Monday, March 15, 2004
I must admit that I am getting a little tired of all this snow. The past week's warmer temperatures have turned the once cotton white scenery into a cancerous eye-sore of dirt covered snow hills. I wonder how long it will take to melt all of this snow. My bet is more than one month, so that by this time in April I will still be looking at, at least several inches of snow.
That being said, the snow that came down last night was well-timed. Considering the fact that the dirt covered snow has really started to make the town look ugly, last night's snow repainted the town white and let me tell you, this town looks a lot better in white than it does in black and grey. There is an old saying in Finland, New snow is the death of Old snow and now that I have seen it in practice it makes sense.
Not much else to report here on the front line. We are traveling to Turku this weekend for Virpi and Jyrki's wedding. This should be a great time and I am looking forward to it. Any chance to socialize is welcome. Also, I think that I will get to the movies while in Turku and that is something to look forward to. I think that I have been to the movies three times since I have been in Finland. Considering the fact that in Brooklyn we lived 2 blocks from a theatre and went almost once a week for nearly 3 years, this is a huge change. But it's not like there is a great selection here in Joensuu and foreign movies are out because I can't understand what is spoken and I can't understand the subtitles.
So it's DVD land for us, except for the fact that DVD's run at 4 euros which is way too expensive, considering in Brooklyn they were half the price. You know, you would think that New York City would have a greater cost of living than a small town in East Finland, but you would be surprised. Here's what I mean (in dollars):
Bus in Joensuu: $2.95 / Subway in New York: $2
DVD rental in Joensuu: $4.90 / In New York: $2.25
Sure there are other things like
Rent in Joensuu: $600 / In New York: $1400
But some of the day to day costs are really expensive and so, on the movie front, we just watch the movies they show on TV, some good some bad others really bad. But look at it this way, when we do get somewhere where the cost of rentals is pretty cheap we will finally have a large number of films that we have not yet seen. This can only be thought of as good news, because in Brooklyn we would spend almost a half-hour trying to figure out what the hell we were going to watch.
K and I are really looking forward to the trip. I think that we will starve ourselves for the week leading up to the travels so that we can really gorge ourselves on all the food we have been dreaming of.
hb hungry
That being said, the snow that came down last night was well-timed. Considering the fact that the dirt covered snow has really started to make the town look ugly, last night's snow repainted the town white and let me tell you, this town looks a lot better in white than it does in black and grey. There is an old saying in Finland, New snow is the death of Old snow and now that I have seen it in practice it makes sense.
Not much else to report here on the front line. We are traveling to Turku this weekend for Virpi and Jyrki's wedding. This should be a great time and I am looking forward to it. Any chance to socialize is welcome. Also, I think that I will get to the movies while in Turku and that is something to look forward to. I think that I have been to the movies three times since I have been in Finland. Considering the fact that in Brooklyn we lived 2 blocks from a theatre and went almost once a week for nearly 3 years, this is a huge change. But it's not like there is a great selection here in Joensuu and foreign movies are out because I can't understand what is spoken and I can't understand the subtitles.
So it's DVD land for us, except for the fact that DVD's run at 4 euros which is way too expensive, considering in Brooklyn they were half the price. You know, you would think that New York City would have a greater cost of living than a small town in East Finland, but you would be surprised. Here's what I mean (in dollars):
Bus in Joensuu: $2.95 / Subway in New York: $2
DVD rental in Joensuu: $4.90 / In New York: $2.25
Sure there are other things like
Rent in Joensuu: $600 / In New York: $1400
But some of the day to day costs are really expensive and so, on the movie front, we just watch the movies they show on TV, some good some bad others really bad. But look at it this way, when we do get somewhere where the cost of rentals is pretty cheap we will finally have a large number of films that we have not yet seen. This can only be thought of as good news, because in Brooklyn we would spend almost a half-hour trying to figure out what the hell we were going to watch.
K and I are really looking forward to the trip. I think that we will starve ourselves for the week leading up to the travels so that we can really gorge ourselves on all the food we have been dreaming of.
hb hungry
// posted by Howard @ 10:33 AM 
