There are many things I like about visiting Finland. One of them is to find everything unchanged. The beautiful lights and shadows texture created by the sun and the trees, the smell of flowers, the nature full of plants and trees, the squirrels running up and down the trees... Those things are still there. The super strawberry cake and all the other great food my grandma does is also there. But this time there is a difference. You can hear it here:
Slee Pypiano and The Hammer Trio  by  hamoid
There is a renovation going on in the building. That's one of the reasons I came here, to help my grandma moving some furniture around and make things ready for next week. So this morning a bit after 7 this extremely loud noises began, that made the floor shake. This happens for a few hours every day until they have drilled all the floors in the building to replace all water pipes. It surprises me that they decided to replace them all, and how they do it. It reminds me of the old movie E.T. They have covered all floors with protective material. All walls. Windows. All walls in the elevator. Each step in the stairs. All doors are covered with plastic. A turbine blows the dust out of the building through plastic tubes. Then they seal half of each apartment (all except kitchen and toilet). All this to avoid damaging anything, and to avoid dust getting around. Most neighbors are temporarily living somewhere else, we will do the same in a few days.

My life here is healthy. I eat tasty food, run in the forest, swim, breathe clean air, I give water to the plants in the garden. But there is something strange. It reminds me of the books from Isaac Asimov, where he described a society where humans did hardly ever see each other except teleconferencing. Each human had 10.000 robots doing all the necessary tasks. Few people lived in that planet, and they were distant from each other. When those people met, the shaked their hands wearing invisible gloves. Very clean and efficient.

At the moment I can not tell you about new exciting birds like one week ago. I can talk about money and objects instead. Today I got a EDGE / HSDPA USB stick that connects me to the Internet for 10 Euro / month. No download limit, and VOIP is allowed, unlike in Germany. I also experienced the extreme discounts you find in this country during summer. I bought new summer shoes for 12 Euro, and warm winter shoes for 8 Euro. And Finland is a expensive country. Have you seen "The Story of stuff"? How is it possible to produce all the raw materials needed for the shoes, transport them to one place, pay someone to put a shoe together, send it to Finland, and then sell it to me for 8 Eur? I mean, it's a serious winter shoe, not a drawing of a shoe...