All pictures are original, no working with Paintshop (yet…).

Random Skies … :

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The trip to Russia started at the 14.11.2005 at 5pm and lasted 7 days – a group of about 40 students, Helsinki railway station, Tolstoy night train to Moscow. The first hours passed quite fast, it got dark, and we had to give away our passports 2 times during border controls. The train stopped every now and then, and drove very slowly the rest of the time. The beds were more or less clean, but way too small for me…

Moscow
We arrived in Moscow in the morning at 10am, and were surprised that our hotel (Roosija) was about 5 minutes to walk from the Red Square and the Kremlin, extremely central, clean, and unbelievably huge. From the entrance hall, we had to walk about 5 minutes through the hotel (same distance as to the Red Square) to reach our rooms, and we got lost more than one time. 12 floors, and at least 200 rooms each floor.
The temperature was mostly around zero degrees celsius, no snow though. I spent most of my time in Moscow walking around in the centre, visiting “must see” sights.
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For all those incredibly curious people out there who are already missing comments and new entries: I am in mother Russia at the moment, Moscow, and will spend the next few days in St. Petersburg.

After that there will be lots of information about this trip :-)

EDIT: I am back home, going to eat and sleep now, details and pictures in the next few days.

Fireworks (1):

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Hi folks, I arrived in Helsinki yesterday. My flat has 17 squaremeters, facilities and a gorgeous (yep, I’m serious) kitchen included! It is just 10 minutes to the central station and another 5 minutes to the university.
Yesterday and today I spent my time walking around looking for cheap stuff for the apartment (except furnitures I have to provide everything myself, which also includes bedsheeds and bedlinnen, a pillow, cooking gear etc.), and already bought some equipment.
I have a permanent adress now, where I will live for 4 months, so feel free to send me mail (ask for my adress via email, in case you want to do that).

I am also looking for a cheap (old) office laptop – software would be no problem, I just need the hardware, for about 4 months. I would use it as desktop computer, thus there wouldn’t be any damages to the computer (it would stay in my apartment), in case you want to borrow it to me. Otherwise I’ll just buy it, if you guys have a (old) cheap laptop in store. Just send me a message!

Updates the following days. I have free internet access at the university, at very good computers :D

Amsterdam, night:

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A tram in Amsterdam, it is extremely crowded, a black young (~25) guy is sitting in the small cabin and controls the tickets when you get in. No matter where you go with the tram, he comments it in a sloppy, exaggerated, extremely intonated “black rapper English”, singing in between, and making crowd control:
“Neeeext station” (his voice rises 3 times while saying “station”, like the guy announcing boxers before the fight): “Kongensplein … plein … plein … plein” (his voice decreases more and more, until he only whispers the “plein”).
“Oh people, come in and just hop on the others! There is still some place left!”
“Captain, do we still have some space on the roof?”
“Tatatatataaaaaaaaaaaaa – the Van Gogh Museum! Yeah!!!”
Funny :-D

Moreover, some additional information about Amsterdam: Every months a helicopter is flying, equipped with infra red light, over the city, looking for sick trees – they are cut immediately, in order to prevent other trees getting ill.
Four times in the week, the gates in the canals are closed, and with huge pumps one third of the water in the canals is substituted with fresh water. In my opinion, they could do that more often, but okay, at least it doesn’t smell (though it doesn’t look very nice, honestly … rather brown and dirty).

And because many people asked: “WTF are you doing in Amsterdam?”
Vacation, people. You don’t believe how strenuous it is to travel around all the time, having holidays in Norway … :-D

The iron bars (height of 30cm) which prevent parked cars from falling into the cannels are , throughout the whole city, payed by a bunch of insurance companies. It is much cheaper to built up those bars in Amsterdam than paying for all the cars falling down from year to year …

Weeee … Amsterdam!
We arrived here on Monday (took a flight from Oslo), nearly broke our spines when the airplane landed on Dutch ground, and had a nice time since then.

First thing to do: Get a local guide (we came across a guide called “get lost”, written by a local who really knows what is going on). You can find many interesting places by yourself, but even if you stay here a few days, you surely will, by chance, not find all the extremely nice places (like the shop with the most toothbrushes of the world …).

Amsterdam, impressions:
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