Amoc to Marloes

Greetings, good Mrs. Marloes,

Since getting a handwritten letter is such a rarity I decided to go ‘all in’ on the appearances in the hopes of making this letter even more entertaining. Let us begin.

I am a 32 years old former IT-support guy born to alcoholic parents in the small town Kempele in Finland. While my parents had enjoyed making babies, they really didn't care for taking care of us. I ended up living mostly in the public library. I'm being taken care of by the rest of the small town, who all of course in such a small town knew about my parents. Even though I was considered a troublemaker and my grades were below average I was cut a lot of slack. And at 14 years old I finally got accepted to Tech School. The countless hours spent in the library finally paying off; I was off to the big city to study computers and to make it big! How wrong I was, oh how wrong...

How wrong I was, oh how wrong...

I was hoping computers would be my salvation but they ended up almost being my destruction. I hope you were smarter with your studies in school. I made a friend whose father had his own computer store & repair service when he offered me a job for €3000 a month. I fully thought that this was it. So I dropped out of school to start working full time.

By the time I realised I hated the job and the abuse I received from customers and my employers I would have had to go back to school with kids, so instead I decided to throw it all away simply packing a backpack and walking out of the door. I didn't even tell anyone anything, not my boss, friends or even my estranged family. I simply started walking south with my thumb up in the air excited to see more of the world.

I realise working for the municipality can also be soul crushing but I hope you enjoy your work whatever it actually is and that if you ever do quit or change jobs please act smarter than I did.

But back to my travels. I try to be quite general so if you actually interested in something specific you have to ask 😉

In Finland the people are grumpy, slow to warm up to new people and usually terrible cheap skates with their money, but my home country taught me, besides the great education system, the importance and benefits of good manners, patience and survival skills that I ended up using in very different environments than the pine forests where they were taught. So I do still, and will always, love Finland.

The first foreign country I reached was Estonia, a tiny Baltic country that seems like somebody very drunken and poorly tried to copy Finland. Even their language sounds and looks like a bad pidgin version of Finish and a lot of their traditions are Nordic. They despise us Finns and after two nights in the capital of Talinn I understand why: because of the cheap prices and short ferry trip Finns just go there to buy unbelievably amounts of alcohol and get so drunk they can't help but to cause trouble!

I lifted my magical thumb once more and continued south

So after two nights I lifted my magical thumb once more and continued south. In Latvia I actually stayed for over three weeks working at a super sleazy motel hostel but more about that in the next one. If you want one?

yours