Well I arrived in Finland and thanks to the amazing last-minute generosity of jari , I stayed the night with him and his mate. And what a fantastic night it was!!

We ended up drinking Finnish (and Polish) beer and watching a vast array of weird YouTube clips including Toupa Poupa (or something - a Finnish satrical show), Drunk Star Wars (I'm not going to even attempt to spell that one) and Protocop. I also ate some Grill Pringles, which we don't have in England and (a couple of chocolate) Little Mouse in memory of Jack Morgan (BSc). It's great that the guys appreciate the genius of Look Around You. The guys room is fantastic, with lots of (very distracting) furry art on the wall - including the Kama Citra, which I spent a lot of the night staring longingly at.

I like Finland although that may have something to do with seeing two billboard advertisements involving fursuits in the first 20 minutes of being here. After that, I saw many more around the city. I think it's for a local water park (but Finnish, being unlike any language I have ever studied means that I cannot translate anything here nor are there any clues - which is fun). Swedish is also the second language here and the signs are multi-lingual even though only 4% of the population actually speak Swedish. This makes translation a little easier but still difficult.

I am hoping to go into town later this afternoon to check things out. The weather is cool and cloudy (this is Finland, what did I expect?) and the city has lots of waterways, it being on the coast and all. Later on I am going to sample the delights of the Finnish rail network as I head towards Tampere and Hiru...

P.S. Jari's taste in German industrial metal is legendary and I have now heard so many fantastic bands that you simply can't get in England. I feel my record collection is going to improve substantially in the coming weeks...

P.P.S. This abomination scares me. I hope I don't bump into him on a random wander...

Lupestripe's Beer Watch:
Olvi - a cheap beer with a nice tang to it. Eminently drinkable with a good nose. I'm getting hops and barley and right on your tits...
Lapin Kulta - a beer you can get in England if you look around enough. A little too much gas in it makes for a flat affair when you pour it. It's got a fairly weak taste too but it does have the French word for "rabbit" in its title so earns some bonus points for that.

Lupestripe's Keyboard Watch:
Finnish has some new characters, namely ö ä å. This is not as bad as the Portuguese keyboard though as the apostrophe is only shifted one space to the right and I can live with that. So no ä this time. Apart from that, aside from a few minor differences (like where the ? is), the Finnish keyboard is largely the same.