Visit to Madrid

Rocío and I will travel to Madrid for a couple of days, from wednesday to friday. Therefore I will not be updating the blog until the weekend. In Madrid I will buy my new car, we´ll meet Diego, a friend of ours who we got to know in Finland during his exchange year, and also meet some of the people of Club Audisport Iberica, who have been very helpful with things that I have needed... a special thank you goes to Alfonso for helping me with the new car! That´s it for now :)

How to take off and land succesfully (Part 5)

The flight arrived to Madrid around 2am local time. The office of Avis where we were to get the car was open until 3am. At first, the baggage seemed to take forever to come out of the plane for us to recollect, but finally we got it. Next thing was to seek the Avis office. More easily said than done - the office was located in another terminal, a bus ride away from where we were. There was supposed to be a bus at 2.30am which we were waiting around for, but as at 2.45am there was no sign of the bus, me and the father of another family who also were heading to the same office shared a cab and left ahead to terminal 4 to get our cars. Finally, we arrived at the office five minutes before closing time and did get our cars without problems, although it was quite a breathtaking start for my stay in Spain:) Rest of the other family and Rocío arrived at little past 3am to where I was, as the bus finally had come to pick them up.



Here's one quick photo of a small part of terminal 4. The place is huge...

We got off driving at 3.30am from the airport, around the time that we originally should have been approaching to Villahermosa already. We had no problems finding our way out from the airport and onto the right highway, as I had printed out comprehensive driving instructions from Google Maps. Since then, I have also bought a gps-navigator as it will be very necessary when driving in the cities like Madrid or Barcelona. These two final photos of the trip are of my first sunrise in Spain, already close to Villahermosa in Castilla la Mancha - the land of Don Quijote and the windmills, which nowadays have been replaced with those more modern versions of the concept (see below). The scenery was breathtaking, so I had to stop the car on the side of the road to imprint what I saw on the memory card of my camera...

We arrived to Villahermosa and the house of Rocío's parents at seven in the morning, after traveling for 18 hours. Her father was already waiting in the street in front of the house when we rolled from behind the corner, and soon the whole family was out there to meet us. As tired as we were, it wasn't easy to go to sleep as everything was new for me, so we stayed up for an hour, recapping the trip and giving the presents from Finland to the family (both Rocío and me are equally bad with keeping surprises to ourselves or waiting to know one!). At 8 o'clock we finally went to sleep, only to wake up in a few hours to a new day...

How to take off and land succesfully (Part 4)

After the Copenhagen city tour we checked back into to the airport through the security. The security people wanted to search my backpack, as I had a box with all my phone chargers and camera cables etc. in there, which amazingly looked like something that could have been a bomb in the x-ray. Similarly, two metallic candle-holders in Rocío's backpack in Tampere caught the security's attention... Good thing our aviation safety is being taken care of!

The flight from Copenhagen to Madrid was late for almost two hours, so with hindsight one could say that Jacob could've shown some more mercy for the Skoda during our tour of the city ;) Eventually the flight took off at 22:20 local time, at which point we had been on the road for almost 10hrs already.

This time the plane was a little bigger than the last one. My knees say thanks!

About to board the plane... excited, as the next time my feet were to touch the ground was on Spanish soil :) Another reason to be "excited" in a more nervous way was to get to Madrid in time to collect the rental car we had reserved...

Almost there... the night was pitch black at this point and all we could see from the windows of the airplane were the distant lights of villages and cities below. I managed to catch some sleep up until the time of this photo, which was a good thing considering we'd have to drive three hours to Rocíos village from Madrid.

Copenhagen Turbo-tour (Part 2)

A couple views more from Copenhagen:

Serpentine tower.

A mix of old and new... I prefer the old.

Who on earth came up with this name? Well, that's what you could call "energy with an attitude"... That's all from Denmark this time, but hopefully we get to visit the city properly with more time in the near future. Let's see who gets to visit who first, Jacob ;)

Copenhagen Turbo-tour (Part 1)

We had some free time in Copenhagen waiting for the connecting flight, but lucky for us our friend Jacob with his girlfriend lives there and took us for a "guided tour" of the city - in two hours! Never have I traveled in a Skoda going so fast ;)

Jacob, big man with a big heart.

Outskirts of the city. In the picture a sign back to the airport... or to Sweden, if that's what you want?!

The center of Copenhagen, beautiful with it's old buildings, which were a little bit hard to see from the window of a Skoda going 200 km/h. Luckily there were some traffic lights, so I had a few opportunities to take photos.

This, I hear, is a place where many people gather to spend the day and the evening in good company with some beers. Looks inviting...

How to take off and land succesfully (Part 3)

On July 20th at 15:50 Finnish time our flight from Tampere finally departed. The airports were to get bigger gradually, as we were flying first to Copenhagen, Denmark and from there to Madrid, Spain. The size of the Tampere-Pirkkala airport is about the same as that of one tax-free shop in Copenhagen...



Terminal 1, of the two available ;)

"Our" plane - small, but short of space. There are times when I wish my legs would be that 20cm shorter...

A final glimpse at Finland through a gap in the clouds.

How to take off and land succesfully (Part 2)

During our last month in Finland we traveled quite a bit: to the summer cottage of my family, to an island in the lake Saimaa in eastern Finland, to Kuopio to meet my father and his family and as could be seen in the previous post, also to Jyväskylä to meet my mother's family. I will return to these trips with photos later, but now on with the show... take-off was getting closer.

A week before the flight there was the annual festival Tammerfest in Tampere. That was a good occasion to celebrate a little with some of our friends. We started the evening with a sauna at Rauhaniemi, one of my favorite places in Tampere, with our Spanish friend Jose (above), his girlfriend Paula (right below), Sanna (left below with Hanna, who joined us later, on her right) and of course Rocío and me. The night was long, but before we knew it we were having sauna again at Paula and Jose's place at six in the morning... A party to remember, then:) Jose and Paula were a great help to us during the last days, making them very pleasant with their company, good food that they cooked and letting us stay at their place the final night when there was no bed left to sleep in at our flat. Thank you for that, and we'll be seeing you soon here in Spain!

The Finnish girls with their blue eyes and blond hair...

...now changed to these Spanish brownies :)

This is my shoe that had seen 14 countries so far - 15 as I write. What the heck is Paula doing behind me??!

To be continued...

How to take off and land succesfully (Part 1)

Oh man, I'm already regretting that I ever decided to write this blog... Until now I've been a little more than a week in Spain and already my computer's hard disk is crying for help due to the mountain of photos I'm pouring there every day. Poor machine and poor me - how am I ever going to make sense of all this flow of information and pass it on to you people in an understandable form? Well, seriously speaking, the first week has been wonderful and I will do my best to relate at least some part of it to you - maybe not with my clumsy words but with those aforementioned photos. But before I start with Spain, let's see how Rocío and me got here at all :)


Our apartment in Tampere almost empty except for the essential things. In the picture my things packed and ready to be sent to Spain beforehand. In the end, a little less than 1,5 cubic meters was enough for everything, and to send the cargo I used a nice small transportation company called Kulkurin Logistiikka. If you ever need flexible transportation between countries, based on my experience I can recommend this company and not the least for the personal and flexible service and affordable tariffs.

The last time in the apartment, half an hour before going to the airport, to check the mail and leave the keys for the future tenants. The last few weeks living in an almost empty flat didn't make leaving very hard, as more creature comforts were waiting ahead... but it was a funny feeling though to see the familiar places knowing that you ain't going to see them for an indefinite time.

Here we are less than two weeks before traveling saying bye to my family in Jyväskylä. Everyone else is in the picture (from left: Mikko, Silja, Eija, me and Rocío) except for the dog... who could be taking the photo?!

Ah, and here she is then, our lovely Karo (or Caro, how do you spell it?). She seems to be the only person who doesn't quite get the sense of humor of the rest of us...

To be continued...

Finally here!

The title says it all :) We arrived to Spain at 2 o´clock in the night between Friday and Saturday and after the drive from Madrid to Villahermosa finally reached our destination at 7 in the morning. Today day has been a little tired for both of us for the little sleep we´ve had, but otherwise the first impression has been very positive and nice. The weather is very fine with about +32 celsius and lots of sun, the food is great and the family of Rocío has been very welcoming. Of course it needs a little adjusting to get used to a completely new environment, but with these circumstances it shouldn´t be too difficult. I will write more about these first days soon after I get the officialities over with and maybe also try to combine the whole process of moving to another country to a clear package from the paperwork-point-of-view. So far so good, but let´s see what happens when I encounter the spanish bureaucracy for the first time on Monday! These are exciting times :)

Almost there...

The flight has been postponed by one day to Friday, July 20th. We've got only 9 days left in Finland and this will most probably be the last update to this blog I'll be doing from here, as my computer along all the other things are currently on their way to Spain. The apartment is almost empty, we have given notice of the change of address to the registry- and postal office, I have sold my car and we have gone around visiting my family and relatives to say bye for now... and also enjoyed the Finnish summer at my summer cottage and other places. I have a mountain of photos and videos to go through and I will be posting the highlights here when I get my computer set up in Spain and find the time to put my mind to it. At the same time I should also be able to write my first impressions of Spain, with photos of course.