When you are about to move to a new country, especially one that you have never been before and is quite different than your own, you feel excited yes, but you also feel slightly nervous and maybe even scared. Five years ago, when I was preparing for my new life in Finland, I had all those feelings but I feared mostly to be alone; “what if I can’t make any friends there?”. But these five years proved me wrong, I made incredible friends here. And in last week’s Wednesday morning talk, I was with one of those beautiful friends, Melis, my dear half Turkish-half Finnish friend – who would rather call herself hundred percent Turkish and hundred percent Finnish.

Two weeks ago, I finally had the courage to have my hair cut really short, after gradually getting shorter and shorter. The first 2 days or so were weird, I felt strange with so short hair but I got used to it quite fast. Today I am going to write about my Wednesday morning coffee last week with a Finnish friend, a long-time short hair advocate (I think), the owner of my favourite dog in the world and another Creative Sustainability student (soon-to-graduate), Johanna.

Before Kallio, I lived in Töölö for so many years: on Temppelikatu, on Arkadiankatu, on Eteläinen Hesperiankatu.. And in the middle of all those streets, on Runeberginkatu, there was a cafe which I saw all the time and never took the time even to look inside. Cafe & Eeopos, “kahvisalonki”, was the little cosy corner cafe where I met Ainur this morning and had a really nice 2-hours chat.