Insane

I’m getting crazy! Two nights and my girlfriend and I will be reunited… To not be separated anymore by this stupid Netherlands-Finland-distance! I can’t focus on my work anymore these last days (sorry colleagues), I have trouble sitting still on my chair, I have too much energy but I feel tired (?), I am bored but very busy, I feel butterflies in my stomach all the time, I JUST WANT TO BE THERE NOW!

8 days

Wow… I’m not really realizing it I think… But in eight days my gorgeous girlfriend and I will close the distance - for good! I move from The Netherlands to Finland! How exciting! We will live one week in ‘our’ (her) house in Helsinki, and then we take a three week holiday to Norway. After that it’s time for a cosy goodbye-party in my parents’ garden with family and friends. And then, (sort of) finally, we really really move all my stuff to Helsinki. Yeah!

First things first then. Try to get a Finnish social number, to get access to open a new bank account, get my car on Finnish numberplates, get Finnish health insurance and so on. Then it’s time to attend a language course (Finnish is hard!) to be able to understand first.

Well… enough written for now… Oh, I love her!

Last countdown ever!

I just updated our Tumblr and Blogspot pages... THE LAST COUNTDOWN HAS STARTED! My girlfriend and I will close the distance between us after 19 days! We will go on a holiday trip to Norway first, and after that we pick up my stuff in The Netherlands and drive via the Stockholm-ferry to Helsinki.

I came back from Finland last Wednesday, knowing that it would be the last three weeks of living separately. So great! Awesome feeling. In these three weeks I have to select the clothes and other stuff that I want to take with me to Finland (not all my stuff fits in the car) and prepare our camping equipment. Aaaawww I can't wait!

Moving part 3 - Oops…

Oops… I haven’t written so many updates anymore on Tumblr. Sorry dear followers! But… don’t be sad, here is a new one!

Tomorrow (!) I’m going to my lovely girlfriend in Helsinki, I’m sort of going home! The date to close the distance and live together in the same place (and country) is set on the 1st of August. And tomorrow will be the last time for me to fly to Helsinki and return to Amsterdam alone, to live 1800km’s away. Next time will be together forever! And I will take my road race bicycle with me to Helsinki too tomorrow.
We have a lot of nice things in mind to do in the next five days. We have tickets for the P!NK-concert in Helsinki next tuesday, we will have brunch with friends, I have a job interview, I will visit trainings from my new skating team, we will spend a lot of time together! I can’t wait to be with the love of my life again.

And maybe the best thing… It’s about 11 degrees C and raining in NL, in Finland however it is around 20 degrees C and sunny!

Hotel Mama

In preparation for my emigration to Finland, I moved back to my parents’ house last weekend. ‘Hotel Mama’ is my place to live for about two months, and it feels good. I always liked living with my parents. No problemoooo.

Soon already, I will go to spend some time in Helsinki, my future city and my future home with (hopefully) my future wife. After 8 nights of sleep from this moment, I go to my girlfriend. Three things planned already that long weekend: Brunch with friends, job interview and P!NK’s concert! Yeeeee!

Moving part 2

Last week my girlfriend took already one of my bikes to our home in Helsinki. Great! Moving had started. And it continues today. I am moving back to my parents. I will live there for about one and a half month before going on holiday with my love and actually moving to Helsinki! Feels good to work on the future!

Step by step, bike by bike

Moving has started. Last week my lovely girlfriend and I went on a holiday to Denmark together. On the way back, she took one of my three bicycles to Helsinki on the plane. When she came home, she sent me a picture of my bike in Helsinki, so great!

I also sent a letter to my workplace to quit my job… Last workday: 31st of July!

Distance will be closed soon!

Superb weekend

Love grows. Every time when we are together, feelings get stronger and we get closer. But my girl left again. I feel lost in my own house. My thoughts: What am I doing here on my own? Why didn't I go home with her, to Helsinki? Damn. But the weekend was awesome. We went to the beach, wandered around in nature-parks, had very, very good dinners, enjoyed the sun (finally, spring arrived) and each other.

And now, ten days only. That's great! One weekend alone and we will be together. We will go to Denmark on a nine-day holiday. We rent a luxurious summer house at sea. Plans: Aquarium visit, Legoland, jacuzzi-time, sauna, long walks next to the sea, kiting... It will be amazing!

Welcome to NL

Rain season has arrived: Spring started today in The Netherlands. So, it’s raining. The sky is one big grey mass, and raindrops keep pouring down all day. This might continue for the next few weeks, with an incidentally dryer day every now and then.
Yesterday, my girlfriend’s dad and his girlfriend landed at Amsterdam Airport to spend some days in NL. Poor people. So unlucky. The Netherlands is a really nice country - when it’s not raining.

Tomorrow my love comes too! I will pick her up at the airport around 16.00h. Rain or no rain, this weekend will be amazing.

Best Easter ever!

I’m back ‘home’ in The Netherlands. I spent Easter together with my Finnish girlfriend in Finland. Great weather, bright blue sky and sun, still snow and ice, but just around zero degrees Celcius. Couldn’t be better. We drove to my girl’s parents’ place, went cross country skiing on the Baltic Sea, did crazy jumping in the snow…
We went back to our home in Helsinki which feels to me like home more and more. We feel like the ‘dating stage’ is over, we are spending daily life together and we are preparing to close the distance. August it is!

I love her so much. Valtavasti!

We took this picture at sunset… <3

Great month! The month of 10's!

Wow! New plans coming in, we have a great month coming up! First of all: In 10 nights I will fly to my love in Finland. The Easter weekend will be fantastic. Just 10 days later, my girlfriend travels to The Netherlands already! Her dad and his partner will visit NL, and my love wants to come too. :) GREAT! But then… after that, only 10 nights of sleep before my Finnish handsome comes to NL again! We will go to Denmark that week for a short holiday. My family rented a summer house close to the sea and… We will go to LEGOland! Sooo excited!

Choices and changes in life

I am a speed skater at heart. On the ice, I feel like a ‘fish in the water’. When I was 8 years old, I became a member of my speed skating club and started to train. Little later, I started to race competitions and I have been doing that up to this moment. Now, at the age of 23, I figured out that I found the love of my life. Only thing is… She lives in Finland. Few months ago I made the decision to move to Helsinki in the future. This would mean that I have to quit speed skating in The Netherlands. And yesterday, with a little pain in my heart, I sent an e-mail to my speed skating club to make them end my membership. And so be it. I made my choice a while ago, thought about it really well, and I will continue skating in Finland. The biggest change in my life needs choices that have to be made. In autumn, I move to my girl in Helsinki, and I will leave everything behind here. No regrets!

I love you.


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Our breakfast at bed!

Our weekend together

Friday
My girl arrived at 18.15h at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. We hugged, kissed and felt so much love immediately… Then we went to Utrecht by train ‘for dinner’, she thought. However, I booked a romantic little hotel. Prosecco at arrival and breakfast at bed included. My love was really surprised and happy! We ate sushi (of course) next door, went to a gay bar and then to bed…

Saturday
Strolling around Utrecht centrum. Cosy under the umbrella, it rained. Did some shopping. After that we went to my home by train. Cooked dinner together. At 21h we drove to my uncle’s place, he celebrated his 50th birthday. This was the first time that my girlfriend met more of my family members. Great response, everybody is so happy for us to be happy!

Sunday
Woke up easy and nice, my love in my arms. I haven’t been this happy before… ever. Then we made ourselves brunch and drove to my home town where we celebrated my grandma’s birthday with the rest fo the family. So nice to have everybody together! And again, my family likes my girlfriend very much! I’m really delighted about that. We went home, I had to go to a team dinner from my skating team and left my love alone for a few hours. Still feeling sorry. I had no choice this time. Damn. When I got back we spent some time on the couch, I sang her some songs and played guitar, and then we went to sleep.

Monday
We got out of bed quite early today. Nice, that means we can do everything we wanted to do today. We want to visit my workmates and shop a little in Amsterdam before my girl has to fly back to Helsinki. At the security control we kissed goodbye. I cried. Never did that before. I will miss her so much next weeks. As we speak, we have ‘only’ 16 lonely nights to go. Not so much this time. But I miss her. <3

I will go to Finland next time. Countdown starting at 16 nights.

Update! Tahdon2013 and waking up

Wow! The Tahdon2013 movement is growing and growing, already over 50.000 people who like the Facebookpage, and about 25.000 who are talking about it! Keep checking the page. Very nice Harlem Shake too on it now!

This morning I texted my girlfriend on Couple: „See you tomorrow my dear!” She answered with a heart. One night of sleep left, we are so excited both! I can’t wait to hug her, kiss her and hold her hand. But most of all, when we are in separate places, I miss waking up together. That is the best feeling I have ever experienced. Waking up, open my eyes and see the love of my life peacefully sleeping like a baby. And then, when I carefully put my arms around her, she moves closer to me. THAT is my happiness!

TAHDON2013 in het Nederlands

In het Nederlands een uitleg over de Finse situatie wat betreft het homohuwelijk. Lees HIER.

Like de Facebookpagina van Tahdon2013, de organisatie die het burgerinitiatief oppakt!

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Countdown....4!

Only 4 nights to go! Aaah I’m so excited already… Five nights of sleep and then I will see, hold, kiss, hug, cuddle, (and a little more), my dearest one again. Finally! My Finnish girlfriend comes to The Netherlands on Friday evening. We have a dinner planned in Utrecht that evening. And there will be some surprise from me to her that weekend… :P

The truth behind the Moomin mugs...

Every household in Finland has at least one item of Iittala’s design glass or porcelain. The Arabia Moomin series is famous. But there is something important about the Moomin mugs. The story goes that Finnish lesbians traditionally get children by getting a man to jack off into a Moomin mug and then use the sperm to get pregnant. Because of the quality of the mugs, the chance to get a baby from a Moomin mug would be much higher…

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Songs for you, songs for me

Music is important to my girlfriend and I. I decided to make a top list of songs my girl and I sent to each other. And, here it is! It’s really personal sometimes. Some songs need an explanation, so I made that too. Enjoy listening! Feel free to ask if you have questions or additions.

Snälla bli min - Veronica Maggio
Swedish blonde beauty singing an amazingly sweet song. Stays in your head for days! English translation: Please be mine, listen the song here on YouTube.

Jungle Drum - Emiliana Torrini
I guess this (after a while little ennoying in my opinion) song doesn’t need any explanation. Listen here on YouTube

The Longer The Waiting, The Sweeter The Kiss - Anna Ternheim
Original sung by Josh Turner, Swedish singer/songwriter Anna Ternheim covers it really well! Little help though from Dave Ferguson. This is one of THE songs about a LDR! Listen here in YouTube.

Mary - Bertolf
On some moments, when my girlfriend and I listen to this song, our eyes get wet. The lyrics of it says it all. It’s the (true) story of (Dutch) singer/songwriter Bertolf who have never met his girlfriend’s mother because she died before Bertolf got together with his girl. Me and my girl have the same story. And it’s so true. I really feel it the way he sings and wrote those words. Please read the lyrics here. Listen the song here on YouTube.

Your Song - Ellie Goulding
Ellie Goulding covers Your Song from Elton John. Just beautiful. Listen here on YouTube.

You and Me (In My Pocket) - Milow
Funny song, creative lyrics. Just watch the official video, it’s really special. The whole clip was shot in one take! Watch it here on YouTube. Belgian creativity!

Working, waiting, wishing.

Okay. Long days. Well, every day is still 24 hours, one hour is 60 minutes and every minute is 60 seconds. More and more I notice that I am just waiting for days to pass… At the same time, I have a really nice and busy (almost fulltime) job which I enjoy a lot. I do my work pretty good, but still… at every single moment when my thoughts drift away I think of my girlfriend and how much time there is left before we will see and hold each other again. I’m counting days, weekends, weeks and months to every single time we will be together. I’m (secretly) already counting down the weeks and months until the moment arrives where we will close the distance for good.

Another thing about time, when I look at a clock, I automatically calculate one hour more to know what time it is in at her place.

And until that time, I am just working, waiting and wishing.

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She is amazing!

I got home from work today… And guess what? My girl sent me a whole bunch of red roses for Valentine! All the way from Finland.
But… this thing has a good story with it. She tried to have the flowers delivered at my work, but she could only find a postbox-number. So, yesterday evening, I got a call from the delivery service. They (obviously) can’t deliver flowers to a postbox… I made them the flowers delivered to my home address instead. Very nice! But think about it… who will ever send flowers to a postbox? Yeah, my girl! Thanks my love!

Wow *breathe*

Monday evening I got back in The Netherlands. The amazing long weekend in Helsinki together with my Finnish girlfriend has passed. I never have been happier than last weekend. My girl is a fantastic person. And now the countdown has started all over again. 23 nights of sleep before my love comes to The Netherlands.
Things we did last weekend:

- surprise party for her birthday
- sleigh riding (fast!)
- even did some work at her office
- had dinner at Fazer’s
- went to Stockmann
- celebrated her birthday again :)
- played pool at the Corona Bar (won)
- made dance moves at night club DTM (best gay club in Helsinki)
- watched Shrek
- strolled through the snow

It was great! Thanks my love!

SURPRISE!

Me and her best friend made some secret plan two months ago... We wanted to give my Finnish girl an unforgettable birthday. We thought about a surprise party, and.....

The surprise was great! My girl has always thought that I would arrive in Finland on the 8th of February, one day later than her birthday. But… I fixed, together with one of my girl’s best friends, a sushi-surpriseparty on her birthday (the 7th) with the closest friends. I arrived one day before my love expected me… You should have seen her face when she walked into Tokio55… I have never seen a face more surprised, happy and overwhelmed than hers. When she hugged me, she even had to cry. Me and my partner in ‘crime’ (the best friend) had so much fun in preparing the whole thing, and it worked out better than expected! And we have a nice story for birthdays now :P

Back home, counting down

Wow. We are both back home from our trips abroad. My Finnish girl went to Thailand with her sister, I went to Austria to skate with my team. Being back home means that we can talk using Facetime again, WhatsApp, Pair (which turned into 'Couple' after the newest update) and so on. Life is easier with internet ;)
The long-time-no-see-over-a-month is hard. We miss each other more than ever before, and having those lacks of internet made it even worse. And on top of that, I got a serious injury while skating, I crashed onto the ice pretty badly. It must have been hard for my girlfriend to hear that I was brought to the hospital. And at the same time, I could really use a hug from the one I love most. Luckily, as we speak, we have only four days left before we can hold each other again. And I am okay, 'only' bruises and strained muscles in my upper body. I can deal with that, and even better, I can fly to Helsinki on Friday!

Our world

Holiday-issues

My Finnish girlfriend traveled to Thailand yesterday with her sister to have a one-week holiday in the sun. Our time difference usually is one hour, which is really easy. But right now, the difference is six hours! (I feel for LDR couples who have such a big time gap.) This makes it not realistic to have our daily goodnight conversation on Facetime. This week I have to fall asleep on my own. On the day after tomorrow, I will go to Austria with my skating team. So my girl will be in Thailand and I am in Austria. Fingers crossed for WiFi!

Three weeks

Three weeks to go before we are together again. A lot of things are going on in both of our lives at the moment. My Finnish girl achieved great things in her work this week, and I have been skating a lot of real-ice-marathons. It's freezing in The Netherlands. Maybe, after all, it wasn't that bad for us to live apart this week. We both needed a lot of time for our own activities, and weren't able to invest so much as usual in our relationship. We can deal with it because we know that better times will come. We also knew that this period would be one of the hardest to get through, because 1) it's the longest one we had so far, 2) we both have trips abroad in this period, 3) we both are very very very busy in work and other things we need to do.
Luckily, we have the Pair-app on our iPhones now, and that makes some fun. Send short video-messages to each other, draw something sweet or funny, and let each other know that 'I'm thinking of you'. Next week, my love will go on a Thailand-holiday, and I will leave to Austria with my skating team to race competitions there. We have to hang on. It's definitely worth it! Love is strong.

Damn busy... LDR Hell!

It’s freezing cold in The Netherlands. And for who doesn’t know: We are crazy about speed skating on ice. So, this evening was the first marathon on natural ice (we usually skate on artificial ice). I am a marathon skater in a semi-professional team, so I have to race those competitions. We have a competition every evening this week, starting today. Big media exposure, radio channels broadcasting live, TV registration (live as well), newspapers and so on. A big audience who cheer in the corners, with orange Unox-hats on their heads. There is one big issue for almost all the female-skaters. TIME. Only the men’s can make a good living out of this sport, so we have to work during the day, race in the evening and sleep (a lot) at night. Laundry? Not possible. Cooking some dinner? Very hard. We have to go away from work earlier than what’s actually allowed to be in time for the races. Not nice.

Conclusion… DAMN… When do I talk with the love of my life who lives in Finland??? After all, this speed skating circus is amazing to be a part of. I wouldn’t miss it. But it’s so hard to just accept that there is not enough time to talk to my girl these days…

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“I just knew it was like coming home, and I haven’t even realized I’ve been away.”

—	Heather Peace

Weekends

Being in a long distance relationship (LDR) isn’t nice. For example, weekends suck. Being home alone, or better said, spending your well-earned free time without the one you would like to share that time with. On different blogs all over the internet I read about couples whose family or friends doubt about the reliability of being in a LDR. Luckily, we never felt any doubt about it in our own environment. Of course it is good that the people who know us best stay critic about my girlfriend and me, and our situation. They can warn us or keep us sharp in daily life to keep our feet on the ground. And yeah, we both daydream a lot and fantasize, more or less realistic, about our upcoming future together. One thing we are so sure about… We will be a very happy couple!

Long time no see part 2

Less than a month to go in our latest countdown. Four lonely weekends. For me (the Dutchie) it means 18 days at home and work, and the other 12 with my skating team in Austria. My girlfriend and I try to count in many different ways, to make it feel faster in some way. Usually we count weekends, because those are more empty or lonely than our workdays, but now we have our longest 'long-time-no-see' so far. It was five weekends, right now it's 'only' four left. My girl will have a Thailand-holiday with her sister, I have my skating trip to Austria. We planned them in the same weeks on purpose, because communicating will be a little harder when we are abroad. Not everywhere is WiFi, or even a good phone network. In this way we have the same kind of distraction and neither her or me will be sort of 'waiting' at home. We have to stay strong. We know we can do it and our love is stronger than even before. Hang on my love!

No fear

Long time no see...

I got back home in The Netherlands yesterday. Last week I've been in Helsinki together with my amazing girlfriend! We did a lot of things, so there was no time to write any blog post here to inform you about our busy, busy life. So, here the day-to-day report: