Dear Readers and Friends,

after nearly six years of living in Finland I will move on. I tried for quite a while now to get permission to relocate within my company to Vienna and my request was finally accepted. During this month (August) I will be moving and from first of September on I will be living in Vienna.

Things happened fast since end of June, when my boss gave the "OK" for the relocation and still there is a lot to do and some details are not too clear right at this moment.

It does not make me happy to leave Finland, especially not Helsinki - I love the country and the city and I never managed to feel negative about it. Looking back at the last years I can for sure say that they were some of the most event- and colorful in my life. I had a very good time in Suomi and I will for sure not forget it. In any way I will stay connected to Finland, as I will go on working for my employer and will for sure visit every now and then.

Nevertheless, the move to Vienna makes me very happy. It is a return to my mother tongue and it is also finally arriving in the place, where a lot of my friends live of which I know some since more than ten years.

At the moment I do not intend to close down this blog - I might be silent here for a while, due to the tasks of the next weeks, but in general I feel still comfortable here and just because I will be "out of Helsinki" most of the time, this does not contradict the title of the site.

All you good people, keep on moving, take care and all the best to all of you!
Georg

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For more June Picutres from Helsinki click on the above picture or here to see them as a slidewhow

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It is summer time, the sun in Northern Europe can hardly be convinced to disappear anymore, people stay up all night and due to the lack of sleep it seems impossible to concentrate on any written text. So who wants to read blogs during summer? Therefore let me hint you to three visual blogs, which I enjoy all very much:

Katutaso - The Helsinki Street Art Blog collects photographs of graffiti and other street art from all over Helsinki.

Rocektboom, with Amanda Congdon is a English language VideoBlog, that is "aired" every weekday. Amanda discusses interesting news and sites from the Internet in a very funny way.

But sorry Amanda, here is the VideoBlog that is just bit more entertaining and more attractive than Rocketboom: Ehrensenf, the German VideoBlog with Katrin. Also here you get your daily news from the Internet and it is worth a look, even if you do not speak German. Ehrensenf by the way is an anagram of Fernsehen, the German word for TV and means something like honor-mustard.

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The last two weeks were so sunny and beautiful in Helsinki that it was not possible to spend more time than really needed in front of the computer. A month ago it was still all ice and grey here and now the sun is already hesitating till 22.00 until it vanishes for a few hours and the birch trees in the backyard are green.

Yesterday I took my bike and went just around Kehä I. There is a bike route along that ring road and I can only recommend you to try it out on your own. The signs on the way will not help you much and I got lost several times, but it is possible to find your way through. Anyhow, getting lost is a good way of training Finnish swear words – so it all has a deeper meaning.

I still do not manage to make direct links to Google Earth, so I only have the below bad picutre of the trip. The Google Earth kml file as well as the gpx data file unfortunately only open as XML in the browser and not directly in Google Earth (they do from other websites, but not for my own - hmmm). If any of the readers knows how to avoid that, I would be greateful for a hint.

I will be away from Helsinki now for one and a half week. First for a meeting to Southern France and the with my children in Southern Germany. Hope those who stay here keep the sunny weather up and running.

On Friday I flew back from Bavaria (Germany) to Helsinki. That afternoon a colleague and I hang out for an hour in Greding, a city South of Nuremberg. The temperatures were at 23 degrees Celsius and I got afraid of returning to Finland and having to put on several layers of clothes again.

Pah! There was no disappointment after the return – the sun was out most of Saturday and all this Sunday long. Everywhere people were roaming around, some of the runners and cyclists even left their jackets at home. The temperature went up to 11 degrees Celsius and the ice is melting, giving us back the sea.

For the first time I was at the graveyard in Hietaniemi, a wonderful place for walking. One of the statues on a grave impressed me – a naked woman reading in a book. Beautiful and daring.

» See more pictures of April in Helsinki
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