Just Amsterdam. Or..?

I have just one simple comment about my trip or rather an advice: JUST GO THERE! You have to go to Amsterdam, and there's no other option! Man, it's one of the (or maybe the) most beautiful and feels-good cities I've ever seen. But another ... well sorry for being boringly exhortative... go their with your loved ones. You will feel the city (literally) much better :-)

The city just embraces and gives out all its stories and secrets. And week-ends are too short to listen to them all. :-)

Cheers.

Kiitos from Finland.

Hello again!

Just came back from Finland a few hours ago. It was a biz trip and I usually prefer not to put my biz trip impressions on the blog, but this one had a few things worth saying.

But since I have been hopping from ome plane to another for the past three days, I am dead tired right now to put it all in an eloquent way. So, just not to forget...

First of all, we landed in our final destinqtion - Oulu - in 1 am in the night and..... really, first time in my life I saw it.... we stepped out of the airport into a broad day light! (Uuuu, dizzy, what's going on?!)

Well, yes, it was that famous white night. Now, in summer season (which in Finland lasts from the end of June to the middle of July as we were explained) it is North day - light 24 hours. Well, it is kinda cool for the first day (or rather night), but guys, furthermore your brain just starts going mad of abnormalities and refuses to sleep when it has to, while merely switching off when it is supposed to work. Actually, you are just making those nights for yourself by pulling down the blinds.

Next. I dunno, whether it was those few days when we were visiting Finland, or whether it is like that anyways, but it was rainy and chilly aaaal the time and it poured even more depression on the brain, which desperately tried to find sunshine in the 24 hour long day.

Sauna. Oh, yes. We didn't have time to go there, eventually (I wouldn't anyways), but Finland does have this cult of sauna and as one can trace it everywhere, sauna appears to be one of the beloves (though few) entertainments. Even my shower cabin in the hotel was somehow customised under a sort of steam shower - sort of sauna...

We were wondering along the Oulu strees under the incessant rain, trying to find a "cozy" place to eat. We ended up in a ... MEXICAN restaurant AMARILLO Original taste Wings. Well, I bet the food was far from the Nordic traditions, but we shovelled it up like three hungry vikings and half of the restaurant were staring at us, most probably wondering where those uncivilised funny patterns came from.

And, I guess it was true we were three barbarians from the seemingly civilized western europe in this severe and proud country.

I am very honestly confessing that I stole this story, or rather not. I read it, and liked it a loooot. So, thought you might like it too ;-)


Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others, including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all constructed boats and left. Except for Love.

Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to hold out until the last possible moment.

When the island had almost sunk, Love decided to ask for help.

Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said,"Richness, can you take me with you?"Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you."

Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel. "Vanity, please help me!""I can't help you, Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat," Vanity answered.

Sadness was close by so Love asked, "Sadness, let me go with you.""Oh . . . Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!"

Happiness passed by Love, too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called her.

Suddenly, there was a voice, "Come, Love, I will take you." It was an elder. So blessed and overjoyed, Love even forgot to ask the elder where they were going. When they arrived at dry land, the elder went her own way. Realizing how much was owed the elder,

Love asked Knowledge, another elder, "Who Helped me?""It was Time," Knowledge answered."Time?" asked Love. "But why did Time help me?"Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered, "Because only Time is capable of understanding how valuable Love is."

Transhumance or The big cow exodus

So, today I was back on the track of my travels. Went hiking to Ballon d'alsace again. But a different one...

Well, when my friend was inviting me for this... exercise, he sounded like that: "There are cows, a lot of cows! And they are walking. And people have to walk behind them to the top of the mountain!" Well... when I heard, I honestly had very mixed feelings: a lot of walking... in a place where I have already been... behind the cows... in a most probably rainy weather... climb to the top of the mountain when I am so tired after a crazy work week... My sleep-seeking brain has even invented a refusal startegy: to call 15 min before the early morning departure and say something to stay peacefully in bed whatever it could cost.

I guess the nature itself conspired against me, because I was woken up early in the morning by the bright sun beams bursted into my bedroom. And then my mind gave up: get up and move! In an hour we were heading on to Giromagny, the start point of the whole THING.

In reality, the whole as I quickly found out at the place, was the fest of cow exodus (sorry, but really can't find another word to describe it) for their summer pastures, uphill in Ballon d'Alsace. The cows are adorned and let out to the towm main square where the musicians are playing all kinds of triumphant and merry music to commemorate the Day and to probably cheer up the animals. Though the latter is probably really useless as the cows seemed so excited that they definitely did not need either cheering up or stupid people's snaps and poking - they were eager to go to their summer camp!


After all people's pomposity organized to at-least-as-they-thought pay respect to this almost sacred animal for cheese loving France, the gates were finally opened and the happy cows rushed (literally) to the top of the mountain. Those curious, sporty, local or just crazy gapers headed on to follow the herd, me being among them.
It was a very intensive, but enjoyable march along the beatiful mountain road. Crispy mountaineous air did not help sweating as we tried hard to keep up with happily running cows. Somewhere in the mid-way, the whole cow-people crowd made a break and we had a chance to taste a wonderful mulled wine... while cows didn't. Huh...

We arrived to the long-discussed "top of the mountain" in total 4 hours. There I was indeed surprised to see huge tents already installed and waiting for their tired and hungry hikers (in no way cows meant, though really sorry for the cows). When we found ourselves inside, the first thought that came into my mind was: "Gush, but isn't it Oktoberfest back in Munich?!". It appeared very similar to me. Big crowd of thirsty for good fun, food and drinks people and live music. And onwards, there was a lot of fun, and amazing (also very similar to German) food and amazing local wines (not beer thankfully ;-)). And people were dancing and laughing and everyone looked relaxed and restful.


It was a good day. Thank you Sun for waking me up!

"...Thank you for the music..."

This Saturday Belfort is hosting a big music festival, FIMU or Festival International de Musique Universitaire. It is really unusual to now see this good old, usually so conservative, town to wake up for this international hassle which is gonna take place in a day. Just saw all the scenes and rock pavilions which had been constructed in just one week. The whole Vielle Ville (Old City, Altstadt or whatever you can call it) just suddenly changed its face: couzy squares and little streets now have to bare all the rocker insanity on their long-standing medieval shoulders.
They told me it was one of the best times to visit Belfort. It turns into a smaller version of Cannes during its famous cinema festival. Well, you dare Belfort!

The Goals.

Hi Everyone! It's been a while I didn't touch my blog. Well... now it got busier and tiredness and business more and more often extinguisheany desire to go and spring out emotions to the world. I have two things, which I feel like I wanner write about... And they are not particularly linked.

But anyways! I had a beautiful week-end. (Thanks to E. - my travel companion - who was finally back) Went to Saut du Doubs, an a-a-awesome place on the border right between France and Switzerland. I was told that it's the best time to go there now as the river is in its full water. And it was really amazing: it showed all the natural power of the young spring and the frantic current of the waking up mother-nature. The waterfalls and the whole
forestry were great! It seems I haven't tasted such air for years.You know, it was really funny to pass a bridge which connects French land, on its one side, and Swiss land, on its other side. And even more funny: on the other side of the bridge there was a table with all notes like "You are now crossing the border. Please keep ready your passports or other ID documents". And all this in a real wild forest where not only customs officials, but a forest-guard is not a very frequent passer!!

I was longing for a week-end like this with a proper sun and a real May warmth! To catch the first sun tan on the face and to doubt whether to take off the coat, since it's warm, or to keep it on, since the wind is still mean. In a word, it was probably the first proper fest of SPRING in Europe this year. And it was generous.

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The second point is... Well... I am sitting right now in a totally dark room at my place. After another amazing week-end day-out in the nature. And I don't want to switch on the light - yeah-yeah, one of those "no-people-and-please-no-light" moods. Yeah... and listening to Leslie Feist. One my American friend advised me, so I finally got to find her records to listen. Kinda not bad. Yes, so! And I got suddenly (and probably stupidly) nostalgic. Nostalgic and a bit... empty. Looked through the pictures, mine and some of my friends. And somehow felt that so much is behind. So much efforts, feelings, emotions, hopes, achievements and falls, people, friends, intentions etc..... MBA is over, many of the life stages are in the past. So, what now? I realized that all my life I had goals, very strong personal goals I was stubbornly moving to. I don't mean that I don't have a goal now. It is just that I think I am getting a bit (ok wanted to say older, but will say ->) wiser. And now the goals turn into some "bigger life pictures" and it both scares me and makes me feel somehow weeker and more vulnerable, I guess. I understand that I probably should no more be "egoistically" stubborn in moving where I want, but then... how to live without this "break-any-wall-on-the-way" movement? And how to keep up with all those dear and loved ones? Well, I don't know the answer, at least now. And don't want to switch on the light.

Week-end incroyable!

Last week-end I had a bi-i-i-i-g trip. In one set covered Switzerland and a fair part of France! :-) But what a travel it was!

So, we started on Saturday morning, early beautiful morning. The plan was already made: Basel - Colmar - Strasbourg. And so it occured with... mmm, slight interventions in-between.

We came to Basel around 10:30-11:00 am. From the first minutes I could sense this big city (well, big compared to Belfort) spirit. And besides, it was Switzerland, which per se meant a business flavor floating in the air. It was a pleasure seeing so many busy looking people in Versace business
suits talking to each other on the streets, walking talking on the phones or just loitering around and shopping, but still with a very busy view. We went to the central area to take a breakfast. After that there was a lot of roaming around and glazing at shop windows - the so called lache-vitrine, if my French knowledge does not betray me. We passed a fussy market square, which seemed very French to me, though the city itself was entirely German speaking as opposed to Geneva. It was funny making my way through the crowd of people and not cars. And it felt good!
We left Basel at around 3. And headed on to Colmar. It did not take very long, just about 1.5 hours, to get there. My anticipation of the town was: it is gonna be a little provincial ville, so what am I gonna see there? But E. was (thankfully) persistent taking me there and, oh how grateful I am for it now! To this town, we arrived at a big parking place and the first thing that surprised me was that there were so many trees in blossom just everywhere.

Taking little narrow curly and very clean streets we moved on to the city center. And I found myself in a museum. The only difference was that everything was real, people around, houses, trees, cobble roads. Live museum! Everything, every house, every balcony, every wall, every cafe, every person seemed to have had medieval history. And it didn't feel weitr at all. It felt peaceful and timeless. We wandered in Colmar and ate straberries, and drank chocolate, and tasted local spécialité - special salty bagels, the name of which I cannot remember now to my shame. But then there was time to leave since we already stayed far longer than was planned. Strasbourg was ahead...

We took our time for driving from Colmar to Strasbourg and, again, it was not long: in Alsace everything is not far from :-).

As many of you may know, Strasbourg is an officially pedestrian city. So, we had to leave the car at suburb parking space and take the tram to the center. We went down on the Kléber square and took a quick tour around the city center. It looked week-endly busy and the style (no matter how trivial it may sound) was sensed everywhere. We had a short tour, but it was getting darker and we potentially had to head back to Belfort. And it was that time when that insane idea was born - to stay overnight so that to see more of Strasbourg the next day. And so we did. And we, thus, had enough time for a proper diner when we tasted another Alsacian specialty choucroute, which is a close relative, if not a twin, of German sauerkraut served with a variety of meet and sausages.

Next morning we continued with Petite France, the oldest area of Strasbourg, incredibly picturesque and, indeed, very ancient. We went to the famous Strasbourg cathedral and saw famous astrologic clocks. An impressive mechanism to see! It was raining from the morning, which as I was told was a very typical Strasbourg weather, but it somehow didn't spoil the grandeur of the city and my impresson, even for me - the one who absolutely cannot bear rain.

We left Strasbourg around 3 pm and I understood that what I saw was still a tiny part of what Strasbourg could offer. But... at the end of the day, it's not the last time I was going there ;-)! The week-end was approaching its end and we had to go back to Belfort. But, it wouldn't be us, the two adventurous souls, if we would just drive peacefully home.

We decided to make the way back through the mountains. Vosges mountains. The car was climbing higher and higher and suddenly (you would never think) it started snowing heavily! Please keep in mind that it was 6 April on the calendar! I was naive enough not to take any warm clothing and shoes. And the weather was sensational enough to seduce us to get out of the car and to play snowballs. So, in the end I was wet and freezing, but who cares about such trifles. We stopped by at Gerardmer, a beautiful town in the lowland - a retirement dream. It was a little town scattered across the bottom of the bowl, formed by the mountains and the lake in the middle. We grabbed crêpes in the quay restaurant. It was a bright sun shine outside, trying to correct the weather's mistake melting the sudden snow piles. It was a short, but very bright impression, therefore when we left I thought that I should do my best to come to Gerardmer once again, with my special one.

Having gotten over the Vosges mountains, we had to cross another chine called le Ballon d'Alsace or also le Ballon de Belfort. There, weirdly enough, it was sunshing and felt really hot. So hot that we even discussed laughing that during those two days we expereinced at least four seasons, all at once.
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When I started this post, I realized that I would never put into paper (into Word.doc in this case) all feelings and impressions I had during this all-around-Alsace week-end. So, forgive me for the dry facts and missing 99% of my bright emotions here. But I have an excuse: come and see it all yourself!