Sokos is the best (and the only really worth mentioning) department store in Lahti. Located on the prime spot on Aleksanterinkatu, shock middle in the city, Sokos caters for all aspects of life.

The first floor has accessories and a miniscule bookstore with largish magazine department. The second and the third floor focus on fashion and life in general.

The basement has a big grocery store that is convenient to replenish your hotel room reserves. The ground floor hosts also a café, Presso, and Hesburger, the local McDonald’s clone.

www.sokos.fi, Aleksanterikatu 19-21, Lahti, Finland,+358 10 765 3236

I created the Nomadig.com that you know last year’s summer, and yesterday I checked the exact date of the post. It happened to be June 15th, so today a small celebration may be in the program.

I had the domain name nomadig.com reserved for me from spring 2003. I was walking to my hotel in Israel from the nearby town (I don’t remember the name now), and pondered on just leaving and never returning. It occurred to me that it could be feasible in the modern world to still keep on touch and be away simultaneously.

Then reality hit me: I’m married, we have both good jobs, and a nice flat with loan. We should struggle ourselves free of these bonds, but that requires money. A lot of money.

I anyhow reserved a domain name and tried to figure out what to put there. While doing that blogging took on and finally I found the best way to fill the site with new content without having too much upfront investment in the text. So, instead of becoming a digital urban nomad, I started to write about the subject.

During this year, I’ve learned a lot about blogging and related items. I’m not going to dwell on the generic terms, but focus on the most important things for Nomadig.com (not in any particular order):

• Selecting WordPress. I was unsure whether I made a correct choice when I installed WP, but WP 1.5 has been a blessing with a number of plugins and the theme system.
• ShortStat installation. This has helped me to understand more who is my audience. Currently most of the people reading my ramblings are coming from search engines, and Nomadig.com seems to be ranked quite high on certain terms. Not all, but some.
• Hacking ShortStat. ShortStat failed in certain scenarios, so I had to add features and clean the code a bit. Some people found these useful.
• Creating look and feel. I had one final look for Nomadig.com that got never published. It exists mostly as an image, but there is a half-made publishing system with that look in my hard disk. The second look and feel was copied from my (more) personal site and it was much better than the WP original. It lasted for a couple of months and then I created the current design, that I’m mostly pleased with. There are some bits here and there that I should correct, but they are so minor that they can wait. I have better things to do in the time being.
• Installing Kitten’s Spaminator. Comment spam became a real nuisance during autumn 2004 and after fighting hard with it with the basic WP 1.2 tools, I installed Kitten’s Spaminator and have got virtually no spam through since then. There was a pause in activity, but nowadays I get twenty or more spam attempts every night.
• Creating the front page. The original Nomadig.com front page was static and it contained only links to the main sections. It didn’t allow me to grow the site to the direction I wanted, so I replaced it with a more portal style page that has a lot of direct links inside the site.

My personal life has changed a lot, too. I changed my job last autumn and our first son was born on April. Past twelve months have been a real joyride — exhausting, but fun.

Sokos Hotel Lahden Seurahuone is a recently renovated upscalish hotel located in the busiest shopping street, Aleksanterinkatu, in Lahti.

The hotel rooms are well-designed and cozy, a combination that is hard to achieve for some reason… The bathroom has the basic amenities and a good shower. There is also a couple of saunas in the hotel.

The breakfast is excellent, and it it served on a ballroom facing to Aleksanterinkatu — so you can spend some time looking at the by-passers.

There is a night club and a couple of restaurants in the same building as the hotel. You can’t really notice them from the room, so you can relax fully in the comfortable bed.

www.sokoshotels.fi, Aleksanterinkatu 14, Lahti, Finland, +358 20 1234 655, sales.lahti@sokoshotels.fi

Ice Kiss is an old fashioned ice cream bar serving large ice cream portions, sundaes and plain cones. The selection is fabulous, there are twenty or more flavours in ice creams and the portions add more variety.

The prices are comparable to normal ice cream stalls found in every Finnish market square, but the portions are more expensive.

The joint is located on the second floor in Hansa building of Trio shopping centre. In fact, the bar is located on top of a road, so it may take a while to find the place.

Ice Kiss, Aleksanterinkatu 20 (in Kauppakeskus Trio, Hansa building, second floor), Lahti, Finland, +358 3 781 8338

I’ve been extremely busy for the past two working days in figuring out flights to me and my family to States, reserving hotel rooms for colleagues and organising various happenings.

I have also learned a lot:

1. Summer is not the time to go to States, business or pleasure. The amount of free seats is just microscopic and you don’t get any bargains whatsoever.
2. You don’t get bonus seats across Atlantic ocean during summer, unless you know your travel plans at least three months before. Is that possible for people such as me, trying to live urban nomadic life and wander from country to country? I just ask?
3. Helsinki is fully packed before midsummer. The only free hotels for any working days seem to be at least five kilometers from the downtown. Only three star hotels left.
4. Mansions and other nice places for meetings are, too, fully booked — but on weekends. There seems to be an endless number of people getting married. We should be attending to two weddings this summer, unfortunately on the same weekend, in Helsinki and Oulu.

At the end of the second day, I got most of the stuff secured in my benefit, but alas my family can’t join me in the States on August. We’ll have to do that later, maybe September.

Rosso is one of the biggest restaurant chains in Finland, operated by the co-operative S group. The restaurants are usually found next to Sokos Hotels or Sokos department stores. Lahti is no exception, as the local Sokos Hotel is next to Rosso and Sokos store is across the street.

The food in Rosso is semi-Italian; basic Italian portions have been transformed to fit better in Finnish taste. So do not expect any fine Italian cuisine. The price quality ratio is poor, as the portions are surprisingly expensive.

The atmosphere is a mixture between a restaurant and a diner. During lunch hour, the local white collar workers flock the place — but you can usually still find a table.

www.rosso.fi, Aleksanterinkatu 16, Lahti, Finland, +358 3 751 5535, rosso.lahti@sok.fi

Sibelius Hall (Sibeliustalo in Finnish) is a big culture centre next to the lakeshore a couple kilometers from Lahti downtown. The venue is known for concerts and other cultural events, but it is worth of a visit even an event.

The building is made of wood, and being several storeys high, it is an architectural feat seldomly seen in Finland — we have been much more focused on building with rocks and concrete, while the country is mostly covered with forests.

The area outside the hall is also quite pleasant. There are a couple of restaurant ships and the smallish marina is nice place to stroll around.

www.sibeliustalo.fi, Ankkurikatu 7, Lahti, Finland, +358 3 814 2800

I finally got hold of myself and uploaded some photographs from various locations around Europe to the photo gallery.

It’s some sort of a personal mystery why I haven’t done this before, as only one of the photos has been taken this year — and all the other photos on 2003 or earlier…

Anyhow, check out the Europe photo gallery. Enjoy!