It’s been a pretty laid back couple of days up here in Oulu, Northern Finland. It’s such a small area city (about 120,000 people) and the lifestyle is very much different to what I am used to.

I did really want to say how fantastic the seats and service were on my Finnair Flight from Tokyo to Helsinki. It was a pretty new A340 and the business class was just fantastic. The distance between seats was huge, you almost needed to get out of your seat to touch the seat in front of you. Although they were not full lie flat seats like Qantas Business Class, with the help of a small sleeping pill I had a great sleep. It will be really intetesting to see how the service and seats stack up on the flight to Paris, the UK to Helsinki and next week to New York.


But back to Oulu and the weekend!

For a start the city centre is quite small, but manages to have a pub at least every ten metres of so. Now I am not saying that I am drinking any alcohol but OMG let’s just say I have seen the inside of a few of these pubs.

From past visits up here to Oulu, we have been told about the Crappy Gay Bar (names by us CGB). You would think this being a University city (world famous university in fact, The patent for Text messaging is from Oulu University as are the Fitness Heart Rate monitors (Polar.fi) and more) that there would be a vibrant gay life up here.

But oh no!

On Saturday night after a night of drinking at another wine bar in downtown Oulu I begged to go to the CGB, I just had to have a look at this place (yes I had been pre warned).

At three in the morning on their busiest night (they only open on Friday and Saturday nights) there were a total of a dozen people in the club. And one of them was the requisite blonde twinky swishy thing too!

I laughed so hard I actually fell over outside (or that may have been the alcohol I’m not really sure).

Eariler in the evening I was trying to explain to someone why I wanted to go and have a look. I knew it was bad, but I needed to see and experience just how really bad it was. I was later told that the gay scene is more private up here and there are large private parties where everyone meets and mixes, and most people go to the regular bars and clubs anyway.

Needless to say Sunday I was feeling slightly under the weather, although we did manage to go walking in the forest!

My internet connectivity woes are continuing but I am learning to live without being connected 24x7, although I dread to think what my mobile telephone bill will be like when I have finished the trip (it can get up one dollar a minute for me to call out!).

I have however been keeping up with the gossip back in Sydney, hearing today that Lumiere has been cancelled as one of the team (either Brett or Andy) are extremely sick. I have heard more on the rumor mill but I refuse to elaborate as it is not confirmed.

On other news from back home the boy who has spent the last five nights at home by himself (usually it is me who is home alone as he travels) has been letting the puppy sleep on the bed with him! This is just unprecedented and very cute, as she is normally not even allowed upstairs unless for a quick visit to wake one of us up!

An event has occurred in the cold war which may trigger a reconciliation between myself and the friend, but I will not be holding my breath, nor will I be all that open to the reconciliation unless there is an apology.

But I highly doubt that!

I must admit that there is a bit of schadenfreude in me about this situation, and I know that it’s not quite the right thing to feel.

So today being my last full day in Finland, we will be taking the dogs to the Forest and I will finally get to pick berries (or watch the lesbians do it anyway LOL). Then taking the girls out for lunch and having dinner tonight at one of our other friend’s places up here.

Tomorrow afternoon I am off to Paris where I have a night on my own and then the boy meets me on Thursday morning.

I am so looking forward to seeing the boy as I have not seen him since he left for Singapore well over a week and a half ago. So as you can imagine I am very excited!

So more pictures and stuff to come soon!

Labels: holidays, Travel-Sep-Oct-07

6:30:00 PM