The long-awaited chronicles from Manchester

Ave and Sonia rocking MANCHESTER (and beyond). [There's alot to read, so be prepared!]

27.07.07, Friday
The moment we [Ave och Sonia, that is] met in the airport was overflowing with joy! Sonia had to run for her life to make it to our plane. The plane trip was kind of strange, because we were surrounded by screaming babies. We were rather weirded out and on the verge of jumping off the fucking aircraft. I almost thought someone’s trying to imply something, or just being all not cool. And there were those two lads on the plane also, probably from Manchester, who were trying to, sort of, hit on us, but failed somewhat miserably. Whatever. I changed my seat from where I was supposed to be sitting, and sat next to Sonia. The (Arab) guy I was supposed to sit next to had the nastiest stare ever! His eyes were blood red and he was just.. Staring. Not nice. Anyways, the flight was okay and then we faced a major problem. Sonia’s luggage hadn’t arrived with us. The time between her flights was too short. Not nice, but we still got a kick out of it.
Then we somehow managed to find a bus that should take us home. On the bus I already got the first linguistic shock – this one guy with a guitar (quite good-looking) was on the phone and he had such a thick accent that I could barely make out what he was saying. Touché.
Before coming home we shopped for milk and juice and cheese (how nice and decent girls we appear, but alas, it was all to be consumed together with alcoholic beverages, my comrades). And finally when we found the apartment, we were astonished, because the place is really nice and big and everything. And Morten’s (one of the flat-owners) nice sneaker-collection just swept us off our little semi-Finnish feet. Baileys with milk was a perfect end for the day and we both slept like babies, drooling and everything.

28.07.07, Saturday
Woke up around 9, took shower, had some tea and cheese (because this is everything edible we had, plus the booze). Sonia’s luggage was still a mystery. So we headed to town to buy some clothes, which we did (I found an extra-cool handbag!) and we also had a lunch in Burger King (god praise junk food). After that we headed home, changed, and went to the cricket ground (Old Trafford), for the gig. The bus was rather FULL and it didn’t even take new people on, but those two really, really gorgeous lads did come on. They were both stylish and you could tell from far away, from their halo, that they were Arctic Monkeys’ fans.
The line for the entrance was shit long and we actually followed the nice guys for a while, but at the line, we lost them. After getting in, it was quite hard to realise that we were actually there, couldn't get our heads around it, and we were both like "fucking hell"!! We still saw those two really cute bus guys briefly, but then they disappeared, or well, we went to buy t-shirts. One of the first things we noticed, and that continued all night long, was that everyone, seriously, EVERYONE was smoking cheeba there! It’s almost like a national sport. While Amy Winehouse was on stage, we were standing in the line to buy 2 pints of Strongbow the whole time. We made it there, eventually. Then we chilled for a while, sat down and walked around and what ever, The Coral played. When Supergrass went on, we were standing next to this one guy who looked exactly like Pete Doherty [note! We later realised that it was, indeed, him]! He was hot, he was se-e-e-ri-ous-ly very hot. And I loved how he said ‘Sorry, love’ when he accidentally very lightly stepped on my foot, or toe (it was nothing, but you know, the Brits apologise over absolutely everything, even over stuff that’s not their fault). But after a brief contact, we lost him also and the crowd was kind of packed. It was insane being in the crowd first when Monkeys went on. People were throwing different drinks and raincoats were a smart move from our part. It could be said that we were fighting for our lives. We were first standing next to two really cool guys from York, and we actually talked to them after the concert also. They were really funny, friggin' hilarious! Pity we didn’t get their names. Our York guys they will be.
In the beginning of the gig I seriously thought we’re going to get killed, because all the pushing and pulling and everything was really wild! Nothing I’ve ever seen like! It was even crazier than some heavy metal gigs. But apparently this is a northern England speciality, the wildness. Luckily it calmed down or we just got transported away with the crowd to a quieter place, so that we were actually able to enjoy the music (which was absolutely awesomeeeeee!!) There was a really cute guy standing behind Sonia, who actually helped her with taking a picture, holding her hand still. How cute! But behind me there were some really typical English bastards, sturdy, big and awful; they were like kicking me in the back with elbows constantly. At some point the power cut and then people were chanting “we can’t hear a fucking thing, weee can’t hear a fuuuucking thiiiing”, that was kinda cool of them. And also challenging poor Alex by chanting “Now let us sing youu a song, sing you a song: we can’t hear a fuuuucking thiiing, fucking thing!” (And this was a crowd was 50,000 people). Amazingly the crowd that couldn’t hear a fucking thing still sang the lyrics, to the song that was supposedly taking place, in their own pace, so it turned out into a massive group sing-along. There’s some northern spirit for you. Luckily the amps were okay again and the concert continued. Alex is really very, very sweet and cool. He looks shy, but that’s kind of a turn-on. And mentioning that he is absolutely one of the most handsome blokes in the country, is just restating the obvious. During the last song, I got hit in the face with something that flew from far away; I have no idea what it was… But it hit my left eyebrow. How nasty, how very my luck! But it was so worth the pain.
After the gig we sort of walked out with the York guys, but they had a train to catch and we tried to make our way to some bus stop, which was a challenge. Eventually we took a tram to town and a bus from there and man, it felt good to be home. Our trousers were awfully muddy, so were our shoes, our hair was full of some liquids… we don’t even want to know what they were. Disgusting! I was holding a vodka bottle on my eyebrow so that it wouldn’t swell up bad, but we’ll see about that in the morning.
Then we ate some cheese for dinner, and some crisps (again) and went to bed. Sleep is wonderful! Oh, and Sonia’s luggage made it here also, but it’s at our neighbours’ apartment now. The neighbour, by the way, is a very stereotypical British lad also.

29.07.2007, Sunday
Woke up Sundayishly very late. Or well, late enough to rest up nicely from last night’s intense experience. We didn’t have any food apart from crisps at the apartment, so we had a bit of tea and some crisps for a micro-breakfast.
Covering up my black eye (which was also ‘slightly’ swollen) was bit of a challenge, but eventually it looked semi-bad only. Domestic violence written in my face! Yeah, you know, Sonia can be a real beast sometimes. But that’s why I love her even more. We took a bus to town and walked around a bit. Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly at all, it was very busy for a Sunday. Seriously, Jyväskylä literally dies out on weekends, but bars were crowded with people and so were the streets. And the weather was, also, very nice. Well done, England! We shopped a lot in Primark and then a few other shops. Gotta love discounts! All the shops closed down around 5pm, so we decided to go on an observation wheel, kind of a ‘Manchester Eye’ (you know, London Eye). It was really cool, and we both love heights with Sonia. So it was quite a perfect ‘end’ for the crazy shopping. The view was great and we had a blast making fun of the lady in the speakers. After that we headed to the Hard Rock Café Manchester. It was at the Printworks (one huge-ass cinema complex with fuckloads of nightclubs and bars and everything), and it was huge also. Arctic Monkeys was playing at the very moment we walked in! One of the waiters looked like Orlando Bloom! I bought my mum a hard rock teddy from the store and we had some absolutely wonderful cocktails – called Bahama Mama. Yum. Then we made our way back to the centre and crabbed some hot drinks from Starbucks, sat down on the grass and enjoyed the evening sun in Manchester. People were still sitting there and chillaxing. There was a couple making out next to us on the grass. I was like “get a room!”. I also managed to spray some hot chocolate on Sonia’s (white!) sweater, on the side. My cup fell over and then it squirted the drink all over her. How very elegant, the smoothest thing ever. I'm such a charm; I can't even handle myself, sometimes.
Since we couldn’t have been bothered to cook the dinner ourselves, we decided once again to eat crap. First we thought of going to Pizza Hut, but we didn’t, because there were none nearby. So, Burger King again, with some big-ass meals. This one older kind of lad asked me if my piercing hurt. While we were eating our delicious meals, a next Arab dude tried to come to chat with us or something. I’m sort of allergic to all those random freaks that I tend to attract, somehow (not being xenophobic, but in general). Sitting at the top of a double-decker bus trying to make our way back to our apartment through the evening rush hour, Ave turns to Sonia and says “Look at that fish” Sonia focuses on a street jungle advertisement and falling into one of those moments of silence where you just linger in a black hole. Ave continues “Crossing the street!” (what are you an idiot or something??) I mean fish crossing the street and getting into a taxi?? Hellooo. Sonia first thinks “God of course, I am an idiot” before realizing that it really was a man with an inflatable fish crossing the street and bursting out laughing. This led to a 20 minute conversation (at least) over two glasses of vodka-juice and a purple eye later in the evening. Priceless! Read some fashion magazines and just laughed our arses off, as well. Quality time! I guess the full moon is to blame for us going to bed relatively late. I couldn’t fall asleep myself, and I read for one more hour or so before I could sleep.
[Shopkeeper in Boots, "Did you get punched or something?"]

30.07.2007, Monday
Waking up before 10am on a holiday is a sin, if it’s not absolutely inevitably necessary. So we slept quite long and took our time with the morning tea and breakfast (that consisted of some really good yoghurt – goodbye crisps!). Then we headed to town and took the bus 250 to the Trafford Centre, which is apparently the biggest shopping mall in the UK (not sure, though). It was a bit out of the city, but that makes perfect sense, as it’s huge. It was really, really fucking immense. And they were actually building a new section for home stuff, and the new section was already bigger than some shopping centres I’ve seen. Mind-blowing stuff! We were both expecting to find a concrete jungle or something, but the building in itself was actually very fancy. It was kind of old style with cupolas and everything, fountains, and little decoration niches inside. And fuckloads of different cool-ass shops. We are absolutely horrible when it comes to shopping. I bought myself two new pairs of sneakers, of which I only needed one, and Sonia spent around… a fortune. Anyways, we left the place with huge bags full of stuff, and to top it all, we bought the most expensive water we’ve ever seen in the end of the day. Four bottles were £8 all together (12€, 180eek). But the water was in cool, flask-like bottles, so we had to.
We went to eat in Pizza Hut also, ordered medium size pizzas and downed it all. Crazy stuff, we were so full afterwards that we couldn’t move for 15 minutes, at least. And it hurt to walk for the next hour. But the food was de-li-ci-ous.
The trip back to town was slightly funny, because Sonia had apparently left her intelligence or at least brains in the mall and was absolutely slow with her thoughts. I almost felt sorry for her. It was hilarious though, how she couldn’t understand a fucking thing of what I was saying to her. But oh well, we all have our moments, and that wasn’t her moment for sure. I love her nevertheless.
At home we didn’t do anything too significant either, just chillaxed and took it easy. We also discovered that my eye has really gone black now (not just purple), and foundation really helps with covering it up so that it would look like unprofessionally used eye shadow. Sonia realised there is no way on earth she is going to be able to take all her stuff back to Finland with the bag she has got. She packed stuff with her for at least a three-week-trip. Insane, I didn’t take half as much stuff, (and half of my stuff is actually unused) but I’ll still probably manage. But oh well, it’s Sonia we’re talking about, and she has her own ways of doing stuff. That’s so very adorable. Off to bed quite early, because tomorrow is going to be a “hard day”.

31.01.2007, Tuesday
Today is Ave’s name day! I woke up half past five instead of half past seven this morning, because I had put my alarm on without realising that my mobile had Estonian time there. What a stupid fuck. Well, then we had two more hours to sleep and I had the worst nightmares ever, plus I couldn’t really sleep properly as my nose was a bit blocked and throat sore. But In my dream I was first covered with blood in some jail or something and then I was in my old school house with all the other people there and I remembered I was really, really sick (in a wheelchair!), and I was going to die definitely. I also remember some male person holding me really tight in his arms, kind of like protecting me, but I can’t remember who it was. I don’t even want to think of what this dream could have meant.
Anyways, when it was the right time, we got up once again and after the morning rituals we fucked off to town and even managed to find a coach station without too big of confusion. In the bus station I realised that I am absolutely, 100% broke and I don’t even have the money for going back to Tallinn from Helsinki. Great! The buses worked out really fine, though. Got our round-trip tickets with £6, and the bus left in 5 minutes also, very smooth. Liverpool was as sunny as Manchester. The first image of mine was a bit blown away, because I do have a special kind of relationship with Liverpool. We walked around in town, visiting various different the Beatles shops and desperately trying to find a Starbucks, which we did, after a while. The largest caramel macchiato lattes were absolutely great, again. Gosh, I love Starbucks! It was a blast sitting in the street, drinking coffee and people-watching, and commenting on them. The Liverpool people differ in style (and size!) from Mancs. They’re a bit more laid back and casual when it comes to style, and it sort of reflects in their shape also. Maybe one of five women was in normal size, in a lucky case. No wondering really, why the average waist measure in the UK is 34 inches nowadays (average!).
We tried to go have lunch on the docks, but unfortunately they were all closed for public because of renovation and reconstruction works. So we just sat down on the stairs of some building nearby and enjoyed our “healthy” choice – carrots, some Italian style bread, and cheese, there. It was surprisingly good (and cheap also). We ended up sitting there for at least an hour, doing almost nothing, being absolutely numb and stupid, but loving it with every cell in our bodies. Eventually we had to move, because sun had moved quite a lot and the shadow was coming onto us. I also talked to Karl and Ragnar on the phone, they are now in Barcelona, and they’re coming back to Finland a few hours later than me. I’d love to see them all and stuff. I also worked out a plan for getting money, with my brother, because I need to get back to Estonia somehow. We’ll see about it (and I remembered that I had promised to buy Stass 5 packs of Pall Mall ciggies).
After the meal and everything, we walked back to the [shopping] centre, where we followed a handsome bloke for a while and ended up in a church yard. After spending, literally, our last coins in Hennes and Mauritz on suspenders and a belt. The church yard was cute with nicely cut grass and other people chilling there. Didn’t do anything too meaningful there either, just relaxed and it was great. Lying on the church lawn, we saw a guy passing on the street with his kid, a little boy. In the following scenario, the man told his son (presumably son) “Say hello” boy: “helloo” man looking at us: “say gorgeous” boy: “gorgeous.” We continued to attract attention from two slightly dodgy men and a woman; the woman expressing interest in getting into the church garden (by this time the gate was locked despite a hole in the gate which will be returned to later), while man 1 compliments Ave’s socks and creepy man 2 asks Sonia “Want a cuddle?” Thanks, and no thanks. They closed the gates before we could be bothered to raise our cute arses, so we had to crawl through a tiny-ass hole in the gate. Whatever, really.
It’s funny that everything closed down already around 7pm. So, we didn’t have anything better to do than to hit a bar for 2 pints of Fosters, for our (almost) last money. It was more than heavenly – cold beer after a long day walking and being all touristy. Yum.
We also took our time with walking to the bus station, as we had fuckloads of time. The sunset above the city skyline was absolutely wonderful again (not that I would love sunsets or anything). In the bus station we couldn’t help ourselves and bought one pack of crisps and a pack of Wherther’s Original candies (fockin’ good!), for our very last money, this time. Awful, but crisps Are good, and so are the candies. The bus trip back was quite sleepy and also the rest of the evening. Try making sense of the world while you’re having a battle with sleepiness who’s quite a strong lad, with a hard punch.

01.08.2007, Wednesday
We seriously slept in today, but it makes perfect sense, because Liverpool was very, very tiring! We didn’t have any proper plans made for the day, so we just went to town, I took some goodies with us (a pack of crisps, two nectarines and a bottle of Baileys) and we did some people-watching also, after visiting the cathedral. Somehow churches tend to attract us. We were planning our departure the next day, drinking Baileys from a paper bag (you know, public drinking is illegal), and as I looked at the text message Finnair had sent me, I realised that MY flight is on 03.08, not on 02.08, as Sonia’s… So we were a bit alarmed, and called Sonia’s dad. He said her flight is the next day, for sure. Umm, okay, that was slightly random and we already worked out a plan for me to stay one more day in Manchester, alone. Fucking hell, must say. That was seriously whacked. So, we went to Marks and Spencer and bought some milk, crisps (!), and cheese. I seriously can’t remember what normal food tastes like! So, we called my parents and everything and they were a bit shocked, but oh well, nothing to do about it either. So we drank our Baileys and went to Printworks for a sec, to find out if there is anything good happening in clubs this night. Nothing in Tiger Tiger, but some student night in Birdcage, across the street. Okay. Then we went home and I helped Sonia with the packing and everything, because she took things for two months with her, and bought some new stuff also, so she had a bag issue. When we were almost done with the packing, Sonia found her flight booking, and it was also on 03.08.07!!! So we called her dad again, and the whole fuss had been about nothing, or well, about Sonia’s dad thinking that we were to come back on Thursday. That was beyond hilarious, seriously. We laughed our arses off so bad! Oh fuck, that was funny. We cracked up about it still the whole night. As we were home, and Sonia packed, we thought of what to do. Couldn’t be bothered to hit the club, so we just started drinking vodka at home. It was damn fun also. We gossiped about blokes and made some wedding plans (never mind!) and the usual girly stuff. Then at one point we realised that the guy at Arctic Monkeys’ gig, who stepped on my foot and said “Sorry, love” and who was absolutely very doable, was fucking Pete Doherty! We had been talking about it earlier, and we said that he looked exactly like him, but then it all made sense, and it was fucking him! Flirting with Pete Doherty is not something you do everyday, you know. We were seriously blown off our feet. Especially me. Oh dear lord. Oh dear lord! Oh my fucking god! I’m so glad I managed to take the picture with Sonia’s camera, secretly. At least we’re not slow or anything with realising stuff.
It was a blast getting tipsy at home with good music and the little fan girls in us. I think Sonia actually finally realised that she went to see Arctic Monkeys last Saturday, and furthermore she saw gorgeous Alex once again. And I freaking flirted with Pete Doherty! He is so very doable. Argh. I can’t get my head around it!!!

02.08.07, Thursday
Waking up early is so not cool! So we just took our time again in the morning, with a few cups of tea, cheese and bread for breakfast, taken in with Cosmopolitan and Elle magazines. Our little morning chat again and then finally around two pm we finally went to town. In town we went to Urbis, the cool-ass urban museum with a cool-ass gift shop also. The exhibition was absolutely cool, with street art and a history of this one club/gig venue in Manchester, Hacienda. It was seriously very, very cool. Then we took like an hour in Marks and Spencer again, to figure out which bread to buy and we ended up buying almost the same kind Italian bread and some canned beans and cheese and toffee. So, we came home, prepared some yummy food, we were both absolutely starving, by the way, and munched away. Then we pretty much tried to pack our things, Sonia had apparently no probs with that, as I had done it for her already last night. I, myself, had quite a challenge with trying to fit my stuff in my tiny lime green suitcase. Now we’ve been trying to contact this one Welsh friend of Sonia’s, Liam, who’s in York right now, at some gig. We really hope he’s going to drive to Manchester, to chill out with us for a while, but this is somewhat unlikely, as he might be getting absolutely plastered with some people already, and we can’t get hold of him. Bummer, but we’ve got our Russian friend with us, green apple taste this time, and some orange juice to company us.
What is love, baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more! We didn’t manage to reach Liam after all, however, Sonia called his sister (who was at a pub in Liverpool), didn’t understand half of what Sarah was saying, and well, we concluded that Liam is probably dead or mugged somewhere.

03.08.2007, Friday
Still no life-sign from Liam, his phone seems to be switched off or something (or then stolen or lost). One thing we hate about our lovely flat here is that the “quiet time” ends 9am, which means that all the construction workers and lawnmowers go crazy in the morning. It was such a turn on to wake up to (not). Anyhow, we rose our bums around 10am, showered, etc, etc, ate the last antipasti loaf and cheese, of course and some tea. It’s incredible how we’ve managed to eat absolute crap for the past week, and we’re still healthy, sort of. Then we did the final packing, which was absolute pain, and cleaned up the place. The vacuum cleaner they had in the flat was called Quiet Jet, and believe me, it was everything but quiet. It was the most twisted electronic device I’ve used past few months. It made a horrible noise and it was a real challenge to clean the floors with it. But we survived. A thing to note also is how much litter we produced with this one week. We had three huge bags full of shoe boxes and labels and one huge-ass trash can full of other crap.
We made it alive to the airport with bus, with our fucking heavy bags (it was pain dragging them) and now we’re sitting in the terminal and just chilling, because our flight is in two hours. Cannot be bothered to go through the security yet, because we’ve still got some bread rolls on us with spread cheese, and we should eat them. Mwhaha. And some people watching should be done also. Oh gosh, by the way, I think we witnessed the ugliest women in Manchester on the bus. They were two moderately obese ladies, with 0,5cm hair, triple chins, nonexistent style and the weirdest bags ever (they were on wheels and looked a bit trolly-like). And they were whining about the bus breaks. I guess it could be categorised as some sort of a childhood trauma of ours. It was dreadful, seriously. Yuck.
We were blessed with good luck at the check-in, because there was almost no line at Finnair desks and we got away smoothly. But we did manage to prove ourselves stupid again by first starting to walk to the wrong terminal instead of checking it from the paper. When it comes to us, it’s so very typical to do something like that. No brain action, whatsoever.
So, this is it. Man, don’t really want to go home. This holiday mode is very easily adaptive and hard to give up, and thinking that we start school in a fucking week is just painful. Hell no! Excruciating. Agonising. Terrible. Help.

CONCLUSION
Sonia saw Alex, and so did I. I flirted with Pete Doherty. We’re both shit broke now. We ended up at some very random places. The weather managed to surprise us with being absolutely non-English. Well done. Food is expensive, but at least the cheese tastes like something. Carrots and baked beans are cheap. Double-deckers are cool. The pubs in England are so nicely dodgy. It was a blast. It was wonderful, quality time. The best thing ever! And I actually managed to shift my accent from 100% pure American to a southern England accent with an undefined twist.
Oh, and the women in England are seriously ugly, and the blokes are quite doable, most of them. And the beer is also very good.
And we both wonder what normal food tastes like…
Oh, and Liam is, indeed, alive. He just lost his phone or something and hasn't got a new one yet. So he's all good and he has to make it up to us with coming to Finland at some point now. Or else...
And we're not slow or anything, just a bit underdeveloped.. :D But it's all good!
Over and out.