Month: January 2024

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From Finland to Angoulême. Train travel in Europe!

If you liked my previous post about traveling from Berlin to Italy, you will love this one about my train travel from Finland to France! The trip is way longer than in the last comic, plus in this one I’m going to a comics festival in Angoulême. I hope this comic can inspire others to try traveling by land, even if it is a bit slower than traveling by a plane.

I am going to say this in the comic too, but I must say it here as well. Traveling by land in a train where it’s okay to get up, move around and go to different sections of the train is so much better for my heath than sitting still on a plane. Movement is needed even for making comics and I don’t mind the extra time a train takes. What else would I be doing with that time, even if I wasn’t on a train, than making comics? Nothing! And I can definitely draw comics on a train too.

Here I am in Switzerland with my very heavy cart full of comics. The suitcase is Siiri’s.
Here I am in a train from Basel to Strasbourg and the beautiful content (views) go by as I draw comics.
Here you see me drawing the previous page! I have the InterRail app screenshot as a sketch layer, so I know where we have been and where are we going.
In this picture I am in the foreign rights tent in Angoulême in the Finnish booth finally taking apart the heavy boxes of comics! This was the happiest moment of my trip. Both me and the cart survived! Surprising!
Here I am pointing out two Finnish comics creators in the EU Webtoon exhibition: Sari Sariola and Tuomas Myllylä.
The toilet is for everyone, but one must venture into it alone… Except if you’re a pair of shepherds or a centaur with a sweet ass duck!
Link to my patreon!

Who appeared in the comic?

Here’s links to everyone who appeared in the comic and that I know are artists or other creative professionals who might want to be mentioned.

Categories
Autobiographical comics Comics Sustainability comics Working in research

Traveling by land, Germany to Italy and back!

“Germany? What do you mean Germany, H-P, you’re Finnish?” Yes, I am, but I only started drawing since leaving Germany. Last summer I went to Trento Italy for an ethnography and qualitative research conference together with my colleagues Juulia and Carmen. I traveled through Berlin where I also met a long time Instagram friend! I made this comic during the long train rides and I first published it on my Patreon for backers only. Now it’s been a while since that happened, so I decided to make it public.

I think people are interested in doing longer travels by land, but they might be worried if it’s really difficult. And yes, it is more difficult than flying. But it’s also amazing and exciting and relaxing and part of the whole experience of traveling! So maybe this comic can inspire you to try out something other than a plane next time you travel.

The reason I’m posting this comic now is that I’m leaving to Angoulême in France tomorrow! And I’ll be traveling by land again! That reminded me of this comic. I don’t know if I will draw a travel diary this time, but I’m thinking about it. I’m traveling together with a friend of mine, the Finnish comics artist Siiri Viljakka.

These two photos are taken from a moving train! That’s Alps! Incredible.
This is a river from Trento in Italy. We took a cable car from where the photo was taken to that building you can see on top of the mountain!

This photo was taken from the mountain where we got to with the cable car. I had thought Trento to be way smaller of a town than what it turned out to be! It was weird seeing it all laid out like that. The size of the mountains is something I as a Finnish person will never understand. (We have no mountains in Finland. I even happen to be from an area of Finland that’s the former sea floor! Osthrobothnia that is.)

Wouldn’t you like to study here? Well I did! This is the courtyard of the Trento public library. I went here to work on my university stuff.

Now that I’m traveling in January, the views will be completely different from what they were in June. Our route takes us from Stockholm (Sweden) to Copenhagen (Denmark) to Strasbourg (France) and then finally to Angoulême (France) to attend the gigantic comics festival held there every year! I’ll try to at least write a blog post about it, even if I wouldn’t necessarily draw a comic. We’ll see!

Now that you’re here, consider this. You become my Patreon backer, I make more comics! Sounds great, right? Here you go:

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Are you into reading more comics? Check out all of the comics I’ve posted on my blog here on my Comics tag!