taina

a genuine diary extract:

A bit after 17:00, we could finally board our night train, SJ EuroNight 345, Stockholm-Berlin. We have berths 75 and 76 in carriage 21. There are crying babies in our carriage. Our first travel companion in our compartment is someone from the UK who's living in Stockholm for work. They're heading to Berlin for an ultimate frisbee tournament. Our second супутник joined us in Norrköping. They turned out to have lived in [Student City] for a while, a few years back.

S— took the top bunks and got ready for bed between 21:00 and 22:00. The final two passengers to our six-berth compartment boarded in Malmö, but I was asleep by then. I would not call this a comfortable way to travel, but I delight in the romance of pretending it's the 19th century.

( Next morning: )

a genuine diary extract:

We happened across vegan restaurant Gopal. It has the usual buffet, but it's not the usual kind of all-you-can-eat: you fill a tray and then weigh it, and pay by weight. It's like €2.55 per 100 g, we got lunch for the both of us for something silly like €18.70. The food was great, and the crowd there was just the kind where we feel at home: queer and alternative. It was warm enough to sit outside.

After a pear ice cream at Tammelantori, it was finally time for the Moomin Museum. It revolved around the books and their illustrations. There were lots of original artworks and sketches [by Jansson], and dioramas constructed by Tuulikki Pietilä. I would have liked to learn a bit more about the, well, everything else: the comics, the merchandise, the impact on Jansson's further life and career, on Pietilä's life and career... But still, it was very much worth seeing. I bought a cheap pocket edition of Muumilaakson marraskuu from the gift shop. It's my favourite of the Moomin books and I'd like to have a copy in my own book collection.

We would've liked to see Pyynikki too, but it was a bit too far away. We just walked to Tammerkoski park and then to a restaurant for dinner. After that we had almost an hour to kull before our train, so we sat in the sun in the park again. S— fell in love with Tampere, she says she could live there.

a genuine diary entry:

We went to Jyväskylä to my aunt K—. We made it to the bus without problems, despite mummi's anxieties. The views from the bus were very nice, and I couldn't decide whether to read, look out the window, or nap. I had time to do all three during the two-hour ride.

We arrived in Jyväskylä at 14:05. We went into the bookshop first to buy some postcards, then we had a cup of tea at Café Miriam's, a nice local café/bakery. Aunt K— met us after her workday, at 15:30 (she works as an English teacher). She gave us a tour of the arts and humanities campus of the University of Jyväskylä, where her and mom studied English together. Siiri the dog came with us, she was very excited to meet us! K— drove us around Jyväskylä for a while and showed us the JYU's sciences campus, mom's old student house, and various neighbourhoods.

K— showed us around in her house, and we had dinner with uncle J—. K— hasn't seen me in 11 years and she's never met S— before, but she trusts us with her entire dog: we were allowed to take Siiri out for a walk unsupervised. Only it started raining and she refused to move.

J— had yoga and K— had zumba class. We went to sauna in the meantime. It felt so good, oh, I've missed it! The view from the kitchen and living room is amazing, you can see —järvi peeking through the forest. There are no landscape pictures on the walls, that would be tasteless in a house with such a view.

a genuine extract from my diary:

At 23:00 exactly, a shuttle took us straight into the ro-ro ferry. I hadn't at any point thought beyond getting on board – usually I just follow my parents. There was a reception desk on deck 7 though, and the cabin number (8039) was printed on the key card. We helped someone who introduced themself as M— – they were afraid to take the lift because they've been trapped in a lift all alone for three hours one time. We took their suitcases with is in the lift while they took the stairs. We left our own suitcases in our cabin and went to find the Late Night Dinner we'd booked. (We thought it'd be tomorrow night, but we're very happy to have it now.) The buffet was tiny, but the food was excellent.

This ferry, the Finnstar, seems smaller than the Stockholm-Helsinki ferries I remember. The car deck seemed small, and as far as I can tell there's just one central stairwell. Come to think of it, there's no promenade.

a genuine diary extract

"Toutefois, la café aux chats est une zone PVP. C'est la melée totale, un corps-à-corps brutal. La clientèle ne connaît aucune décence, ne respecte ni l'intégrité de l'espace personnel, ni les fondements de la vie en société. Les étudiantes se forcent un chemin entre nous pour toucher la chatte sur notre table ; les parenze lâchent leurs morveux sur les chats qui n'ont pas envie de caresses ou même les soulèvent au-dessus de nous pour les faire saluer la chatte ; les passanze dans la rue tapent sur le vitre sous nos yeux... Pour la clientèle du café aux chats, les autres humains ne constituent que des obstacles à vaincre – physiquement s'il le faut."

a genuine diary extract:

“I made a stop at some brambles by the roadside that I’ve been eyeing for a while, and snacked on blackberries. Most of them were out of reach, of course, but the accessible berries were bountiful too. They were the usual (familiar) mix of sour and sweet. There were no nettles growing between the brambles – usually those seem to like forming an unholy mix. (The roadside in question belongs to a busy road in an industry terrain. I’m going to get so much heavy metal poisoning but I’m so full of microplastics already that it probably makes no difference.)”

a genuine diary extract

“On peut rater deux des sept cours pratiques ce bloc. Le professeur nous a conseillé de les garder pour le cas où – « If, for example… say… a relative dies. Of course, if you die there’s no problem. »”

some of the notebooks i keep:

diary
i keep a diary in A5 notebooks with lined pages. i'm on my twenty-fourth diary right now.

Great Notebook of Lists
A4 notebook with squared paper, like the notebooks i used for mathematics in high school (in fact the first one was a leftover maths notebook). in these i keep all kinds of lists (TBRs, to do lists, ingredients, ideas...); doodles and sketches; poem drafts; other random notes. i fill up roughly one of these per year.

four-year journal
a much thicker A5 notebook with one page for each day of the year. on each page, i write a 3-5 line journal entry for the same date of four consecutive years. i started on 28 May 2021, so i have almost a year left. it was a cheap notebook and is kind of falling apart.

selection of poems
a notebook into which i copy poems (by other people) that i particularly like.

poëziealbum
notebook in which i ask friends to write down a poem (of their own or from another author), like a vriendenboekje.

Board notebook
my notebook from my year as the Treasurer of my literary student association. that means i'm mostly done with it now, but i still refer to it occasionally and recently took some notes for a proposal i'll submit at the next general assembly.

Editor in Chief's notebook
same idea as the above, but for notes regarding the association's magazine of which i'm currently one of the Editors in Chief.

a genuine diary extract

"Ik kreeg van het pensioenfonds een enquête opgestuurd. Op de vraag of een pensoen bieden past bij "een goede werkgever" antwoordde ik "oneens". Ik was heel blij dat ik de vervolgvraag kreeg, waarom ik het daar niet mee eens was. Ik heb toen uitgelegd dat de werkgever verplicht is een pensioen te bieden, waarbij ik artikel 1.2 van de statuten van de Stichting Bedrijfstakpensioenfonds voor het Schoonmaak- en Glazenwassersbedrijf citeerde. Het bieden van een pensioen zegt dus niets over mijn werkgever."

a genuine diary extract

“Dear reader, I hope you get something from my writing. Entertainment, details about my life, a feel for who I am, signs of the times, historical source material, maybe even beauty at times, it doesn’t matter. I’m doing this for you, whether you’re future me or someone else. I hope it means something to you.”