Lohja's nightlife

Now I'm not a big fan of going out in Lohja. The Finnish anti-social mentality is very obvious in bars. You only approach people you know. In Lohja that is practically everyone; so most people actually have a blast meeting their old friends. This is why everyone goes out on Christmas Day. But I don't know anyone outside my circle of friends. I did my high school in Helsinki and then went to uni to another country. So I didn't really had the chance to stay in touch with a lot of people.

Aside from this, going out in Lohja is a bit of a sham because the places here are complete dives. You pay sometimes up to 8 euros to enter what elsewhere in the world would be where the drunks and homeless people hang out.

But yesterday, I had a blast. I expected nothing, knowing from experience it would most likely suck. We had some friends over at our place and then continued to a new club that just opened in Lohja, Prime. We even had one of our friends, Laura (the one who's just turned 18 and loves to drive) being the designated driver because it was snowing and freezing cold outside.

We queued to get in to Prime, met some funny people already in the queue. Nothing like bonding over bashing the bouncer.

And then inside it was fantastic. It was a real club. Far from being the swankiest I've ever seen but for Lohja's standards it was amazing. It was really new so didn't smell of vomit either, always a plus.

They played regular club music and had a decent enough dance floor. And I even met Annukka who I met in Newcastle in 2005, the only Lohja person I've met on my time abroad.

So I just really hope people keep going to Prime because I want the only decent place in town to remain open until the next time I'm in Finland.

On Christmas

Perhaps not in the proper holiday spirit but I'm all about keeping it real so here's:

Top 4 reasons why I dislike Christmas

1. Obsessing over cleaning. Now I don't enjoy cleaning anyway but particularly over Christmas my sister gets obsessed about it. In what I consider to be a perfectly clean and tidy house, she feels the urge to clean. Fine if she would do it herself but noooo, she expects everyone to participate.
2. Too much food. I don't get it why we need to stuff ourselves on Christmas. My family buys food like there would be eight of us eating when there's only three, possibly four. I go to the shop with them and tell them to stop buying stuff but then they get angry at me for spoiling their fun.
3. Complicated family relations. People not getting along, awkward new family relations, who should go where. It's complicated enough as it is without the whole holiday-who-visits-who-at-what-time hassle.
   
4. Presents. Now I bought mine over the autumn, when I saw something I knew someone would like, I bought it. So by the time I was going home, I had everyone's presents all wrapped up and everything. Then I come here and all people talk about is how they haven't bought any yet, how they don't know what to buy and the ones they bought they feel aren't sufficient.

None of this is making me feel particularly festive. In fact, I think next year it'll be me alone on a tropical island.

Here I am!

I'd completely forgotten that I hadn't updated this space since my arrival, which by the way went rather smoothly.

So here I am, in Lohja. It's cold and snowy, just how I like it. The darkness is getting to me though. I sleep like a hibernating bear.

All is going rather smoothly. Riikka is recovering from her toncils operation so we keep her company. Meaning we go to her place and make fun of the fact she can't speak. We're not nice people.

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas and I'll get back to you at some point. Probably before next year but who knows.

Home is where my luggage is

Tomorrow Finland is once again calling me. At 10.45am I will start my journey towards Lohja and if all goes according to plans, I will be back home around 1am (GTM +2).

Why does it take me 12 hours to get from Cardiff to Lohja you may ask. It's because I'm taking a bus to Heathrow. These buses are notorious for breaking down so I'm leaving myself around four hours extra to make it to the airport. But even if that were to happen, Heathrow is not my favourite airport and I'm sure my flight will be delayed even though I'm flying with British Airways. In addition to this, I don't know whether the whole luggage-handling strike has been sorted out in Helsinki so might well be that it will take me longer.

I just needed to write down all the things I can think of that can go wrong, just because I like saying "I told you so."

In the meanwhile, things here in Cardiff are good. I managed to finish everything in time so I'm now up to date with my school deadlines. Even got a brilliant idea for a magazine I could pitch next term. I might ask your opinion on in Facebook sometime over the holidays so I would love it if you could contribute.

I've also got my luggage full of presents. So much so that I had to literally stuff the few clothes I'm taking and I'm not sure how am I going to fit my toiletries and make-up with me as well. Damn stupid liquid rules for carry-on luggage!

This time around going on holidays is a bit different. I've got no goodbyes to say to anyone, we'll all be back in a few weeks time. And I'm also only going for a few weeks instead of the month I'm usually away.

Going back is extra fun this time as I get to see all my Lohja-peeps: Minna, Jenna, Riikka, Anne and Laura. Laura has turned 18, Anne will come back from her Erasmus, Riikka from Sweden and Jenna has graduated. It's all pretty momentous. We've already planned a big pile-up.

In case I don't find the time to update this space, I wish you all a merry Christmas and see you next year! I'll be coming back to Cardiff on the 29th, assuming the BA strike doesn't affect my flights...

Edit

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the blogs and end up neglecting one or two. EU-UK one is my absolute favourite though. I love finding out stories, writing about them only to find out a few days later some mainstream newspapers are running similar stories.

But that's beside the point. What I meant to talk about was how swamped in work I've been and therefore unable to update anything here. Not that I have much to say even now.

Suvi was in Cardiff. We had a blast. We ended up having a massive night out the day she got here so kudos to Suvi for staying up 20 hours straight and still being entertaining. The rest of the time we remained indoors (weather was crap) and were entertained by Mark.

One thing I could however go on forever about is how I hate editing videos. I have no patience for it. And since I don't know the software that well it's even bigger of a pain in the ass. The same goes for photoshop. I just love Microsoft's Paint.

One of the things that bother me most with writing articles is the reliance on others. I can't write an article when I feel like it, I need to constantly wait for people to get back to me. I miss writing essays when it was all up to me. Well, I miss that aspect of it but not the content necessarily.

I do find myself gravitating towards EU-related topics. And weird ones, like the Covenant of Mayors and transposition of directives. Guess Maastricht had some influence on me after all.