Feeling like a child

When go abroad you might feel mentally a bit retarded as you cannot understand the local language. Basically you are on a level of under 5 year old kid if you cannot speak or read the local language when you need to communicate with a foreign language. When traveling and visiting places as a tourist you are often only in a tourist friendly places where you can survive with your mother tongue or in English. Usually you can also speak with a common language to your fellow travelers. Therefore you might not get the feeling of feeling like a retard. Especially in Georgia I have had the feeling of retarded more strongly than before because I do not understand the Georgian alphabets and therefore I am not able to read anything. Knowing the local language is essential to immerse the local culture.  I have started to learn Georgian alphabets and trying to speak something.

Finnish brand in Georgia

Finnish logo in Georgian

In Georgia I spotted one Finnish brand called Myllyn Paras which produces for example flour for baking. Interesting thing was that I spotted their products in a pharmacy. In Finland I have not seen their products being sold in a pharmacy. In Finland you find their products in grocery stores. You can see their name written in Georgian and Finnish. In Georgian it says literally "Milin parasi".

Umaglesi Liga Match

Boris Paichadze Stadium

Police watching over the crowd

Today I went to match a football match of Georgian league. The match was between Dinamo Tbilisi and Torpedo Kutaisi. The entrance was free and about 500 supporters of Dinamo had already arrived and decorated their area with flags. Few hundred supporters of Torpedo arrived to the stadium after few minutes of the starting whistle. There was a line of police men rounding the whole stadium and extra attention was given naturally to the areas of the fanatic supporters. During the match both of the supporters were throwing loud bombs towards to the pitch and also torches were light.

The match itself was entertaining. The final result was 3-2 for Dinamo Tbilisi. When ever Dinamo scored many people in the crowd shouted insults towards supporters of Torpedo and showed middle fingers. There was an interesting incident on the pitch when few players of Torpedo wanted a penalty from a dubious hand ball. The play was not stopped but two players of Torpedo ran to the referee and grabbed him from hands and shoulders. Clearly braking the rule of referees untouchability. Referee wrestled himself out and just let the game run. He did not even give warning to the players for protesting. I think that in many other leagues referee could have given a red card for the players for grabbing referees arm and protesting such way.

After match I did not see any aggressive behavior.  The attendance of the match was several thousand which is quite little for s stadium which has capacity of  54 549 people. I have been told that rugby has become more popular than football in Georgia. Hopefully I will have a chance to see a rugby match here. You can read previous football match reports from Turkey and Spain.

Is Georgia Safe?

Traffic in Tbilisi

I read an article of the top 10 safest countries in the world 2015. Georgia is on the place of 6th safest country in the world 2015. According to the article Georgia is safe because you can walk alone safely in the capital during the night time and crime rates are low. But I have witnessed the crazy driving in Georgia and therefore I do not consider it that safe. I decided to find some statistics about traffic accidents in Georgia and Finland.

The most recent statistics I found from both countries are from 2013. We can compare these countries well because the population of the both countries is around 5 millions. The number of road traffic accidents in Georgia is double compared to Finland. The number of fatal accidents in Georgia is also twice as big as in Finland. Though Finnish population has higher tendency to drive under intoxication. One reason could be that in Finland the taxi cues are very long in the weekend so getting a taxi is more difficult compared to Georgia. High number of road traffic accidents definitely decreases the safety of Georgia.

	Finland	Georgia
Total number of road traffic accidents	2741	5510
of which caused by intoxication	411	228
Persons injured	3677	8045
Persons killed	190	514

Table of road accidents in Finland and Georgia 2013


Sources:

• http://www.geostat.ge/
• http://www2.liikennevirasto.fi/julkaisut/pdf8/lti_2014-07_liikenneonnettomuudet_maanteilla_web.pdf

Social security system in Finland

Finnish social security system guarantees you better income than full time job in Poland. In Finland Unemployed person gets 1100 EUR/month in gross according to Savon Sanomat 14.4.2015. The 1100 EUR/month is formed of 600 EUR unemployment support and then support to cover rental costs which can be 500 EUR/month in the capital area. It is hard to imagine Finnish speaking person to be motivated to move to Poland for work if he/she gets paid better in Finland unemployed than having full time job in Poland. Though by working in Poland Finnish speaker has good chance to earn better than average. So one could have better income compared the neighbors  Earlier I wrote a post of salary differences between Poland and Finland and how appreciated Finnish language skills are in Poland.

Spanish Jail Comic Strip

Timo in Spain

Now I publish another strip and here you can read the story behind it. I have been working on comics which I have been gathering together. I have still more strips in store to be published in the future. Here previously published strip.

2 years in Poland

Graffiti in Centrum

Two years ago I wrote about my decision to move to Poland. I was enthusiastic to learn Polish in the beginning but my language learning motivation decreased little by little. Therefore I never learned fluent Polish but at least I can speak a little. I decided not to extend my contract and therefore I am going to Finland for one month. I do not know yet what I will do or where I will go after the holiday in Finland. At the moment I am considering and looking for different options. Lets see what the future will be.

Skiing in Georgia

On the top

Last week I did a skiing trip to Gudauri in Georgia. The skiing resort has marked routes over 50 km and the top stations is on the height of 3007 meters. This was the first time I was skiing on a big mountain. My previous skiing experience is mainly from short but steep slopes of Finland.

It was foggy on the first skiing station and you could not see very far away. I was very impressed when I reached the top of the mountain. On the top of the mountain you could see amazing landscape, clouds below and sun shining brightly. From the top it was possible to go down on steep slope covered with powder snow reaching your knees. It was the first time that I could enjoy skiing in powder snow. There are many possibilities to ski in powder snow. You can take a helicopter ride to the top of one of the many mountains in the area.

Salary differences between Poland and Finland

I have few Finnish friends and foreign friends working in a service desk job in Poland. From them I found out that you get paid very well in Polish standards. Before I have also written about the job opportunities for Finnish speakers in Poland. I decided to study the topic little more and compare the salary of service desk worker to the salary of a doctor in Poland. Click "read more" and find out the exact salaries.

Strange Finnish culture

Today I read an interesting post "here's why other countries think you're weird". In a chapter called "a confused Indian in Finland" is an interesting story how Indian business man was confused because of the lack of personnel/service in a high-class Hyatt hotel. Then one commentator in the post tells how he was confused how men do not even hold door for women which seemed pretty rude to him.