Time to....

"When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it. And I had love, but I did not feel it. Many decades would pass before I understood the meaning of all three. Now, in the twilight of my life, misunderstanding has passed into contentment. Love, liberty and time, once so disposable are the fuels that drive me forward."


                                                                                                                 -Ezio Auditore da Firenze






"The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye...until we meet again"
                                                    
                                                                                                                 - Jimi Hendrix






"The last day is way shorter than counting to ten"




                                                                                                                  - Leena Ahmad Alsamat

Hi guys, this is Max, coming at you from Freising Germany! For the last couple of weeks I´ve had sooo much stuff to take care of and I´m sorry you haven´t heard from me earlier. I was in Prague this week and it was one of the best weeks of my life, that´s a definite. Shout-outs to all and everyone who accompanied me to the beautiful capital of the Czech Republic. I might do an update on my week in Prague later. If you wish to read about my experiences there, please leave a comment below. 

Been thinking a lot lately. You know..about returning...leaving all the people behind. This is a different goodbye than the one you guys up in Finland heard me say as I left you a year ago. Back then I had the guarantee that I would meet all of you again. Now it´s all different. 

As Cheek said: "Mä mietin mitä jää kun mä lähden täältä, mut ei syytä huoleen, se päivä ei oo vielä tänään, eieiei" yeah it might not be today...but....it´s in 4 days. And now in the twilight of my exchange, after having had a couple of good conversations with my dear sister Charlotte and Lenny who just arrived, I´ve actually started fearing my own homecoming. I´ve changed. That´s a fact. Everything back there, in the other world, has stayed unaltered. I hear it is as if TIME had stopped for a year. I also hear that it´s very heard to begin anything with the your "old friends", if I may, in the hanging out/ partying kind of way. Charlotte stopped hanging out with 90 % of her old friends. This is exactly the scenario I fear. I hope with all my heart that this won´t be the case. I love you guys so much and I can´t even imagine my life without you guys. And honestly I don´t think we´ll have a problem, but there´s always that little uncertainty lingering somewhere deep inside. Just know that I will most likely be very confused  coming back and I beg for your understanding and patience. 

After the week in Prague I cried again as we returned to Freising with the bus. I feel like I´ve been crying a lot lately because of all the goodbyes. And soon it´s that TIME again...TIME? is it really that TIME, agian? It seems as if I only just arrived...and in the beginning it seemed as if I had all the time in the world.  I like to think I got the most out of my exchange, that I used my time well. Always said "yes!" or "of course I wanna come with you guys". It´s without a question been the best year of my life. 

Happy to come home, sad to leave. It´s a strange situation. I feel like I belong here now...and I have to leave. It´s going to be hard. Have to go to the gym quite a lot I think. To clear my thoughts and so forth.

We´ll see what happens...Time will tell.  I just wish it wasn´t running out

sunset in Prague....sunset of my exchange

Tic toc tic toc

My beloved family from all over the world

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page"
                                                                                                                    - St. Augustine








"Love makes a family"
                                                                                                                    - Gigi Kaeser






"in truth a family is what you make it. it is made strong not by the number of heads counted
  at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you
  share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes
  for the future you have as individuals and as a unit"


                                                                                                                    - Marge Kennedy








  As the end of my exchange year draws near (I´ve got exactly 4 weeks and 4 days left) you start to look back on your exchange in a very judging matter. Questions like "Did you learn enough? Did you see enough? experience enough? Could you have made more friends? Was it worth it? Should I have done something different in order to make my exchange year even better? What if I would have done this..instead of that?"
All these questions I can effortlessly answer. For me "if" doesn´t exist. I made some major life altering choices during my year and I´m privileged to say that the majority of them turned out excellent. Others...well.

"If" doesn´t exist. Would I still be here in Germany if I had made that one phone call? Would Jordan still be here if he hadn´t shown the security guard his papers? Would Jonathan still be here if his home town hadn´t been Oberstdorf? We´ll never know because "if" doesn´t exist.
But now as I sit here reminiscing on my year as a whole I can proudly say that no regrets linger in my mind.
Did I make mistakes? Of course. Why don´t I have regret? You learn from your mistakes and by understanding the nature of the mistake and realizing that a mistake has been made can grant you knowledge that you can use to your advantage in times to come. And I have made my peace with these mistakes.



One and perhaps the only question about my year that I fail to answer is "How am I going to be able to carry on without my "family from all over the world?" I know I have talked about this before but now the matter is surfacing stronger than before.
The bond that immediately forms between two exchange students is really mind blowing. This bond forms without mutual language or morals or values. It´s like two new students from different cities changing to the same school in the middle of the semester but more extreme. Something like this, I believe, can only be experienced with Rotary. Imagine, 30 people from all over the globe melting together into one unity, a group or a team, if you will, ready to take on and conquer the challenges that lay ahead. The moments I´ve spent with these people are absolutely unsurpassed. Their company has taught me to see the world with more open eyes and for it really is. They taught me to understand other cultures and see the diversity and wealth in them. There are few things more precious than sitting at the riverbank at  sunset with these people, listening to Latino music and dancing, without a care in the world. The sheer energy of the Latinos is quite overwhelming and the cheerfulness shines a warming light upon your heart. Around you hear Spanish, Portuguese, German, English and French.
The exchange students automatically form a network of support, knowledge and creative ideas as the exchange commences. Ultimately, it´s not your host family or friends in the new school who are going to be there to help you up if you fall or whenever the world tries to bring you down...it´s the exchange students. We share ideas, dreams, feelings and problems. The international family of love and back up is always reachable 24/7. And what happens in the family stays in the family, that´s a definite.



This family is the thing I will most miss about my exchange. This very group, this all accepting family is free of all prejudice and discrimination. Never before have I encountered anything in this fashion and it has had a colossal impact on my life. I can state, with easy that the opportunity to be an affiliate of this family is one of the best things that have ever taken place in my life.
Each rendezvous with the family contains heaps of unforgettable moments and loud echoes of delight. Every member of the family functions as a conduit of joy and the more there are of us the bigger the flood of gladness is. Each moment spent apart from the family is stuffed with a slight feel on incompleteness and I sometimes see myself as a drug addict constantly searching for this "high". I fear I will be lost for a while when I return up north, still searching for this feeling, drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. But will be oceans apart by then...by life goes on, doesn´t it?


I´d like to take the time now as the first exchange students who arrived last fall are leaving next week(my love goes out to all the oldies who arrived in January 2011 too), and thank my family from all over the world for the best three weeks of my life on D-tour and every single moment we spent together. I can´t even begin to fathom how my exchange would have been without you and how many great friendships I would never have formed if I hadn´t met all of you.
My most fond thanks to you all. I know we´ll meet again...eines tages.
I wish you all the best in your lives and I hope I can be a part of them in some way, shape or form in the future. Take care, stay healthy and live well. Mi casa es tu casa <3 and I mean it.

<3

love you guys

zum Schluss noch ein Bild vom Omar, wenn er Scheisse baut XD

The Greatest of Surrerings

"It is deeply shocking and incomprehensible to me that despite volumes of documentation and living witnesses who can attest to the horrors of the Holocaust, there are still those who would deny it."
                             
                                                                                                                                 -Mark Udall

"The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed"

                               

                                                                                                                          -Stephen Ambrose

"The most disgusting, nauseating, terrible, horrifying thing that has ever taken place on this earth....seriously fucked up shit"

                                                                                                                                  -Max Heino

I think you  all see where this is going. We visited Dachau..the former Nazi concentration camp just outside of Munich. This visit took place last Saturday. But before I tell you about this most uncomfortable visit I´d like to quickly address something nicer that happened the evening before and got me so intoxicated...if you will that I was still a little bit  drunk the next day. That too was a first time experience.

So me and 15 latinos and latinas took the train to Wasserburg. I was basically minority and couldn't understand everything they say but I like it with the latinos. It´s like being in another country all together. They seem to like me as well because I´m kind of the only "outsider" they have fully accepted into their circle. So we went to this Frühlingsfest (Spring party) in Wasserburg. It´s basically a small Oktoberfest with a Beer tent in the middle and an amusement park around the tent. I took a couple of rides with the girls, if you know what I mean, we ate something and got amazing places in the beer tent. Right in the middle! 

I decided not to drink...then I thought...what the hell YOLO (YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE). I´m sorry...this YOLO thing is some new internet meme/thingy thangy encouraging young ppl or people in general to do stupid and irresponsible things XD. I was like: Hell imma drink! I´m in germany with a bunch of latinos, I need something to help me stand them XD So me and Omar and Luthero and Cesar invited a couple of German girls to our table and ordered our beers, you know the 1 liter things. I knew one of them before as she is a "soon to be" exchange student.

Her friends were creamy and one of them was sooo good looking. Like Leona Lewis with a better face. Man and she was eyeballing me the whole night and we threw a couple flirt lines back and forth and she wanted to take a picture with me every two minutes. So I was getting my hopes up aaand then me and Omar decided to do the drinking pose where you put your arm around the other persons arm and drink. Now...we both had like 75 % left of the beer and I don´t know why but we just kept on going and going. He looked over at me and saw that I was still drinking and I looked over at him and noticed he was still going on. I was like "f*ck if I´m quitting". So then suddenly we had emptied our beers....and it really hits you like a baseball bat. The effect came as sun as you but the beer glass down. "OH NOW I`M DRUNK"

Omar looked at me like "What have you done to me??!!" Then we continued socializing with the German gals and then miss Leona Lewis was like.."I have a boyfriend"...I was like..."you have wha..?? ANOTHER BEEEEER PLEASE!!"

Beijo para Brasileiro viado

elegant  and drunk latinos

Now I didn´t say it out loud but I thought to myself...WHAT THE FUCK? Like now advice for all my beloved girls out there (Besos <3..that´s kisses in Spanish in case you´re not in the know) if you have a boyfriend..don´t look at me like you want my...... love (XD)...and stare at me for 2 hours straight. Because

you will come across like an attention seeking little skeezer...and my respect for you will decrease a ton...

I was like "hola, hola, hola, hola....girl...you can forget the flirt now...I kinda try to respect those kinda things..maybe"

Frühlingsfest in Wasserburg, + Yuri´s afro 

Friends and alcohol. Keep on reading to find out what happened to the dude´s face who´s wearing glasses

I drank a second one, a third one and I was done. We left the Frühlingsfest and we got into a fight...like a big one. Well, me and the latinos and latinas, like 16 ppl in total started walking home in the night like 2 or 3 am. We take a small road through the fields and out there in the open we encountered some Germans.
...well let´s just say a fight broke out...one of us got hit in the face real good and his eye was as big as a peach the next day. It was the nastiest sucker punch I´ve ever seen...what a loser that German guy who punched him is. Being all heroic and stuff I got the situation to calm down after a while and we eventually got home.

The next morning I woke up and noticed that I was still intoxicated...never experienced that before.
So we ate something and traveled to Dachau where we met the other exchange students. It was a pleasant reunion in a most unpleasant place. After we were done exchanging howdoyoudos and so forth we stepped through the gate with a well known passage on top "Arbeit macht frei".

It was an open, dry sand field and the sun was gazing upon it. There were only two barracks standing in the middle but you could see the remains of tens of other. The two barracks standing weren´t the original ones. They had been reconstructed just for museum/ memorial purposes. The Nazis had blown up all barracks when they realized that the Allied victory was inevitable to destroy all evidence of the camps existence. At the other end of the field there was a relatively big building that was used as an industrial facility where the Jews (and handicapped, homosexuals etc) worked basically as slaves making armament and ammunition to keep the war engine of the Third Reich running. Today the building works as a museum.
The whole place made me sick. It didn´t help that I was still a bit tipsy from last night. We made a tour through the museum and we watched a short film with real footage taken after the Allied forces took over the camp. Heaps of bodies...torture..bad hygiene...sickness.  One sick thing too was that the handicapped people who couldn´t walk were housed furthest away from the factory building. So every morning the handicapped had to get to the building...imagine..the people who couldn´t WALK had to WALK the longest distance.
After the film I sat down and cried. Lots of people did that and you´d be heartless if it wouldn´t awaken any feeling in you.
In front of the building there was a sculpture like this:

very describing

never forget

And at the other end of the field there were churches and temples for all main religions where you could sit down to pray. So we did.

field of suffering

up in smoke

After the visit we went to Greek restaurant and we had a great day together.


Apologize for the somewhat serious post.

Visitors from another world

"I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are waiting."
                                                                                                                             -Optimus Prime










"We are all just visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love....and then we return home"
                                                                                                             -Australian Aboriginal saying




"Some time ago, I was visted by loved ones from home. They felt like home, looked like home, smelled like home. Their visit made me feel like i was home. Then suddenly they were gone again ...and so was the feeling  of being home"


                                                                                                               -Max Heino
















Now when I´m talking about visitors from another world I´m not talking about this:

or this:

I´m talking bout this:

.....HEEEEEEELP!!!!

yeah...maybe this:

wasn´t the worst case scenario after all XD









Naa I´m kidding. I love visitors and these two especially <3

To begin I´d like to thank my cousin Julia Pelin (Pölään) and one of my best friends 
Harri "Haba/Maitokylmiö" Harju for a most wonderful visit. Like the three wise kings of the Bible they came a long way from an eastern land and with them they had glorious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 
And by gold, frankincense and myrrh i mean rye bread (heaps of it), smoked ham and a Truvirtu Oyster (metallic wallet, elegant as f*ck).


I travelled to airport early this Thursday morning to meet these visitors from another world. It´s seemed as if my comrades brought the sunshine and cloudless skies with them as well. The sun layed it´s warm rays upon us and it made us merry and rejoyced and enjoyed this reunion basking in the sunlight. We exchanged memories from the old times as we walked to the bus stop. The sun´s gaze was so strong infact that we had to cover our eyes with sunglasses and shades. Harri put on his real Raybeti´s, Julia her real Calvin Klein shades and I shielded my eyes with a pair of 6 Euro shades from Newyorker. 
We took the bus to Freising and observed how the skies and the earth became one 100 km in the south and how the warm alpine air shiverred over the magnificent mountain ridge known as the Alps.

Now enough of this fancy writing. Now let´s see what Harri and I look like in action. 

We took a tour around the city and I showed my guests what Freising was all about. Fact: Freising is all about friends, sunshine, beer, good food, beer, and ice cream and beautiful women and liqour and churches and old buildings and liqour and beer. We cooked and ate and it was nice, am I right cosmic panda? 

On friday we chilled and later at night we went to the lake, it was beautiful. There were friends (from school) and sunshine and beer and LIQOUR! Then we got lost with the bikes on the way home but that was just because the earth´s magnetic field messed up my radar.
 I regained control of my navigation apparatus and we found our way home.

we might be lost

On saturday we visited Munich, the world capital of beer and Oktoberfest and beer. We went shopping. Harri bought what he called "slow shoes". 

slow shoes

fast shoes

Julia bought something to please tha ladie folks back in the other world (as in her mother and our grandmother). I bought a basketball.


Sunday was nice. In the evening we went to a classic consert. Rotary paid for the gig. Harri enjoyed the consert with the whole of his soul. After the torture...I mean after the enjoyment the rotarians treated us to pizza. We ate our italian poison and got LIQOUR as dessert. We drank grappa and limoncello.
I dont remember what else took place on this comfortable sunday evening....strange.

Aliens in Munich

Big pimping

aaaaaaawwwww

Downhill descent after consert. Beer and liqour (Freising) in background

supplement: grappa

On monday my vistors left. We took farewell with happiness in our hearts knowing that it wouldn´t be long untill we´d be reunited again.

Special thanks to HABA and JULIA for the visit <3




Stay happy <3

The Truth and some catching up

"My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world"
                                                                                                           -Muhammad Ali


 "Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths"
                                                                                                           -Muhammad Ali

" Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear"
                                                                                                            -Mahatma Gandhi 








Guess who?




Did you miss me?




Well I´m back by popular demand!

b*tch I´m fabulous

Dear loved ones, I´ve meant to write you sooner but I´ve just been busy.

Now you might be thinking...He hasn´t written anything in 7 week or so. How is he going to ever catch up and tell us what happened during this time. We´ll the truth is I´m not gonig to. I´ll just adress things quickly and go on to something of higher importance. 
"Well what are you going to talk about then?"
Im going to talk about the truth.
 As you guys probably know, I was on a trip around Germany for 3 weeks. I can´t possibly write to you about everything that went down. All the landscapes, the people, the sights the smells the sensations. Im not even going to try. Let´s just say that they were the best 3 weeks of my life. 
At the same time they were the 3 saddest week of my life. At the same time these weeks showed me how people from all over the world can come together as one family. At the same time they made me realize how easy my life is and has been. At the same time they made me understand how the human mind is capable of anything but how it can also be your biggest obstacle. At the same time they made me realize how your background shapes you. At the same time they made me aware of the fact that when I return to Finland I might NEVER see these peopl e I´ve grown to love ever again. They also made me realize that when I´m sitting at a street Cafe in let´s say Munich or Frankfurt and I see people going about their daily chores walking past me that they all have their own stories, their own history and that I will NEVER get to know them and that´s just how it is. Hell we had a girl from Taiwan and one from Japan and one guy from Mexico who aren´t even part of our district and we all got really close and I´ll probably NEVER ever see these people again...and that´s just how it is.
As Oskar Schell said it the movie Etremely Loud and Incredibly Close:

watch it

"So many people enter and leave your life!  Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in!  But it also means you have to let them go!”
 











And I know most of you just come here because of the comedy factor but this blog update will and is (as you have probably already noticed one of a more serious nature). But to loosen it up here´s a picture from the Bus that we travelled with through G-many.

Don´t fall asleep on the bus...

My mind drifted, back to this sh*t





Now let´s be truthful, I think I´ve seen the truth, my truth. Because fact is, we all have a truth of our own.
It´s this year that has opened my eyes and allowed me to see the truth. Being "alone" out in the world. Facing challenges alone. And still being loved and getting meeting so many new people. Experiencing the essence of other cultures. It really showed me what the world really looks like. I see the world with new eyes. I understand the world. I see life from a different angle.

I think I know what life is all about. And that is the truth. Wherever I go I feel happy. And of course this happiness can be momentarily broken down by unforseen events but it´s always there. I see the faces of the people closest to me, the little emotions. I´m able to say that I love someone with whom I can´t verbally communicate. Someone with whom I don´t have a common language. It´s just like there´s nothing missing. Everything I need is within my reach. It´s about changing perspective...it´s so hard to put into words that I feel I´m not even scratching the surface of it here. Put in the end the truth is easy to find. You just gotta know where to look. And I feel like I´ve emerged as a better person. I´m not saying that I was some criminal scum before and by saying that I´m a better person I do not mean that I became a do-goodie or saint. I just feel like I enjoy life so much more now. I just got home from the gym for example and it was raining like hell and I didnt have a raincoat, I just had my hoodie and I was totally happy about it. I just laughed at my bad luck and biked home. Even if the sky was filled with gray clouds my mind was filled with sunshine. That there my friends is the truth. 

I just want to let you know that I´m living my life, living my dream. I´m happy but still miss you all oh so much and I can´t wait to get back to see you all.
Truth below:

Global Family

Extremely loud and incerebily close

Beck´s beer factory, beer testing round, Omar is done for, once again extremly loud

the global family takes over Lübeck

and Köln

Face palm....i mean paint

whoopsie..........it´s baileys I promise

American Gangster

from left to right at the table: Fredo, Sonny, Tom Hagen, Vito Corleone, Michael and Luca Brazzi

Who bought two teamboxes just to make lal his friends happy? I did

Freising trio, crying

I love you

 Seek the truth, It´s out there