We moved!

As planned Ingrid arrived in Nice on February 19th. We had some good time, especially on the food side. Thanks Soizic and Paul-Francois for the great dinner, and also for recommending us the restaurant Blanc Manger in La Colle sur Loup. We both agreed it was the best dinner we had on the Riviera, and that was for our last restaurant there! I have some photos that I will put on Flickr next week when I’m fully set up.

The packing went well. We stuffed the car as much as we could - there was really no space at all left. It’s still amazing what goes in a Renault Clio. Some exceptional snow in Nice (something that happens every 10 years) tried to slow us down, but we managed and left on schedule.

There was a little sad moment when closing the door of the apartment, after all the energy we put in restoring it, but then in the car we were happy to leave this ugly city with two many people and dog shit.

After a little stop in Alsace by my parents (and the usual Tarte Flambée), we took the ferry in Luebeck (north of Germany) for a 1.5 days trip. It was quite boring, there was really nothing to do on the boat, but it was still much better than to drive through half of Europe with the bad weather conditions.

We arrived in Riga, Latvia, Sunday afternoon and found our way out of it. Riga is really horrible for driving as there are almost no driving directions at all. Two years ago I spend half of the night lost there when I wanted simply to cross the city.

In Tallinn we of course unpacked in 30 min (with some help) what took us two days to pack…

And on Monday I took again the ferry to Helsinki to reach Salo, Finland, where I will be working. Fortunately I had my car, because with – 15 C I didn’t see myself waiting for the bus and the train in Helsinki.

I started working at Elcoteq Design Center (EDC) on Tuesday. These first days make me think I did the right choice by coming here. EDC is working like a Design House, and this is what I wanted to do.

The usual administrative stuff of a first week (or weeks) in a new country ends up being easy. Salo is small, so it’s quick to drive around and things are not too complicated.

I was lucky with my apartment search too. The offer is pretty limited, but my first visit was already the right one. I signed the lease today. The apartment is what I was looking for, a big one room (35m2) with good space, in good state, close to the center and to work (2-3 km) and relatively cheap.

So these two weeks that were so much talked about went pretty well. Now it’s really a new stage that starts in our life.

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