Different view of Paris - Pariisi eri nakokulmasta

Welcome to Paris - Tervetuloa Pariisiin!!!

Welcome note - Tervetuliaisviesti

Fancy shopping - Upeita ostoksia

Top restaurants - Huippuravintoloita Sports - Urheilua

Famous balconies - Kuuluisat parvekkeet

City parks - Kaupunkipuistoja
Attempting Louvre houkuttelee

View - Nakoala

Illegal shoes - Laittomat kengat Illegal boots - Laittomat saappaat

You can find your way - Loydät perilli

Transportation 1 - Kulkupeli 1

Transportation 2 - Kulkupeli 2

Latest hat fashion, shower caps - Viimeisinta hattumuotia, suihkuhatut

Big brother is watching you - Isoveli valvoo

View from Eiffel näköala

THE monument - SE monumentti

A hole - Reikä

Not any Champs Elysee - Ei oo se

Office extension - Toimiston lisasiipi

Another hole - Toinen reika

Local express service - Paikallinen pikakuljetus
A tower with a hole - Reikätorni

The famous roundabout - se kuuluisa liikenneympyra
Too high for a tunnel - Liian korkea tunneliin
Car shopping - Auto-ostoksilla
This might be better - Olisiko tama parempi

He bought one - Hän osti yhden

More about shower caps!

This is tough to believe.
We visited the other day Paris and while we were finishing our lunch, two elder ladies were leaving the restaurant. This sounds strange following the earlier shower cap post and the Israeli soldier's shower cap usage, but here is a fact with eye witness evidence;

Senior citizen lady took off from the restaurant with a nice quality hat on her head, an to protect that she decided to put on ...a SHOWER CAP ON HER HAT!!!

Eli Pariisissa bongattu suihkuhattu uudessa kaytossa...!

Positive about Brussels Police

As said, I have had a positive experience with the Belgium Police – believe it or not! Well, at the end I was treated with a mixed approach but I got away without a ticket...

This is briefly what happened;

One Saturday morning I left the house with a tight schedule to go to K´s football game. This time we needed to pick up N and another player from a house nearby. Since I was driving the car without hands-free I needed to talk and drive. And since N didn´t answer I had to try again in the traffic lights.

I am the third car in the line and when green light comes, the first car is asleep. Of course I honk, noticing that the driver of second car pays high interest to me. First car takes off but the second car, a Skoda Octavia, still stays foot. I raise my hand the French style (I don´t use finger) and they move slightly so I can take my turn to the next traffic lights in 10 meters.

Next thing I see this Skoda turn after me and a man rushes to my car and pulls out some sort of a badge with a text “POLICE”... I am of course polite and with an apology explain that I am in a bit hurry to do volunteer coaching – and luckily I had my whistle hanging on my neck. At this point also the bad cop has reached the scene and starts to talk about 100 Euro ticket for talking on mobile while driving. Luckily the first guy was in control and just gave me a verbal warning – and no ticket!

Dear Brussels Police...

...please be reasonable!


Few days ago a friend of ours got a ticket from a local traffic police. Normally you get them due to speeding, just like the ones I have received. Each and every of the ones I have got have come via mail since these guys rely too much on tech :o(
However, the friend of ours who happen to be one of the very many non-Belgians living here are Canadians. Yep, parts of Canada is French speaking but since these people are not, they are at the same “I-Don´t- Parle-Vous” level as myself when it comes to proper discussions in French.

The Lady of the family was driving around their home area, a suburb of Brussels, and she was stopped by a police control. Since these guys happen to live in Flemish speaking area, the police patrol that stopped them gave the “speech” according to their Flemish guide book – in Flemish!
(For info to the ones wondering what is Flemish: it´s basically the same as Dutch language, no matter what Belgium´s or Dutch say. Belgium has got 3 official languages: French, Flemish and German.)
Even though the police clearly understood who/what their customer was ( a non Flemish or French speaking expat), they continued to manage the situation in Flemish.
Was this due to lack of English speaking skills then?
Well, the Jury is out for that one;
The lovely police officer spoke only Flemish until at the end he said with a perfect English: “You will get a ticket!” .

In a country with millions of non-origin-Belgians (including the people from Morocco, Congo, Turkey and what-ever-country-where-you-come-from-to-find-success-or-abuse-social-welfare), one could imagine to get more services also in English. That is not the case in public or private sector – including shops…


HOLD YOUR BREATH: I Have got a positive experience with a Belgium Police to come :o)

Late Ice-Skating Wake-up

I bumped into our neighbour yesterday and we ended up talking about ice-skating. Probably since this is the first time for loooong time that Brussels has had minus degrees (Celsius = below freezing point) for a week in a row. And for the 5 winters that we have lived here, it is the first time that the snow lasts for more than 6 hours without melting.

That means that the lumilyhty, the cover for the light made of snow balls, is still in good shape – just like the snow angel.

Back to the ice-skating;
The neighbour is British and he has – thanks to their lovely 5 years old daughter – gone ice-skating for the first time in his life. As said earlier, there is something strange about Brussels and skating since also I have skated here for the first time in my life. Well, I have some flash image in my head that I would have been on one rink at Lehtisaari, Finland but I must have been around 5-6 years or so…

With the British it is quite natural to live their life without skating, but me coming from Finland where the snow is part of your nature it is not. Also in school it is obligatory to skate as part of physical education, so you might wonder how I got by without skating. So do I. For some reason also my brother managed to do the same, but I can bet he had different motivators and excuses from mine.

I actually loved to play ice hockey and that’s what you do at winter time in Finland. Everyone has got a hockey stick and you play at the backyard, on streets, school yard which is converted into ice rink and everywhere you can. When we had a break during school day we raced down to the rink in order to reserve the goal for us and then we played there, but since it was during breaks we played on the ice with shoes instead of skates.

I don’t know how I got by at younger age but fact is I never got myself skates – at least not the right size… One thing is that my feet are the standard European Union size (47 or 14 in US size…) so it wasn’t easy to find skates and borrowing from friends was also out of question.

At middle school and high school I played basketball quite a lot and therefore tried to convince the teachers that it was better to let me practice b-ball inside and not to even talk about ice-skating – and with most teachers it worked. Particularly in high school we had a great personality as a teacher: Jussi Markkanen. He was a BIG basketball fan and also wanted the school team to succeed well. Hence he was perfectly fine with me staying inside shooting hoops instead of freezing my ass outside while others were skating. Great man, he gave me full marks to the graduation paper!

Anyways, I think it was our 3rd winter in Brussels and Finnish friends asked us to join them for ice-skating and so we did. I must have been mentally imbalanced or something since I also rented skates and tried it. It went surprisingly well and was fun so I right away decided to buy myself a pair of skates. However, since Belgium skate selection is quite small we bought new ones for the whole family when we visited Finland.

One year later I speak with my brother who also went through school years without skating and what does he tell me – due to his lovely daughter he has also started ice-skating…

Ice-skating in Brussels

Is it possible to ice-skate in Brussels?
From experience I can say that it is!
Normally here is only one place to go: Poseidon at the outskirts of the city – with a swimming hall in the same building (the one we were thrown out from without the swim caps – see earlier blog from Nov 22nd). If you don’t have your own skates, you rent a pair (no, it is not that nice to be renter # 15.723 for that pair of skates) and off you go.

Before Christmas there are also at least 2 other places to skate; one rink at the Christmas Markets in the city and another by Avenue Louise. There is also Sunday skating hour in an arena in Leuven, about 40 km from Brussels and that’s where Finns and Canadians play in local ice-hockey teams. I think the second one is covered, but for example last year the one at the Christmas Markets was covered with water. And since locals seem to think it is romantic or something to skate, they queue for half an hour to get the rental skates and then go to extremely overcrowded rink.

What about the behavior on the rink then?Well, I would say it is a bit like local traffic – everyone for themselves and no need to care about the safety that much… And since the possibilities to skate are limited, the skills are a bit like swimming skills of beduines (the guys who live at Sahara).

Still, there is something strange about Brussels and skating - in addition to having a bar at the corner of the rink & cafe for beer and what ever drinks you wish to have with skates on, and the fact that it is open until April when we are sometimes heading a beach weather.

As said, something strange or how would you explain that also I was on skates in Brussels for the first time in my life? But that is worth another story.

Winter in Belgium

Today came already the second winter for this season. First one was in November and lasted for one day...

Actually winter is one of the biggest things I miss in Finland - and even a family member has admitted the same. Hence you can imagine we take an advantage of every snow moment we have.

Snow Angel

Lumilyhty

How are then people in Belgium prepared for winter?

Well, they are not. Yes you see here and there someone; a flower shop with a shovel, one of 3 cars have cleaned the snow so they can see where they are going, and one out of 50 has got winter tires!

Do they then stay home if it snows?
Hell no, they take off as usual and queue four times normal to get anywhere. If they get there, since there are hills and I must tell you the same as I told my Belgium colleagues today:

Belgium people are not;

a) equipped to drive with snow or ice and
b) they are not skilled to drive. In general. But particularly on snow ;o)

(OK, you can find wilder and less disciplined traffic in Bulgaria or Turkey, but we are talking about Brussels.)

And what happens when they are stuck?
Instead of trying to push the car to move, they sit down and wait for
a) the salt truck to come or
b) the snow to melt.

Still, I love to drive in a snow - and I do have winter tires. Only downside is that many cars today have electronic hand break which doesn't enable playing on the snow. I know, I tried.
But now - home sweet home even if outside it's getting closer to -10 C. Let's see if it's a snow day from the school today. We Finn's don't though understand such concept that school is closed due to weather. Any weather.

Shower Caps in the Fridge?

Imagine this...
You are visiting a relative in your home country, family that you are very familiar with and have been to their fridge also earlier. You go to the fridge and find there a plate of tomato slices - covered with a shower cap!!! Yes, transparent plastic hood with the rubber band and all. Same stuff that you can find in hotels that still offer "collectible" stuff in the bathroom.
Picture above not authentic ;o)

Yep, I could not believe it myself either but the Lady of the house explained me that "they are not shower caps, they are "Fresh Covers" - "Tuoresuojahuppu" suomeksi". Yep, another nice example of Finnish compound word ;o)

Since I consider myself being a sensible human being I don't believe such crap - particularly as I tend to spread practical jokes myself - but she insists it's real. Yeah right... By the way, today she claims having been in an ice hockey game but doesn't know which team won so she must be real.

The fact is that it is impossible to prove this lady is wrong - and perhaps that's why she is my favorite female cousin (no I don't have many of them ;o) ). So few weeks after this visit comes this thick letter with the mailman (ja han olisikin tarina erikseen Belgien asenteita kuvaamaan...).

C'mon, what's in the envelope?
THIS:
A pack of so called "Fresh Covers / Tuoresuojahuppu" a.k.a. "Shower Cap / Suihkuhattu". I don't know what efforts she made to get this packet made just to make the point that she would be right, but suihkuhattu is suihkuhattu is suihkuhattu!!!
Or can you make a difference from the above...?

One word of credit though;
The shower caps are becoming a universal thing. Below you can see a screen shot via www.hs.fi site of Israel activities in Gaza. I just wonder what is the Israel soldier using on his helmet?

Happy New Year, sorry for the silence but still PC's suck

Hyvää Uutta Vuotta - Happy New Year!!!Real thing a bit lower, first things first!
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Anopille neuvo:
1. Mene sivulle http://translate.google.fi/
2. Kirjoita tekstilaatikkoon taman blogin osoite "www.withlovefromtheworld.blogspot.com"
3. Klikkaa alla olevat laatikot niin etta vasemmalla on "Englanti" ja oikealla "Suomi".
4. Klikkaa "Käännä"-nappia ja saat eteesi hiema hoono Soomi kaannokse minä kirjaus...
Näin paasee lukemaan hieman enemmän.

And the same for otheres, if you want to get some sense of the Finnish text, go to http://translate.google.com/and enter blog address to the field, and naturally the language boxes from Finnish to English and you are revealed to some basics of this code language, perkele!
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I've had severe PC problems and since local PC support man has been out of country it has not been easy to solve it. PC was cleaned due to virus sometime in November and then the bug hit again all slowly but firmly annoying problems appeared.

First accessing "normal" sites with some flash etc basic stuff it started to ask about script errors, mainly once but some sites perhaps 10 times. Not such a big issue if it is occasional, but when it's 1 out of 2 sites it gets to you. And when you are in the middle of something important and Explorer collapses, it's not that fun...

Well, off we go to our ski trip and when we come back I can't access the blog admin site.

Why?
For what ever PC-HIV reason any of the Google-sites was accessible.

What do I do then?
Not knowing too much about life behind the scene, I'm looking for help and luckily my sister's friend seems to be a man with extreme skills and patience. Without having access on my PC (no, not even taking over the control remotely), he managed via screen shots, tries, failures, errors, new tries and clear explanations to give me multiple advice that at the end led to success!
What's the downside?
He is in Finland and has got a day job so not in desperate need for PC help work from dummies like in this case ;o) But just wait if we move back to Finland - I'll bribe him to do the stuff for me...

Jos luet taman - Kiitos J.K.!

PS Do I have some interesting shower cap stuff for you later on...