Cross Border Faith

My historical second crossing of border took place in Ellund just the last weekend, right at the border of Germany and Denmark. The destination was Copenhagen and Denmark would now mark the second country I've ever visited besides Finland. I was excited, of course to see Heidi and Lara there, whom I knew back from the times they were doing an Erasmus at my home University of Eastern Finland a year ago. However, I was not so excited to hold three tickets to the IIHF World Cup Semi-Final game anymore, since the Finnish heroes had just lost their quarterfinal game against the Swiss heroes. If they hadn't, we would have been watching Finland in the Semi. What a national disaster! And if it was a disaster on a national level, it certainly was that on a personal level as well for this crazy Finnish ice-hockey fan. Once again it was another existential crisis to be dealt with. How can this be? I had bought the tickets way before I even knew who was clashing against whom in the q...

Meetup is a online social service that allows people to find groups and organize social gatherings all around the world. I learned about its existence just recently during my first travel to Copenhagen through Hamburg . I had plenty of time to luxuriate myself in Hamburg before the arrival of my night bus to Copenhagen around 2:30 AM. It was the first time ever for me to travel such a distance completely alone, so I sought out for chances to socialize with new people. That's how I found out about Meetup. My first steps in Hamburg went really well. I managed to find the city's central library for a free WiFi, take care of some business there and explore the city vicinity a bit. My Meetup event was organized at a place called Sofabar at 8 o'clock, about 45 minutes walking distance away from the main railway station. It was the only available public event in the area at that time so there was no alternative to go elsewhere, if I wanted to have something to do while waiting...

A lot of times when people hear that I study theology, they ask me if I'm a religious person or not. This has surprised me a bit since I don't remember anyone ever asking me this question back in Finland. Maybe this tells something about the cultural differences in my homeland compared to other parts of the world: we tend to keep religious matters to ourselves and hold them as more personal and intimate than elsewhere. I don't really mind when people ask me about my faith. Actually, I'm even begging for it. It's definitely not something that one should be hiding about. People don't " light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house ." (NIV) My problem is, however, that when I'm faced with a substantial question like this, I sometimes struggle to formulate a meaningful answer to it. By this, I don't mean that I'm insecure with my personal standpoint. Ho...

How many times has your mother prohibited you from talking to strangers during your childhood? For me, several times. Two rules from my mom were quite simple: first (1), don't talk to strangers and second (2), certainly don't let any strangers enter your home. While it might be useful to dictate these to your child, it certainly isn't helpful anymore once you are a grown adult. From time to time it's even necessary to talk to strangers as a grown-up. And this becomes even more evident when you're traveling alone in unknown places. Last week I visited Cologne to spent my May Day holidays exploring the city for the first time with my Finnish cousin Jukka and his German fiance Verena . During my adventures I had two experiences of talking to strangers and I would like to share these incidents with you in the next bit. My first encounter with a stranger was at the Bochum main railway station. I was on my way to Cologne and I went up to the track to see my train wa...