quite a lot of it, but taking anything away would seem like too big a sacrifice.

Although, having some idea about what everything costs in Iceland, I think I'll just try to negotiate my way through the luggage overload and pay if I have to.

But now it's about time to have a little whiskey, try to sleep a little, wake up early in the morning and drift along, whatever that may mean.

Goodbye Finland. I'll miss you, but now I have to prove I could live without.

Echo breaks

It is just exhausting. Physically, mentally, often both. I packed nearly everything my modest apartment (well, just a room) contained into very trustworthy Danish cardboard boxes which have been around for nearly twenty years. Those are relics from times when my folks were moving around Scandinavia because of dad's job assignments. I tell you, those Danes know how to make a cardboard box. They take around four seconds to assemble from their thin, room saving appearance to their full fledged, sturdy-as-a-tank-with-impressive-storage-capacity glory.

So those excellent Danish cardboard boxes were manhandled into a rented trailer and hauled across Finland to be stored. I just wasn't able to find a good and affordable storage for the stuff from Vaasa, so my belongings switched from West Side to East Side over a weekend. I didn't want to pay extra rent for my exchange period, and I didn't really want to eventually return to this very apartment either. Knowing that Iceland will stretch my financial ability quite a lot, I refused to stretch it even further by paying for a place where I'm not living and I wouldn't want to either.

But it was exhausting. I do a terrible job at moving. I hadn't even really started when dad arrived, so everything had to be packed and disassembled together. I wasn't really enjoying it, especially getting to witness how lazy a cleaner I can be at times. I don't know which made me feel more guilty, the fact that dad saw how I hadn't properly even started the process beforehand and had to help, or the fact that I found lots and lots of spots in my room where I should've cleaned regularly. It was something like the mental version of the feeling you get after excercising yourself harder than you should, when you find new aching muscles in places you didn't know of.

All I have now left in this room is me, a laptop, a borrowed matress, a little clothes, a carpet which I forgot to pack, a lot of paperwork, some dust gatherings and a few memories. It's quite interesting to notice how similarly I've spent this day, compared to when I had this room fully furnished. What do I need that trailerful of stuff actually for? I can sleep here, use the computer, eat, perform certain bodily functions and read in a non-furnished room just as well. Still I know I'm putting everything out again when I move back somewhere, but at least I'm one step closer to realizing why askesis has been practiced.

I've also managed to get pretty far without any overly emotional bye-byes, whether that's a good thing or not. In fact a couple of those would've probably meaned that the distant return might've been easier. I think it's a nice feeling to miss, to know that there are certain people, certain moments and certain things you'll be longing for.

Another good feeling is knowing that most work for your future move is now done, and there are fairly little things to do anymore than kicking back, relaxing and enjoying the ride, whatever might come across. I also made the decision of taking a little less used route from Helsinki to Reykjavik, so instead of Copenhagen I'll go via Oslo. My previous experience with Oslo airport was somewhat memorable, so it's fun to see if the Norwegians can put up a show this time around too.

When I last was there, maybe five or six years ago, their new airport had just opened a couple of days earlier. When we got off the plane, we discovered that parts of the terminal floor were made of glass slices, dimensions perhaps something like 20x150cm. They were arranged in patterns, so that there was nearly as much glass as the more solid looking floor. A Japanese businessman before us apparently didn't apparently see glass as a viable floor material, so he didn't step on them. The resulted step dancing was something between penguins wobbling forward and Fred Astaire high on life and substances that would be deemed illegal in most countries. But he avoided all the glass.

The baggage claim area was also full of surprises, as it was literally flooding. Apparently the opening of the new airport wasn't going as smooth as people were hoping for. Thankfully several friendly Norwegian officials were instructing us to the parts of baggage claim where you didn't need a kayak to move in.

It is a funny thing. In ten days I'll complete one circle in my life. I've got no clue what life in Iceland will bring, but I know I'm motivated to make the most of it. And from what I hear, it ought to be quite a show on New Year's Eve!

Yes, I'm ready to jump

One of my English language teachers in college is American.

I happened to be in class when she told someone how she hates the Finnish usual habit of starting a presentation apologetically if we're not completely satisfied with what we'll be telling about. Instead of starting to dig your own hole right away, you should let the audience do judging afterwards. I kind of see what she was getting to, but I still can't avoid the said mistake. I'll begin with an apology.

I'm used to thinking that I'm a terrible writer. I study communications, so while that's not really a career wrecking prejudice, it has certainly had an effect on what I've thought I might want to do when I grow up. It's the usual thing of being extremely harsh and critical towards your own text. I like writing, I'm just not confident with presenting it to anyone else. However, I'm not going to write much longer about how this is my first attempt at blogging and how I feel about it. That is not relevant. After all this isn't really a blog for the sake of me having to have a blog. Instead I've created this because I'm in the middle of some of the most tremendous changes I've ever experienced in my life, and who knows, maybe even in my personality and how I deal with everything. A major part of it are my forthcoming move to Iceland to study some, live some and maybe even work some. That is not all though. I will also issue a thankful greeting.

Certain events a few weeks ago left me mulling over some rather fundamental things I discovered I've for too long unconsciously ignored. What I value the most in life, why I'm not usually happy with it, is this melancholy a prominent feature in me or rather something else? A cry for help or a way to cover my ears and eyes from the things I don't want to deal with?

By a rather fortunate accident I stumbled upon words which briefly, in just a couple of lines, instantly clarified all the countless thoughts I had been creating and following through during a long weekend. I don't know how similar the author's situation in life was with mine when she wrote those. Still I instantly thought that she had put down exactly what I had been trying to chase, putting my immense pile of sprawling thoughts to an order and making me see what I had been doing wrong. It was so obvious I couldn't see it. The following is a blocky free translation from her blog.

At the same time I know that if I spent another year like these in here I would fade away. I could do it, spinning around in the same circle of dreams over and over again. The same disappointments, same hopes, same glimpses of light, same blows, same catches, varied survival strategies. I could always cope and stay alive. But in the end the autopilot and the sparing flame are nothing. There has to be happiness and rhythm and endless motion, good feeling, blazing flames, peace in mind and trust in heart. Those are after all the best features in A, and you have no idea how much I want to have that girl back.

This is what made me able to relate. For me the case isn't maybe quite the same as I never really was more impulsive and less catatonic than I am now. After reading that passage I knew I was doing something wrong. It's not like never felt moments of happiness before. I just didn't know how to hold onto them, embrace and nurture them to make them bigger and more overwhelming. Now I have a better idea. There's been a shift towards a more open, curious, spontaneous and smiling me. I don't want to be the boy who looks at his shoes when he walks the streets, closing his eyes from the good and the bad, instead of just wanting to get the smoothest possible ride to the next day. I want to be the boy who can jump headfirst into a pile of beautifully autumn colored maple leaves without thinking that what the random spectators might think. I want to rediscover the flimsy keyboard playing skills I lost sometime during the teenage years. I want to find out seizing the day truly means. I want to feel again, something, anything, positive or negative. Everything is better than the void. And I want to thank Annukka for the words which made me discover how terrible job I was doing with living. I will start by believing that the sparks will become flames, and the flames will eventually become fires.

I've since felt different. I will no longer live my own life vicariously, I refuse to be a spectator of it. This hopefully explains how I named the blog. I'm slowly but steadily drifting away from the vicarious thoughts. I also think that this blog won't focus too heavily on the city of Reykjavík. That's two things that aren't really telling anything about what I may write here, but I must liked the wordplay too much to ditch it.

A couple of years back, around when I first started concidering an exchange period, I at first thought I'd better go to a natively English speaking country. Looking back, I can't really understand where that thought came from. I'm rather good with languages (well, compared to my math skills at least) and I've never been afraid of travelling. Now I have roughly six weeks to go before embarking on what I hope will be the greatest adventure of my life. Today I couldn't be happier that I dared to apply to the country which has most fascinated me as long as I can remember. I'm even happier that I got accepted, and I also might even have some interesting travel company to go with.

Today I finally received the acceptance letter from Háskóli Íslands and the accompanying bundle of Other Stuff. That Other Stuff was surprisingly little though, consisting mostly of a map showing among all else all the locations of Esso stations in Iceland. Joy!

Today I also ran around the town like a madman from one bureaucracy to another while trying to figure out what kind of social security I'm entitled to when living abroad, how I can renew my Visa Electron before leaving, what kind of insurances do I need or do I need them at all and so forth. If some people earn their living by designing others' weddings, why can't there be professionals who took care of all the dirty paperwork for a fatigued student? Or if there is, why isn't it available for those with a small income?

Right now I feel like I can't write about Iceland much. My ideas and dreams of it are probably pretty similar to anyone elses. I know that in some occasions I'll be happy to see that those previous thoughts were rather correct, in some occasions I'll be surprised and in some I'll be disappointed. I won't be unrealistic but I still have faith that if any enviroment can help me complete this personal change that is currently in motion, it is the land of fire and ice. I'm not afraid of what I'll face but I'm afraid to stay as the queen of pop sings in that newest video of hers.

Or, "Are you ready to jump / get ready to jump / don't ever look back oh baby / yes I'm ready to jump / just take my hands / get ready to jump." It might just be because of all what I'm going through and dreaming at the moment, but that song moves me today.

And ain't I just in the middle of realizing that's exactly what matters the most in this life?

Damnit boy, stop thinking and enjoy that movement!