Exploring Kalasatama & Trying Out Xbox Kinect
When I’m feeling stressed out, annoyed, insomniac and generally not centered or not like myself, there are a few activities that really help: a weekend at the cabin, an urban exploration / geocaching trip and diving. After a good afternoon or a weekend of those, coming back home feels like I’d been away for a week.
I’ve had a couple of weeks that have been kind of paradoxical: I’ve been both happy but at the same time massively annoyed. This has lead to stuff like spending insomniac nights watching Chernobyl documentaries, since I can’t seem to get my head out of that place (in a good way). Last weekend I managed to dent the bad vibes by a surprisingly interesting urban exploration trip.
(Want to see more photos? Check out the Flickr Photoset here)
Wreck Diving in Åland, Part II
Susi and I decided to end our Awesome July of 2010 by going to Åland to dive some wrecks, like we did last year. This time we were accompanied again by Gunnar, Christina, Jukka and Hakkis, but also Jori and Ville who are of a slightly fresher batch of divers.
On our way to Åland we heard that the weather wasn’t quite as great as it was the last time, and the wind went up to 10 m/s on the sea, which is quite a lot. On the way to Åland the ferry got hit by quite an impressive thunderstorm, which didn’t bode that well.
(More photos in the Flickr photoset!)
On our way to Åland, we ran into a pretty massive thunderstorm with some impressive cloud formations.
In the end the wind was too heavy to go to the open sea, so this time around we didn’t get to see Belliver or Gävle. We stayed two days in Plus, which is the “home wreck” of the dive operator. It’s a nice three mast sailing ship that sunk very close to the shoreline, and which is shielded from the worst of the winds. Nevertheless the going was a bit rocky both over the surface and under water.
Into the Zone: My Trip to Chernobyl & Pripyat
“You are going to Chernobyl? Why on Earth?”
“Well, if you have to ask that, I don’t think I’ll have an answer that will satisfy you.”
Ever since I heard that it’s possible to go on a trip to the Chernobyl power plant and in the city of Pripyat in the turn of the millennium, doing that has been one of my dreams and Things To Do Before Dying. Why? Well, I refer you to the quote in the beginning of the blog post, a discussion I’ve had several times in the last few weeks. Ever since I was a kid I have been very fascinated with post-holocaust settings and “A World Without Us” types of scenarios, modern ruins have had a certain weird appeal to me for ages, and then then of course Chernobyl is a name that gives rise to all kinds of thoughts and feelings.
Chernobyl, Pripyat and the Zone of Alienation
I was 11 when the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded. I’d like to say that the moment had a big impact for me, but it really didn’t. It’s a bit strange, since my memory goes really far back to my childhood and Chernobyl certainly affected Finland, which got a big dose of fallout along with Sweden. Somehow, apparently, it just didn’t affect me personally enough that I had committed it to memory back then.
In 2007 I became aware of the new sarcophagus being built over the old one in 2008, when the Ukrainian government also forbid traveling to the graveyard of the military vehicles used in the clean-up. “That’s it for that dream”, I thought stupidly and more or less forgot about the whole idea – until Toni phoned me earlier this spring and asked if I was interested in accompanying him and some other people to the radioactive zone.
Sold.
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