Mari Travels with Tango

Back in Helsinki, at the Vuosaari Harbour. Although fully aware of how preposterous the heading sounds, after much contemplation I have decided it is the most appropriate for what I will attempt to discuss in this entry that will mark the end of this journey with tango. In effect, the big questions that I have been trying to answer during the past weeks, indeed, during the trip too, remain the same: what is it that tango means to me, why does it occupy such a special, central stage in my life, and what is it that I am trying to achieve with it? Before getting into that, I suppose it would be good to tell you something about the final stage of this 'Travels with Tango Tour'. The two-night, one day sea journey from Rostock was very pleasant, with lovely sunny weather, beautiful views over the calm waters of the Baltic Sea, and long, winding conversations with Meeri, a Finnish lady who I was sharing the cabin with. Before I knew it, the trip was over and the ferry arrived in th...

Well my Friends, here I am, in Rostock once again. Just like for last year's trip, the final leg of the journey will be covered by boat that leaves from this harbour city some time in the early morning hours. This time, however, I made the journey both ways under my own steam, not relying on the train to get me back from wherever I had managed to get during the previous weeks. It was the right decision, as this way I feel more content, having really covered the ground myself. The campsite in Röbel. Today's journey was exhausting, though. The temperature that had not been that cool during the past week, was forecasted to soar up to 36 degrees, and it certainly made the going quite hard. Expecting this, for once I managed to do the sensible thing and got up early, setting out from the campsite already at 8. This meant that I had a few hours of relatively pleasant temperatures before it got really hot. Additionally, I was lucky to have the loveliest, gentle but firm tail wind t...

 I woke up with thoughts of tango, as most mornings on this trip. It seems that although I may not be actively thinking about it all the time, my mind is busy processing all the elements related to movement, balance and interaction between the dancing couple. As I am still so new to tango, each milonga presents me with new discoveries, or unresolved puzzles, that will then be examined by my subconscious during sleep. Often, I wake up with a sudden realisation on how a certain move is produced, and would then want to try it immediately. In this case, I had to settle for memorising the outcome. Yesterday I had not managed to get very far from the city due to a late start, an oppressive heat, the very winding route and, believe it or not, catching a free-running horse in the middle of the bike path somewhere in the suburbs of Berlin. This meant that today I really had to cover some ground if I wanted to make it to my ferry on Sat night, and I did what I could. However, the soaring ...

Dancers at Clärchens Ballhaus. After 4 nights of milongas, a minimal amount of sight-seeing (consisting mainly of riding my bike past well-known sites, not even stopping), a lot of worrying about the bike and very volatile moods am now getting ready to move on. In the end, I had to replace both the tube and the outer tyre to fix the bike, as the old ones had become totally destroyed in the process of pushing it through the suburbs. Luckily however, the wheel itself was not damaged, and despite my initial fright when I did not seem to be able to fit the rear wheel with its new tyre in its place, in the end all was well. The time spent in uncertainty  was certainly a very much needed reminder of how easily my tour can be brought to an abrupt end: all that is needed is a technical problem that makes riding the bike impossible, and all of a sudden I feel like a bird without wings. Unfortunately, my time in Berlin was also marked by a disappointment on the personal front which left m...