Not that I am looking for an excuse for not writing anything within the last few weeks, but I might just as well point a finger at something. It was the moving that kept me away from writing, or even thinking about writing. I don’t know how often you read this blog, but for all those who lost track, this has been my third move this year. So I hope you understand.

At this point it’s not only difficult to keep track of personal belongings, but I have to pause for a moment every single time when asked for my address. If I happen to recall the street, then I’m not sure whether the building is 3 and the flat 19, or is it the other way around. Not that important after all, although it adds dreamlike experience to everyday life. And it’s not just the address and belongings, also the surroundings become elusive. Every street and lane is familiar and strange at the same time. I’d be turning left instead of going straight, just to notice that the turn would have made sense three cities ago, but makes absolutely no sense here and now. A couple of weeks ago I set off to work on my bicycle just to cycle right by own front door quarter of an hour later with a mouth wide open. I’m sure I had made a ridiculously beautiful circle and confused the snoops, but I also discovered a space wormhole in my neighborhood and was late for work.

Absentminded? Maybe. But I have to admit it’s been great fun too. With the exception of yet again displacing what seemed like an endless stream of boxes and all that other stuff. Every move makes me scratch my head thinking if I need any of these items at all. By far most creative response to all this moving came from a friend of mine who asked if I only carry two backpacks with me after all these too frequent relocations. His remark was spot-on, as Britons like to say, and if I were smart enough, I’d shake it all off and stop carrying and caring. Of course, this wasn’t the first occasion leaving appendages behind crossed my mind. These kind of thoughts keep my cranium surprisingly busy every time I need to carry excessive amounts of things from place A to third floor place B. More than once I wanted to forget this or that box–as long as it didn’t contain any books.

Speaking of books, I could blame them for my long absence too. It’s so much easier to curl up in bed with a good book than it is to sit by computer trying to come up with something anyone would want to read. Especially when other writers have so much more captivating things to say.

Whenever moving I am always amazed how many books I rediscover, which makes for even scarcer and weaker attempts to write. Obviously I buy more than I can read, or even remember what all I would have wanted to read. Of course, when bought, most books are optimistically placed onto the pile next to the bed. At some point the pile grows too large and every so often I move the books to the shelves where they are all to easily overlooked and forgotten. But whenever I’ve been packing and unpacking boxes I unavoidably rediscover all these gems. First I have a hard time placing the books straight into the boxes as I’d so much more like to sit right there and then and read the book, any book (I believe you’d want to do anything else but pack too). And the same struggle recurs during the unpacking. It’s terrific and terrifying at the same time.

Even though you might think I’m kooky, I must admit that I love doing this. It’s like shopping for [place your favorite item here]. I find it very much resembles browsing in a great bookstore. Great majority of these books I have carefully selected and am sure that at least at some point I had a very good reason for getting every single one. This shopping-like instant gratification is particularly reinforced if I have completely forgotten about owning a certain volume. So when I hold it in my hands the desire to know what the covers hold immediately comes back.

And that’s what happens when I am at home; it’s nothing in comparison to how ape I go when in a good bookstore. Unless you’re a book nut, I encourage you not to come along. It doesn’t really take a Powell’s in Portland to tickle my book nerve for hours (size doesn’t matter, variety does); Akateeminen bookstore in Helsinki does the job just as well. And just as women usually park their male counterparts in a sports bar before they head out shopping, I park my missus in the shopping district and head out to a good bookstore. It would work perfectly, if only shopping wouldn’t exhaust her so quickly.

And what could be a better place than Finland for a book lover. I was stupefied when I read in Nick Hornby’s fantastic column that “forty percent of Britons and 43 percent of Americans never read any books at all, of any kind.” As if it wasn’t difficult enough to imagine that half of the population of these two countries never read a single book, the reading there seems to be in decline. So it’s not a slightest surprise I spilled hot tea all over myself when I read that Marcel Proust recently made a comeback by making the top ten list of the best selling foreign authors in Finland. And these sales figures were not just coinciding with Proust’s blockbuster hitting the big screens in Finland; Proust was among the best selling foreign authors for three consecutive months, even reaching the sixth place in the April 2007.

As I trust you knew already, the reason behind Proust’s success was not really Brad Pitt giving voice to the famous French writer, which could result in a massive hysteria and teenage girls rushing to bookstores grabbing Proust’s books off the shelves. Rather it was the Finnish translation of Proust’s seventh and final volume of À la recherche du temps perdu that caused the spike in sales. And it is probably safe to assume that whoever bought the seventh book has most likely already read the preceding six. Which only makes me wonder how many of the respondents in the research Hornby quotes knew that Proust is actually a writer and not a dessert or a salad dressing.

I’m heading to the Helsinki book fair this weekend. Let’s see if I can come home without any books this year. And you should stop wasting your time reading this blog; go tackle a book instead. (Tackling books was, by the way, exactly what bookmarks distributed in my US high-school were telling the students they should do. The bookmarks even portrayed a fully equipped football player (wearing helmet and all) holding a book like Hamlet usually holds a skull. I’d say you should read them, tackling’s no good on a book.)

Mladen

Moving is usually a straight-forward business. But there’s always a bit of uncertainty. Canceling everything connected with the old life and ordering everything anew. Although this can be exhilarating, doing such things in certain places can be a tad bit on the unnerving side. Sweden fits among such places. Sure, it could be a lot worse, but there is also a lot of room for improvement.

Canceling the apartment lease two months before leaving is still quite reasonable, but it strikes me as incredibly obtuse that in Sweden you have to literally beg to get the electricity bill. Not that I’m incredibly gung-ho about parting with money, but I cannot understand why the electricity company wants to send the bill in two months’ time and obviously to the wrong address as some complete stranger will live in the same place. And when it comes to Swedish bureaucratic thinking it’s not that difficult to imagine incurring huge debts and eventually being hunted by the international crime busting special forces.

Speaking of which, this is not even the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to Swedish slowness in processing things. What one would expect it would take a couple of key strokes or at most hours to resolve, takes literally months to accomplish in Sweden. Say, for instance, student registration. I arrived to Sweden in January as a visiting student at the Göteborg University. One would think that it would be only a matter of a simple formality to get the official stamp confirming me being a student. But no, after three months I became one and was entitled to everything students are, such as a library card. I mean seriously, think about this. It’s not like I get paid by the university to study. It’s the library card type of things that are at stake here.

I don’t want to get started again on the witless bureaucrats and their papers, but there’s just one more thing that I cannot resist mention.

One thing I was sure about when I was leaving Sweden was that I can stay if I desired to do so. Not just to study, but also with a working permit. Forever, if I wanted. Too bad I found this out two days before I left. Yes, just two days before my departure I have received a letter from the Swedish immigration office stating that I am allowed to stay, study, work or do whatever in Sweden. Thank you and good to know, although I would feel much more welcome if I were to receive it a bit earlier, nevertheless.

But what really kept me busy the morning of departure as I walked in circles around the only room in the apartment is, where the hell am I going to stuck all these papers, those few but only dishes and tons of tiny useful crap. There isn’t much choice as everything that does not come along goes to the garbage bin. And being the hamster I am, that would really be the last resort in desperation to catch that five o’clock train.

Even though the situation was a bit tense at that moment, I was at least happy that I could at least in theory take all my possessions with me. This time around the name of the game was carry all that you can carry and not 20 kg, without sharp objects, water, bare feet and in fear of latex gloves being prepared for inner inspection. That said, I am incredibly tired of flying and all the haste and unneccessary security crap associated with it. Trains are great. They might be slow, but people are more relaxed and I can take chef knives, water, wear shoes on my feet and as it turned out 108 kg of, well, stuff. Or to be more precise 54 kg per person: six backpacks and three boxes. Mind boggling, but it was actually hilarious.

Six hours of packing later, and finally, the last item gets to go into the box. Fridge is empty, stomachs are full. In the attempt to avoid wasting any food new culinary combinations are tried out. After eating sushi gari, truffles, pasta, pesto and mustard and washing everything down with milk, I didn’t wonder anymore why such dish is not on offer in any restaurant. I did, however, hope this last minute foolish experiment wouldn’t cause digestive problems on a three-day trip ahead.

The apartment is locked and stuff carried to the elevator with great amusement as this is the first time I actually lift my share of backpacks. All together they weight 44 kg and had to be carried to the train station. But once everything was on the train, the rest was pretty straight forward: sit down and enjoy the ride.

Mladen

Spending one of the last days in Sweden in Liseberg amusement park turned out to be almost the best choice. Considering all that unhealthy stress and tension that come along with moving, getting a healthy and constant dose of adrenalin for eight hours straight seems like the best one could do, instead of packing boxes, that is.

The owners of Liseberg claim to be the oldest, largest, baddest and the most visited amusement park in Scandinavia. I don’t know if all that is true, but I can say that some of their rides are so good that one simply never gets enough. Take, for instance, the Balder roller-coaster (in the photo above). Already from afar its magnificent wooden structure is awe inspiring, but once the tiny train rises to the top and just moments before it reaches that first 70 degree drop into the void, you really become aware of your insignificance. The feeling, alongside the constant clasping of internal organs, remains all the way until the two-minute ride is over.

Similar feelings are constantly present on other rides where the trains are shot out and reach speeds of 75km/h in 2 seconds, flip you upside down, swing and spin between 0 and 120 degrees at neck breaking speeds, catapult you sixty meters up or drop you from the same height towards the land. No matter whether the ride lasts 20 seconds or 2 minutes, I am pretty sure that the times are carefully measured for each ride to hit just the right spot between the weightless stomach sensation and puking. It’s probably as close as it gets to astronaut training for the mere mortals, especially if you can persevere for eight hours.

The last time I did a similar thing was in Helsinki’s Linnanmäki amusement park. It was great fun while it lasted, even though I did get a bit green-faced from that Viking Ship ride. But the next three days after those eight hours at Linnanmäki were quite terrible. I had a constant nausea, my head was spinning whenever I sat or lied down. It felt like a terrible hangover for three days straight. And it would be quite terrible if I got the same feeling after a similar stunt at Liseberg, since I have a day of packing and 48 hours of traveling ahead of me.

As I mentioned right at the beginning, I’m moving again. Although there are some resemblances to the last move, it is a lot easier this time as the flat needs to be emptied, or in other words, stuff just needs to be packed, or thrown away. But the trip itself will be something special.

The trip back to Finland is unlike anything I’ve done before: I’m going back by train. Once the train leaves Göteborg I’ll be traveling via Stockholm, Umeå, Luleå and finally to Haparanda, a small town right on the border with Finland. From there I continue the next day to Kemi, Oulu and Kajaani before I reach the final destination: Kuopio.

I was excited already when planning the trip and can hardly wait to board the train tomorrow afternoon.

Au revoir,

Mladen

Aaaaalmost there. Obviously not a first generation immigrant graffiti artist from ex-Yugoslavia.

Mladen

I’ve spotted the advertisement on the left in the Wednesday’s copy of Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. If you can’t tell right away what is advertised, I don’t blame you. But you might want to know that it is an add for a plastic surgery hospital in Helsinki and that the advertised price of 5530€ on the right side is how much they want you to pay for breast implants.

Everything fine, but could please someone tell me what’s that rhinoceros is doing in the add. Are they saying that that’s what their potential customers look like now, or is that what they will look like when they get those breast implants? Spooky, no matter which way you put it.

Mladen