So it's now come down to this. I'll be out of the Icelandic soil in eight hours (and less when I'm actually completing this), some two months earlier than originally planned. I do not mourn, as I feel happy to go home, but at the same time I'm feeling a certain amount of mist in my eyes, reflecting to all what this half a year has given to me and taken from me. I will not delve into that as I'm not yet sure I can see it all, probably won't until some time later.
There are a lot of things I wanted to see and do here, but I never either had the time, motivation, or ultimately money to. Yet, I am not feeling disappointed. Of course the past six months didn't turn out quite like I would've thought beforehand, but that's just der Lauf der Dinge in life, isn't it? The way things go. What's important is that even when I'm leaving prematurely, I'm both excited to go back and not feeling sad to disappear already. It gives me an itch to come back someday.
This'll also mark the end of this blog. There was a steady decline in posts per month, so it doesn't take much to see that I started either losing the inspiration or running out of things I wanted to say in public. I doubt that I would be able to continue writing something like this when I return home, and even if I could, it would be silly to keep doing it under this blog title.
There are things I know I'll miss the moment I get on the bus towards the Keflavík airport tomorrow. The pools, the vastness of the ocean. The mountains behind the cityscape, the quirky but fascinating language. The adorable cafes, the unexceptional feeling of trust among people. And of course E, E, N, and P, for being the wonderful people you are.
As I'm searching myself for the last words to utter in here, I'm listening to Sigur Rós and peeking out of the window, for the sky is putting out quite a display again. The pink, lavender colours remind me of my first weeks in here, when I was walking towards the campus at sunrise, marvelling how those exact same shades were reflected on the mountain Esja, overlooking the city. It's as if a circle was completed, the colour now moved from the mountain to the sky. It gives me a sense of closure, and I can't stop smiling, looking at those clouds slowly tumble by.
I find the old proverb "home is where your heart is" rather truthful after all these months. When I reflect on my life in here, it truly seems to fit, I guess I knew all the time that I won't stay permanently, or probably even want to. Acknowledging that doesn't take anything away from how much I've enjoyed the time I've been given. Instead it grants me a bit more understanding of my mindset, and how thoroughly Finnish I am. Maybe my heart never settled in Iceland, but it will always long here.
keskiviikko 27. kesäkuuta 2007
maanantai 18. kesäkuuta 2007
Come, to think of it
I've felt quite non-bloggy lately. I guess I've started to lose the inspiration to marvel my life in Iceland, as the things I've been doing and the thoughts I've been thinking after my re-arrival have been quite casual and mundane. It looks like I'm almost set to leave the country in a couple of weeks, two months earlier than I originally planned. The reasons to stay are growing thin, there's pretty much only the will to travel around to see more of the Land, and a couple of wonderful, wonderful people left.
By no means I'm saying that those aren't good enough reasons to be here, quite in the contrary. The financial situation is just limiting my ability to do so. A job prospect and a reunion with some of the fantastic gang in Vaasa look rather appealing at the moment.
The Copenhagen incident turned out rather neat. Enjoyed a couple of local microbrews, wandered around the downtown, checking out what Tivoli looks like in the nighttime, watched a nuclear swan family have a late night / early morning swim & snack just outside the Tycho Brahe Planetarium, and had a little nap at the very same place.
The Flickr page also has a couple of (long overdue) shots from my current whereabouts in Seltjarnarnes.
I don't really know what I'll be doing in here for the last weeks. Tomorrow Air is playing at Laugardalshöllin, but that's everything scheduled for now. Some possible hiking routes have been planned though, so at least there ought to be a plenty of fresh air to come.
By no means I'm saying that those aren't good enough reasons to be here, quite in the contrary. The financial situation is just limiting my ability to do so. A job prospect and a reunion with some of the fantastic gang in Vaasa look rather appealing at the moment.
The Copenhagen incident turned out rather neat. Enjoyed a couple of local microbrews, wandered around the downtown, checking out what Tivoli looks like in the nighttime, watched a nuclear swan family have a late night / early morning swim & snack just outside the Tycho Brahe Planetarium, and had a little nap at the very same place.
The Flickr page also has a couple of (long overdue) shots from my current whereabouts in Seltjarnarnes.
I don't really know what I'll be doing in here for the last weeks. Tomorrow Air is playing at Laugardalshöllin, but that's everything scheduled for now. Some possible hiking routes have been planned though, so at least there ought to be a plenty of fresh air to come.
tiistai 12. kesäkuuta 2007
Before Sunrise
I guess my attempts to travel back to Reykjavik hadn't backfired enough yet.
After a lot of hassle and several changed plans I was already on a plane to Copenhagen today. It had to return to Helsinki because the electronics gave a signal that one of the cabin doors is not properly closed. An hour and undoubtedly several sheets of paper later, it turned out to be a false alarm. Nonetheless, we were too late for my connection to Iceland. Turned out that there are no more flights tonight, so I took my stuff, got on a train and rode to the central railway station. I crammed my stuff to a locker and thought to visit a city I haven't been in during my years I can remember.
So. This is a nightly transmission from Denmark. I have a few hours to figure it out. To live Copenhagen.
After a lot of hassle and several changed plans I was already on a plane to Copenhagen today. It had to return to Helsinki because the electronics gave a signal that one of the cabin doors is not properly closed. An hour and undoubtedly several sheets of paper later, it turned out to be a false alarm. Nonetheless, we were too late for my connection to Iceland. Turned out that there are no more flights tonight, so I took my stuff, got on a train and rode to the central railway station. I crammed my stuff to a locker and thought to visit a city I haven't been in during my years I can remember.
So. This is a nightly transmission from Denmark. I have a few hours to figure it out. To live Copenhagen.
tiistai 5. kesäkuuta 2007
What remains
The week in Finland again has been quite an unexpected experience.
I couldn't anticipate how strange it would feel. After five months of living in the enchanting but rather barren Iceland, to come back to the stupendously lush and lively sceneries I have been raised in. The characteristic edgy rockiness has been replaced by firs, birches and fields and fields of spring wheat and hay. The greenness of everything is pretty much inarguably at its best this time of the year, it's the kind of new, sweet, light instead of the inevitably darker shades of the midsummer.
While visiting my mom and the region I lived in for most of my elementary and high school, I also got to take a look at what the most ubiquitous places of my teenhood looked like. One of these was a grove, just a couple minutes away from our home. The way there would go past a patch of forest next to a kindergarten, which was closed a couple of years before. The forest paths I always remembered from there were no more, lost due to no more hordes of children trodding upon them. Vegetation there wasn't exactly the thickest, the once paths now serving as a growing ground for some hay.
The grove itself had undergone an equally thorough transformation. It used to be a surprisingly lush little valley, surrounded by a lot less damp land, and having a little stream run in the bottom. Now, you can't even enter it any longer.
Instead of being the paratiisi it is called it looked more like a paradise lost. Trees were fell all over the narrow paths that lead to the bottom of the grove, the small bridge over the stream and back up on the other side again. Going down might've probably even been dangerous, as the valley looked very prone to suffering some small landslides. The once so serene grove was not walkable any longer. The laborousness and the dam engineering had run over it. And it was executed by beavers.
Very close to that site is the neighbourhood tennis court. That was still there, but looking completely abandoned. Sure it always was a little low maintenance, hard surface one, but it didn't have trees or other plants extending their branches through the fences, and the door had been broken. The net still looked pretty good though, so I guess it could be at least semi functional still. I know I would've played there.
The whole part of the little town once grew to support the hospital, originally designed as a tuberculosis ward. When the disease was decades ago banished from the land, it was turned into a common clinic. It has been under fire for many years now, some functions closed already. The area is bursting with life a lot less these days, which is hardly a surprise. Still, the grove served as an even better reminder that nothing really is permanent. I had expected that life is being siphoned out of the homes slowly, but I couldn't imagine it to happen for the parts of the nature I always loved.
I couldn't anticipate how strange it would feel. After five months of living in the enchanting but rather barren Iceland, to come back to the stupendously lush and lively sceneries I have been raised in. The characteristic edgy rockiness has been replaced by firs, birches and fields and fields of spring wheat and hay. The greenness of everything is pretty much inarguably at its best this time of the year, it's the kind of new, sweet, light instead of the inevitably darker shades of the midsummer.
While visiting my mom and the region I lived in for most of my elementary and high school, I also got to take a look at what the most ubiquitous places of my teenhood looked like. One of these was a grove, just a couple minutes away from our home. The way there would go past a patch of forest next to a kindergarten, which was closed a couple of years before. The forest paths I always remembered from there were no more, lost due to no more hordes of children trodding upon them. Vegetation there wasn't exactly the thickest, the once paths now serving as a growing ground for some hay.
The grove itself had undergone an equally thorough transformation. It used to be a surprisingly lush little valley, surrounded by a lot less damp land, and having a little stream run in the bottom. Now, you can't even enter it any longer.
Instead of being the paratiisi it is called it looked more like a paradise lost. Trees were fell all over the narrow paths that lead to the bottom of the grove, the small bridge over the stream and back up on the other side again. Going down might've probably even been dangerous, as the valley looked very prone to suffering some small landslides. The once so serene grove was not walkable any longer. The laborousness and the dam engineering had run over it. And it was executed by beavers.
Very close to that site is the neighbourhood tennis court. That was still there, but looking completely abandoned. Sure it always was a little low maintenance, hard surface one, but it didn't have trees or other plants extending their branches through the fences, and the door had been broken. The net still looked pretty good though, so I guess it could be at least semi functional still. I know I would've played there.
The whole part of the little town once grew to support the hospital, originally designed as a tuberculosis ward. When the disease was decades ago banished from the land, it was turned into a common clinic. It has been under fire for many years now, some functions closed already. The area is bursting with life a lot less these days, which is hardly a surprise. Still, the grove served as an even better reminder that nothing really is permanent. I had expected that life is being siphoned out of the homes slowly, but I couldn't imagine it to happen for the parts of the nature I always loved.
maanantai 28. toukokuuta 2007
Today I will spread my wings again
As it often seems to be the case in the life of the undersigned, when things happen, they happen swiftly, unexpectedly and in multitude. I'm flying to Finland via Copenhagen tonight, and be in Helsinki tomorrow morning.
After I made the realization that there is a chance that my days in Iceland may be growing thin, I've been going through a rather wild barrage of thoughts. What did I come here for, did I achieve that? What did I learn? What did I see? What did I not?
Perhaps most importantly, if given the chance to stay,
would I want to?
I'm not sure any longer.
I've loved being in Iceland. I wouldn't trade any of the moments I've spent in here away. And yet, now when I'm about to go to my own lands, without having any idea when I will be back in here and for how long, it doesn't feel hard to go.
And I can't quite understand why.
The one thing I do know is that my Flickr has a couple of new photos. Yesterday evening, after a mind-clearing conversation over a pint glass, I didn't want to go to sleep. Instead I took my camera and wandered around Seltjarnarnes, looking at the incomprehensibly beautiful landscape that has been my home for the past five months and trying my best not to do injustice to it with the camera.
I'm coming back here in a week though, that's for sure. I suppose the most likely "what next" scenario is that I'm returning without a job in Finland as well. That frees me to live as a vagabond in Iceland for June, and I will try to make the most of it. See many of the things I wanted to until I run out of money. I hate to have the €€€ dictate my summer so much, but I can't not to.
If I happen to get employed in Finland, then...
I will come back to move away the rest of my stuff and say a few bye-byes if it's time to go, but I wish I could've given the country a better farewell.
After I made the realization that there is a chance that my days in Iceland may be growing thin, I've been going through a rather wild barrage of thoughts. What did I come here for, did I achieve that? What did I learn? What did I see? What did I not?
Perhaps most importantly, if given the chance to stay,
would I want to?
I'm not sure any longer.
I've loved being in Iceland. I wouldn't trade any of the moments I've spent in here away. And yet, now when I'm about to go to my own lands, without having any idea when I will be back in here and for how long, it doesn't feel hard to go.
And I can't quite understand why.
The one thing I do know is that my Flickr has a couple of new photos. Yesterday evening, after a mind-clearing conversation over a pint glass, I didn't want to go to sleep. Instead I took my camera and wandered around Seltjarnarnes, looking at the incomprehensibly beautiful landscape that has been my home for the past five months and trying my best not to do injustice to it with the camera.
I'm coming back here in a week though, that's for sure. I suppose the most likely "what next" scenario is that I'm returning without a job in Finland as well. That frees me to live as a vagabond in Iceland for June, and I will try to make the most of it. See many of the things I wanted to until I run out of money. I hate to have the €€€ dictate my summer so much, but I can't not to.
If I happen to get employed in Finland, then...
I will come back to move away the rest of my stuff and say a few bye-byes if it's time to go, but I wish I could've given the country a better farewell.
lauantai 26. toukokuuta 2007
Short term failures, long term uncertainty
It's been stressful for the past two weeks.
Despite my frantic search for a job, I'm still unemployed, and truth to be told, I can't afford that for much longer.
In any case, I'm going to Finland for a week soon, probably leaving on Tuesday. My mother has her 50th birthday next Thursday, and even if she's not really making a number of it, I'd like to be there. After that, I'll probably meet some friends during the weekend, stock up in salmiakki and rye bread, go visit a sauna and a forest for the first time in five months, and whatnot.
However, the job issue is starting to very problematic. When I came here initially, I thought that I might struggle with the studies in here a bit, but at least getting a job shouldn't be a problem. Turned out that the exact happened. I did very well with my studies, managed to complete everything and actually more than I intended, and with decent grades too. And now it seems like the employment became the issue instead.
For the past two weeks I've been running around, sometimes calling and mostly visiting pretty much everything I've managed to think of. Just trying random places or asking for the advertised jobs they offered to me at Vinnumálastofnun, or paikallinen työkkäri på finska. I've tried so many things from stockroom stuff to cafes the post and smaller delivery companies to car rental companies to Icelandair to gardening, and virtually every single time the answer is either "sorry, we're looking for someone to stay permanently" or the way more common "give me your number and I'll call you tomorrow, I think I have something".
Since I'm typing this, y'all can probably guess if anyone ever called.
I just don't know. I can't comprehend that I'm this undesirable for an employee, but I suppose it's either that or then it's not as open a work market as I've been told it to be. Again, I haven't been picky with what I would take, but it looks like nobody is willing to give me a job with anything. I suppose I'm doing something wrong. Finding something would probably be easier in the countryside, but now that I've committed myself to this apartment for at least June, I wouldn't like to leave now and pay for it, not living there at all.
I now started to apply for some possible places in Finland. I guess the competition over there is even tougher, but at least I can try. Coming in here has been a huge financial investment already, and I can't spend this summer without working somewhere to compensate that.
It just makes me a little befuzzled. I originally thought that I'll have a lot more chances to travel in Iceland during the summer, when I can actually afford to do it. I've seen so little of what I've wanted to see so far. And now it might be that I can't stay for much longer.
I will come back again in the beginning of June, after that week in Finland, but I don't know how long I can stay for. I don't even know what I would prefer. If I'm lucky enough to get a job in Finland, I'll probably need to take it and leave Iceland for now, having experienced much less than I would've liked. The more likely alternative is that I'm coming back here as a vagabond for June, traveling around the country as much as I can, and go back to Finland in July, either living with dad in Helsinki or trying to study something in Vaasa.
Such is the way things go. Enviroments change, but I still have trouble in finding myself a summer job.
Despite my frantic search for a job, I'm still unemployed, and truth to be told, I can't afford that for much longer.
In any case, I'm going to Finland for a week soon, probably leaving on Tuesday. My mother has her 50th birthday next Thursday, and even if she's not really making a number of it, I'd like to be there. After that, I'll probably meet some friends during the weekend, stock up in salmiakki and rye bread, go visit a sauna and a forest for the first time in five months, and whatnot.
However, the job issue is starting to very problematic. When I came here initially, I thought that I might struggle with the studies in here a bit, but at least getting a job shouldn't be a problem. Turned out that the exact happened. I did very well with my studies, managed to complete everything and actually more than I intended, and with decent grades too. And now it seems like the employment became the issue instead.
For the past two weeks I've been running around, sometimes calling and mostly visiting pretty much everything I've managed to think of. Just trying random places or asking for the advertised jobs they offered to me at Vinnumálastofnun, or paikallinen työkkäri på finska. I've tried so many things from stockroom stuff to cafes the post and smaller delivery companies to car rental companies to Icelandair to gardening, and virtually every single time the answer is either "sorry, we're looking for someone to stay permanently" or the way more common "give me your number and I'll call you tomorrow, I think I have something".
Since I'm typing this, y'all can probably guess if anyone ever called.
I just don't know. I can't comprehend that I'm this undesirable for an employee, but I suppose it's either that or then it's not as open a work market as I've been told it to be. Again, I haven't been picky with what I would take, but it looks like nobody is willing to give me a job with anything. I suppose I'm doing something wrong. Finding something would probably be easier in the countryside, but now that I've committed myself to this apartment for at least June, I wouldn't like to leave now and pay for it, not living there at all.
I now started to apply for some possible places in Finland. I guess the competition over there is even tougher, but at least I can try. Coming in here has been a huge financial investment already, and I can't spend this summer without working somewhere to compensate that.
It just makes me a little befuzzled. I originally thought that I'll have a lot more chances to travel in Iceland during the summer, when I can actually afford to do it. I've seen so little of what I've wanted to see so far. And now it might be that I can't stay for much longer.
I will come back again in the beginning of June, after that week in Finland, but I don't know how long I can stay for. I don't even know what I would prefer. If I'm lucky enough to get a job in Finland, I'll probably need to take it and leave Iceland for now, having experienced much less than I would've liked. The more likely alternative is that I'm coming back here as a vagabond for June, traveling around the country as much as I can, and go back to Finland in July, either living with dad in Helsinki or trying to study something in Vaasa.
Such is the way things go. Enviroments change, but I still have trouble in finding myself a summer job.
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