Moving in....

I moved into my new apartment six days ago. It's about ~50 square meters, one bedroom (well, one bed without much room other than the bed) with a large living room and kitchen/dining room combo. The apartment is on the sixth floor of a wonderful vintage building with an elevator that looks as if it were one of the very first ever batch of elevators made in Finland (or anywhere). It is an iron cage which moves slowly but very smoothly. So far my biggest concern is making sure I open the inner cage door without getting my fingers squeezed off through the grate.

I love having a real place to live here in Helsinki. Though hotel life is nice a few days a week (and is something you just get used to as a consultant) the room service/housekeeping/cable tv/etc... just doesn't make up for the freedom of being able to really unpack, cook, and just know that there won't be someone coming in every day between 10am and 2pm to pick up after you and potentially look through all your things.

The apartment is so conveniently located to downtown and work that I felt guilty even buying (or using) a pass for the tram, though I'm sure that will change once it gets COLD and DARK DARK DARK. It only takes 15 minutes to walk all the way in to work, even carrying the dreaded laptop bag and wearing the dreaded work shoes.

Other problem: Remembering the name of the street I live on. You try it. Caloniuksenkatu. Try it again: Ca-lo-ni-uk-sen-katu. Sheesh!

Anyway, enough rambling. There are pictures of the apartment below. It really does look surprisingly this nice (well, it did before I moved my 100+ kg of crap in!) but apparently the pictures were taken for some architectural magazine in which the apartment was featured. It's always nice to be reminded that other people have such much better taste than us normal folks...