It's been a month here now and things are settling down. I'm legal. I have a job. I pay taxes. This immigrant can begin to strut a little.

Tampere

I'm even beginning to get the hang of Helsinki; link places together, get around without a map and say please and thankyou (it's the same word-yes!). So on the weekend, ready to broaden my horizons (and visit the mother-in-law), I got the bus with Dog and Girlf. up to Tampere (above). One definite plus of Finland is that dogs are allowed on public transport here, you don't even have to pretend to be blind.

Dog claiming her right to ride the bus. 

Tampere is also known as the Manchester of Finland. It's the old industrial centre with big warehouses and giant chimneys. It's sat in-between two big lakes which you can swim in in summer and skate on in winter. Definitely worth a visit. A good friend of mine was playing an excellent selection of punk records at the Soho Bar and I got the chance to talk with some of the locals. I insist that talking to people in pubs is by far the best way to learn about a country and sure enough, within just a couple of pints, I had learned that bears don't attack women because they are scared of their pussies. University of life.

Summer has also begun to leave us. In Helsinki the change of the seasons is pretty drastic. I found this cool graph (I'm mostly nerd) which shows the crazy seasonal change in comparison to Madrid, Spain. Don't be too confused; Basically the light blue line shows the number of daylight hours throughout the year for Madrid. The Dark blue line the same for Helsinki.

Obviously to get from 19 hours of daylight to just 6 is going to take some pretty drastic change and that's what's happening now. Winter is coming a bit like The Day After Tomorrow.

Ridiculous movie

OK. Well not quite, but the leaves are turning yellow.

On the plus side this means that the mushroom season is go. Watch out Ray Mears,

God