This is where the first Japanese picture was filmed in Finland was shot. A beautiful, heartwarming movie about friendship, food and cultural encounters, I wholeheartedly recommend it for a slow day.
Authentic Mexican Restaurant in Finland: Pueblo
The proper Mexican food invasion in Helsinki continues. After Café de Nopal opened at the end of 2010, a separate team set up Pueblo in Eerikinkatu 25 during 2011.
I know some of the Mexican staff personally. Their tortillas are excellent and they have my favourite beers on offer, but the food is sometimes a little too salty for me (I cook without salt, so that might be the problem). Regardless, it is very nice to have an alternative open during lunchtime in the heart of the city.
HIFK vs Jokerit
I read somewhere that the Helsinki ice hockey derby between HIFK & Jokerit is the most fiercely contested in the Nordic countries. Even if I don’t cheer for either team, as a neutral it was nice to attend a match with a nice atmosphere and chanting, not only clapping.
Blog post avalanche
You know that horrible feeling when you start writing drafts you haven’t finished and they start piling up? After four months I have finally freed this blog’s backlog, with the list of newly-published posts below:
- Dos libros de futbol (Dios es Redondo & La Tenés Adentro)
- Participación en el Maratón de lectura de Radio México Internacional
- Mexican tourism campaign in London
- Local understanding fail
- Gentrification, degentrification
- Economic growth keeps on going strong in Mexico
- 2011, what a year
- Massification of social media
- Fatiga con las campañas
- Argentines 10 years ago, Russians and Brazilians now
- Mexico is child friendly
- Mexico trip
- Patientez
- Monaco
- European Unity and its malcontents
- Meditando con el rosario
- Lo importante en la vida…
- Quick trip to Mexico
- It just can’t seem to stop snowing
- Esquiando con un bebé
- Couple walking together in winter
- Rally Mexico
- Beans = Kryptonite
- Maybe Mexico is indeed quite misunderstood
Maybe Mexico is indeed quite misunderstood
A couple of European colleagues joined me in my last business trip to Mexico and they seemed genuinely surprised by what they saw. It was not as unsafe as they were led to believe, the people were more ethnically varied than they expected, it was not as poor (even though of course they did see a cross-section of Mexican society from wealthy city denizens to farm hands in the hills) and the food was better than they thought.
Also at some point I spent some time with a group of Finnish gentlemen who had a lot of questions about the country, which I did my best to answer in the little time we had together (personal favourite: why do all houses have water tanks in the roof?).
Maybe the place is indeed quite misunderstood as I’ve been saying all these years. I’m not saying it’s better or worse, it’s just not what people abroad without previous experience of the country think.
Beans = Kryptonite
I’m allergic to beans. Maybe that’s why I had to flee so far I ended up in Finland 😛 . Take the delicacy above, called huarache, for example. It happens to have beans inside the dough, and made me sick the whole night after I ate it. At least I didn’t end up in hospital with serum like the time before that.
It’s ridiculous. It’s akin to a Finn being allergic to potatoes or a Japanese being physically unable to eat seaweed.
Rally Mexico
Spent a little over a week in Mexico for work. Visited Mexico City for a few days and then drove all the way to León, Guanajuato for the Rally Guanajuato Mexico. A picture summary below, the rest of the photos here.
Couple walking together in winter
Esquiando con un bebé
Hay dos maneras de practicar esquí de fondo con un bebé de brazos: te lo puedes poner en una mochila o si ya tiene más de 6 meses puedes sentarlo en un trineo especialmente diseñado para ello (obviamente abrigado adecuadamente en ambos casos)
El caso es que ser papá no significa empezar a echar panza.
It just can’t seem to stop snowing
