Tango-travelling again (Stockholm)

After a month of steadily worsening moods and feelings of not belonging, I am once again travelling with tango. This time, however, it is only a short hop over the Finnish Gulf to Stockholm where there will be a tango festival during this week. The event, Tango 59 Degrees, comprises of no less than 5 day-time and night-time milongas each (the first of which begins in 15 minutes' time!), workshops, seminars and live performances. People I know who have been to it before were very enthusiastic about it, and personally I am just happy to be able to dance every day for the rest of the week.

You see, settling into my 'normal life' back home has been as hard as ever this time around, although the lovely summer weather and the general holiday feeling that prevails in Finland in July should have worked in its favour. At first, things did not look that bad, as I was full of positive energy, confidence and inner harmony, but quite predictably the considerable slowing down, as well as the setting in of daily routines, quickly started to affect my moods. What's more, the ridiculously low offer of tango (there is only one weekly milonga in Helsinki, plus one in Tampere, a city about 2,5 hours fast drive away) has done nothing to lift my spirits. To add the final straw, I developed a one-sided crush on someone that at first filled me with energy, only to leave me feeling totally void once it had become clear that he was not going to reciprocate my feelings. So, before I knew it, I was feeling just as out of place, out of sync, lonely and rejected as at the worst of times.

Having worked intensely for the past 3 weeks in the same café where I've been helping out on and off during the past 4 years, I was beginning to feel totally exhausted, and jumped at the opportunity to get back on the Tango Road. Now, having only arrived in Stockholm less than 2 hours ago and still not recovered from the last few nights' lack of sleep (last night I only managed about 3,5 hours which left me feeling as if I was totally drunk when I had to get up at the god-forsaken hour of 4.30 this morning) I already feel a lot better. My hostel in the Old Town of Stockholm is filled to the brim with youngsters, and I am sharing my room with no less than 7 (!!) Spaniards (all male :-) plus another girl whom I am yet to meet. The guys are quite young and sweet (and not bad-looking at all) so I suppose that kind of explains why all of a sudden I am feeling like there is something to live for after all...?;-)

Will be writing an update at some point during the week, so in case you still are checking the blog periodically, there will be something new. Based on the comments of some of my readers, all the lyricism on the importance of tango and the different venues and people I meet dancing is kind of lost on those who dont tango themselves. I am sorry for this and can certainly understand that it can be a bit difficult to see the point in all of this. All I can say is that you should try it.

Comments

  1. vuokkomero12/08/2010, 10:27

    Wish you happy days there in Stockholm!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous17/08/2010, 19:52

    Mari-kulta,
    niin kuin monesti muulloinkin mun täytyy olla eri mieltä kuin enemmistö - vaikken itse tangoakaan, kuvaukset kyllä osuvat ja uppoavat, jatka vain!
    Tuo edellinen ("tangon merkitys") kirjoitus oli todella kaunis. Itsetutkiskeluahan olet (ja olemme!) harrastaneet jo pitkään, mutta ehkä tango on tapa päästä järkeilyn ja teorioiden ohi ja yli, oivaltaa jotain itsestä tunteen, tiedostamattoman, intuition kautta.
    rutistus Lotalta

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown22/08/2010, 20:24

    Sounds good. Hopefully you have a lot more milongas where ever you decided to continue your journey. As they say, it's the journey, not the destination.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paris, finally!

Image
Paris. Here I am, after all those weeks on the road, at the End of this Road. And I Love It: The city is lovely, the weather is beautiful, the people are friendly and the dancing is good. Most importantly, though, I feel really good about the achievement that took most effort in the very beginning and the last few days. As a matter of fact, I did get here already Friday evening, but time has just passed in such a blur that I simply have not had the time to sit down and write about it. Even as I write this (at 4 am on Sunday morning, having just returned from a milonga), I am about to fall asleep while seated, so I will need to be brief. On Friday morning, I had an early start from Peronne, and despite the minor (?) logistical problem of a 40-km stretch missing from my maps (funny, considering that they were the neighbouring pages of a series of maps) managed to cover most of the remaining distance without getting lost. This changed, however, the moment I got into the...
Read more

Getting into the swing of it (Pärnu)

Well, after two days of cycling I have both good and bad news. The good news is that very little seems to have changed for me in terms of travelling this way. Yesterday, although getting out of Tallinn was as stressful as leaving a strange city on a fully-loaded touring bike always is, I quickly noticed that indeed, I had not forgotten how to do this. Nor did the little over 100 km I covered both yesterday and today seem impossible to do, although the last 20 km certainly took some willpower. One thing that has greatly eased my settling into the right mindset is the fact that my Dad is accompanying me for a few days in his camper van. This means that not only do I have a soft mattress to sleep on and someone to pay my meals (;-), most importantly, there is someone to encourage me on (in his case, this means trying to get me to put the bike on the van and driving with him instead of cycling, something that I obviously wont do :-). All this works in my favour, as does being able to get...
Read more

The charm of the Danube (Vác)

And so, after 10 days of cycling, I am now almost within shouting distance of Budapest. What remains is 35 km of winding bike track, hugging the side of the now slowly, almost dreamily flowing river. The sky has a few scattered clouds that at this hour (11am) still offer some shelter from the heat that is set to climbing up to 40 degrees as the day progresses. Knowing there would be little escape from the sun, I set off from the campsite at 7, stopping in the centre of Esztergom only long enough to get some groceries for breakfast. A minor problem arose at the campsite reception, when the same guy who had refused to charge me when I arrived last night, saying I would have to wait until the morning, now said the reception would only open at 9. Now this was Far too late for me, as it would mean I would have to cycle the whole 80 kms in the already merciless heat. So, what to do? I simply put on my tour leader mode, the one that was once needed to keep my safari staff operational, ...
Read more