Attracted to heights

Ever since I can remember myself, I've wanted to be on the highest ground. Literally. I would climb everywhere I could. Height gives me a combined feeling of fear and triumph, filling me with adrenaline and endorphine. That's what got me started on climbing.

It's not a sport you go into, just to keep in shape, as going to the gym twice a week for three months a year is. It's something that if you start with passion keeps you going, trying to improve yourself, always mastering your moves and your thinking. It grabs you from inside and keeps you searching, hunting for that perfect climb,  that takes years for some people, even decades to find it, but most do not give up, untill they do. Climbing takes you places you wouldn't have gone otherwise and takes your mental and physical abilities to another level.

As an exchange student you need more sources of social connections outside of your school and having hobbies is probably the best way to do that. So as soon as I came to Tampere I started looking for a place to climb. I went through quite many of them and at one point I went to TK (Tamperen Kiipelykeskus) at that moment I knew my search was over and I finally found something that would keep me here through my whole exchange year. That would offer me good training, social connections and a second home. I didn't search more, I signed up to be a member as soon as I got my host sisters to translate the forms for me (to know what I am signing). For me currently TK is a sanctuary. A way to get out of my everyday life as a ''vaihto oppilas''. When I look at a route it is not about what I ate this morning, or how my coffee tasted, it's only about the route, how to do it, what are the right moves, how much power and where should it be put.

Climbing, to me is more than a hobby. It developes your body muscles immensely, gives you an enourmous body awareness, takes you out in the nature (in warmer seasons), and mostly, it's a way of life. It keeps you meeting similar people, people who love the mountains, the nature, the great outdoors all together. It's the way you dress, the way you talk, the things that make you laugh and the way you see things. A doorcase is no longer just the thing keeping the door where it is, it's a place to practice your grab. You see a rock next to the road and your first thought is not ''How old is that?'', but ''Is it climbable?''

We all have our addictions and currently, this is mine. Going as close as i can be to the edge has been a goal of mine for quite a long time and even though I still have a long road ahead of me i think climbing is one step forward.

Kuvat ja teksti: Buryan Aleksiev