About this blog
pinned post This is a blog of Niko Lipsanen, a Finnish geographer and couchsurfing host.
The girl who watched me attentively
10 Apr 2026 I was sitting on a sofa in a shopping centre, doing my Duolingo. A girl stopped next to me and watched me attentively for a few seconds. She made a gesture with her hands, and smiled before leaving.
They say Duolingo is bad – but I don't
6 Apr 2026 I keep hearing people say that Duolingo is just a game, and not useful for actual language learning. Often it is an advertisement for a competing app but sometimes I hear it also from people who use or have used Duolingo themselves. I disagree: it depends on how you use it.
I combined hummus and sardines, and it was...
15 Mar 2026
(major update: 2 Apr 2026)
While in Tenerife, I sometimes have a toast with either hummus or with some canned fish (sardines, mackerel, tuna) for afternoon snack. Today I couldn't decide which one so I decided to have both hummus and sardines.
The blog is now open to the public
30 Nov 2025 This far I have just moved here some old content from different parts of Domnik.net website. From this on, I start publishing new content. The blog is now open for those who can find it but I will promote it more only after there is a bit more new stuff here.
Alternatives to CouchSurfing
27 Nov 2025 Since mid-May, 2020, CouchSurfing is not free anymore. You have to pay either a monthly a yearly fee, and they both were raised in 2025. But it is not the only hospitality exchange community: there are free alternatives like BeWelcome and TrustRoots, as well as others (either for free or for a fee).
Dominica maps from my M.Sc. Thesis
25 Nov 2025 Cleaning my website, I decided to remove the outdated Dominica pages which didn't have much content that would still be relevant. However, as the map page has been relatively popular I moved its content to this blog post. The maps were mostly made for my Master's Thesis (Geography) in 2001.
What Breivik really said about his religion?
13 Nov 2025 In July, 2011, there were terror attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utøya where 77 mostly young people were killed. Anders Behring Breivik, the terrorist behind the attacks, has both claimed and denied being Christian, also claiming that his faith is actually Odinism. To find out what is his relationship with Christian religion, I read the relevant parts of his manifesto, took some quotes, and comment them here.
On the ontology of handedness
08 Nov 2025 The ontological question about handedness is the difference between 'right' and 'left'. How to define those without a reference to any particular asymmetric object?
