Arimo Kerkelä and Olli Lukkari head to Europe in June. Kuva: Jere Kyrö

Olli Lukkari and Arimo Kerkelä travel through Europe to gather a thousand dreams from other people and, at the same time, realize their own.

 

The goal and slogan is not humble: 2 men, 20 days, 1000 dreams.

Arimo Kerkelä and Olli Lukkari don’t seem to shy away from a challenge. On June 10th, they hop on a train with an interrail ticket, committed to asking, and getting, 50 people a day to share their dreams with them.

The dreams are written and drawn on cards, which Lukkari and Kerkelä later photograph and put online for everyone to see.

The idea is to get people thinking about what they really want.

“Many people are too afraid to go after their dreams. I want to get them thinking about it”, Lukkari says.

 

Lukkari and Kerkelä themselves seem to show a good example when it comes to daring and resilience.

Lukkari started gathering people’s dreams on cards last summer. At first, he handed out 360 cards, asking people to send them back to him via post.

One returned.

The disappointment was bitter, but Lukkari continued, changing the strategy to asking people to fill out the cards on the spot.

This is also how Lukkari and Kerkelä met: In the fall picnic organized by the university last autumn, Lukkari asked Kerkelä to write his dream on one of the cards. Kerkelä found it a bit strange.

“I was really surprised when he came asking me for my dreams”, he says.

Nevertheless, Kerkelä used the opportunity and asked Lukkari to give him an interview for his web publication Teleportaasi.

“The interview lasted for ten minutes and then we talked for four hours after that”, Kerkelä explains.

Already in their second longer discussion, Lukkari and Kerkelä decided to go on an interrail together.

“I think we are both the kind of people who easily realize even the smaller dreams”, Kerkelä says.

 

After the beginning, Lukkari’s card project has spread to unexpected proportions. At the moment this article is being written, he has gathered around 800 cards.

The moment you read it, the amount might be larger. The cards have been scanned to Lukkari’s blog Post Our Dreams.

In addition, the dream cards have been showcased in Finland in various exhibitions, for instance in the city library of Jyväskylä.

 

The interrail trip Kerkelä and Lukkari have named Unelmien tiellä, then, is a joint operation, a kind of a sister project to Lukkari’s Post our dreams and Kerkelä’s Teleportaasi.

After gathering the dreams, Lukkari and Kerkelä intend to photograph the cards and put them on a separate website. During their trip they will also keep blogs about their adventures and film for a documentary they hope to publish afterwards.

A lot needs to be done, but they have the energy.

“Olli seems to have the batteries of a duracell-bunny. And this is just so much fun”, Kerkelä says.

 

The actual route for the interrail remains unclear and unplanned. It starts from Turku and continues to Stockholm, but aside from that, the only sure destination is Munich. This has been chosen because the German headquarters of the Make-A-Wish Foundation are there and Lukkari and Kerkelä wish to visit it. The foundation realizes the dreams of children with life-threatening medical conditions.

Lukkari and Kerkelä also intend to take directions from their Facebook-followers.

“The main thing about the trip is not cultural history or fancy buildings but the people we meet”, Kerkelä says.

The future after the trip is wide open for the both of them. Kerkelä goes on to pursue a different dream altogether: after the Interrail, he intends to go to Nepal to write a novel. Lukkari will take a year off.

Then, who knows.

 

Check for yourself: www.unelmientiella.fi