Hyvää Joulua!

Due to the lack of money and the fact that i know too many nice people here now I spent Christmas again in Finland. I just came back from a traditional Christmas diner with ham (kinkku), different mashed vegetables (laatikko), fish and way too much other delicious stuff. So I hope you all have also a great time with your families and loved ones.

Hyvää Joulua! Gud Jul! Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten! Joyeux Noël! ¡Feliz Navidad!

die spinnen die Finnen

aber mal sowas von.

I was checking the latest Finnish Single Charts since I'm bored with my music right now and what is number 1???

HEVISAURUS!!!

And yes it is exactly that! A group of dinosaurs playing sort of metal music. So obviously it is more made for kids but why is something like that in the official single charts??? Ok I shouldn't be surprised since I think Finland is the only country where an album of the Smurfs (fin. Smurfit) is regularly in the Charts. A the moment with a Christmas album of course.

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää kaikille!!!

Happy Finnish Independence Day to all of you! :)

Joulukuusi

The huge Christmas tree is now standing in front of the cathedral :D Now Christmas season can really start.

Lappi on ihana!!!!!

So I'm back from Lapland. Still exhausted, since i just came back this morning, and I still have to much work to do so here are just a few impressions for the moment, the stories follow later.









So enjoy the pics and feel free to be jealous :P














more pics you find in my picasa album

busy busy

sorry that i haven't written about the great survival weekend yet. I started but I have a lot to do at the moment, then I had a friend from Germany over for 3 days and now I pack the rest of my stuff for my 4 day trip to Lapland. Cross your fingers that everything will work out and that none of us 6 will freeze to death during the -17°C during 3 of those 4 days! I'm really a bit worried since I never drove a car in Winter and well it will be an interesting adventure. I survived 2 weeks in Russia without speaking Russian so 4 days in freezing Lapland should be really easy to handle. ;) Well, we'll see.

So hopefully I'm back next week with looooooots of things to tell. :)
If I haven't posted till next Thursday you all should get worried ;)

Moi, moi

Hyvää Isänpäivää!

Happy Father's Day! :)

Scandinavian humor

Just found this hilarious comic about Scandinavian history.

http://humoncomics.com/make-a-good-impression

Pitkästä aikaa!

You see I actually learn new things in Finnish! Not everyday as I would like to but well...
I'm just sitting in my room, eating freaking expensive but very delicious Norwegian melkesjokolade (Freia is the best in the world!) which Adam was so nice to bring me from his 10 day long trip to Norway for which I still hate him. Ok of course I don't, I'm just really jealous and now my wish to do a hiking trip along the Norwegian fjørds in one of the next summers is stronger than ever. Well maybe next year! :)

Anyway after a quite interesting week with lots of ups and downs I'm looking forward to a weekend of rest. NOT! 'Unfortunately' I signed up for the so called 'Survival weekend' of ESN. And I think for me it will be all about surviving. I was hoping to be back to 'normal' health again by now, but well if you never rest and just run around like a Duracell bunny all the time, the body has no chance to recover. So I still suffer from regular fever attacks but at least the coughing is gone. And now that my flat is silent for the first time in days (you cannot imagine how much noise 3 Greek girls can make and seriously they never shut up!) my headache almost disappeared. So I packed a lot of warm clothes like my skiing clothes, gloves, a had and of course my hiking boots. Better to have too many clothes than freezing. :D So we will go into the Finnish woods for 2 days including 2 nights (probably around -2°C then) camping in heated army tents which we of course have to heat ourselves. Hihi will be very much fun. Very interesting is that weeks ago the 50 places for this survival weekend were full after 15min and now more and more people are dropping out. All girls! Hahahaha cowards! Well more space in the tents and sauna for us then :P

So much for this weekend. Last weekend was sort of interesting as well.
First I was at another Uniklubi concert and seriously I will never ever again go into a club with is usually for people over 24. It was soooooooo disgusting. The men in their 40s and 50s undressing each passing women with their eyes and when they are drunk they get really hmm don't know the English word but one of the girls I was with at the concert just punched a guy for touching her and seriously I would have done the same. Unbelievably gross! And the women were as bad as the men. If I, at any point of time, wear tight leopard leggings, a black short shirt, a belt and a golden handbag while having a weight of around 150kg PLEASE shoot me! Seriously it wasn't pretty. And when than women in their late 50s dance to Coco Jambo and Mambo No5 it's really time to go. Unfortunately that awful club just wanted to make money and so the band started to play at 0:30! Of course nobody of us knew so the few Uniklubi fans in their early 20s had to wait for around 2 hours and witness this surreal scenery. But the concert itself was great!

Then there was of course also a Halloween party the day before the UK concert. Surprisingly good at least from the music which was the first time not awful club music but really trashy 90s party music. And seriously a party cannot be bad if they play BSB's Backstreets back! :P

On Sunday I did my assignment for my 'Religion in Finland' course and went to a local congregation. :) If you want to get to know Finnish people join a church here! :D It was very nice and I was even invited for a family diner yesterday. :)

Uni is during OK. Tomorrow I have my last regular class in my 'Religion in Finland' course which was really interesting. In the first lesson I was wondering why people study comparative religion but now I'm quite surprised how interesting it can be and I think it doesn't really matter if you studied political science, comparative religion or English literature when you are a taxi driver. ;)

Anyway I started a new course last week: 'Swedish-speaking Finns as a minority'. I was hoping it would help me with my thesis but was worried at the same time that i know already everything they will teach us. Of course the whole history part I heard and read already a dozen times but there are actually really interesting aspects I have never considered or heard of. Well since the course if from the Sociology department I hear a lot about studies and interviews and research and projects which makes it more interesting. Because who would have thought that it makes a differences in the perception of a bilingual Finn towards other bilingual and monolingual Finns to what kind of school (regarding to language because there are Finnish and Swedish schools here) you went.

Ok enough about uni. Need to go to bed and get some sleep before my 8:30am class and the first probably sleepless night in the woods. Wish me luck that I return at all and preferably without a pneumonia or a worse disease.

*kramar*

PS its -17°C this weekend in Lapland! I'm going there in 2 weeks!!!!!

Sick :(

Finnish fall/ pre-winter hit me with it's changing temperatures and constant sweating and cooling down when going day and night by bike. So now I'm listening to the following song and hope that the coughing and fever attacks go away pretty soon.



Dedicated to all TBBT fans out there! :)

Foreigner’s Guide to Finland

Just got a link to this hilarious article.

http://varjosanomat.com/?p=1564

Enjoy reading it! And you are free to guess which parts are actually true, because I promise there is some truth hidden, unfortunately I may have to say. ;)

More music

In Finland you can find a dozen of different forms of music but probably the most famous is Finnish metal. I'm not a big fan of heavy metal, since I prefer melodic music over noise :P so I got stuck with what I would put into the field of power metal or something like that.
Since my favorite Finnish guitarist Jari Liimatainen (probably the best guitarist here in Finland) got kicked out of my ex-favorite power metal band called Sonata Arctica, I was looking for something as equally good as the old Sonata stuff. And now I found it! :D
Jari has a new band! Their first Album came out last year and this is my favorite song of the album:

Cain's Offering - More Than Friends


Also this is very nice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEd5K_F3C-4
but in general I would recommend the whole album!

\,,/ Rock on! ;)

PS This entry is dedicated to Suzy who loves Finnish metal as much as me. :)

snow, sitz and, of course, hockey

God Kväll! (swd. Good evening)

Another week is over and time is running really fast.
After looking through the blog, it seams like the first weeks were just about crappy parties and now everything is just about ice hockey :D Crappy ice hockey of course, but still fun not like the crappy parties who were not that much fun.

So yesterday I was - surprise surprise - at another TPS icehockey match. They lost. Again. The 11th game in a row and there was no fighting this time, no blood, so really boring and if around 60% of the audience is for the guest team (and 15% exchange students who have no clue what is going on) then something is wrong :/ but that’s all for icehockey today since nobody really cares and those who care I already told about the match :D

Anyway, winter is coming to Finland. In most parts there is snow already and yesterday I also saw the first 10 snowflakes. :) Can’t wait till it really starts snowing. But since there are almost no clouds every day it will still take a while. The nights are freezing now and during the day time it is usually around +5°C. Good that I have now all my winter clothes here including a hat which is very important when you ride your bike at 7:30 in the morning or at 3am in the night. ;)

Hmm not much is happening at the moment. I have an exam next week. Which is my first real exam since my intermediate exam in 2008. Will be interesting, especially since it is a law exam. We'll see what's going to happen.

Then something about Finnish student culture. On Friday I was putting on my lovely red student overall (swed.: halare) and went to my first sitz-party of the semester and it was really much fun.
So a sitz-party is a party were well you sit together (no way! :P) with a bunch of people, get a dinner and all the time you are singing and drinking. The songs are usually traditional sitz songs, who are very funny, sometimes a little mean against the former rulers of Finland (SWE + RUS) but in general very nice. So the whole sitz last for a few hours, depending how much you sing (and drink) and how fast the food will be served.
The sitz I went to on Friday was the famous 'Megasitz' by the student clubs DaTe (computer science) and Kleio (history) with more than 100 people. That's not so common, since my student club has usually a sitz with not more than 20 people, so it was really something special for me. We sang a lot and thanks to my previous sitz experiences I knew quite a lot of songs, unfortunately just very few by heart but well I have to start learning a few more. The food was good as well, although it took ages till the main course was served but well. More time for everybody around me to drink, a lot!
And well that's as always the only part which I don't like. What is the reason of getting completely drunk during a sitz or any other party? What is fun about not remembering a whole night, or that you don't remember how you got home in the middle of the night? Seriously I don't get it and probably never will. And why do people look at me strangely if I said that I never been drunk in my life. It is not something to achieve or be proud of, people! Not even when you are 17 or so! Well at least that's my opinion. ERASMUS students see it a little differently. But well they are young, one day they will grow up as well. I hope, or drown drunk in the Aura river. :P

Ok enough for today, need to study the Finnish court system, how to get divorced and what punishment you get for murder. Very important things to know here! ;) [Law is sooooo depressing!]

Last but not least the opening song of every sitz 'Helan Går':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyZpCs3i71s

jääkiekko - ice hockey

Yesterday I was again at an ice hockey match. The 10th game of the season for TPS from Turku, my favorite team. Well and they lost again. 9th loss in a row! But seriously that's more or less what i expected of them after they won the national championship last season.
But well Hitomi, Adam and me got really great tickets this time, 6th row, very close to the ice rink and since half of the seats were empty we changed the seats after the first part and were sitting then in 3rd row behind the glass. Very exciting i can tell you. You expect every 5 minutes to get hit by the puck and can practically feel the pain of the tackles into the walls. Anyway Turku lost but the match was worth seeing anyway.
Why? Well a game last 60min. And in this game the referees gave out 168 penalty minutes: 76 for TPS and 92 for KalPa. Just too bad all the fighting took place in the other end of the ice but well here you see the 'best scenes' of the game. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0laf1Rxys0

sun, fun and concrete travel plans

Moro kaikille! :)
(fin. slang: Hello to everybody!)

After a few complaints it's time for an update. I thought it's nice not to spam here so often but it looks like a few people are actually interested in my life here in Finland. :P

Anyway a few things actually happened since the last entry.


Last weekend I was in Lahti for the Finnish summer championships in ski jumping and nordic combined. The weather was surprisingly good (got even a small sunburn on my nose!), the results quite satisfying (Kalle our new golden boy! :D) and me and my friend Tellu were not the only ones there, which was also a nice surprise. Looks like you just have to print the names Ahonen and Koivuranta and people are coming. :) Lahti in 'summer' aka without snow was kind of weird. For 5 years now I just have been there in winter and I have to say it is much nicer in winter. ;) When the lake (Vesijärvi) is covered with a thick layer of ice and the whole ugly grey city is white and clean because of the snow. So beautiful.

Oh and Finns are just way too nice. On Sunday it was the nordic combined competition and the skiing (rollski) part was a few kilometers away and Tellu and me of course didn't have a car and no busses where going. So Tellu tried to ask different people if they could take us with them in their car. I was not believing that it would work because in Germany usually nobody would do that, ever! But it worked in the end and we got a ride and saw very good skiing races. Just the fact that the skiing track was in a military area and you could here constant gun shots made me very uncomfortable.

Hmm what else did happen? Went to a few crappy parties/ club nights. But realized that if you switch of your brain and leave your good taste of music at home you can actually enjoy the clubs and won't complain about 6e for a drink and 2,50e for the cloak room fee. ;) Oh yeah and I really dislike fairies and princesses now. :) After last nights fairytale party and at least 50 fairy wings stabbing me and about 20 princess crowns trying to poke my eyes out I clearly had enough for one lifetime. But I liked the costumes of a lot of Germans there. They are surprisingly the only people who actually understand the concept of fairytales. We had a king/prince, little red riding hood and a very cool puss in boots with real cat eyes. :D But somebody should tell the other people that peter pan is not a fairytale, neither are the Smurfs, elves or Superman but well everybody had fun dressing up so I should just shut up.

Hmm seriously I don't think the last weeks were that interesting. We had the Aurarodden which is the annual rowing competition between the two universities here. My Åbo Akademi lost all 4 races. Pretty disappointing but well. I finally joined my student club again and looking forward to their next activities. I'm going to my first sitz-party at the 15th of October. The famous DaTe-Megasitz, so nothing like the small SF-Klubben sitz parties with less than 15 people. :D

I went the first concert of the semester. Anssi Kela: 2,5h of very nice Finnish music, practically for free since it was a 'pay-as-much-as-you-want'-concert. Very cool! And usually the concerts in Finland are just 1 hour long so it was really something special. The next concert is on Saturday. One of my favorite Finnish Bands called Uniklubi released their new album last week and now they come to Turku and I can't wait to hear the new great songs live. specially since I haven't seen them live in 4 years!!!


I think that was more or less it. Well almost, after the 2 weeks of rain we have since Monday sunshine and clear blue sky! :D Pretty cool, literally. The temperatures are partly freezing cold like yesterday with around 5°C but sometimes very hot like today with 14°C when you felt like you just want to run around in your t-shirt.

And the travel plans are taking shape. Well the Stockholm trip we (my flatmate Eva and me) wanted to do next weekend is probably postponed because stupid Viking Line doesn't have the last minutes offers anymore in Finland and all cabins are sold out on Friday night anyway. :( So now new shoes from me from the Deichmann in STH. :( But then we are planing to go to the Fazer chocolate factory in Vantaa if we find more than 10 people and the date we want to go is still available for a tour. And the last trip we plan is Lapland in November. Looks like it will be 4 days, 3 in Inari or that area in the far north and one in Rovaniemi visiting Santa (Joulupukki).


Oh and I almost forgot. We had Turun Päivä (Turku Day) here a few weeks ago. We went to the castle of Turku (Turun linna), enjoyed the different markets and public concerts in the city and in the evening there were fireworks.


Ok that's it for today or tonight ;)

rain, icehockey, travel plans

so it's weekend time after my lecture at 8.30am this morning to which i went after just one hour of sleep (I'm very keen on not missing any class even though my physical condition is very very bad). But since I just have courses on Wednesday and Friday my weekends are kind of ... long. :) Which doesn't make it easier to get some work done, it just makes me lazy. :(
I would love to go out more, ride my bike to Naantali or just around the Turku area but since almost a week we just had rainy days and it is not so much fun to be wet and sick all the time. So usually i have to problems with rain but since this weather will stay like that for another 5 days I'm wondering why Finns get depressed in Winter when you have the beautiful snow everywhere and very often blue sky and actually sun here in the south. One should get depressed in fall when it is gray and wet all the time.



Anyway, winter is coming in big steps. And the most important thing for me this week was that the ice hockey season started yesterday. The winner of the last season of the so called SM-Liiga is TPS, so the team from Turku. They played last night against Hämeenlinna and it was a hard match. One could see that TPS was putting themselves under pressure. As the reigning champion they had to win, which they did in the end but just through penalty shot out. So it was not a very good game but the season is long and I probably have many opportunities so see a few better matches. :D

At the moment everybody is making travel plans and the sign-ups for all the ERASMUS (ESN) trips happened during the past 10 days. Certainly nothing is in my budget or at a time where I'm not able to travel anywhere. So i have to arrange something else for me. I'd love to do a few trips as well but since I've seen almost every part of Finland it is not my Nr 1 priority. Of course Stockholm is on the list, as always, together with saying hello to the Joulupukki (Santa Clause) in Rovaniemi again. i haven't been to Porvoo and Tallin by now, so these cities are a must and well for the rest I have to see, visiting friends in Hki, Tre and Niinikoski is very important as well.
In 2 weeks I'm going to Lahti to see the Finnish summer championships of the skijumpers and nordic combined. That will be the first time that i see Lahti without snow. Will be interesting! Hopefully the competition will be also nice and the results according to my preferences. ;)

So much for now. Have a lunch date and need to discuss the last party night with a few people. But I noticed again that parties are more fun if you are not drunk but almost everybody else is. :) But the problem then is that you worry too much about everybody else. My advice of the evening was 'Stay away from the river!' Since at least 2 people drowned there already this year.

So have a nice weekend or as we say it in Turku: Hauskaa viikonloppua! :)

Post

got my first real post today. 2 postcards. woohoo! So merci à Steffi and well my parents. But I so enjoy post so please feel free to send me lots of postcards (or other things) :D If anybody still has not my new address or my Finnish phone number (which I actually use for 5 years now) and wants one or both please email me because i won't post any of this private information here since you never know what crazy stalker is reading this ;)

Ohrwurm

so as long nothing interesting is happening i try to introduce you to some Finnish culture. Since I'm a bit lazy nowadays I start with music, or better with my favorite song at the moment my so called Ohrwurm (earworm). Music is very important to Finns so this fits perfectly to Finnish culture. ;) Next time more about Finnish food because I think i found one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted although probably many people will consider it weird or even disgusting, but more about it tomorrow or on Sunday.

So here is the Song 'Missä Muruseni On?' by Jenni Vartiainen

short update

ok too lazy to write much

sunday: went outdoor swimming. was 14°C outside so what better way to spend the day? Water was warmer but not really warm, so one had to swim to stay warm. Swam 1km. after swimming sauna. :) Think repeat that next sunday.

today:
Got a bike. was to lazy to walk every day 45min to uni and wait for the police bike auction in 2 weeks. Bike was 50%off and has 21 gears. What do i want more? Oh and its purple. Not my color really but at least I'll find it between all the red bikes here easily. And there could be worse colors ;)

And got curtains today. Or better say bought a 4m long cloth for 14e at Eurokangas. I went home and woohoo my package arrived. Finally! Looked for the post office online (it was too far away for my map), went with the bike up and down a hill (stupid me) to the post office (5min!), got the 10kg package and walked with the package on the bike back home (around the hill). Took me just 30min and the package just fell down 2 times. :/
I opened the package at home and what did I find? ... YES CURTAINS!!!! Great! Now I have a nice new curtain also for the 'living room'/'entrance hall' :)

oh and had my first uni class today. at 8am! Will be the only course for the next 6 weeks. Always Wednesdays and Fridays! What a joy!

amazing city race + room pics

I keep it short this time. Amazing city race was, well, amazing. :P
Here a few impressions:




running with Paavo Nurmi, searching for Finnish animals in Turku (aka climbing up the elk), having a chat with Mikael Agricola, going to school (aka Koulu), meeting Lenin and learning the Fibonacci numbers were just a few things we had to do. Afterwards it was of course party time. The details of the night I keep to myself but it is not much fun walking 45min home in the night after many hours of dancing. Autsch!



Room decoration is also almost completed after a way to expensive visit to IKEA. I still need curtains though, and a carpet, and maybe a wastebasket.



But I think it already looks nice and after I put some pics and posters on the wall it feels like home now. (And yes, I know it is a little too much with the pics but I just couldn't decide!!)

Moving

So finally today was the day I moved from the hostel to my own room in a shared apartment in Räntämäki in the west of Turku. A very nice location, close to the river and green almost everywhere around the houses. I'll check the surrounding area out for bike and jogging trails during the next week. :)

So the whole moving was a little stressy, which isn't something I like but well everything worked out in the end. I had to check out at 10 in the hostel and luckily managed to squeeze all my stuff into a locker. Seriously there was no space left in there. At 12 my tutor group meet for lunch and then Alonso and Vicky decided to come to the hostel as well and to help me with my luggage. I think they just wanted a ride home because it started to rain. :P So we all went into the car, it was already 10 past 1 and Alonso said the housing office from where I should get my key was closing at 2. So I got a little nervous. l didn't want to spend another night somewhere on a couch or in a hostel. And then, as always when you have no time, all the traffic lights where red and there was road construction going on. Well we made it it the hostel and because we where 4 it look less then 5min to empty out the locker. And since my tutor Jessica has a quite big Audi everything fitted in the easily. The drive to the housing office was again filled with red lights. We still made it to the office at 13:40 and guess what? It was open till 15:45!!!! Well after waiting for 15min I got my key.

And now I'm in my room. I unpacked everything, put some posters on the wall, noticed that my pillow is missing (cross your fingers that it is still in Jessica's car if not I will shed many tears since I love my muumin-pillow very much) and started a long list of things I need to get at the IKEA store this weekend. So the room is bigger than last time but of course you cannot compare it to my Magdeburg rooms which where at least double the size I have now, maybe evening bigger. Anyway it is enough if you don't have any furniture.

I also meet my flatmates. A Greek girl called Eva who will become a dentist. And an Indian girl who is a Master degree student here for Computer Science. But I already forgot her name although Eva told me twice but seriously with names you have to write them down then I'll never forget. Well looks like my flatmates are really nice and we will have a good time.

But now it's time to sleep, which is very weird because usually I'm not tired before 2am but since I'm here I became so boring and go to bed almost every evening before 11. Looks like I'm really the gradma of the exchange students this year.
But tomorrow we have city race and after that 2 parties again. Seriously after that I'll be so sick of parties!

(I'll add some pics tomorrow)

mobile phones are awesome

Monday, 30th August 2010, evening

Can you believe there are still people in their 20ies who don't have a cell phone? The French Canadian guy I mentioned earlier is one of them. Because I'm a very nice person I borrowed him my second phone for the semester. And today he really made my day. He couldn't stay any longer in the hostel because every bed was booked tonight so he wrote me a message if I would see the Peruvian girl again today who offered him a place to sleep in her apartment in case he wouldn't be able to stay at the hostel any longer. Well luckily she was sitting right next to me since my tutor group had lunch together and I gave her his phone number and wrote him that I would do so. She texted him and 20min later he finally managed to answer. Poor guy typing messages must be very hard if you never had a phone yourself. But then I also got a message: 'Mobile phones are awesome'. LoooooL seriously my whole tutor group was laughing for about 10min and my tutor was so curious to meet the guy who doesn't own a cell phone. :)

Steffi's Travel Oy

Seriously I should open not just a Shop with Finnish products but a travel agency. Everybody is asking me which trips to take and when to go where. LoooL Not just at my university but also now at the hostel. I should register Steffi's Travel Oy or Steffin Matka Oy! And charge for every tip I give.

1st week: parties, people and hostel life

So the first week is almost over. And still there is no rest or calming down. Half of the important stuff is not yet organized, I have no Internet in the hostel and it is freaking cold with just 13°C!!!

But from the start. The Orientation week started on Wednesday and I was meeting lots of new people from Finland and all over the world and toooooooooo many Germans. They are really everywhere. Crazy! Ok some are really nice but seriously I could live without them. And the worst part is there is another Steffi here. :'( Dislike that very much!!!!!!

I got to know my Tutor on Wednesday as well. Her name is Jessica from Österbotten who is also a member of my University club at Åbo Akademi. Jeah SF 4 ever! :P In my tutor group there is also Victoria from Peru and Alonso from Spain and a missing person where we all are not sure if it is a he or she but that person is still missing. Very weird! But well besides that I got to know by now Japanese and Chinese girls, a Canadian guy, a Italian girl and soooooo many more. They said more than 25 nationalities are this year at ÅA and together they are like 140 people!!!! Oh jeah and a guy from Norway! :P Very important for me! ;)
I'm quite happy that we didn't have that introduction of everybody in the beginning. So no standing up and saying ones name in front of more than 150 people. Woohoo!
So we had also a bus tour through the city on Wednesday, could have been the guide myself but well it was Ok. So all in all the Orientation week was more of less a waste of time for me but well didn't expect anything different. The only good thing was to get to know new people.

On Thursday there was the famous first year Med students party or at least I think it is famous. I joined Steffi and her friends for the rally through the city. The different clubs of the Medical faculty introduced themselves to the new first years and had some tasked to do and after that at the party prices were given away. The tasks were sometimes tricky and as an international student group with 4 Finns too it was sometimes hard because most of the time everything was in Finnish. Well in the end we managed 9 out of 12 tasks and won even 2 tasks and got chocolate and Koskenkorva Bränvin. :) So a very good result. Winning is the best. :P The party itself was completely crazy. You couldn't hear a word because everybody was talking. So much for: Finns don't talk. ;) And everywhere naked guys were running around with just towels around their hips because there was also a sauna in the med students club. :) Crazy but fun at the same time. Oh yeah and one of the funniest conversations of the evening was with a Finnish guy. He asked in Finnish if i was from Finland and I answered 'En' which means 'I'm not' in Finnish (jeah really difficult to remember ;)) and then he was like 'You are from Finland, right?', 'No you are joking with me you must be from Finland' and said some other stuff in Finnish I didn't get. Well yeah drunken Finns are funny. :)
Had to be in the hostel, in which I moved on Thursday afternoon, at 2am so I had to leave the med party at 1:30am. On Friday I felt horrible. I think I'm too old for parties like that ;)

And of course on Friday was the next party. Well actually 2 parties after each other. I just went to the first one (Student Union Welcome Pub Evening), which was really enough. We had a Finland quiz there and guess what ... my group won! Surprise surprise. We had also a Japanese girl there who is in Turku since January so there was no chance that we'd loose. :P Well we did some stupid mistakes but well. And in the end we had to share the first price. Chocolate (the good Maitosuklaa from fazer), batches for the overalls, Salmiakki (not kossu!!) and äh condoms. Still didn't understand that but well Finns ... you know ... crazy people!
We aka. our quiz group decided to go for a kebab/pizza/falafel and skip the second party. When we passed the club later there was a queue where at least 50 people were waiting outside! Unbelievable! And it was already past midnight.
Now it's weekend so trying to get some university work done which is a bit tricky if you don't have a Internet connection. Next week I have the whole week off because my classes don't start before the week after. Woohoo!

The hostel is ok but I cannot wait to get into my own flat. Problem is there is still somebody living in there so I can't get the key before the afternoon of 1st September. Which really sucks!!!!!! Because then I have to go at least two times to get all my stuff from the hostel to my flat which is like 10km away from the hostel. But by now I know already people living in Räntämäki so there should be somebody who could help me with my stuff.

So enough for now. I start to freeze in the library already and my stomach is making funny sounds. Hmm maybe I should feed him more than once every 3 days. But I don't have my Finnish bank card by now. That sucks because I got already my scholarship money on the bank account but without my card I cannot use the money for grocery shopping or getting me a bike. But well get the card next Friday then it is shopping time. I still need stuff for my flat, a blanket, pots, a pan and I already saw like 10 cups I really would like to have. ;) Maybe it is good that i have no bank card by now. ;)

I hope everybody is alright. From Wednesday on I have my own room and regular internet connection again so I'm able to answer messages and use ICQ or skype again. :) Just in case somebody has the urgent need to talk to me. :D

*hali*

Kotona Turussa - Hemma i Åbo - Home in Turku

So I'm back. For real!
Just 5 month after my last visit I'm back in my favorite Turku.
And it wasn't raining but the full moon was shining over the airport and as soon as I read Lentoasema Turku/ Åbo I had a smile on my face. No weird feelings anymore just joy. :)
The Finnish bus driver ignored my English, of course, but luckily I have no problem with kaksi ja puoli euroa :D At the market place I was again confused. They changed bus stops during the past years a lot (but at least the construction work is done now) and I didn't remembered all the buses that drive through Hämeenkatu which was where I had to go. So I asked a busdriver. Looks like most of the busdrivers are foreigners now which made it a lot easier. So I got a busnumber from him which I could take and had a nice little chat, too. I just don't get why everybody thinks I have a Finnish boyfriend. As if it was that easy? Anyway I arrived with my tons of luggage at my friend Steffi's place where I will sleep the first 3 nights. It's so good to see a familiar face.

We are planing to go to an international food party tonight from Steffi's exchange program. Let's see what we German girls will make. ;)
Tomorrow Orientation week starts. I'm not as scared as 5 years ago but still I'm not so keen of introducing myself to 130 people in a huge lecture room. I hate speaking in front of people about anything including myself. But I'm curious about my tutor.

So that's it for now.
*puss och kram* ;)

Greetings from Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Monday 23rd August around 5pm

Today I was getting up very early (again) to finish packing and getting the last things done. I didn’t even have time to think that I’m leaving Germany for a while longer than just 2 weeks. My suitcase was, of course, way to heavy again and I had to leave some important stuff behind which I will receive in a package in about 2 weeks, so I have to survive now which just the basics. Well and it is for sure a good excuse to go shopping as soon as I have the scholarship money.

We (my parents drove me) arrived 4 hours to early in Berlin and so we had enough time to eat one last highlight of Germany cuisine: Currywurst. The one in Berlin is the best and I was grateful that my parents didn’t dragged me into McD as they did so many times before when I preferred real food.
Even though I had 22,8 and not the official maximum of 20kg I didn’t have to pay an extra fee for my luggage. As always! The flight to Copenhagen was well interesting. A very small plane with just 4 seats in a row and my hand luggage just made it with a little squeezing into the overhead compartment. But Danish is such a funny language. I understood most of it which surprised me but it really sounds like a mixture of Swedish and Dutch. But I still prefer Norwegian :D

The whole trip is very multicultural, I flew from Germany with a Scandinavian airline, read a Swedish newspaper on the plane, sitting now in Denmark, eating Danish chocolate and reading a Norwegian newspaper. Could have bought the Finnish chocolate as well but I’m not so keen on spending 50% more money for something I can buy from tomorrow onwards in every supermarket. I also skipped the Anton Berg chocolate although I wanted to try that for years now. But 4,20e for a chocolate bar even if it was 150g is definitely not in my budget. So now I wait in Copenhagen for all in all 4hours to contine my flight to Turku. I just hope the weather is better there. In Berlin heaven was heavily crying because I left and Copenhagen is crying too because I stay for just a few hours. Let’s hope Turku is not crying because I’m coming back ;) Although it would be tears of joy I’m sure.

Just got a message from my best Finnish friend who is coming back to Finland in September from her internship in Spain. So really good news because finally we are not living 2000km away from each other anymore. Woohoo! And maybe she can take this weird feeling away that I’m doing a very big mistake again which I had the last 2 days.. Although at the moment I just feel confused neither happy nor sad just confused. Hopefully this feeling will become a positive one as soon as I hear some Finnish people talking around me. :) At least the Iittala shop here at the airport made me smile already.

Oh and I started a new tradition. Since I got a new small suitcase I decided to collect stickers on it from places I’ve been too . I always wanted to do that and now I have the perfect suitcase for it. :) Berlin was the first I put on it but stupid Copenhagen airport doesn’t seams to have any stickers of Denmark nor Copenhagen just 'Danish' wooden shoes ;) and Danish castle guards. The souvenir shop looks like a mixture of London and Amsterdam :D Just in white and red. So no sticker from here, have to return next year and get it in the city center. :)

Last weekend in Germany

Just a couple of hours are left for me till I‘m off to Finland. After repacking my big suitcase for 90 minutes (opening and closing that thing 10 times incl. sitting on the suitcase to close it the first 5 times!!!) I give up and hope that my teary eyes will be enough to prevent me from paying for 3kg of overweight. Everybody should cross their fingers. Now hand luggage it also almost packed besides laptop and toothbrush :) So I’m ready to go.

But before I arrived today at my parents place I had the best weekend in a very long time.

Usually I don’t leave the house on weekends and just relax but this time I had to finish packing the last things in my flat, cleaning up, returning the last 30 books to the library (went there 3 times in the past 3 days to return the 100 books I probably had for the past 2 years), preparing some food for my going away party and just preparing myself to say goodbye to some of the best friends I’ve ever had. So I was pretty busy which meant not more than 3 hours of sleep during the past 4 days. But it was really worth it.

My ‘Going Away Party’ (which I had together with my friend Janine who is leaving Magdeburg next week as well) was really awesome. Great food, lots of nice people and interesting small talk topics. But one should never put 4 political science students in a room together, they will end up talking politics if you want it or not. :D Very funny. But I think everybody else felt immediately asleep then ;) And I got such cute going away presents and am still proud that I didn’t cried when people were leaving and it was time to say goodbye. I saved those tears for the time when everybody was gone. :’( The party ended around 2am (way too early ;)) with a huge laugh. But don’t even try to find out what the topic was. What happens in Janine’s and Kathrin’s living room stays there ;)

On Sunday morning I left Magdeburg for good, and as usual forgot half of my stuff there (my version of a going away present: leaving a dirty salad bowl behind including salad servers that didn’t even belong to me ;)) and spent the rest of the morning in Halberstadt visiting my favorite LDS ward. The afternoon I was in Veckenstedt with Jessi and her family, great food, 3 American ‘girls’, good games (I’m so kicking ass in Activity – thanks Janine! :)) and lots of (mini)airplanes and (mini)harvesters. Little boys can be sooooo cute. And I think I haven’t heard my name that often in my whole life. ‘Steffi look here …, Steffi do this …, Steffi see that… , Steffi come and watch…’ all afternoon long. :) Gosh I’m going to miss that because at one point it was again time to say goodbye. Again very emotional and sweet since I even got a kiss – how long I waited for that ;) – from 3 year old Fabi. ;) Well it’s a start and one has to be grateful for the little things. :P

So that was my weekend. I enjoyed every bit and at a few points I probably would have said Ok I stay if somebody would have begged me to. I used to like going away but after 4 years it is so hard to say goodbye. :’( So thanks to everybody I saw this weekend and also to those I didn’t manage to meet again before I left. Thanks for the past 4 years. I’m glad that I meet you all and that you enriched my life, overlooked most of my strange habits, weird comments, active arguments or dress-faux-pas’ (although I’m still convince that I didn’t have any ;)).

I love you all more than you can imagine and going to miss you like crazy. But don’t you think we are done yet. It is pretty hard to get rid of me, which is more a promise than a thread. :P

And as I said already to most of you, if you are in Finland, Sweden, Norway or Estonia, just give me a call and we meet up.

So that’s it for now. Maybe 3 hours of sleep and then off to Berlin, Copenhagen and then home sweet home Turku where again a Steffi is waiting for me. :)

I’ll promise to keep on posting here with or without a steady home which I won’t have for another 10 days. But well being homeless shouldn’t be that bad, I hope.

*hug* and good night or as ‘we’ say in Finland ‘Hyvää yötä!’

Und in Kurzform auf Deutsch:
Hatte ein sehr tolles Wochenende, will nicht mehr weggehen, aber Koffer sind nach langem Kampf gepackt und um 15:45 geht mein Flieger gen Norden. Danke an alle in MD und ganz LSA bzw auch Deutschland und der Welt ;) für tolle 4 Jahre. Wir sehen uns wieder, egal ob in Deutschland oder woanders in der Welt. Versprochen!

1 month to go

'Dear STEFANIE XXX. You have submitted a TYS KAMPUS housing application. We have reserved an apartment for you at 20380 TURKU / RITZINKUJA XXX.'

I have a room in Turku! Woohoo! After waiting for almost 2 month, I know now for sure that I don‘t have to sleep under a bridge from September onwards. And I got the room in my favorite residential area which is really great. So this was the last thing in preparation before I leave Germany in exactly 4 weeks.
I also sold some of my furniture already and will move the rest back to my parents in 3 weeks.

Till then my daily routine is: getting up, writing essays, eating, writing essays, sleeping.
So much fun! ;)

52 days left

So with just 52 days left till I go to Finland I finally booked my flight today. Like 5 years ago I will fly directly to Turku which will make it a little easier for my sleeping arrangements. :) Well and I wasn't so keen on sleeping again at a train station. Did that too often in the past 3 years. ;) Let's just hope my luggage won't get lost in Copenhagen where i have to change planes.

By now the whole planning and organizing is going well. I enrolled at Åbo Akademi, terminated my rental agreement, applied for a flat in Turku (still waiting for an offer), booked the flight now and will start organizing my 'good bye party' tonight. :D

Yesterday was my last day at university so I'm now just writing essays all day long. Well in between the World Cup matches at least. ;) But if Brazil goes home today I'll have again a lot of time for my essays. :/

The last week at uni was sort of weird. Saying goodbye to teachers and fellow students with whom I had so many good courses and memories in general. But it was really nice to see all the excitements and joy after I told everybody about my scholarship. It feels good to know that so many people are happy for me. :) I'll hope I meet as many nice people in Turku again as i meet here in Magdeburg.

Even Alexander Rybak knows what is good ;)

just found this

GRATULERAR!

'Jag har glädjen att meddela dig att du har beviljats ett stipendium på x Euro ur 'Otto och Johanna Beltzners fond' för utbytesstudier [...] vid Åbo Akademi under läsåret 2010-2011.'
In English: I'm going back 'home' to Turku in August and even get money for it. :) Well or something like that.

After I 'ran' into a little note on this scholarship for German students by 'my' Åbo Akademi, 2 days of crazy application writing in Swedish (good that I haven't done anything in that language for about 3 years) and some great friends helping me with language corrections and running after signatures, while I enjoyed my birthday and the ESC2010 in Oslo, I got a big envelope from ÅA on June 10th. June 10th!!!! 10 days after the application deadline! Why can't Germans be so fast with answers? Anyway, big envelopes are usually a symbol of getting into a University (I think I saw to much US TV since in Germany you never get a big envelope if you get into a school!).

So I got the scholarship, still don't know how! Because my Swedish is so bad and I've been to ÅA once before but well I won't complain but am thankful for the opportunity to go back to my beloved Finland and hopefully finish my thesis there, since that is the main reason why I am going. So no partying, no traveling, no wasting time and money, just studying!
Hahaha ok you don't actually believe that right? Of course one needs a little party once in a while, a few travels and getting to know people, having fun and very important: improving my Swedish and Finnish.

I have to be in Turku at the latest on August 24th, so I just have 10 weeks to organize everything: confirming my place at Åbo Akademi, terminating my rental agreement in Magdeburg, booking a flight to Finland, getting a room in Turku, writing a lot of essays so that I can focus on my thesis in Finland, emptying my room and hopefully selling a few things, packing bags and potential postal packages, securing my finances, etc.
You see I will be very busy during the next weeks ... but it will be worth it.
And I'm good in planing so I don't expect any stress, especially since I hate stress ;)

Well, and why am I writing all that in a blog although I said I will never write a blog?
Last time I went to Finland I started with long mails telling what I did, uploading pics and getting almost no response and after awhile I was too busy ... or lazy ;) to write anymore. So I want to do it differently this time. I won't bore anybody with long mails but everybody who wants can read my blog and look at the pics I uploaded whenever they want. I try to write short entries from time to time so everybody knows where I am and what I'm doing. Comments on my post are, of course, very welcome, as well as ordinary e-mails or even real mail when I get my new address in Turku.

So I hope you enjoy reading this blog. :)
(Let's just hope it survives longer than my 'newsletter' in 2005.)

*hali* or *kram* (as we say in Finland ;))