Traveling can be a lonely business, even if you’re surrounded by people all the time. The biggest number of people I’ve been surrounded by on this trip is 11 417 (capacity crowd) but of course it’d be nice with some familiar faces.

There’s a family legend about one of my father’s hockey trips. It’s not about him, but I think it nicely captures the human need to feel at home. My Dad’s’ hockey team was in the Oldtimers’ World Championships in the UK somewhere. I may confuse this with his trip to the Edinburgh tournament but it doesn’t really matter.

There they were anyway, seeing the sights when a teammate of his said, “Look, there’s a sign in Finnish!”

And indeed there was. The sign said “Coca-Cola.”

Well, see this sign! It says “me”. Made me feel welcome in Bern, Switzerland.

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell writes about an experiment where people were given fifteen minutes to examine a student’s college dormitory to gather information about him. Afterwards, they were interviewed, and it turned out that they could describe the subject’s personality more accurately than his or her own friends.

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It’s not easy being man.

Just look at man’s life in the headlines, and that’s just today.

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The six-word memoir of the day:

“Waiting for the phone to ring.”

Here’s my six-word memoir of the day:

“You still ain’t seen nothing yet.”

There are two things a true professional never does.

1. He never works in his underwear. There’s something about underwear that makes any activity seem less professional, no matter how fine the final product is. I’m sure F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t write Great Gatsby in his underwear. That’s why I’m writing this entry fully clothed. In this case, Speedos are also considered underwear.

2. He never goes to a meeting without a bag. A suitcase, a messenger bag or the like, but never a backpack. It doesn’t matter what’s in it. It can be a lunch sandwich, a newspaper, notes, even underwear (as long as it stays in the bag), it doesn’t matter, but the bag has to be there or you might as well yell, “I don’t know what I’m doing” when you enter the meeting room.

Now, go take over the world.

Every city has its own special personalities that everybody knows of, but nobody really knows. And while I understand that some people look at them and feel bad, I’ve always been fascinated by them.

Maybe I’ve even admired them. The courage. The way they’ve decided to do whatever it is they want to do. The best ones are obviously the ones that are not dangerous.

Here are some of my favorites:

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The Stockholm Konserthuset, “the concert house”, had an open doors day today, in a effort to get kids to come to the city, see the fabulous blue building, try some instruments, and get so totally hooked on classical music it ain’t real, baby.

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Sports is best enjoyed live. I’m sorry to disappoint avid readers, but that’s just a fact.

For example, there is nothing better than to hear 6 000 Slovaks cheer and yell and play their drums and horns and whistles creating a noise that makes your ears pop, and the hair on your arms to stand up and salute – only to welcome their hockey team onto the ice. Because the noise they make when their team scores a goal can’t be called better. Just more.

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Hey, I’m back from Magnitogorsk. I was just here, a mere 50 hours earlier, waiting for a stylish little Atlas suitcase that never came. I was just an innocent little Finn, curious about Russia, a wide-eyed kid, venturing out on a journalistic adventure in George Orwell’s footsteps. On a charter plane, of course.

And here I am now, tired and weary, with images of a memorial to a war that’s mostly a part of my grandparents’ past, and a city, going forward and backward at the same time flashing before my eyes, and memories of my journey from Europe to Asia, and back, still vivid on my mind. There I was, for what seemed like days, weeks, a lifetime, with one of Magnitogorsk’s most famous TV personalities as my travel companion. In a taxi cab, naturally.