Collecting countries and colds

I've had some bad luck with the weather this year (well I know the whole Europe has had, except for Finland. And that's not where I've been to.)

It all started with an orienteering camp in Åhus, in the south coast of Sweden, over Easter holidays. It was supposed to be all sunny and bare ground for great orienteering, but of course it had to snow there for the one last time before summer just on that weekend. But to my big surprise, I overcame my despise of coldness and got the sparkle of orienteering again!

The second encounter with unexpected coldness was during my four day trip to Paris with my Tübinger-Finn-Scott friend E. It was my first real time in Paris (the accidental over-night staying in an airport hotel due to the delayed Finnair flight in January doesn't count), so I was totally looking forward to it.
It all started in the best possible way with a free entry to Disneyland (thank's to E's sister E working there): a childhood dream come true! I've dreamed about Disneyland since I was little and kept seeing the ads for it in the beginning of each Disney film (and we had all of them at home, so I really saw that ad all the time). I spotted lots of princesses in Disneyland and got a pic taken with Minnie Mouse, but it was freezing cold, so I also caught a cold. Heh.

The youth hostel (Peace & Love Hostel) I stayed in was the absolute worst I've ever been to. It was so dirty and creepy looking, no keys to the room, no proper reservation system: they'd overbooked the dungeon - sorry, 14-bed dorm - on both nights I slept there. When I first arrived, they just finally threw someone's luggage down from their messy bed and told me to sleep in it. It was an ancient, rusty three-storey bunk bed that kept creaking every time one of us even breathed. The window had to be kept open to avoid us suffocating even though there were minus degrees outside, and of course my bed was right next to it. So the next day I wasn't so enthusiastic anymore while strolling in Louvre with a fever - but I have to say: Mona Lisa's actually not that small everybody says. It's a decent size portrait; why would you even expect it to cover a whole wall or something? I also spotted a real life pick-pocket league chased by the police from Louvre to Seine: it was so cool how the police finally got them all circled and arrested. That event marked the turn of my luck: I changed to a decent priced, nice, clean, safe and well located youth hostel "Absolute Paris Hostel", slept 16 hours in a row, overcame my cold and spent a wonderful last day exploring all the major sights. All's well that ends well.

Then came the Pentecost holidays (one whole week free from university), and the long planned two week road trip to Italy (Lake Garda, Venice, Trieste) and Croatia (Split, Zadar, Zagreb) with my great Finnish orienteering friends E, L and L. Thanks to the freezing end of May weather in Germany, I caught a cold the day before the trip. This time it didn't go away by sleeping but evolved into angry sinusitis, so I had no choice but to get some antibiotics - for the fifth time this year. Always the sinusitis. I had to take it a bit easier, so I couldn't hike as much as I'd wanted. It didn't matter so much though, since the weather gods weren't on our side: we only had a couple of non-rainy days there. We should've gone to Finland instead, since it was the hottest country of whole Europe during that time. Typical. Anyway, of us four, three got ill on that vacation, and one of us even had to be taken to a Croatian hospital. Luckily all the people were incredibly nice and we got all worked out despite the language barrier. Croatia was a great country with breathtaking landscape, and I hope I'll get to explore it again one day - maybe all healthy and with some better luck with the weather.

That's it for my memorable Euro-trips and thus a farewell for blogging in English - next time back to Finnish with some up-to-date posting.