Keskustori in December or December in Keskustori?

Sorry for my lack of blogging lately. I just haven't felt like doing it. Instead I have concentrated on my comic strip drawings and Facebook. It seems that not before you have found a certain amount of friends there, it gets more interesting.

They have set up a Christmas square in Keskustori, the heart of Tampere city. It looks beautiful now with all those lights and colours, cottages and a huge Christmas tree. It's the second time around when this kind of Christmas celebration is happening there.

Tampere has organized these "Valoviikot" ("Light weeks") in every December as long as I have lived, which is quite a long time. There are many types of Christmas and Winter related characters formed out of light bulbs. They have stayed basically the same as long as I can remember; only some more of them has been added. The latest arrivals are more colourful than the oldest.

I started wondering about the girl feeding seals character. The girl has clearly a mini-skirt on - in the wintertime! Ok, seals are fed indoors in Särkänniemi, the amusement park in Tampere, but still. And isn't it a bit sexist nowadays too? Well, nevermind that. You can judge for yourself by watching the middle picture beside.

Currently I work in the center of Tampere. I use buses to get to work, because it's so damn hard to get a free parking place there. By 'free' I mean both available and costless. If I wake up early enough, I have a better chance to get one, but I still have to walk a mile or so to get to work. That's not bad though.

Now that the temperature has gone below zero, -15 C degrees this morning actually, the starting up of a cold motor engine strains the car a lot - at least according to the latest studies. One cold start-up equals to 500 km of driving. I'm trying to save my car a bit here. A 30-day travelling card (similar to 30-dagarskort in Stockholm) costs today 73 euros. It's handy but if I use the car every now and then, it won't be cheap anymore.