at least 3 links to youtube, in here.

Elena, Kathi, Carlota and I went to Tallinn for the weekend.

Sofia had talked so much about the city, from when she went to study there, that it was hard not to like the place even before going.


But I wish I had visited Tallinn more off-season. The old town seemed like a medieval-themed park, invaded by pricey italian restaurants and packed with tourists coming from big cruises. The whole place felt like a huge touristic attraction, it was hard to imagine anyone actually living there.

But I felt better after escaping to the less crowded streets, and visiting the surronding neighbourhoods.

So, here are my highlights from Tallinn:

1- Kalamaja was a really nice part of the city to go for a walk and had more alternative places. We went for coffee in F-Hoone and ginger beer at Pudel Baar.

2 - Linnahall port. An abandoned concrete temple, built by the soviets for the olympics = my idea of a romantic spot.

 
3- Pancake place. Forgot the name. It's a restaurant in the old town that mainly serves pancakes. HUGE PANCAKES. I ordered mine with bacon.


4- Estonian language sounds super adorable. Like elfs talking. 
I learned that öö means night.
öö
öö öö
öö

öö öö öö öö
öö öö
 öö 
   
On the last day, we went to a really weird shot bar.
After each of them tried two different funny-coloured drinks, they hugged me goodbye and I went to the hostel and packed my stuff to leave the next morning to Helsinki, for two extra nights.


But there was one thing that affected the rest of the journey.
I got PMS.

tam tam taaaaammm...



This had happened before in Berlin and resulted in me bursting into tears in Telmo's kitchen, while checking my gmail inbox, and listening to Now, Now's album on repeat while walking in the city and thinking gloomy thoughts for a few hours.





When I came back to Vilnius I promised myself never to travel again in the week before my period. But of course, one can't always plan their trips acording to ovulation cycles.


And it's not like it always makes depressed. I mostly just feel really overwhelmed. About everything. Emotions get wider and the world is too big for me to deal with it. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it works both ways: sadness can be grand and overwhelming, but so does joy.
When the boat reached the port and I saw the city for the first time, it semeed like a tangible reflection of what I was feeling. Helsinki was monumental, spacious. It was bustling and calm at the same time. I loved it. 


Anna had sent me a list of suggestions for things to do, that I carried with me, religiously. and now I'm making you a travel guide including some of her tips, and some of mine:


GUIDE TO HELSINKI

The city has very different areas:
 
- in the Centre, the main street Aleksanterinkatu, Cathedral and old market square by the sea;
- Punavuori is a bit hipster and has many Finnish design shops and nice cafes, it's good for window-shopping and afterwards you can rest in the garden next to the Sinebrychoff Art Museum;
- Töölö has beautiful architecture and is worth walking around. There's a lot of people jogging and cycling around Töölönlahti, and my advise is to sit in a bench and jut stay there enjoying the view of the lake and having people pass you by, running, while you're being all idle and lazy.

 - Kallio is the old working class district and has cheap beer bars.

ALSO: Street names are written both in finnish and swedish. So it's not like they named the streets with such long names that it occupied two plaques, which was what crossed my mind at first.

Things to Visit: 
-Kiasma - contemporary art museum.
-Design Museum - the temporary exhibition they had was really good, but the permanent was more or less ok. -so i'm not really sure if I would recommend it alwaaays, but I'm keeping it on the list.
-Kaamperi-  this didnt appear in any the touristic maps, which is odd. It's a bit out of the centre (take tram 8) and it's an old factory that now has galleries, studios and some events going on. Also, it's FREE (the galleries).
-Cafe nr9 - nice place to eat.
-Tram number 3 - it goes round in a circle and gives you a good picture of Helsinki, in the tourist information points there's a map with all the places of interest  the tram passes by, so it's perfecto to get a day ticket and just hop-on an off.
-Take a public transport ferry to Suomenlinna Island for a picnic (it leaves from the market square and costs just a couple of euros, look for the "HSL" public transport sign and avoid the expensive tourist ferries) - i didn't have time to do this, though
-For not so expensive Finnish soups, fish etc. go to the indoor market in Hakaniemi (tram 3 stops there)

Another thing I did while I was there was to go to a concert at Loose bar ("Nice bar with cheap concerts"said Anna).
Remember a few months ago, when I went to Riga, for an exhibition, and feared I would end up by myself in a corner shyly sipping my drink and not talking to anyone?

well, that's exactly what happened this time.

Guess you can't win 'em all.

Normally, in this situations, I just approach the other person in the room that looks as alone and lost as me. But this time I was the only one by myself, in a noisy basement, surrounded by groups of friends happily chatting about and I just couldn't push myself to go and approach a random group of people, even though I wanted.

The concert was really nice an I trully enjoyed it. (It was this lady: Irma Agiashvili)
 but couldn't shake away the awkward being-all-alone feeling, and I walked back to the hostel, that night, in really low spirits.

The next day I talked with a guy from my hostel, who had been travelling around Europe by himself, and told him about that night in Loose. He said he totally understood my shyness, and he would feel the same: "What I usally do is to have a few drinks, and then I'm much more relaxed about going around and introducing myself to people." 
That made me feel like less of a loser, but, unfortunately, his solution won't work for me, for a variety of reasons: starting from the fact that I stopped drinking alcohol and that, even if I hadn't, I'm a security freak that refuses to get even slightly tipsy if I'm in a foreign place.

always alert

aaaaaalwaaaaaysss
 

Maybe I'm overthinking this and I should just conclude that I CAN'T go to a bar on my own, and expect myself to do some hardcore socializing, specially in the most touchy-feely and sensitive part of the month. 
Maybe I should just STAY AT HOME and watch rom-coms with Heath Ledger and cry a bit because he's dead now.

it's so sad..

Has any of you been in that situation? 

Going to a party where you knew no one?

or arriving in the club but your friends are all late (so you're just casually playing snake in your phone so it looks like you're busy)?

or, on the other side, how often have you given up on doing something or going somewhere, because you had no one to come with you and it's less fun if you can't share it?

When I was planning to go visit Finland, my idea was going to Turku aswell, and visit Moomin World:

It's the Moomins theme-park. But I quickly decided that, though I really want to go there, it's one of those things that would be way nicer if I went with someone with whom I can get all hyper and point at things and take pictures with the charathers.

It just has to wait for another time.

I think I may be intolerant to alcohol.
I've been wondering about it for the past few months, and I guess I'm finally admitting that I should probably quit drinking. At least for a decent amount of time.

I reckon it's related to the gluten intolerance thing and my overly-sensitive body, but it's odd because I never felt like this before!!
A year ago me and Sofia were going through our post-erasmus-drinking period and had an impressive collection of bottled-goods in the cupboard.

I felt totally fine.
But now, I can't have more than 2 or 3 units without feeling, the next morning, like my intestines are screaming for revenge. 

I kept blaming it on something else, but it's time to face the fact that it must be the alcohol.

And I'm not happy about it! Not a bit!Which makes me wonder: Why does the prospect of having to stop drinking make me so annoyed?

For one, because I've cut enough things on my diet already. (even though I'm aware I'm the worst gluten intolerant in the world and still make little pizza exceptions, to reward myself on a bad day.)

But the biggest reason is that it feels like drinking alcoholic beverages is the only reckless, slightly self-harming, mind-altering, rebelious thing I do.

Without it I'm a fucking mormon.



I even have a similar dress... good god.

And it's not that I neeeed it badly, to have a good time and partying. but, it's nice to have a vice. and I don't know how to replace this one with something equally cheap and legal.

suggestions anyone?

NSFW

This post is Not Safe For Work

and it's also about things I found at my workplace, ha!

Those who read this blog from the start probably know that I'm working in a LGBT organization in Vilnius. 

Sometimes people ask me what do I exactly do there and as much as I would like to answer, "oh, I'm fighting homophobia in the baltics", because it sounds like I'm kicking ass and it's cool, the truth is that, in a day to day basis, most of what I do is normal office work.

We have meetings, and a coffee machine, and working hours and excel tables. It's like being an intern in any other office apart from the rainbowflags everywhere and a big jar of condoms at the entrance.

BUT, there are days that remind me how cool and weird this place can be:

Some months ago the Gay League got new furniture. We, volunteers, were moving books and flyers from old shelfs and found some interesting stuff. I decided to photograph the best, and share it with you:

1 - The postcard with "Sucking Tips"

 

the front image is very straight to the point, and so is the text in the back.

2- The other postcard with a penis.

 

I like to think about the designer who came up with this.

3 - Not-So-Sexy Santa

 

It somehow disturbs me because he kind of looks like someone I could know.

 4 - Russian Pamphlet

 

I guess CEKC means sex.

5 - Swedish Way

This is such a nice booklet. Every page of it emanates 90's feeling and people in the photos look like a gay version of Friends' cast.

 

 for real... don't you think that guy looks like Ross?

6 - THE Manual!

Apart from some illustrations and instructions for sex, it also gives you important tips for the dating world, like how to start a conversation with a stranger in a supermarket ("That's a very interesting vegetable. Have you ever cooked it?")

I also read a part explaining the handkerchief code, which involved wearing a bandana in the back pocket with a colour corresponding to the person's sexual preferences.
I'm guessing gay women never had much codes for meeting one another, since the only book I found about lesbians was this:

7- The Eternal Quest

In the beginning, part of the purpose for writting this blog in english was that I would practise my writting skills - foreseeing the amount of letters and business paperwork I would have to do in my volunteer job.
And that's going well. Apart from almost sending Christmas Cards to all embassies saying "Dear Embassador" instead of "Dear Ambassador" I didn't make any major mistake.
(I still think "embassador" makes much more sense and they should change the dictionary)

the thing is,
contrary to when I was living in Budapest, now I'm not hanging mainly with native speakers. 
Back then, it was common for me to be the only person in the room speaking english as a foreign language. I felt somehow pressured to say everything well and conjugate all the verbs properly and would feel very embarrassed if I made a mistake.

But now, everyone around me is speaking english as a second language: with all the mistakes, weird grammar, and funny pronunciations that come along with it.
That made me much more relaxed and sometimes find myself saying things that AREN'T CORRECT AT ALL and just shrug and be like "who cares? as long as you get my point..".
My spoken english is probably much worse than a year ago.

The problem is.. so is my portuguese.
I few weeks ago I called my mum and was seriously having trouble remembering some really simple words. I talked slower and carefully.
She was looking at me like I was retarded.

I'm worried that if both my portuguese and english continue to decline, soon I'll only communicate with sounds and gestures.

What I've been doing

HEEEEY!
It's been SUCH A LONG TIME since I wrote here!

In my defense, I've been having very little free time. And I've been prefering to spend that time awaaaay from the computer. And near Vilniaus NeFiltruota.

A lot happened since my last post. I'll give you some of the highlights:

Bleached My Hair
And made this gif:




and then dyed it purple and appeared on national newspapers:

(Ok, appearing on the news was completly unrelated to the hair colour, but I had to share it anyway: how many times in my life will my photo appear over the subtitle "Lithuanian Homosexuals shoot a commercial to air on national TV"*?, not many, I bet!)

Since then it's getting kind of pink. To a point that last week some teenagers started singing "I'm a barbie girl" to me in the bus stop.
(I felt like pointing it out that Barbie was BLOND, like them!)

*not really sure if that's what it's saying there.

Mid-Term Volunteer training

Again, we went to a small town and attended daily sessions of team-building exercises and discussed our volunteer experiences.
The word dillema came up a lot.

In one of the exercises we had to lay down and meditate on our plans for the future: "Picture yourself in 5 years.."
This made me so anxious I had to go out and kick the snow.

During that painfull week without internet Anna lent me her Kindle (How did I survive for so long without a kindle?? How?? I need one!! ) and I read part of a book of essays about consent, called Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape and then moved on to Judith Butler's Gender Trouble.


(This was the only Judith Butler meme I could find. Internet, you disappointed me.)

Later, when we went for a day trip in a ethnographic museum, the guide made us play some traditional lithuanian games that couples used to do, before getting married. One of them involved a girl holding a cookie from string that the man would playfully try to get with his mouth. The girl should make it hard for the man to get the cookie, but not too hard or else she could risk him giving up the chase.
Like this:

(Wrote stoll, but meant stool. Can't be bothered to fix it.)

With those essays fresh in my mind, I was looking at this scene, arms crossed, smiling with superiority : "oh, this is such an illustration of the commodity model of sex."

This smug i-read-feminist-books-and-disagree-with-the-message-inherent-to-your-little-heterosexual-couples-game attitude combined by the fact that, during that same week I found myself saying, very casually, something about gender non-conformativity in a conversation, made me a bit aware of how much some things about myself have changed.

THIS IS GOING TO BE A LAME MOMENT ABOUT SELF-GROWTH AND STUFF. BUT GIVE ME A BREAK, I WAS 5 DAYS IN AN ISOLATED PLACE THINKING, DISCUSSING AND MAKING COLLAGES ABOUT MY SELF-GROWTH. IT WAS BOUND TO AFFECT ME!

let me give you an little outlook on my life so far:
3 years ago I didn't know what LGBT standed for. (I mean, I knew it was something gay but I never really thought about the meaning of the acronym). It was Paulo who explained it to me, during a class of Comunication Theory - "Common Joana, you should know this better than me."

I've learned a lot, specially since I've started working in LGL.

Now, I'm sending newsfeeds to Ilga Europe on a monthly basis, reading about hate speech and organizing events like this.


Like Joey Stylez, I came a long way.

(it took me about 1:30 minutes to understand this video isn't a satire)

But that also means that I've become the person that grumbles everytime I'm filling a form that asks my sex and the only options are male or female.
A lot of what I've learned made me see differently things that I didn't question or that didn't even bother me, before.

And this makes me worried in two ways:

Partly, because I don't want to become the kind of person that bitches about the supermarket's rice family-package representation of a family not being inclusive enough.(yes, Elena, I've seen you doing this.) I don't want to be annoyed all the time, or stop myself from enjoying some stupid chasing-a-cookie game because I'm against what it, deep down, represents.

and partly, because when I come back, I won't even know how to translate some of this things, let alone have people wanting to talk with me about it.
I tried to tell my mum about this magazine, about fitness and health but written with a feminist and body-positive attitude. - She got suspicious when I said feminist and very confused with my awkward translantion of the term body-positivity.
How do I even say that in portuguese? seriously, how?


Went to Poznan and Berlin, AGAIN

In Poznan I was in a competition in Ligatura, the international comics festival they have there, wich involved pitching my idea for a comic book to a juri.
It was really nice to stay there and made me miss a lot being at school and surrounded by an artsy crowd. Just picture me walking around the exhibitions holding a plastic cup with cheap wine and looking at everyone feeling all "I'M JUST SO HAPPY TO BE HERE"
Also, won first place in the competition!! Which probably means they will publish my book, in Poland. Except that I haven't been contacted since. If it wasn't for the diploma hanging on the fridge  I would have started questioning if all of it was nothing but a stress-induced allucination.

Also, Berlin was much nicer this time. Taught Telmo the wonders of mixing vodka with ginger tea, went to the Opera, to H&M and the Erotic Museum.

On Coffee

In Berlin people gesticulate a lot when explaining the flavors present in your coffee. You're also considered to be very cool if you adjectivate your coffee, specially after drinking it and while returning your cup to the hipster coffeeshop owner.

The adjective doesn't necessarily have to match the reality, you just need to come up with something nice (nice? Telmo!) and serious enough in order to convince. Even if the owner doesn't agree with your point of view he won't tell you that, instead he will take it as a perspective. Afterall nobody knows how your tastebuds work, right?

— Oh yeah, I chose this one because the other ones were more than five euros. Oh yeah, it was slightly sour with some notes of red fruits and hazelnuts.

It's also very uncomfortable to drink your coffee because you feel pretty much observed by the people behind the counter. As if they were trying to read in your eyes if the roasting process was done nicely or if the infusion was made at the right temperature and the right time. The slightest wrong expression can be dangerous and result in the owner coming to your table and ask:

— Excuse me sir, is there something wrong with your coffee? We apologize if the taste is not accurate enough, we've been trying to improve the infusion since we're working with different roasteries and suppliers.

To which you have to answer:

— Everything is fine compared to the Mokambo I'm used to! Oh no, don't worry, it's perfect! I love its sourness with some notes of red fruits and hazelnuts. Trust me, all the flavors are in there.

The coffee that is said to be the best in town is always, for some weird reason, served in the coffeshops from which hipsters can easily be seen from the storefront windows. People grab their coffees on the counter and go sit, strategically, by the windows, pretending they're in the middle of their work break, when in fact it's monday 10am and you know that their still searching for an internship and seeking for a sex partner.

As soon as you finish your coffee, someone would immediately come to take away your cup so that you either buy something else or just go away. The secret here is to drink it slowly, as if you were a coffee connoisseur, when it fact the reality is that you're broke, with no job and no sex, and it's so fucking cold outside that that little cup of hipster coffee is your only hope of postponing your miserable life.

This post mentions Telmo

but it's mostly about cities.

POZNAN (I can't write it properly with my keyboard, but the last "N" has a little thing over it.)

I went there for a training on Hate Speech and Hate Crimes. To be honest, before going, my expectations were really low. Both towards the training and the city. I figured Poznan would be a small place in Poland with nothing that interesting going on.
I also had scary flash-backs of my EVS training week in October. 
I just don't like playing team-building games and talking about feelings, ok?

But after a week there I was in love with the city and super excited about everything in the training.
The workshops and discussions were interesting and everyone else was really cool. Me and Ceren both felt we will miss having a big noisy group around us while having lunch and dinner. After months of silently eating tupperware food in the office, it was a real change!

I didn't have much time to see the city. But went for a walk on the first day, with Ceren, and we both concluded that Poznan has a really pretty old town and sex shops on every corner.
 
During the time of the training we mostly stayed in the same street, where the hostel and conference room were. But, even in that one street, there was a vegetarian restaurant, a cute coffee place filled with hipsters (I've been in Vilnius for time enough to actually be surprised to see hipsters and feel a weird urge to hug them all), a shop/restaurant with gluten-free food, a really cool bar for shots, a nice italian restaurant we went to one of the nights, a organic cafe, a second hand shop... know what I mean? Poznan is like, a smaller cuter Berlin.



BERLIN
After the training, I went to visit Telmo in Berlin.

I had never been there, and I feel like I'll disapoint some of my berlin-enthusiast friends when I go back and tell thenm I didn't do any crazy partying and the closest to a night out was me and Telmo eating cheesecake in a dark bar and talking about feelings, plans for the future and learning how to love oneself.

To explain how I felt about the city I'll first talk about Sandra Juto.
Those who know me for some time are familiar with my issue with her. Sandra Juto is my pet hate. The poor lady doesn't even know me. It's the most idiotic form of antagonism: I hate Sandra Juto because DEEP DEEP DOWN I wish I was her.
I generally use her name as an adjective. So, if I had to describe Berlin, I'd say Berlin is very Sandra Juto. Which makes sense, since she lives there.

In her website, Sandra Juto introduces herself as a "blogger, graphic designer, online shop owner, artist, illustrator, photographer and crocheter." She's not exceedingly good at any of this things, but managed to get this ridiculous expensive wrist warmers business quite popular.

She has a blog depicting her perfect instragram-coloured life. Her apartment is neat and white and nicely decorated. She doens't have tampon boxes and supermarket discount flyers laying around. Her landlord didn't left any collection of pots, or butterfly decorations in the house that she can't get rid of and are awfully ugly.

She always eats amazingly good-looking food, and goes for coffee with her friends. 





 I believe everyone in Sandra Juto's world dresses well. No one wears Slipknot tshirts, they don't have unflattering haircuts or an ugly handbag that I-got-it-for-free-why-shouldnt-i-wear-it?

She's always in nice photogenic places. Sandra Juto has never been spotted in a lame pub with mirror walls, dolphin shaped dream-catchers and unflattering fluorescent lights.

So, in one of the days walking around the city, I sat on the subway and noticed people around me.
Everyone looked like her.
They all looked like someone she knows.
They probably all ride bikes and buy nice things in flea markets and sit in cafes and listen to Bon Iver while smoking rolled cigars.

Maybe they're even vegan.