Buying illegal stuff on the Internet

You might have heard that we are using non-disposable, enviromentally-friendly cotton diapers. These nappies have many advantages compared to the disposable variants like Huggies, Pampers etc..

First of all, you can use them as many times as you want, thereby decreasing the waste mountain. Furthermore, if they ever get totally worn out, you can still use them as a good old-fashioned cleaning rug.

Secondly, they are of course much cheaper. Yes, you need to buy them at a higher price compared to a disposable one, but since you can use them over and over, the price per use is a fraction of a Pampers.

But strangely, this is where the problem of illegality creeps in. It seems that in many countries (for example Japan, but apparently also in France) used diapers are deemed "sexually tantelizing items", and are illegal on eBay and labelled "used underwear".

Luckily people in Finland aren't as narrow-minded as some other nationalities, so we received some good diapers from the wonderful land of 1000 lakes.

February 2007

This article was first published in February 2007

The first months started quite gently, with a couple of nice socializing activities, for example organized by Anne from Tenderfeelings There was also a colleague of mine who had a baby boy, and I took the pictures for the birthdaycard. And then I met OrElEkE, a girl who introduced me to the wonderful life of Urban Exploration. Urbex as we call it is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of human civilization. More information can be found on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_exploration . Some of the places we visited (alone or together with friends) were an abandoned theme park, an old hospital, a crypte, a sanatorium, an orphanage and some factories. We only take picture and leave footprints. On some occasions we also took models there for some interesting combination of abandoned beauty.

Some examples of my urbex pictures can be seen here : http://urbex.deviantart.com/gallery/

Visiting Vermeer in Delft

This article was first published on 19/08/2002

In August 2002 I visited Delft in Holland with a friend. We took her car (she doesn't like to drive so much) and in less than 2 hours we arrived in the beautiful centre of Delft. We had booked a special arrangement called "A Meeting with Johannes Vermeer in Delft and in the Mauritshuis.
The arrangment included one night in Hotel De Plataan, tickets to several museums and churches, a two-day pass for public transport to The Hague and back, and several reduction vouchers. In total we paid 122 euro for the two of us.

Hotel De Plataan (3 stars) is a stylish hotel with an individual character, situated in the heart of the old historic centre of Delft.

New Year's Eve 2006

this article was first posted on 31/12/2006

This year we had a very quiet New Year. Claudia and I went to the sauna, later we spent a nice time at home and watched some movies. And of course we make a top quality dinner with my stone grill. It felt like back in the old days, when men only had a stone, some fire and a freshly killed mammoth…

Welcome to the HitchHicker's Guide to Life

Welcome there folks to this new blog of mine, where we will talk about Life, the Universe, Fish and much much more. Every day I will publish my random thoughts here. Whenever I see injustice, a free ride or great food, you will be the first to know :)

Enjoy your stay here on the World Wide Web and maybe our paths will cross one day...