The 100th posting, end of the journey

During the year 2006/2007 I spent 10 months in Australia, 5 weeks in New Zealand, 3 weeks in Bali, 3 weeks in Thailand and also a bit over week in Malaysia also visiting Singapore. This is the travel journal about the time abroad.

My route is marked with red color.

[Latest Edit, 3rd June 2007]
I added few pictures to the postings from Australia and Asia. The pictures taken by Pete were added to the latest Asia entries. In exchange he could use part of my texts in his English task. Fair enough.

I'm currently editing a video out of the massive 15h footage I shot along the trip. If I find anything spectacular during the process, I might add some still pictures to the postings.

Returning Finland

I didn't want to write this post too soon after coming back. The reason is that I wanted to give myself some time to settle down and see if I experience some kind of enlightenment, some kind of higher level of self-consciousness, see if I've got a different point of view about things in here.

I was welcomed to Helsinki, Finland with a blizzard and delayed flights. During landing I was peeping out of the window like a little kiddie who never saw snow before. I was pretty much all smiles when I bought some dark rye-bread from the cafeteria. Sounds real cliche, but it's these small things you start to miss when you're abroad. I also had good fun going through headlines in Finnish tabloids.

I took a plane from Helsinki to my home town Kuopio where my family was waiting for me. It was good to see everyone again, eat some home-made Finnish food and, of course, go to sauna. The temperature was mellow -10 degrees which didn't felt too bad at all. After few days temp went down to -25 and I started to miss the nice sunny surfing days. Little I knew what was coming.

After around a week at my parent's place, it was time for me to move to my own apartment in Tampere. The 300km drive, which I previously thought was quite long, felt like a shopping trip after the long distances in Australia. Driving on the right-hand side went ok after few incidents mixing the blinker and windshield wiper controls. It was good to have my own apartment back because when traveling you have to organize your accommodation all the time. That's quite exhausting on the long run. I wouldn't had believed me thinking this but it was also great to go back to the university again. Getting used to the daily routines was pretty easy even though I was suffering minor jetlag with early wake ups . The other thing which made me little uneasy was the weather. I though -25 I experienced in Kuopio was cold enough but this week the temperature went down to -37 here in Tampere. Needless to say that it's quite a project with all the clothes before you could go out. However you can't do anything to the cold air which "burns" your airways when you breathe. Anyway it's again a bit warmer and maybe soon I'll be able to do some snowboarding again.