Wknd in Tallinn, Estonia

The summer weather in Finland has been amazing this year. Except for a few rainy days in the beginning it’s basically been blue skies, sunshine and 25 degrees every single day. Since we live pretty much next to a forest and a lake, it’s been a lot of swimming during the last few weeks.

When the weather is so great you become almost ignorant to the fact that just because the sunshine is where you are, that doesn’t mean it’s sunny everywhere else. Or at least if your name is Jonna. So, when we decided to do a spontaneous wknd trip to Tallinn, Estonia, and I saw a weather forecast that said 17 degrees and rain, I still didn’t believe it. In shorts and a t-shirt (and equipped with no umbrella!) I jumped on a ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn.

The ferry took 2 hours and once we arrived my shorts felt like the most ridiculous choice of clothing. It wasn’t that it was raining. Oh no. It was pouring down. Literally pouring down. There was so much water on the road that the cars could barely drive off the ferry.

Slightly disorganized Tallinn harbour didn’t really come with a taxi line so we had to wait for the taxi war to end before we managed to grab a car to our hotel, which was located in the beautiful old town.

Once there (and checked in), a windy and rainy day followed. Residents and shop owners of tourist-Tallinn obviously saw the rain as a great opportunity to make shit loads of money out of silly tourists (like us) who hadn’t brought an umbrella, and sold some pretty basic stuff at 18-21 euros, which is around 200 rmb. Yeah, I don’t think so.

After some serious searching we managed to buy plastic raincoats from a small shop for 1 euro/each (that’s more like it!) and challenged the weather. Fortunately it stopped raining towards the night and we had a nice time walking around old town, checking out old buildings and cute little shops, bars and restaurants.

Tallinn's a very touristy place with a focus on the medieval times, and locals aren’t necessarily the most friendly people that I’ve come across. At one cute little restaurant, for instance, we were sitting at the bar having drinks when a countless number of people came in asking to see the menu. The staff kept handing them a menu, but then when the guests required a table they just said:

-Sorry, we have no free tables and are booked all night.

Hm... so why not tell them that before they start studying the menu?!

We did some bar hopping, enjoyed an average Italian meal, and saw some pretty drunk groups of tourists, which is probably one of the reasons why locals don’t love the visitor flow. The next day the weather was better and on the ferry back to Helsinki we even sat on the sun deck, playing card games.

Suddenly a guy came up to me, saying:

-Hey, you live in Shanghai right?

-Eh… yes I do!

-Yeah, I recognize you. We work in the same office building. You’re on the 15th floor! I’m on the 17th!

There he was, a Brazilian guy hailing all the way from Shanghai to the Tallinn ferry, and he was pretty surprised to see me there too. We are now officially elevator buddies in Shanghai.

I have a tendency to bump into people that I know on airports, no matter what kind of strange place I get to I often see someone I know. But on a Tallinn ferry on my way to Helsinki?! Turns out –it’s a small world.

Some pix from Tallinn:


Estonia has only been independent since 1991 (This memorial stone is for all the people that died when the boat "Estonia" sank in 1994). With a population of 1,3 million (Tallinn has 400 000 citizens) it's a small country.

In a 1 euro raincoat...






Tallinn by nite

Summer in Finland

Despite the horrific events that took place in Norway on July 22 I’ve managed to have a pretty good holiday. It was just really hard for a while to think about anything but the attacks. I have a countless number of Norwegian friends (from studying in Australia 2003-2005) and I’ve been in touch with pretty much all of them, just to make sure that they are OK (they all are. One guy has an apartment located some 500 m away from where to bomb blast took place, however, but he was in Australia for a holiday when everything happened. Fortunately, his flat is still intact). Since I can read Norwegian, I had a bit of an “information overload” situation in the beginning of last week, where I sat glued to the computer and read everything I saw in the newspapers, as well as blog posts and comments from Norwegian survivors. As a result, I cried a lot and didn’t sleep for three night, and when I did, I had nightmares where the shooter appeared, trying to kill me. So, I decided to keep away from the Internet for a bit, hence my decision to not blog. Hope you understand.

But except for the days that followed the sleepless nights last week (those were not fun) I’ve had a lot of fun. My first week in Finland was spent at my bf’s parent’s summer cabin, located in a small community called Hankasalmi. It’s a gorgeous place, and this time my folks came with us (all the way from Sweden, it took them quite some time to first drive to Stockholm, then take the ferry to Helsinki and then drive from there to Hankasalmi) for the first time! They loved it too (how can you not!) and we had some great times even though the weather wasn’t on our side at all times.

After the summer cottage stay I spent a wknd in Helsinki, followed by some gorgeous days in Tampere, Vammala, Vaasa and –Estonia’s Tallinn! But more about that in the following day’s posts.

Here comes some photos from the summer cottage:

For Norway

On Monday at 12pm, all Nordic countries held a minute's silence for the victims of the bombing and shooting in Norway. On this blog, I'm taking a silent week.

Off to northern Finland's deepest forests, see u in one week!

How to find an apartment in Shanghai

Our first flat in Shanghai -quite nice one. Just located in the completely wrong part of the city -and as a result we had to spend 2 hour commuting every day. Oh, little did we know back then!

I just checked my blog email and saw two new emails from two different people about to move to Shanghai, asking me the same things:

-How do I find an apartment in Shanghai?
-How much should I pay for it?

Now, those are big questions, but since they came at the same time, and I’ve promised to answer blog enquiries during my holiday, I thought this could be worth a blog post.

Since I just completed a 2,5 month frustrating flat hunt, I believe that we can all agree that I am far from an expert on how to find accommodation fast. However, during my search for the perfect crib, I came across several different ways of searching for a place:

Finding a flat

There are several Eng and Chi websites offering housing advertisement in Shanghai these days:
Craigslist has a lot of listings, however, often lacks photos.

Then there is a housing section on smartshanghai, which is great as the housing ads offer both photos and map of where the apartment is located (+ links to several real estate companies), however, I have to say that the flats you see in the photos of the ads, and the flats that you go and see are often not the same. Also, I think a lot of the agencies posting on smartshanghai (not all of them though!) are keen to help wealthy laowais with expat packages. Having said that, however, there are still some really good ones and if you’re looking for shared accommodation, I believe this is a great place to look.

Another good site/forum that can help any Shanghai newbie with getting his/her question answered is Shanghai Expat.

Get an account, browse the topics, and fire away! I was a frequent user of this forum when I first moved to Shanghai, posting questions about everything from where to buy soy milk to how to find a basketball team.

If you master the Chinese language, you might want to take the advice of CNNGo and look for a flat on some of the local pages. Here’s the article that lists some of the big ones.

Another option (and my personal favourite choice) is to simply walk around in the area where you wish to live, and visit real estate agencies located in that area. Tell them your budget as well as your demands (one bedroom, two bedrooms, old house, new building… etc) and they can normally take you to see some places straight away. One thing I learned from my latest flat hunt was to stick to one or max 2 agencies, otherwise it might get too confusing, not to mention messy.

Don’t forget to bargain with the landlord. Ask for new furniture if you need, a lower rent, or whatever requirement you might have. Negotiating things like rent and furniture is a normal part of renting in China. Never just settle for what the landlord just tells you (unless you think the deal is already good enough).

Now, moving on to the second question:

How much should I pay?

This question is impossible for me to answer! It depends where you want to live (central areas, like Huangpu and Xuhui and Jing’an are normally more expensive than Pudong, Minhang, and Hongqiao), how big of a flat you want, what kind of furniture and decoration you need, an many other things. You simply have to set a limit for yourself and try your luck. You will notice quite soon if your budget is enough or not.

And finally…

Where should I live?

Having lived in 3 different areas in Shanghai: a six month stunt in Pudong, 2,5 years in Xuhui, and now 1 month in Huangpu (or old Luwan) –I can only tell you one thing: live close to your office/school, or, close to your mean of public transport. It makes life much easier and convenient because trust me, you don’t want to spend hours on commuting every day.

I hope this helps! Happy flat hunting.

Summer blog topics -suggestions, anyone?

Finally, my holiday is here! Today I’m off to Finland. I’ll be spending 3 weeks there, and then I’ll head over to Sweden for my final week. A whole month off –feels unbelievable! This wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for all the overtime hours I’ve done this spring (and really, I’ve worked a lot), so I guess working loads also has its advantages, hehe.

For those that have followed this blog carefully, today is also the day when by no-sugar bet with my significant other ends. Do you think I made it? No candy, cakes or sugar for some 2,5 months in order to win a shopping spree?

Well, of course I did. And not eating sugar has made me feel great, so who knows, maybe it’s something I will keep up. It wasn’t that hard to tell you the truth. Give it 2 weeks to get rid of the sugar craving and then you’re fine. Highly recommend it to anyone who is struggling with keeping their hands off chocolate bars.

Since I will be on a holiday there won’t be much action going on in my life. The summer days in Scandinavia tend to be bright and beautiful, but kind of boring in terms of action and events. So I’m not sure what to blog about. Do you guys have any suggestions/wishes? Anything you want to know about life in Finland/Sweden? Photo essays? Anything China related you wish me to write about? Could be anything -about studying in China, some restaurant recommendations, anything... Any questions you want answered? Fire away, because I’d like to keep this blog going even while I am away, but I need your input in order to make it interesting.

But first I have a 1 hour taxi drive, a 9 hour flight, and a 3 hour bus ride to look forward to… see you on the other side!

The starch girls

As I’m getting ready for a holiday in Europe, I obviously try to get the very most out of China before I leave, including:

• Pampering such as massages, manicure, pedicure
• Speaking as much Chinese as possible with my Chinese friends
• Indulging in a lot of spicy food

However, the whole pampering thing has become a down prio, as I’ve realised that I enjoy my other two priorities much more.

Some days ago, my best girlfriend and I went to one of our favourite Sichuan joints.

-Looks full, she said, as we stepped in and were greeted by a noisy, smoky but happy environment.

-Yup, I confirmed, trying to locate a free table.

-你们好！(Nimen hao!) Came the manager, who I’ve seen many times before, and, who must have recognized us, as he smiled a little bit too wide.

-No tables today? I asked.

-Always a table for you girls!

Yes, he definitely recognized us.

And, magically, he showed us to a free table.

Five seconds later a female waitress appeared with a menu.

While we started flicking through it, she stood by our side all the time, until she finally said, with some obvious impatience in her tone of voice:

-The mushroom dish that you are looking for is here.

She grabbed the menu and flicked the pages until… ta, da, out favourite mushroom dish appeared.

-One of these, she said to herself and wrote on her notepad.

-Eh… yes. We agreed.

-What else? Tofu?

-Eh, yes.

-Do you want your spicy noodles today or rice?

-Eh… spicy noodles. Yes. And rice.

-You want BOTH rice AND spicy noodles. That’s way too much.

-Eh, but we want both.

-Ah, you two. You always order the same and you always order too much!

We just stared at her, chins dropping to the floor.

-But we won’t waste it… I started, we will…

-You will get the leftovers in a doggy bag and take it as take away, oh yes, I know. Like you always do!

-Right…

-Still, I think you girls eat too much starch.

-Eh, er… well.

-Yeah don’t worry, you’ll get your noodles still.

-Eh… great! Thanks! Don't forget the rice!

Right. Time for us to change restaurant maybe? Or, maybe we should change up our order a bit? Then again, it’s so good?! And why change something that is good?

But damn. I thought all laowais looked the same to Chinese people? That’s what my friends often tell me. But apparently Chinese people too, learn to remember you by your habits. We are obviously the two doggy bag starch girls at this joint.