A Place To Hide

I am so overdue with this post, but there has simply been too much going on for blogging to be high on the list of priorities.

Short on Croatia (the rest of it):
We didn't spend much more time in Croatia after the last post, as we left the country the next morning, heading for Trieste in Italy via Slovenia. Although the swimming was top notch I have no wish to return to the touristy parts of Croatia ever again. Perhaps if I could find a secluded island somewhere this country would be more down my alley.

Short on Slovenia:
Not much to report, I'm afraid. We took a wrong turn before exiting Croatia and hence entered the country a bit east of where we had planned, but it was easily corrected after a bit of fumbling around in a crossroads, and we crossed over into Italy within a couple of hours from entering.

Short on Italy:
I'd never been to Italy. Love Italian food, have always wanted to learn the language, have to admit to a certain weakness for the men... but had never been. And oh my, did it live up to expectations! The small shops, the narrow streets, the sensual language - ARGH! What am I doing in Finland again? We spent some time in Trieste before heading northwest in direction of our passage into Switzerland. Experienced a gorgeous rain storm that we could enjoy from bed looking out on the balcony in our room. I want to go back to Italy. ASAP.

Short on Switzerland:
Hm. Part 1 of this holiday's family check-up took us to Florentin's hood. We started out in Zurich where we hooked up with one of his girlfriends whom I enjoyed conversation with over beers while the young gentleman proceeded to get himself a little bit pickled :) The next morning we swam in the river that runs through the city, which I have to say was a thrilling experience! Mother, brother (x2) and father were visited over the next few days, and I met some brilliant people. We rounded it off with another night in Zurich where Florentin's friend Christian gave him a reprieve from the girlfriend while I worshipped Paul Auster in a local pub. Oh, and I found a dragon. And got a speeding ticket. :/

Short on Germany:
I've always liked Germany, but this time around we got ourselves into a bit of a spot as we entered the not-so-nice town of Kassel. If you ask me what was bad about it I'll be hard pressed to give you a concrete answer, but as with Moldova it rubbed me the wrong way in _every_ way. A big contributor was probably that we had been travelling for three weeks about this point, and were getting a little tired of it. We spent a night close to the Danish border in a town that was closer to the Germany I like, however.

Short on Denmark:
VROOOOM! Did we even stop in Denmark? Ah, yes, we had lunch at a roadside diner. Otherwise little to report, I had my eyes set on Örebro and Denmark is mostly flat anyway. Nice to see the windmills in the ocean between Denmark and Sweden, though.

Short on Sweden:
We pushed on a bit into the night to get to Örebro without stopping along the way, and yay! Back to the farm :) We spent a few days with my family, basically being lazy, going swimming, barbequing, drinking beer and simply having _holiday_! To say we both needed the rest would be an understatement. From there we drove on to Stockholm and took one of the party ferries over to Helsinki, where our roadtrip ended around 10:00 the next morning.

To sum it up, this road trip was a massive undertaking, no doubt about that. The reader stopped at 8 700 km, we used the spare tank of gas a couple of times, had a couple of rather hefty navigation conflicts, three and a half weeks with temperatures between 30 and 42 degrees C with very little access to water, mosquito bites de luxe, a sudden allergy attack that lasted for two weeks, and sometimes a definitive lack of relaxation and holiday. What we also had, however, were hundreds of hours spent in excellent company without conflicts, a car with AC and sunroof, great sights, good camping choices, good hotel choices, good food, good drink, functional systems, maps, loads of weirdness and a very, very good time.

Back in Espoo I'm now in my second week of being back to work, and since the end of April I have not only added 10 previously unseen countries to my list, I find myself living with a gorgeous young man and am contemplating getting my master's degree over and done with. Not quite sure yet how this came to be, but big thanks to karma for paying a lot of attention to me lately :)

"If I told you all the times that I'd done wrong,
could you bathe my soul and wash it all away?"
White Lies - A Place To Hide (To Lose My Life, 2009)