Summer adventures 2006

We came to the historic hansatown Wismar to meet Sabine and Petra who were exhange students in Kouvola last spring. Hitchiging was again super! We arrived to Wismar harbour really fast: 15 min waiting at Hamburg (auffarht Horn) and one hour of driving, straight to the bar where Sbeen works! Thanks to Wolfgang and Kerstin who made a great road sign for us!!

Sbeen's apartment is really cool, and her flatmates also - especially Mario because he was away and we could use his room, thanks! They're constantly cooking delicious meals (even though they're vegetarian, says Mikko).

The St. Nicholaus church has the second highest ceiling of brickstone in the world. The old town and the unique medieval harbor are part of Unesco's world heritage.

On Saturday Sbeen and her ever-happy friend Ulli took us to a small village, Ilow, outside Wismar. There we celebrated the Finnish midsummerfest - and they even had a bonfire!

Sunday was again a hot day but before going to the beach we went to listen to Cellolitis (Nikolaus Herdieckerhoff) at Ponton in the harbour. He was also playing at Ilow the day before. Such nice music, like magic! He's a one man orchestra with just his talent and cello. Hope to hear him again, maybe in Finland!

Wismar is by the sea, so they have many nice beaches there. We spend a really nice evening there, again with Sbeen and Ulli. Even though everyone else is vegetarian, Mikko got his wish and could grill lots of proper Thüringer bratwurst (so-called "Makkara").

At the moment we're having temporary problems with "the internet stuff" so be patient - more pics coming soon!

From here we'll continue to a cool festival next weekend: Fusion. After that it's time for Berlin.

SCROLL DOWN FOR PREVIOUS STOPS OF OUR JOURNEY

We made it to Germany! After seven hours of hitchhiking from Amsterdam we arrived at our new host Mareike's home door with a fancy car - hitchhiking is definitely as easy in here as in Finland!

Hamburg is cool, and we'll probably stay for a couple of nights. Then it's off to Wismar.

We might be offline for some days because of "some Internet thing".

The lovely house where Mareike lives with 3 other nice people. We are really fasinated by the house and the wild garden! It´s such a dream. We had a nice evening teaching Finnish over tortillas & caipirinjas made by our great hosts.

Girls over Hamburg, St. Michel churchtower. Mareike was our guide for the day, and we got a good tour of the city.

The view for above. We also went underwater, to the 100 years old tunnel under the river.

Mikko at the river writing stupid things to the sand. Not everyone knows there's also a beach in Hamburg, and the water is warm and clean enough to swim in.

SCROLL DOWN FOR PREVIOUS STOPS OF OUR JOURNEY

Today we arrived back to Amsterdam for the Roots festival. The atmosphere was almost as nice as in our campingsite Zeeburg - recommended.

We leave for Hamburg probably on Tuesday.

By an unexpected coincidence we realiyed how small the world is: On Monday we met three friends from Rovaniemi, Finland! We left them where we started from, having fun in Amsterdam.

On Thursday evening we travelled to Den Haag to meet our Finnish friend Tapio. Haag appears cleaner and more expensive than Amsterdam. Even though the city was more peaceful, we had a lots of fun with Tapio and his friends - one of them, Florian, even invited us to visit him in France when we pass by.

We are still planning on going back to Amstedam before Germany.

In the evening we went to have a sniff of fresh sea air

We visited a mosque

Old buildings

Haag by night

Balls. Ollappa pallo.

Old car

Happy

The following sunny pictures are from the huge beach of Haag, where we spent Saturday in the sun.

Tapio

Last night our wonderful hosts kindly lend us bicycles to really get into the A'dam feeling. Wow! They really respect bikers here. Highly recommended for everyone. We biked for example by the river to scout the area for a beach party starting tomorrow (the picture). Part of our adventure was to cycle through the biggest park around, Vondelpark, at night. People were on a candle picnic there and the park is really quite big. Nice! We didn't even drop the bicycle keys to a canal, like many others

We're still without a place to sleep tomorrow, but we made the decision to stay in the Amsterdam area till next week. We are waiting for example for the Amsterdam Roots Festival concert on Sunday. Tomorrow we'll either go to a camping area or to den Haag to meet a Finnish friend - that is, of course, if someone doesn't SMS us we could stay in Amsterdam for the weekend... We could postpone all other plans for that

We are currently staying by two very nice persons in Amsterdam, Agnes and Alex (Hospitalityclub member djinh). On Thursday we must find another friendly soul who'll take us.

We have had some thoughts about our route from here on. First thing to do would be to travel via Hamburg to Wismar to meet the member sbeen and some other old friends. Then maybe even go to Berlin. On the way back we could possibly stop in Hildesheim (to meet friends), but after that the next waypoint will probably be Paris. From France we of course try to get to Spain.

These are just preliminary "plans" (so-called) and can change...

Someone came to us during the night and asked: "Where can we find not too expensive bier in nice place? Are we in the wrong area perhaps?" Well, we told them to go where we just came from and went on.

There's some photos for you, so you can decide if we have been in the wrong area or not.

Here we are at the airport in Helsinki, eagerly waiting for our plane to leave.

loving friends on an airplane <3

Mikko the tourist is reading the Visitors guide at the first night

sweet canals

Suvi at the Dam Square, also the first night

the Dam Square in daylight

We also met a local member of Kissanpesukerho

Mikko is resting in a park

Amsterdam is full of bicycles

Suklismanna at her best

We found a good party at 11, an old factory (?) overlooking the whole town. Unfortunately the camera was sleeping as we partied.

Suvi found an old friend in the red thing district.

We bought the Amsterdam Film Museum in Vondelpark for a summer apartment. Everyone's welcome to our mansion!

Here we are! This is amazing, the best thing ever happened to me! It's boiling hot and the summer is crazy. The nights are black and warm and the atmosphere multicultural.

At this point we haven't managed to blog any pictures, but soon...

We are two friends living on the far side of the world, Finland. As Finland is filled with polar bears and penguins in the summer, we decided to travel to Europe. Our aim is to get to know nice people, experience amazing places and have fun.

Our adventure begins on Friday evening the 9th of June with a flight to Amsterdam. Everything after that is yet unplanned, but we’ll probably be travelling about two months.

As we are poor media students/workers, we are relying on the goodness of people. We would greatly appreciate accommodation in the company of likeminded souls. In return, we offer our friendship and of course, accommodation in Finland in the future.

Our primary way to travel will be hitchhiking, and if everything goes well, we hope to find ourselves in Spain by the end of the summer.

Some random info on us:

- Our hospitalityclub.org usernames are Suklismanna and Suupala
- We live on opposite sides of Finland, Suvi in the north and Mikko in the south
- We are well-mannered, honest and open-minded without restrictions
- Money has kept us from travelling as much as we would’ve liked to, so we are eager to see all the most famous sights of Europe, as well as the hidden treasures
- We are not a dating couple, but best friends

If you would like to meet us, please contact

MIKKO
Email: xmiru@kyamk.fi
GSM +358-40-5375457
ICQ: 191593262
MSN: mr_ruostila@hotmail.com

SUVI
Email&MSN: sumikkon@ulapland.fi
GSM +358-40-5862634