There Goes the Neighbourhood

Yay, weekend! And a great way to start it was Möllevågnsfestivalen, a festival "from the people, to the people". It takes place in the district of Möllevågnen, a very colourful and lively district with lots of exotic little shops and cool cafés and restaurants. Yes, it's what some might refer to as "multicultural", but in the bestest way.

From what I've gathered, the festival is run and organized by volunteers, and anybody can participate. There's performances of all sorts, street markets, yard sales, free yoga lessons, a wonderful mix of everything the district has to offer. I read about a fashion show by local designers, and at the street market you could buy unique clothing, jewelry etc. made by people living in Möllevågnen, or Möllan like it's usually called. When I was checking their website earlier, I noticed there was a "wish list", a list of smaller and bigger stuff they hoped people would donate or borrow to make the festival possible. So it really is from the people!

At the counter of the restaurant where we ate, I saw a piece of paper asking people to sign up for volunteering at the festival. There was one name, with no phone number or adress, and in the "what would you like to do" column they'd written "have fun, get drunk". But I suppose that's a one-off, since the festival seemed pretty big and well-organized.

They advertise these as best pizza in town. Hell yeah!

I bought these at the street market, at the incredibly
pretty booth you can see above.

This is some actual street culture, all the people coming together to offer each other a unique experience. Walking by a booth after booth of the most imaginative creations, looking at the colourful mix of people, I kept wondering if something like this would be possible in Finland. Claiming the streets for two days, turning a part of a city into a festival. Would be worth trying, anyway!

Now that I got started on posting pretty pictures, I might as well post a few from last weekend. On Saturday, me and Allan visited my colleague from work. The evening started with a great dinner and ended, well, after maaany glasses of wine, champagne, beer and, to make sure we go overboard, whisky. But let's not get into that, let's look at the pretty table Sari-Anna made instead.



On Sunday, after some very painful and hungover cooking and cleaning, we had our Icelandic friends over for tortillas. How grown-up is that?! Instead of watching MTV munching chips and dip, we were making our own guacamole. Oh but trust me, we've had those other types of Sundays as well.


I don't know if Monday is becoming a movie night or something, last week we went to see Sex and the City 2, and this Monday we saw When you're strange, a documentary about The Doors. It was pretty entertaining, loads of archive material - and Johnny Depp as the narrator! Still, it didn't really offer anything new, and I felt like there wasn't much depth to it. But there are worse ways to spend a Monday night than looking at Jim Morrison and listening to Johnny Depp's voice for 90 minutes, so I'm not complaining.


Today, I have precisely one month left of my time here. It seems way too little, and thinking of my departure is just breaking my heart. But then again, a month is a long time, and last winter me and Allan would have given anything to spend a month together. So instead of mourning about my time running out, I should enjoy it.

...

In fact, I think I'll turn off the computer and do just that.

-Karoliina