Transit

Posted on | March 6, 2007 | 10 Comments

Yesterday I caught a cab, a train, a bus, a plane, a bus, another bus and then another train. At the end I had made it from Oslo to Tampere, which has a cool looking cathedral amongst the smokestacks and shopping centres outside my tiny hotel window. It’s either ham or cake for breakfast in Finland. Guess which one I chose?

Category: Travel, Work

Comments

10 Responses to “Transit”

  1. jean
    March 6th, 2007 @ 5:36 pm

    “let me eat cake,” said Melissa to herself. Enjoy your adventure.

  2. melgregg
    March 6th, 2007 @ 6:02 pm

    Yes, Finland is fab. The first place women were given the right to vote, too (airport info guides are so informative: Helsinki is “A fun city that works well!”).

  3. glen
    March 6th, 2007 @ 7:56 pm

    what!?!? no ham cake?

  4. seonaid
    March 6th, 2007 @ 9:55 pm

    You eat the cake for your breakfast and you pocket the ham in a nice little bun for your lunch. You are probably well couth tho’ and wouldn’t even think of doing this.

    There are some curious symbolist paintings inside the cathedral – a burning bush blazing through glass, scrawny, naked boys as saints, and the most hauntingly moribund angel I think I have ever seen*.

    What do you make of the sound of the Finnish language?

    [*To self-limit this hyperbole, I haven't seen that many.]

  5. Nick Caldwell
    March 7th, 2007 @ 4:21 pm

    Huh? I thought New Zealand had Universal Suffrage first. Hmm. Wikipedia claims New Zealand had “limited universal suffrage” first.

  6. danny
    March 7th, 2007 @ 10:55 pm

    Thanks Nick, as a resident of NZ I have to encourage a level of scepticism about states’ self=presentation. According to Wikipedia

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women's_suffrage

    and a few other more reputable sources, NZ really was the first place to give all women the right to vote (but not necessarily to stand for office). Sweden’s 1862 initiative gave women the right to vote “only in local elections, votes graded after taxation, unmarried women only until 1909″. But good on them anyway.

    Enjoy the kake!

  7. Seonaid
    March 8th, 2007 @ 8:36 pm

    Well … Finland has a woman president (installed AFTER Helen Clark, just to keep the NZ boasts afloat). When will it happen here (OZ that is?) where women who get within sniffing distance of ‘somewhere important’ in politics are transmogrified into lightning rods for all sorts of trouble (infrequently of their own doing) that inevitably undoes them c o m p r e h e n s i v e l y ….?!?!?

  8. danny
    March 8th, 2007 @ 9:46 pm

    When will it happen here (OZ that is?)

    No. You’ve got to remember that NZ’s largest company (NZ Telecom) has had a female CEO, which is basically unthinkable in Australia – check the top 100 companies and find more than two female leaders there last time I checked.

    A better question is, who on the Australian federal political radar has a chance at getting the top job? Don’t say Julia Gillard because she’s 10 years away even in a best case scenario :) .

  9. seonaid
    March 8th, 2007 @ 11:47 pm

    ^ >

  10. seonaid
    March 8th, 2007 @ 11:49 pm

    “There were political whisperings over the trolleys at Woolworths today, and the word up at Harris Farm Markets – purveyors of fuit and veg to the chattering classes – was Go Maxine!!!” (newmatilda.com forums)

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