I've been living off a bag since August. Technically homeless, bunking down in benevolent c/o addresses and optimising baggage allowances. Yet not travelling enough to brag about it. At least my carbon footprint is in check then.

Now, I get on with a two-part lowdown on the last eight weeks. The events take place in Helsinki metropolitan area.

Lectures and presentations

Someone said that the English language is devoid of the word sivistys / die Bildung. I guess the closest word is cultivation. Anyhow, the first one was about X and technology, and second one about X and the political left.

The grand old man of communication and technology, Osmo A. Wiio talked to a middle-aged audience about surviving in today's technoscape. There was hardly any beef there; buy an Apple computer and get spared from viruses, is not much to write home about. However, Prof. Wiio has been around since 1940s and should just be let to tell stories from the course of his life – that would be priceless. Now he just scraped his reservoir of anecdotes.

A more engaging talk was given by dramaturgist Outi Nyytäjä to another middle-aged group, namely the intellectuals of the social democrat party. Nyytäjä is an elderly woman and thus excused to behave outspoken, even badly. Sharp witted, Brittany based and fluent in several languages she did her best in trying to spark up the ideological flame of this very mossy party in a clueless situation.

Megapolis 2022 event attracted crowds to Vanha. Headline: "Environmental problems are solved in cities". Speaker lineup was rather media sexy indeed. As a satellite event there was a presentation by fantastic artist duo HeHe. Over the winter they're working on Nuage vert laser projection in Helsinki. This was also the first session of the Pixelache University. In the lobby I made the first contact with the Wikiparty – a young movement of great expectations.

Then, there was also a Graffiti Research Lab show & tell and laser graffiti night, where my bicycle also got pimped out with LED throwies.

Football

My pals Markus, blogger of Lighthouse, and ml - top commenter and Bird-list contributor on this blog and I went to see two FC Honka matches. Matches at that point of the season seemed a bit lacklustre on Honka's part, but Markus had a great anecdote about Honka's and HJK Helsinki's extraaathletic rivalry on the heights of stadium light posts. Obviously, no visit is complete without a visit to Gallows Bird where I'll be heading next on St Thomas' Day for traditional winter solstice brews session.

Earlier this year I thought the Finnish football culture had taken a social turn, when I saw people flocking at pubs to see Euro qualifications. Maybe that's just because they're are on pay channels now, but during the Belgium match everything was absolutely packed. Except one, and as told by a film critic, "Going to an Iguana is like FU'ing yourself".

Cultures

On that Megapolis 2022 day I opted out from presidential keynote and accepted Keltanen's offer to see Get Yor War On at Espoo City Theatre. Fantastic political play after eponymous comic completed with extensive choreography on overhead projectors. Tickets courtesy of Riikka, extending thanks here and now.

I'm not contributing to Prenzlauer Berg's baby boom in the foreseeable future, but the children's play Ahmatti I saw at the Alexander Theatre courtesy of the director, was damn good stage art for children over five years. Parents ahoy!

Because monolingualism is overrated, I gained an ego boost from keeping up with Jag är min egen fru at the Swedish Theatre. One-man play about the prominent Berlin transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who assumed life of a housewife hoarding Gründerzeit memorabilia. Without the turbulent historic circumstances, that would not be the most exciting theme, but it made a satisfyingly laid out play nevertheless.

Freja cordially tipped off to the opening of their Megafån group's Feminist Wallpaper exhibition. I'd personally rather be pro-equality than pro-feminism or any other gender-biased ideology, but I like this work. Prime example of crowdsourcing in art as well.

To conclude I went to the Helsinki Book Fair for the first time. My friend Taina published her new book on the relationship between religion and politics there, which I'm looking forward to read in the holidays. Karstein was on the panel there as well (missed that, but luckily we had the pints @ Pikkulintu) and he's come out with a new Fakta book (#3). Congrats!

Otherwise, I scanned about half a dozen interesting titles, but my personal baggage allowance would not bear any weight of paper.

They're closing at Melis now, so we must have a break here.

Our shared flat in Prenzlauer Berg dissolved and I've moved a bit further uptown to Pankow for some time now. The flat is from 1920s, so it dates back to the Weimar Republic, instead that Imperial Germany's final year 1918 of the previous address.

It's nice to have new surroundings to explore. So far I've run into a women's prison, a Jugendstil church, a small-time mall, blockhouses as usual, and a wasteland which I think is an out-of-order Red Army cemetery. All in all it seems I'm in brackish waters where new, old, urban and suburban intertwine.

The best thing of course is, that the flat is curiously located on the exact same latitude as Mega.

Mega is a location near Hönow village east of Berlin. It only exists on Falk maps' 2003 edition and in the minds of the people who've heard about it.

I recommend watching mkk's great four-minute road movie Mysterious Mega on Vimeo.

Almost two years of (mostly) Germany now and the love/hate relationship with the language goes on. From a non-native speaker's perspective German is in its complexity a frightening instrument of power, but also an infinite source of linguistic pleasures. In my case, especially in its written form.

Frustrations mostly deal with the spoken word, especially on TV, on stage or such. To battle this, I had taken up a tradition to go see the latest transmission of Tatort with a friend every Sunday. These 90-minute murder mysteries have been on air since 1970 and have become quite an institution. I've come to believe, that Sunday Tatorts have taken the place of Sunday Sauna in my weekly rhythm. Both are somewhat purifying and masochistic experiences.

I discovered help from an unlikely source. Recently I voluntarily watched an English language film dubbed into German – not Die Hard 4.0 but V for Vendetta. No problem whatsoever, everything was loud and clear. With the mandate given by the results of the revered PISA study, I've had a bit of a stuck-up outlook on the culture of dubbing, but now the tables turned. There, I may have found the missing link.

I was cycling home around one sunset and suddenly came across a fox. First I thought it was a dog from one of the allotment gardens in the area. Just as I got close enough to realise it wasn't, he fled through a hole in a fence. I peered through the hole and found him standing there.

In the countryside I had only seen foxes in fur farms, as we made casual class trips to local economies (although they're not the same species, to be exact). The first time I spotted a red fox was in Helsinki's Kontula when I moved in for the first time. The second spotting took place in East Helsinki as well.

More photos and story snippets on Flickr.

First of all, yes, Midsummer is bygones for a week now. Nothing Midsummer-like happened here in Berlin, but where it counts, e.g. in Finland, I've heard the circumstances were excellent (see dw's video, for example).

I tried to ask some people about their cultures' customs. A Danish colleague mentioned bonfires and "witch burning" (sounds familiar). From the Germans I only got a bit of a weird eye as response. Apparently Midsummer is no big deal – why should it be, anyway?

Two things, each worth one eurocent come into mind. Firstly, Earth's axial tilt results in dramatic seasonal changes in polar areas, hence the greater importance of solstices. Secondly, in the periphery, a greater deal of the native customs have survived the Christianisation or assimilated into it (or vice versa).

The celebration takes new forms all the time.

In the region I grew up in, there is a military air base. Then it was called the Finnish Air Force Academy. Now it's just the Training Air Wing and in another ten years it will probably be consolidated to Poland altogether.

Every Midsummer since 1945 the air base hosts the all family Midnight Sun Airshow including a healthy mix of bouncing castles, popular music and military equipment on display. It's bonfire, schlager and jet fighters for the masses, baby! Of course we went there a couple of times. Usually about 15000 other people think, that it's perfectly not strange.

The catch of course is the international guests. Look at this clip, it pretty much summarises the whole deal in 23 seconds (mind the soundtrack, too bad there isn't more). This year they had Patrouille de France. Once the Russian And, and... can you mention an air show without mentioning the Red Arrows?

The best act however was completely vernacular. Once they announced for an ill-parked vehicle to be moved. This was repeated several times along the evening. Finally a heavy-duty helicopter arrived. It had picked up a car (like in that James Bond film), flew off the premises and dropped the car off from, say 500 metres.

Then it was time to light the bonfire.

After a long hiatus, Risk sessions were revisited in Mäkkylä of Espoo. For the first time, we had a congested board with maximum six players. Usually there's a fight at two thirds into the game, but this time it all went through peacefully, despite the genocide that ended the game.

It's been scarce on updates lately. That doesn't mean the world in my eyes was complete. A few posts just seem to keep on sticking to the fingers. No doubt it will pass.

There has been some proceedings can report on straight away.

I went to Volksbühne to see their five-years-in-the-rotation theatre piece Der Meister und Margarita. Yes, it's grandmaster Frank Castorf's take on Mikhail Bulkakov's novel – which I need to grab on the next visit to Finland. Whereas the play was spectacularly set up and acted, the German text got the better of me big time. Bad sound quality in dialogue is a typical failing in European media productions, but I still can't deny the truth, that I just couldn't follow the lines at all. The spoken word seemed to have nothing to do with what the actors did, or any other context I could imagine amidst chaos. Simply put, I was clueless, buhu!

Never mind the language problems, the play was a monumental challenge, anyway. Anything that clocks in at four and half hours, raises questions about directorial narcissism.

At the weekend we undertook a day trip to a Polish town just across the border. There, the present day and near history intertwined with the stone cold February breeze of central European plains and the world appeared in its more desaturated colours. No, it was great fun. So interesting, that I might write about it in detail later.

P.S. Obviously I took some photos. Meanwhile…

Keeping up with the theme of the day, let me quote an original verse from German poet Heinrich Heine:

Freundschaft, Liebe, Stein der Weisen,
Diese dreie hört ich preisen,
Und ich pries und suchte sie,
Aber ach! Ich fand sie nie.

Nevertheless, Werther 2.0 never grows weary of friends. Having said that, I'd like to thank all of you reading this and wish you happy Valentine's Day. Peace and blessings.

Alas, growing older, I am. So, please join me tomorrow at Bar 23 in the Lychener Str (U2 Eberswalder). Nineish or so. H-hour is midnight. Pssst, they have Augustiner on tap.

During Christmas holidays a couple of dear friends encouraged me to start writing a book. At least to start with something, small… put down thoughts, consistently. Coincidentally, I had just got started with gardening this blog. I don't know if it counts, because I'm not writing here in my native tongue.

However, languages shouldn't be a problem, "The world is full of means of translation and delivery. One needs first to have something weighty enough to say," I was told. Surely the world has not become complete.

Consider 'translation', in the wide meaning of the word here. Where does the 'weightiness' come from? As many of us in creative branch factually work in the universe of 'translation' business on constant growth – finding that sweet gravity well of weighty weightiness might become an odyssey.

Now, at this point a Prozac regimen was also suggested, but let's try another solution first - call in the business coach!

I've noticed an e-learning company I used to work for in 2001 – now called Tieturi Vision – has recently collaborated with ice hockey trainer and match pundit, coach and executive Juhani Tamminen a.k.a. 'Le Roi Soleil'. I remember him once saying, "Success always calls for discipline".

As I dug a bit deeper into the website I found a slide in 10 Steps to Become a Winner, that I felt elaborated on that stray one-liner:

Confidence is a matter of consistently doing three things:
• be reliable
• commit to excellence
• take care of others

Then, there's a lot of stuff about winning, becoming a winner, winning principles, the culture of winning and so on. I'm not interested in that, but that's not to say my relationship to competitiveness weren't complicated.

Pulled out of context Tami's three bullets don't sound too bad at all: be reliable, commit to excellence, take care of others. Simple and beyond most of the 'leading the right kind of life' chatter. But let's not blow this out of proportion…

In the beginning, I was talking about writing a book. How the matter is to find something reasonably weighty to say. Then, about the (seeming!) ease of translation versus creating the original. This all this might apply, yet I'm not writing a book here. Instead, I'm gardening a blog.

Based on principles originating from ice hockey rink.

Some books, that lay on my bedside table at various states of advance.

Paavo Arhinmäki: Punavihreä sukupolvi.
Young leftist MP candidate from trenches of Helsinki talks his life in cityscape, politics and calls for "Red-Green Generation" to stand up. I'm on page 58.

Iain Banks: Espedair Street.
Imaginary rock biopic from my favourite sci-fi author. Glasgow (p. 29).

Bertolt Brecht: Flüchtlingsgespräche (Conversations in Exile).
Misters Ziffel and Kalle contemplate in Helsinki railway station, where Brecht used to catch his breath while fleeing Nazis and the war (p. 15).

Bruce Chatwin: The Songlines.
Legendary travel writer scours the Outback with Aboriginals and the mysteries of their sung folklore. Not started yet.

Holm Friebe, Sascha Lobo: Wir nennen es Arbeit – die digitale Bohème oder intelligentes Leben jenseits der Festanstellung.
Two freelancers and jacks-of-all-trades from Berlin introduce the "Digital Bohemian" and lay out the groundwork for brave new lifestyle and economy of the age of networks and collectives (p. 30).

Daniel Kehlmann: Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the World).
Exploits and expeditions of luminaries Gauss and Humboldt of early 1800s German science followed gently through a comical lens (p. 19).

Ben Macintyre: Herrakansa viidakossa (Forgotten Fatherland. The Search for Elizabeth Nietzsche).
Journalist journeys deep into Paraguay's hinterland in search for a lost utopian settlement of 1880s Aryan enthusiasts (p. 98).

Roope Mokka, Aleksi Neuvonen: Yksilön ääni - Hyvinvointivaltio yhteisöjen ajalla.
Sociologist-philospher combo from Helsinki branch of think-tank Demos have written a report on the prospects of individuality, societies and welfare state of near near future (p. 40).

As 2006 draws to its end, I've gone digital with photography. That's a spanking new Canon Powershot G7, serial number 3131114078, in the mirror. Let megapixels rule.

When the wonderful ladies of Kuulakka General Partnership are not writing concepts, scripts and copytexts - they come up with their own company Christmas parties.

The unlikely theme of this year's gettogether was Hawaiian-Russian beach party.

Photo above was taken on 1961 presidential holiday by photojournalist Kalle Kultala. From left to right, Ambassador R.R. Seppälä, Max Jakobson, President Kekkonen and foreign minister Ahti Karjalainen have just received a "note" from Soviet Union, much to their chagrin.

Four months of nomadism are over so far, as I settled in the old address in the Schönhauser Allee. Andi and Till also keep company in the flat. Thanks to all Samaritans there, who helped me through this makeshift period. You know who you are :)