Trip down memorylane...

I was inspired by Petchie's post, where she writes about a discussion with a Polish girl. It's strange how the differences between nationalities disappear the further you get from your own countries. Just being European in another part of the world seems to be enough to strike up a friendship! I once rode a garlic-stinking taxi with an old Polish driver in New York. When he found out I was from Finland he visibly changed and became very emotional. I felt like I had ran into a long lost realtive, he was very concerened about me catching the right bus to the airport (I had initially asked him to take me to the wrong place). We nearly hugged when I finally parted from him :). This sounds like catching a taxi in NY is something common for me, I think I've actually only caught one single taxi there if I remember correctly... Only stayed one night there on my way to Montreal and then just passed through on my way to the airport on my way home after making a small tour: Montreal - Milwaukee (visited shortly a guy I had been madly in love with at 19) - LA (see a young, innocent version of me visiting girlfriend from Finland) - Philadelphia (visited another guy I had met on Korfu, Greece :) - NY. This tour I made while I was on a three-week holiday from my job as tourguide for a Finnish company (Finnmatkat - Finntours). I had spent the summer working in Greece (Korfu) and was on my way to Sri Lanka for the winterseason. I couldn't imagine sitting at home with my parents in Jeppo for three weeks, so I took off to the States instead...those were the days! I was 23 years old!

I seem to have strayed far off the topic, but it's so nice to reminisce...I also remember once in Prague. I was on my way back to the center after having dumped my rucksack at a hostel just outside town. A couple stopped me to ask for the way to the same place and we ended up talking, at first in German,soon switching to English. When getting into nationalities it turned out the girl was from Finland, so we immediately switched to Finnish. When I found out she was from Hangö, in southern Finland I asked if she maybe was a Finno-Swede, which she confessed she was, so we switched to Swedish. Then she asked where I was from and it turned out her mother came from Jeppo as well! We weren't related, but I knew relatives of hers :). Talk about a small world :) :). The poor guy accompanying her had began looking like a questionmark already at the point when we switched over to Finnish and was really surprised to see us getting more and more excited when talking. In the end we just went our separate ways again, but I´ll always remember that chance meeting, it was such an unlikely coincidence!

Ah, should get back to the realities of my life now, nearly twenty years after my travelling around Europe at 28 after a languagecourse in Heidelberg, Germany. At first I had headed for Budapest (Hungary, can't resist scanning a photo of me from that trip :) to visit a couple I had met on the course and then continued towards my boyfriend in England via Tschechoslovakia (still one country then) where I ran into the girl "from home". Sounds like I had boyfriend in every country back then :). Interrail was such a wonderful thing. I guess it still exists, but I haven't thought about it for years and years.

This last photo is from the same trip. When I scanned my interrailcard, I saw "Dresden" and suddenly remembered meeting an American Philosophystudent on the train. We spent the day walking around Dresden, ending up drinking bear and telling dirty jokes on the trainstation, while waiting for our trains. Do you remember a film with Ethan Ha... (from Dead poet's society) and a French blonde actress. They were travelling around Europe and fell in love. I really like that film, it reminded me of my meeting this guy, even if there was no romance between us, but definitely a connection. I really hope young people travel as much as they can nowadays as well. It's not the same anymore when you're middleaged....


Now I need to get back to getting my son to bed (bad, bad mother, wanted to get him to bed already an hour ago, but I got so caught up in this....), so we both get up on time toworrow morning. I'm still a bit unused to leaving home at the same time every morning (7.45)...last night I dreamt I had overslept by three hours and was frantically looking for the phonenumber to preschool....I was really relieved when I woke up and found out it was a few minutes until the alarm would go off :).