Author / mirvaonthemove

by mirvaonthemove

Happy 90th birthday, Finnair!

Finnair, the trusty airline of my home country, is celebrating a big birthday this year. Only 10 years to go until the BIG 100! Woohoo! 🙂 In January Finnair was named the world’s safest airline in 2012.

While just five years ago I didn’t have any particular ties to Finnair,  nowadays I have quite a lot: in 2011, I was selected as one of the seven Quality Hunters bloggers traveling on Finnair for seven weeks. That gig saw me zoom from New York to Europe, Japan and India in my own personal record speed. I also now have a couple of friends who work at Finnair as flight attendants.

In addition, I’m a frequent contributor to Blue Wings, Finnair’s in-flight magazine, where I’m currently in charge of compiling the monthly calendar of events. So if you are flying with blue and white wings anytime soon, check out my event recommendations under the “This Month Around the World” pages. My favorite event for this month is the breakfast buffet festival for monkeys in Lopburi, Thailand. Would love to check it out one day. 🙂

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With all these Finnair connections I’ve got going on, it was only suitable that Blue Wings asked me to write an article about Finnair’s 90th birthday – but to do it from the perspective of the passengers. Without the passengers, there would be no Finnair. So back in July I spent a day at the Helsinki Airport interviewing families and individuals for the story (and visiting the Book Swap that I helped create!). The point of the article was to show who flies with Finland’s national airline, and what they think about it.

Though I had to get up super early to get to the airport by the time the 6 a.m. rush starts, it was a really fun day of reporting. I was roaming around the airport together with photographer Tuomas Kolehmainen and our Finnair liason Markku Remes. Markku and I worked together during the Quality Hunters project too, so it was nice to catch up again. We met tons of interesting people, from international business men to Croatia’s official athletic team and Finland-loving Japanese tourists.

And here’s the result! The article is a pretty cool-looking three-page spread in the November issue of Blue Wings that is just now hitting the seat-back pockets of every Finnair flight from Hong Kong to New York. So if you are flying with the airline this month, keep an eye out for my story and my calendar. You can also read the latest issue online here (scroll to pages 24-25 for the birthday story that is pasted below, and to pages 64-65 for the start of my events listings. Just so you know – “sivu” means page in Finnish.). Hope you like reading the story as much as I liked reporting it!

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Have you flown with Finnair? What was your experience like?

by mirvaonthemove

Inspiration and desperation at the Social Good Summit and Global Citizen Festival in New York

Last week was truly something else – I learned more than I ever dreamed possible about various problems currently affecting the world: extreme poverty, funky-sounding but terrible tropical diseases like hookworm, global warming, infant mortality, malaria, lack of education for girls…. Phew! Needless to say, my brain was running on information overload after receiving all of this info from two NYC events: the three-day Social Good Summit held at the 92Y, and the one-day Global Citizen Festival in Central Park. These happenings were the source of a lot of inspiration (extreme poverty is on its way out!), but also desperation: so much to do, so little political will to do it!

I attended the Social Good Summit, organized by the UN Foundation and Mashable, mostly to report on the latest climate change news for The Interdependent.com. To read my article on how social media is playing a role in the fight against global warming, click here.

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During these two eye-opening events I also saw a ton of celebrities, like Al Gore, Alicia Keys, Will.i.am, the drummer and bassist of Linkin Park, George W’s daughter Barbara Bush and my favorite reality TV star, Ernesto Arguello from NBC’s short-lived show Ready for Love. I even got a photo taken with him! 🙂

ErnestoArguello, who is a “humanitarian entrepreneur” according to his Twitter account, spoke at the summit because of something you see in this photo. The yellow belt he is wearing is the symbol of Snap2Live, a “life-saving fashion statement” campaign that promotes seat belts and traffic safety. Sadly enough, car crashes are currently the leading reason of death for children worldwide. Someone dies on roads every 6 seconds: a million of the victims are children. With 70 percent of its profits going to the Road Safety Fund, Snap2Live supports the UN’s “Decade of Action for Road Safety.”

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Discussing new energy initiatives are singer Will.i.am and Jessica O. Matthews, CEO of Uncharted Play. They spoke at a panel called “Sustainable Energy and Global Youth: Making a Complex Issue Fun and Accessible for a Measurable Difference.” After having been kicked around for 30 minutes, the ball that Matthews designed can generate up to three hours of electricity.

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Linkin Park’s bassist Dave Farrell was at the Social Good Summit to to promote “Recharge.” This new climate change-influenced videogame is part of the band’s “Power the World” campaign, which supports the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative.

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Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, revealed his latest campaign, “What I Love,” a multimedia exhibit that makes climate change a personal matter. The site lets you choose things you couldn’t live without and explains how those things are threatened by global warming.

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On Saturday, a few days after the Social Good Summit ended, some 60,000 New Yorkers and visitors attended the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park. Here I am with my friend Faviola, who scored us two of the free concert tickets given through the website. The fundraising day featured a collection of well-known artists: Kings of Leon, Alicia Keys, John Mayor and Stevie Wonder. We were all the way in the back and could only see the performers as ant-size on stage, but it was still good times for a great cause!

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Did you by any chance attend the Social Good Summit and/or the Global Citizen Festival live or via the Internet? What did you think?

by mirvaonthemove

Please make me Jauntaroo’s World Chief Explorer by voting for my video!

Wouldn’t it be cool if I got selected for the Best Job Around the World and got to check out 30+ vacation destinations over 12 months, volunteer in all of them and blog about it for all the world to see and learn? And minor detail – be paid $100,000 in salary. I sure think it would be pretty sweet 🙂 So please go vote for my super cool video application on Jauntaroo, a travel-planning website, and do it TODAY before the voting ends – which is any day now, as the Jauntaroo team is currently reviewing all applications. If you have already voted, no worries – you can “Like” the video again every 24 hours! 🙂 Thanks for your support!

I was up until 7 a.m. today working on this video, so I hope you can all show it some love!  Thank you!! Gracias!! Kiitos!! Tack!! Danke!! Merci!! Jerifef!! Terimakasim!! And so forth. 🙂 Just click here or click on the photo to get to the voting site:

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And if you think that you “liking” a video online hardly leads to any tangible benefits in a sea of thousands of applicants, you’d be wrong: In 2011 I got selected as one of Finnair’s seven travel bloggers (called Quality Hunters) after my application scored 2,227 Likes, the second-highest number on the site! My video can still be seen on my own YouTube channel, even though Finnair has taken the contest page down. The race was extremely tight and nerve-wracking as I recounted in the blog later, but worth every missed heartbeat – the seven-week gig, then also at times dubbed “The World’a Best Job,” was beyond amazing and saw me flying to destinations from Japan to India and Europe! So there you see, every Like counts in today’s social-media obsessed world! 🙂

by mirvaonthemove

Travel Inspiration: Pablo Garcia cycles around the world for 14+ years

As you probably figured out from my post that talked about the Helsinki Airport Book Swap, I was back in the homeland for the summer again. My two months in Finland went by fast, much in the same fashion as my previous year’s summer break in the Great White North.

But now I’m in New York again, ready for new adventures and mind-opening encounters. I already had one of those on Sunday at Union Square, when I spotted Pablo Garcia, the Argentine man behind the World By Bike project. He has been cycling around the world since 1999!

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Pablo was at the square with his trusty bicycle and a banner explaining his journey that has taken him through 82 countries. He was selling doll pins for $5 and a $15 DVD documentary of his travels, which is how he finances his trip (along with sponsorships). The final stage of his round-the-world trip, biking back to Argentina, is expected to take about two years. By that point he will have cycled for 16 years, and visited every continent sans Antarctica (makes my own travels in 60+ countries by public transportation seem measly by comparison!).

I had just seen the “World By Bike” documentary the day before as my friend had bought it from Pablo at Union Square, so it was great meeting its star in real life. While the quality of the film isn’t quite on par with National Geographic documentaries and the like, it’s pretty good considering the challenging shooting surroundings (like the extremely hot Himalayan mountains and mosquito-filled Yukon territory of Canada). The story itself is truly fascinating and keeps you glued to the set for the whole 48-minute duration. An integral part of the doc is a bittersweet love story with an Italian girl Clara who comes along for a year of cycling but then decides life on the road is too much for her.

If you are interested in buying the documentary and supporting Pablo’s amazing travels, you can do so here.

Here’s the trailer of the documentary, one that Pablo told me is just the beginning. Once back in Argentina, he plans to do a whole series of films about his epic journey. Looking forward to seeing them!

by mirvaonthemove

The Helsinki Airport Book Swap: From a random idea to reality

Back in the fall of 2011 I was on a 10-hour plane ride with Finnair, flying from Japan back to Helsinki, when I finished a book I had been reading for a few weeks. It may have been Pico Iyer’s colorful Video Night in Kathmandu, or Rusty Young’s Marching Powder, a novel set in the infamous Bolivian prison of San Pedro that I visited in 2008. I can’t remember for sure.

But I do remember thinking, “I wish there was a book swap at Helsinki Airport so that I could switch this book for another one before my next flight.” And thus I posted this suggestion on the Quality Hunters blog (at the time I was working as one of eight QH travel bloggers hired by Finnair and Finavia):

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Much to my surprise, the blog readers liked the idea, as did Finnair and Finavia. The book swap became reality in the spring of 2012! Hurray! It’s located next to departure gate 27, up the stairs toward the Fly Inn Restaurant & Deli.

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Even though the stylish Airport Book Swap has been around for more than a year, I only witnessed it with my own eyes two weeks ago. That’s because over the past year I’ve merely flown into HEL, not out of there. Luckily now I was at the airport working on a story for Finnair’s in-flight magazine Blue Wings, and I finally got the chance to see my little pet project in real life. Finnair’s own Markku Remes, a familiar face from my Quality Hunting days, showed me the place and I even left a book there. The space was really cute and cozy, it was great to see that it turned out so well! I will definitely go hang out there next time I’m flying somewhere. I hope you’ll do the same if you are ever stopping by HEL!

Have you visited the Helsinki Airport Book Swap? What do you think about the idea?

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by mirvaonthemove

My Eurocircle interview

As a reporter, I’m usually on the other side of the pen and notepad, grilling folks with tough questions. But recently the tables turned, as I was interviewed for Eurocircle’s Expatriates-series. To read the Q&A about my life as a traveling writer, click here.

For those of you not in the know, Eurocircle is a social networking group that was started in 1999 in New York by a Finnish lady named Kaisa Kokkonen. “EuroCircle is a free informal community for Europeans, Europhiles & expats,” states the website. Through EC, members can “exchange ideas and contacts & meet people at our events or via the forums.”

I first learned about Eurocircle in 2009, and shortly after that I interviewed Kaisa for an article about the organizations 10th anniversary. Nowadays I go to their various events in New York whenever I have the time. Most recently I attended one of their rooftop parties at Ava Lounge, which was a fun place to check out. So if you are in New York or any of the other cities that EC operates in, check out the events calendar and go mingle!

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by mirvaonthemove

Weekly Wednesday Video: Baby turtle treks to the ocean in Nicaragua

While traveling around Central America this past winter, my sleepy friend Mira and I visited the secluded and miles-long Los Brasiles beach on Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast. Located on an island near Poneloya, the place is only a 30-minute bus ride and a 5-minute boat trip away from the bustling colonial city of Leon, but feels worlds apart.

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The only guest house on the beach is the laid-back Surfing Turtle Lodge,  named after the two things people come to this Brazilian-style sandy playground for: the wild waves and the cute baby tortugas. The latter is what this week’s travel video is about, as we were lucky to witness six baby turtles being released into the ocean during our visit. (After the turtle eggs hatch on the beach, the lodge raises the youngsters in their nursery until they are old enough to fend for themselves against the big beasts of the ocean.) To avoid contaminating the little ones with human smells, we had to wear plastic gloves when placing them down on the sand.

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Here’s my turtle – Pete Jr! (The original Pete The Turtle resides in the Maldives, and was named by my 2010 Maldives travel buddy and photographer friend Mariana Keller).

It was truly endearing watching the little fellow battle his way across the beach into his new home (the Pacific Ocean), and that’s what this clip is about. The background music is courtesy of my awesome music producer brother Erkka. The song suits the footage perfectly – is Pete Jr. walking exactly in sync with the beat or what?! Cuteeeeeee. 🙂

Anyone else love turtles as much as I do? They are my favorite animals! Have you seen baby turtles being born? It’s one of my long-standing dreams.

by mirvaonthemove

Weekly Wednesday Video: A visit to a nursery school in The Gambia

About a month ago I posted a video from crossing the Sahara in Mauritania, inspired by fellow globetrotter Francis Tapon’s 3-year Africa trip. Well, now that Francis is about to enter the The Gambia, it’s only fitting to reminisce about my own visit to the tiny English-speaking sliver of land in West Africa. The country was the fifth and last destination on my West Africa tour last year (not counting my return to Senegal thereafter).

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The Gambia is dubbed “The Smiling Coast,” which is funny since it only has about 35 kilometers (20 miles) of coast line. It’s Africa’s smallest nation, shaped like a crooked finger that protrudes into Senegal. Teeny it may be, but it’s still a crowd favorite: this year’s visitor numbers may amount to 180,000. Europeans flock to the Gambian beaches especially from November to March.

Initially I was hesitant to go to The Gambia – I had heard an awful lot about its reputation as a hotspot for female sex tourism. I thought I would need to fight off potential suitors with a stick, and as a solo female traveler, would be a prime target for the bumsters looking for a sugar momma.

Luckily the reality on the ground was much better than I feared. I visited in the off-season, so tourist hassle was at a minimum. Also, for most of my two weeks, I was Couchsurfing with locals and expats. I thus ended up having a pretty different experience to most tourists.

The highlight of my Gambia visit was getting to hang out at St. David Nursery School in Serrekunda, a private school for 3-6-year-olds. The father from my Gambian host family, Abdul, is the principal there, and his daughter Bintou is one of the professors. Bintou brought me along to school with her on three consecutive days, so I got to spend a lot of time in the company of the super energetic students. Whenever the kids saw me,  they exclaimed “Toubab!” (white person) and ran over to hug me. I felt like a movie star. 🙂

This week’s video shows the students going through their morning ritual and studying in math class. With 120 children in three rooms, the noise level at the small school was through the roof. I have no idea how the kids manage to learn anything in that environment, but they all seemed really smart and enthusiastic. Despite not having the best facilities, the were such happy campers. It was quite humbling.

If you’d like to donate money to the school, click here to learn more. The website is run by a German lady who sponsors St. David Nursery.

by mirvaonthemove

Weekly Wednesday Video: Making pupusas in El Salvador

Continuing with the food theme (live Korean octopus, anyone?), let’s travel virtually to El Salvador this week and learn to make pupusas! As you may know, pupusas are stuffed corn tortillas that are a staple food in this tiny Central American nation, and they are delish. Wish I could have one right now, complete with tomato sauce and curtido (spicy fermented cabbage).

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Traditionally pupusas are made with beans, cheese and/or pork, but my favorite was this jalapeno and cheese version I encountered in a hip San Salvador eatery during my March visit.

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Want to learn how to make one of these yummy things? Check out this video from San Salvador, filmed at the apartment of my Couchsurfing host. On the screen you’ll also be able to spot my friend Mira, the sleepiest traveler of all times.

While this video teaches you the right technique for molding your pupusas and placing the cheese into the center, to find out the actual recipe you’ll need to click here. Buen provecho!

Have you eaten pupusas? What do you think?

by mirvaonthemove

Weekly Wednesday Video: Mongolian talent show

And…. I’m back! Yep, the little break I took for my birthday ended up turning into two weeks due various time suckers occupying my days in New York, but now it’s time to go on with the Weekly Wednesday Video series.

Today I’d like to take you all to Mongolia, a vast and isolated Asian country I got to visit with my dad during the Trans-Siberian train trip last fall. Unfortunately our time there was reduced to just five days due to China’s Golden Week celebrations messing up train schedules, but we did get to experience a few cool things. One of those was the 55-minute performance of the Tumen Ekh ensemble. The entertaining talent show features typical Mongolian throat singing, wildly twisting contortionists, folk dancing and funky masks.

The show was highly recommended to us by the Sun Path Hostel‘s manager Doljmaa (pronounced “Deutsch-ma”), so we couldn’t miss it – even though we almost did. We only had about ten minutes until show time when we hopped into a taxi outside the guesthouse in Ulaanbaatar. Despite encountering major language issues, we got our point across to the driver and magically made it to the theater just in time.

And I’m glad we did! The show was definitely one to remember. Here’s a short recap of what to expect if you ever get to attend a Mongolian talent show.

Have you been to Mongolia? Any interest in going?