Northern Lights : au revoir tampere etc etc

Saturday, September 24, 2016

au revoir tampere etc etc

So yesterday was my last day in Tampere - this year. I will definitely be back, so I didn't mind so much that I missed out on the Spy Museum (by 'missed out', I suppose what I'm really saying is I 'just didn't go'. It's not like there was anything stopping me aside from apathy.) As you know I have been living in the same place for three weeks, and it felt a little like home, so as I was leaving I decided to try the door just outside 'my' door, and it opened, and this was what was in there. For what it's worth. Not much.

And this is my last look into my digs themselves:

Ok from that point it was a long strange trip, actually not that strange, but long, from Erätie to Tampere to Helsinki Airport to Orly to Whatever the name is of the hotel I'm in now. I spotted this person en the way to the post office to post my receipts back to myself (really, I don't entirely know why I do this, except that the receipts are gold - I need them for tax and travel diary considerations - so I trust the post office with them more than I trust myself. I also photographed them all). Anyway as I was saying I spotted this person. Friendly. Didn't mind having his picture taken. Didn't think it would steal his soul or anything.

I don't entirely know (or at all know) what this building is but it is a bit of a landmark, and I could see it down the end of Erätie when I was hanging out there, so I took a photo of it from the train as I was leaving Tampere.

Yeah I did take a photo or two between there and getting on the plane but they were boring so I'm sparing you them. Yes, they were more boring than this photograph below. Well, I just thought - no-one ever takes photographs on planes, do they. I am pretty sure they don't. Sometimes out of the window, but rarely in the plane itself.

Getting to the hotel was a drag but I did it (someone up there likes me) and this was the view out my window last night. I am in room 202, and rhymingly, I haven't got a clue.

So this morning I decided to go to the flea market, and this is where shit gets real. This is approaching Ave Georges Lafenestre (does that really mean Georges the window? guess so) at 7 am, which the internet said was the best time to get there. There were a lot of vans around. But not so many people.

Some punters with an eye for a bargain (good luck dickhead) were wandering around with torches looking at stuff. I just thought there's nothing here yet, I need to get something for breakfast. I meandered away and had a coffee and croissant. Like the Finns, the French seem to have no idea at all about breakfast, it's like something they just haven't got around to paying attention to yet.

Junk slowly accreting of its own volition

When I came back it wasn't much better but I guess progress was occurring however slowly (tbh there were still people unloading stuff/setting up tables when I left, which I guess was around 9). I won't comment on everything because a lot of it paints a thousand words. At least a thousand.

But I will say this gave me a shock because my mother had one in the 70s or perhaps early 80s. Indeed I think possibly her children pooled their money and bought it for her. I had forgotten all about it. Very handy and aesthetically pleasing, non? C'est un rhinocerause.

Lots of little dogs around, real ones.

Things like the below still tug at my something strings. I have that split second of 'that's probably really amazing' followed by 'you don't want to clutter up your life with that kind of stuff - leave it to a loser who'll probably kid him/herself that it's a really great thing that enhances their futile existence. Lol, loser.'