2016: review of the year
No, it's not a mistake. While this post belongs to the New Year's eve reflections, I couldn't publish it then for a multitude of reasons. I edited it a lot since then so let it be an overview of the last 16 months.
There was hardly any year in my life like 2016. It's hard to say something about it overall, so let's dig in details.
Place of the year - La Guancha
City of the year - Groningen (the most cycling city in the world!)
Street of the year - Keilalahdentie
Work of the year - adapting to the fact that our cosy company was acquired by a huge corporation (successfully! it's not that bad after all)
Food of the year - härkis (and vegetarian/vegan food in general)
Like-minded person of the year - my friend Julia; I know that you have very tight schedule, so I appreciate even more every conversation during my visit to Munich, good luck with everything!
Positive change of the year - my dream comes true, soon I'll move to the beautiful Switzerland
The most sad event of the year - we'we split with Elena after 6 years of the life together and after overcoming all kinds of (external) difficulties
The most joyful event of the year - that day when a fallen tree struck the Allegro train and the night after it
Evil of the year - past memories and fears
Good of the year - my wonderful friends and family, without you everything would have bean almost unbearable
Clothes of the year - SPD shoes again :)
Achievement of the year - became citizen of Finland and European Union
Phrase of the year - "everything should happen in time"
Symbol of the year - two toy cats, embracing each other
The worst day of the year - 4th January
The best day of the year - 4th November
Acquaintance of the year - many! awesome folks in Gran Canaria, Couchsurfing and Warmshowers guests, people I met while travelling, Meetup fellows
Self-realization of the year - went to the gym for the first time in my life (boring crap, as I expected, but at least I've proved it); completed German A2.1 and A2.2 levels; completed First Aid course; attended Cycling Infrastructure Study Tours by David Hembrow; founded Helsinki Outdoors Meetup
Disappointment of the year - Tinder and the whole online dating bustle (but off-line dates were just fine)
Parting of the year - there were too much of them during 2016, all very intense
Movie of the year - La La Land
Concert of the year - the ethereal music of Mielophone
Book of the year - Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone
Work
It seems that I know something! :) I wasn't sure how easy/hard is to get a job in a country where everybody wants to move. Only when I was already deep in the process, I realized that I have good chances. More than everything I was afraid that I'll loose my freedom (ability to use Linux, to have flexible hours and to do remote work from time to time) due to rather conservative working culture of Switzerland.
Fortunately there are exceptions! I've seen some employers who send a link to the video interview and it requires a proprietary plugin, which works on Windows only. And I was warned twice that it's improper to ask about remote work on the first interview. What the hell!? I was so happy to tell them *why* I reject their offers! And I was happy to find a company with modern working culture. Time will show how the actual situation matches the reality, but so far so good.
Technical interviews and tasks were everything else than easy. I spent many hours studying new stuff and thinking of the future. Should I go more full-stack? Or pay more attention to the architecture rather than development? Or maybe I should change the field of work?
It's strange, but the deepest and most productive thoughts I had one rainy day while hiking in Jura mountains. It's a relief to know what I want in the nearby years, but it's nice to have a bigger dream too! I hope that I will have enough energy, skills and financial stability to make it true!
Personal life
I don't wish anyone to live the nightmare of divorce and I hope that I will never experience this again. However, when things get too bad, this seem to be the right solution. As people said, "at least you don't have kids". That's easier situation indeed, but anyway the divorce should be at least an available option. I am very happy to live in a modern country, where you don't have to fight for it.
The outcome is like a cold shower anyway: three words, which void 6 years of a common day-to-day life, all hopes, all good time together (even the worst couples have it; and ours was on the bright side, so there was something to loose). "Puolisot tuomitaan avioeroon", - reads the paper. ("Spouses are sentenced to divorce"). This sounds like a sentence indeed.
What is surprising, after all the hell you have more energy than before and you are able to go your own way again, making even firmer steps than before. Moreover, you genuinely forgive all the insults and other crap and then you wish your ex-spouse luck (and hope that one day she will notice that you also contributed to it in the same way as she contributed to yours).
I'll not list here all the crazy and desperate things I've done in 2016 because I know that my mom reads this blog ;) But any grief comes to an end (or at least it strikes less often) and at some point I was ready for a new life (at least I thought so :D).
* * *
As I mentioned, Tinder sucks (or my profile there, LOL). It's not that it doesn't work at all. It does, I even found a girlfriend through it and had a very nice summer (unfortunately she must have an opposite opinion on the matter). And the Gran Canaria adventure was great!
The problem with Tinder is that it's designed for a "cool" guy to find a "cool" girl (and vice versa). I'm not cool at all :) I'm not even a normal guy ;) If I would have spoken about my real aspirations in life on the first date, I'm sure most of them would have been very short :))
Another web services are not much better, except maybe OkCupid, but then it turned out that I am maybe too "normal" guy for the awesome and weird girls, which seem to populate the website. There is also an amazing "Vaellussinkut" ("Hiking for singles") group in Facebook, but it didn't help me either.
Maybe I'm too old-fashioned, but the best things still happen spontaneously and mostly off-line. You just feel the right person at the right moment. Maybe you see her at the airport for the first time and you already know that she will be a very special guest. Or you read about someone who cycled endless kilometres from her hometown to yours and you just realize that you need to meet her and perhaps it's something more than you'll just show her around. Or you get tired of loneliness and organize an outdoor event for beginners. You meet many awesome people and one of them is just so different than others!
Not all the time things go smoothly. At some point you get to know that your sweetheart either has a boyfriend (oh, it's *almost* over with him, but you know that you don't want to be involved in this story) or she wants to live in a remote farm somewhere in the forests of Finland. Or the fairy tale just falls in pieces, for a reason or another.
And then, when you don't expect anything else to happen, you find yourself on an unbelievably beautiful 9.5 hours long date. You've never seen Helsinki so attractive, even if it's rainy and windy, as usual. And then your love story barely fits in the mind (because it's so wow and so different than anything else before!), but at the same time it takes less than two pages of border crossing stamps in the passport.
What's next? I hope only good things ahead!
Russians say "You'll spend the year in the same way you've met it". Well, on 1st January we were on the way to our first common vacation, full of love and sweet hopes.
Travel
I knew that my yearly "plan" of travel and impressions will be fulfilled already during the first 3 months, so after that I didn't travel so much as I'd usually prefer. I had to figure out many things in my life and I needed time and energy for it. This of course affected my levels of cycling and other outdoor activity, but it just had to be done.
January started with an awesome snowfall and serious frost here in Finland, so I used my fatbike properly for the first time. On 13th January I landed in +20 and on the next day was already cycling in the enchanting Esperanza forest. I didn't waste even a day during the whole trip. In evenings I walked or cycled to the nearby villages or along the coast, at weekends I hiked and cycled a lot. I met nice people too! And danced all the night long at Tenerife carnival.
In February I was happy to welcome my friend and his girlfriend to the island. We rented an awesome big house in La Guancha (I hope that one day I'll publish a story about it). Weather became not so nice and El Teide even got a snow cover. Bad weather didn't prevent us from all kind of walks and very demanding (for me) mountain bike rides. After returning home we spent endless lovely evenings near the fireplace tasting local wine.
In March I swam a lot because we travelled mostly to the southern side of the island. In the same month I visited the next big island - Gran Canaria (against my expectations the ferry trip didn't differ much from a ferry trip on Baltic Sea, but the island itself was just awesome). And I tried kayaking in the ocean! And established a new record, climbing to 2700+ m.
In April was time to go back. I still enjoyed my time in Tenerife, but unsolved personal issues distracted me and called back to the Big Land. On the way back I visited Netherlands and had a honour to attend Cycling Infrastructure Study Tours by David Hembrow. Helsinki met me with +2, wet snow, an empty apartment and a note from Elena with just one word: "Farewell". I squeezed my teeth and started to build my life over. It's nice to travel, but it's nice to be home too, so on the last Saturday of the April I cycled on the familiar route in Kirkkonummi area. Tenerife felt like a good dream.
May was full of Helsinki, as I already mentioned.
In June I visited some new (Ruuhijärvi, Mäntsälä, Punkaharju) and "old" (Loppijärvi, Savonlinna) destinations in Finland, which was great.
July wasn't that good as I'd like it to be (not only in travelling aspect), but I managed to make a loop around Vesijärvi and went to the awesome cycling vacation in Västerbotten (North of Sweden).
August wasn't again something what I expected. I spent too much time walking, driving (!) and travelling by train. I would have rather been cycling... But anyway, after some sad events I visited my relatives and friends and then some sweet things happened too! ;) Oh yes, and in between I took part in an awesome self-rescue course (kayaking).
September didn't start well, but then things improved little by little. I took part in the moonlight kayaking trip, closed the season on Siuntionjoki and then listened the call of my heart and went to visit Switzerland. It wasn't only a hiking/cycling visit, I also tried to find a suitable place for me to live there and came to the conclusion that there is no bad place in Switzerland, I'll go there where I'll find the job (which means Basel or Zürich).
October was a wonderful month, full of every kind of outdoor fun. I founded Helsinki Outdoors Meetup, but cycled also alone and with friends. At the end of the month there was a visit to Jyväskylä, which I love and was happy to see again.
Winter started in November, weather became unpredictable and there was not so much room for outdoor activities. And I was so madly in love that I barely noticed everything around anyway :)
Weather stayed crazy during December, but I still found a way to fit a nice cycling trip North of Helsinki and two hiking trips (one of them was just incredible with the transparent fresh ice).
In January *we* visited Prague and it was our first trip together! I liked the city in spite of cold. All my expectations met: historical, romantic, a bit chaotic, relatively cheap, lots of sympathetic trams everywhere. Also the area around seem to be very pretty (one day we hiked in Karlsteijn).
In February there was some real winter with fatbiking trips and even a bit of skiing and skating!
In March weather became unstable again. We made an attempt of a "spring camping trip" with a friend, but it turned out to be a winter camping with -5 at night and strong wind from the sea :D
And April was a crazy month not only because of weather (it snowed on 29th April in Helsinki), but also because of my job interviews. The good thing is that I needed to fly to Munich, where I met the beautiful Bavarian spring with temperatures up to +20 and cycled along Schlierensee and Tegernsee lakes.
I cycled only 6300 kilometres in 2016 (which is 1300 km less than year before). That's a pity, but it's more or less understandable taking in account personal issues I had to solve and the fact that there is no flat place in Tenerife, so even cycling the whole day will never give you the same amount of kilometres as elsewhere.
For a couple of months my office was located only at 15 min. walking distance from home, which turned out not to be very nice too. I think this says a lot about cycling as an awesome mean of transport - who else craves for a longer commute? I was really happy when our office moved (it's 12 km from home now).
There were only 4 take-offs and 4 landings in 2016, which is great! Unfortunately I needed to drive a car or use a taxi much more than I'd like to do in 2016, but I'm very happy that most of the trips in Tenerife were still done by bus. I needed a taxi in Finland twice during 2016 (which is a huge increase from 0 during 6 previous years :D ), but fortunately had 0 trips to buy furniture or moving from place to another.
What else?
I'm really waiting for the trips of the rest of 2017! It seems that they'll be awesome too. My SBB Half-Fare card is already in the pocket ;)
There are much more things to happen in 2017 and I hope that all of them will be nice and pleasant. I am worried about this and that (e.g. about working hours in Switzerland, which are just insane) and it will be a huge relief to find that all these worries were groundless.
As you can see, I'm doing well (especially taking in account how I started the year 2016) and I wish everyone to do so. Pursue your dreams, work hard, don't waste precious time, smile and support each other!
People in Helsinki, I'd be glad to see each of you before I leave! Please drop a message and we'll arrange something!
Have a good summer, everyone!