You see, I wasn’t exactly built for it. Some have said I’m just making excuses. But there’s something to be said of a culture where smalltalk is a skill so neglected that businessmen have to take courses on it, before venturing elsewhere to make their deals. And of a land where space and darkness, as the predominant defaults, distance people from each other. And of some personal qualities I’ve striven to overcome over the years. Hitting the road with your wits and your mouth as your only currency forward was definitely not in the cards for my kind. I was not light-hearted to take on this journey, not even after the many stories shared by friends over dinners the past year, and had it not been for serendipitously perfect matching of time, intended destinations and generous tutoring offer by one of them, I would not have.

We are the first in line a line of hitchhikers starting to queue up by the roadside, past the bus stop our friend-host & Estonian hitching goddess has dropped us on in Tartu, Estonia on her way to mushroom-picking weekend with friends. I hop on the front seat, “the seat of fear”* as they say up north, ready to start my pan-European trail, the “Hitchhiking for Dummies” course. With innate awkwardness, I start reaching out of my comfort zone, talking to this random stranger kind enough to pick us up.

Where are you going? Why are you going there? Have you hitchhiked before? How is it to hitchhike in this country? Where do you go for holidays? Do you have children? What do you do? Simple enough (for anyone else?) to come up with the questions and threads of conversation to amiably pass our road-time together, to pay back in company the risk, effort, obligation they stopped for us for. But for me, an uphill battle, for once being forced to reach out, let in, day in and day out these people – for otherwise the road ends right there. Tell our stories again and again, until my partner’s ones are worn out in my ears, and vice versa I suppose – but it’s all new to the driver so better share anyway.

At times, it’s almost a relief to only have a few words in common, in broken German and traces of half a dozen other languages shared between us. Relief to be lost in translation so thoughts don’t need to be transferred, and you have your little head-space while gazing out the window.

And so it goes. Roads, standing by, waiting, apologetic hand signals, smiling, not smiling, tent, this country is closed for beers, why stop here when lift goes there, last of summer sun, nature provides by the roadside, peanuts and apples and too much chocolate, sleeping inside is for sissies, gas stations are a lifeline, blisters in the morning rain, detours for a better spot, free lunch, hosted by stranger friends of friend, hippie houses north and west, the Dutch jeep, Tom Thumb, and finally a mate-sipping guardian angel for the road home.

But I’m used to it. Made myself accustomed. I try to harden myself in everything, all the time. I want to prove to myself and to others that I can survive anything and that I’m not afraid of danger; I barely consider it. It’s all down to attitude. You’re not unsafe if you don’t accept you are. If you accept it, you tie yourself to it so tight that it strangles you.

In principle, I’m never helpless. If I look as though I am, it’s calculated. No one knows what I really think, and what I am.

Sometimes I must be very tough on myself. I can’t turn back or quit. If I set a destination for nightfall, I don’t stop until I reach it, even if night and morning come before I’m there. If I would stop, I’d get cold and I wouldn’t want to start moving again. I would just like to stay still, put on more clothes and squeeze myself small and warm. That can’t happen. You must not get used to comfort, it can be destructive at times.

I’ve wanted to take this to the extreme. Many say that no one travels like this anymore, but first, that’s not true, and second, it wouldn’t be a reason to change even even if it were.

With thanks to my random roads guide, for a chance to roughen up & explore my limits.

1/8 Stories

“I suppose my stories are in order, sorted either by when they happened or when I heard them, but I’m not totally sure this is the case.

I’ve been on the road for a long time, and forgotten a lot.

I no longer remember a time when I hated those looking at the world from their own little peephole, when I started to pity them, and whether there were times when hatred and pity took turns. I can’t even tell these stories without them getting their feelings hurt – and that might have disastrous consequences. I sometimes have to please them, a little, because my survival might just depend on them. Even a nomad is not free with everything.

Quite often I also meet those whom I like, who I can respect, almost love. Their stories I do not want to forget, but wish instead for them to blend with mine – and I’m happy that they almost always do.”

Text by Maarit Verronen, interludes of short stories from her 1996 book “Kulkureita ja unohtajia“, 1996 (Nomads and the ones who forget, untranslated (as far as I know))

(Aitäh for native-English checkup to Daniel, a writer on his way through Europe, stumbled upon @ Uus Maailm, Tallinn)

Flower power nearby Dam Square

Täällä Amsterdamissa pyörä on ensisijaisesti kulkuväline, jolla mennään duuniin, kauppaan, kirjastoon, ja lapset tarhaan. Kypärän raahailu pikkuasioille polkupyörältä poistuttaessa ei tuossa menossa ainakaan omia sympatioitani saa. Kypärää ei käytä KUKAAN – mukaanlukien kolmea lasta bakfiets-rahtipyörällä kuljettava äiti, tai kyyditettävät lapset – luultavasti saisin perääni muutaman (!) kummastelevan katseen kypäräpäänä.

Täytyy todeta että liikennekulttuuri tätä kyllä helpottaa:
* joka paikassa on merkityt pyörätiet, omana kaistanaan joko jalkakäytävän tai autotien puolella.
* Autoilijat ovat mitä luultavimmin itsekin peltilehmäilyn lisäksi pyöräilijöitä joten pyöräilijöiden kunnioittaminen on itsestäänselvyys – autoilu-idiotismia estänee tehokkaasti sen kokeminen kahdella pyörällä.
* Lapsille opetataan myös koulussa miten liikenteessä toimitaan pyöräilijänä.
* vaihteettomilla (kun ei ole mäkiä) mummopyörillä ei kovin hurjasti kaahailla (lujaa mennään sitten top-of-the-line maantiepyörällä maaseudulla viikonloppuisin)

Ärsykkeinä toimivat lähinnä summamutikassa pyöräteillä hyppelehtivät turistit ja pyöräilevät turistiryhmät – paikalliset (lapset mukaanlukien) osaavat pysyä omilla kaistoillaan ja oikealla puolella tietä.

Holhouksesta ei kokonaan ole eroon päästy täälläkään: sakot rapsahtavat ilman etu- ja takavaloja pimeällä ajettaessa – tämä kuitenkin mielestäni ymmärrettävää holhousta sateisena usein pimeän harmaassa kaupungissa, toisin kuin kypäräpakko joka ei ota huomioon pyörän erilaisia käyttötapoja (kulkuväline asioilla vs maantiekaahaus)

Pyörähavaintoja / Observations of Amsterdam bikes

Comfort Zone Amsterdam

It’s that time of the year again, when I’m left pondering my choices and the way forward – this seems to have become a bit of a tradition in the past 3 years. Things always change, the ones taken for granted not always ending up being so after all.

Amsterdam has a few things going for me – the green startup I’ve been helping out here and there (random advice on issues that come up while building a website), ping pong tables at Den Haag office gig (pipelining educational data and Yet Another CMS) , Casa with friends and travels up in Bos en Lommer, beginnings of friendships and connections I haven’t had the initiative to build up yet. But are those enough to keep me here, considering the very likely possiblity of yet another flat-hunt in a terribly overcrowded city and forced commitment of X months to high-unless-ure-lucky-rent.

But then, where else? Helsinki has the flat I should make a decision on, but as socio-professional landscape is most likely more of the same old, I’d rather not. London has a friend and possibilities towards what I might want to be / do, but 11 (?) million is just a bit too big and the costs staggering. Berlin is cheap and beautiful, but who do I know there to get started with things I really want to do – and I’d rather practice languages other than German.

Or.. just take whatever I have and get going, anywhere and nowhere in particular – lifestyle of a location-independent professional. But it’s getting to a point where I’d really rather stay enough to be able to say I’ve lived there, and work on things I care about, rather than just hop around endlessly from couch to couch, community to community.

Past choices having been dictated more by wanting to travel, and meeting like-minded people outside the bounds of a small country,  I’m now more on a lookout to align my past experiences and skills in a professionally meaningful way, wherever that may be. So for the odd chance of receiving a response to this shout-out into the void:
I’m all ears for pointers towards socially conscious projects where experience with online/offline communities and software skills (& degree to show for those) are needed.

The very first steps are clear however: it’s up north, cottages, camping, family and friends soon enough – with enough time to think things through being forced to be OFFLINE (oh the horror ) somewhere there in the wilderness.

Observing from afar…
The Paper (the biggest, dominating one of the country) is rather neutral in its reporting and doesn’t seem to be taking sides, not dismissing or promoting neither the activist nor motorist point of view, but as usual, is more-than-slightly condenscending in choice of some terms and giving impression of much smaller participation than is visible on the video footage. It doesn’t really report on the background either, the purpose of the movement or even provide a link to sources elsewhere. Habitual for the Finnish media: anything happening a little outside or on the fringes of “the way we do things here” is to be reported in depth, with causes and effects and background by alternative press only, which with their subsription rates are hardly penetrating the masses at all (worth mentioning in this context is the 10x/year freely distributed societally critical paper Voima). (No wonder I had to literally go around the world to broaden horizons, learn about and get into things such as open source software, free culture, digital rights and generally starting to be more critical about and question the status quo)

Also in the comments the true colours of (some) Finns are shown, quite a few comments (out of 272 & counting) such as:

• “just some kids playing at making a better world . 15 years from now these people will live in the suburbia, be all bourgeois and vote for the right wing party. My biggest annoyance is this being allowed. Who will pay for it?”
• “Today’s youth have no spine! Neither does the police! Can practically anyone just go out on the streets and disturb citizens who have important business to attend to? Us proper people never did anything like this, we just did what we were told and shut up.

This reminds me again the word activist practically being a curse word in Finland. Being called one by folks such as your parents, employers, professors and other figures of authority is almost always to denounce you, put you down, to belittle and to marginalize. The effect of marginalization is dampening – requirements of uniformity so that social-democratic equality utopia isn’t disturbed the slightest by diversity, and expectations of having to map your identity into one category only make it hard to even explore declaring yourself an activist, as the label may stick thereafter. It matters little what else you do in life that may be more acceptable to society at large and what other badges you’d prefer to bear in addition, as you’ve already been marginalized and dismissed as a “childish selfish activist” – and with expectations one day to just grow up into a suburbanite live-in-a-box bourgeois consumer anyway.

Hence, I don’t really (want to) consider myself activist, this feeling of having my choices limited and voice nulled based on just one attribute of identity that in my view should rather be a mosaic – even though my activities sometimes could be classified as borderline “activist”, or perhaps something more like “activist accomplice” (mostly / especially when the digital world is concerned). I just try do what feels ethical and enjoyable in order to help out even a little bit.

Compared to the above rather mild case of socio-cultural suppressing attitudes without real danger of being permanently maimed by exercising your right for free speech, (too) many other countries of course have it far worse. So in the context of mostly-okay doing countries (as that’s the only fair comparison that can be made), I’d be curious to learn a bit more about how things are elsewhere along the lines of:

• What are the difficulties, obstacles, roadblocks in making a difference
• How do sociological and political structures suppress or encourage activism
• To what extent does activism label you? Disadvantage and exclude you from / help and include you into the fabric of society?

(responses in comments much appreciated, dear reader-friends with related experience )

Welcome to the sequel of my so-called life. As a post-nomadic expat it’s often easy to forget there are still people somewhere out there who would like to know how you’re doing, what you’re thinking about and what new adventures life unfolds for you.

Title “Hello World” came with the software, but might as well use the metaphor. Like it is tradition when stumbling across new programming languages to explore the syntax, get all-systems-go by writing a simple program spitting out Hello World on an output device – this post is me looking at life curious to give it that initial test run… and then start building further.

Building what, telling which stories? Anything, really – random circumstances usually make life too unpredictable to be able to pre-define how to approach recounting the experience. It could be any or all of the below or perhaps something else altogether.

• Amsterdam – as that’s where I spend most of my days for the time being
• Being Finnish – as that’s where I spent most of my life so far
• Travels – as the roads might still seduce me, and I miss telling those stories
• Hospitality exchange – as that’s what got me uprooted in the first place and there’s some unfinished business left  as an itch to be scratched
• Hello Worlds in software, on platforms – as that’s what I do for a living (and for fun at times)
• Concepts of free software and p2p applied to life in general in a post-scarcity techno-utopian anarcho-geek tree-hugger world – as that’s what my chosen surroundings mostly seem to facilitate
• Just days in a life – as sometimes it’s good to just write it all out, anyway.

…expect nothing, be prepared for anything!
(and feel free to say hi in the comments whenever )