never ending nightmare

So today was the day to leave Finland. Well as always when i travel something goes wrong but today Murphy had seriously something against me. Really everything went wrong. Ok, everthing went wrong after i arrived at the airport, before that everything went just fine.

I was repacking the whole night and cleaning. and well i just had too much stuff. With 2 sleeping bags, curtains, a pillow, clothes, shoes and lots of uni papers and books I had to send some stuff to my parents. I ended up sending 2 packages with around 10kg. At 7am I was the first one at the post office and well I should have used a better scale. Thanks to 100g too much in one package (while 300g less than 10kg in the other) I had to pay 13€ more than I expected. Well that sucked but I couldn't change it. By 7:45am the whole posti-mission was done and i was already waiting at the supermarket to do some last minute chocolate shopping and to buy a bigger bag for my handluggage since my little Halti-backpack just wouldn't do it. At that time it was by the way already 19°C!! Totally crazy! So i got the bag. Really awesome in purple and super big for just about 17€! a great deal for a Finnish brand like Icepeak. So I repacked my handluggage, went then to the uni library, returned all my books and all the uni papers. I was back home by 10:30, packing the last things, eating a bit and was ready to go to the airport. Everything went acording to plan. Well this should have made me suspicious because my travel days are never acording to plan. :/

So I went to the airport. My suitcase was a bit too heavy and my handluggage, too, but i trusted my previous luck with the check-in people. Well not this time! I had to pay for an extra bag and therefore had to check in my handluggage. Great! So i was running around the whole time with my laptop in my arms since i didn't have a bigger bag to use and couldn't leave it in the bag (but the cables stayed in the purple handluggage bag - STUPID!) and a small handbag with my wallet, passport and a bottle of water. That's it. Since we had around 30°C in Finland I decided to put my jacket also into the handluggage bag (big mistake!) and off all it went into the big plane stomach.

So off we went from the great summer weather in Turku to the stopover in Copenhagen. I had about 30min to get to my next plane and i was prepared to run again over the whole airport but we were 15min early so things were working in my favor, i thought. But during the landing phase i got a very terrible sort of migraine attack or something like that in my left forehead. I though a blodvessel is going to burst. Seriously it was bad! I still feel the pain now even though the really strong pain just lasted for 20min. Anyway so i had these bad pains and of course my emergency painkillers were in the purple bag. Awesome!

Luckily I didn't had to run across the whole airport like in April. Wasn't able to do it anyway this time. But the departure gate in Copenhagen was just 100m way from the arrival gate. Finally something positive! I even had time to refill my water bottle. So the flight was ok. I didn't like it when the captain said there is rain and 15°C in Berlin but I had my fleece jacket in my purple bag so i was happy that I packed it and did not send it by post.

So we arrived in Berlin, it rained, it was cold, i wanted my jacket.

Well i didn't get it.

My luggage, both bags and the bags of all the other people who flew from Finland to Copenhagen and then to Berlin didn't get their luggage because the stupid airport people couldn't move a few suitcases in 30min about 500m to the next plane! I couldn't believe it and still can't. I just wanted to cry. Seriously everything is in these bags! Most of the papers for my final thesis, my Journal, my external harddrive, my USB stick with the uni essay i still have to finish but also with all my work for the thesis, my favorite clothes, some presents from friends and some chocolate of course. Oh jeah and my jackets and painkillers!
So the lost and found people were already waiting for us. 'Well, jeah your luggage should come tonight with the plane at 8am.' - 'But I can't wait so long, I need to go another 300km by train today.' - 'Well than we'll send it by post. You should get it by Saturday.' WTF?! So there I was, freezing without my jacket, still in pain, hungry and just really upset, holding unto my laptop. Seriously it is really heavy if you have to carry it around in your arms all day long! Well you can imagine how bad I felt. And even crying my heart out to my Mom on the phone didn't help much. The only good thing was i didn't had to carry all that heavy luggage through Berlin but seriously i would have prefered that because it had warmed me up and would not be sick tomorrow and without anything to do or wear.

I got then some bad food at the train station after i hadn't eaten all day. Should have bought the dognuts instead of the 'fish'n'chips'. Well, next time. And then i had this super 3 1/2 hour train ride ahead of me with 2 changes on the way. German trains have air conditiioning, which never works when it is hot outside but with 13°C it works of course! It was horrible! I got picked up by my Dad on an earlier trainstop so i didn't need to chance twice. Well didn't matter since I didn't have any luggage after all.
My dad laughed at me! Super! Exactly what I needed while my headache was still killing me. And my Mom was shocked when she saw that i just wore a t-shirt. What in 'We have 30°C in Finland' did she not understand when i told her on the phone that my jacket is in the luggage too. Well here i am now hoping that my stuff will arrive on Saturday. Need to get so much work done but why was i so stuipid putting my usb-stick in the purple bag? well then I just write the complain letter to the airline tomorrow!

So much for now, the pain in my head is almost gone, thanks to my mom's painklllers but the fever is coming. Thanks air conditioned trains! Let's hope the world looks a bit better tomorrow.

Aku Ankka Turussa

So my last few hours in Finland are quite stressful but despite my lack of time a spend an hour to get the new special Aku Ankka comic, with the signatures of the authors and cartoonist. Which is so cool. Oh Aku Ankka is Donald Duck by the way. He's stories are probably the most read books in this country. Old and young love them. Totally weird but well so are Finns. So in this special edition you have a story about Donald Duck, his greedy Uncle and the 3 nephews are on a treasure hunt trough several Hanse cities, including Turku were the story ends. And also very cool is that you get the comic in 3 languages in one book, so Finnish, Swedish and English. Pretty cool I'd say. Well all that specialness costs a lot of money. i won't say how much but you can buy several comics for that money. anyway it is super special and it has my name on the cover and there are just a limited number of copies, so definite worth waiting 60min to get the signatures.

Time to pack!

So in 35 hours I'm leaving Finland. Such a weird feeling. During the last couple of days I had to say goodbye to so many people. Seriously I just wanted to cry way too often but well at least I know I made some friends I can truly rely on for the rest of my life. :)



And well, I found something a while ago and still can't believe that somebody here is doing that: Finnish Reggae! Seriously! And the most surprising thing: it is actually good! Here is my favorite song of Jukka Poika Kylmästä Lämpimään which is so perfect for the summer. :)

Enjoy, while I try to fit my last 9 month into a suitcase. Very tricky i can tell you!

Nähdään!

Hyvää Juhannusta!

So it was Juhannus last Saturday. Or as the Swedes would say: Midsommar. Which might be more familiar to all the IKEA shoppers out there. In Denmark and Norway it's called St. Hans. So well it's all the same in the end.

And it's the same tradition i would say in most of these countries. You light bonfires on the lakes, go to dances (mostly the older generations), spend time with family and friends at your summer cottage. Have lots of bbqed food and even more to drink, go to sauna (at least here in FIN) and just have a good free day.

Juhannus starts already Friday evening like all mayor holidays here so the shops were closed by Friday afternoon and the city almost completely empty by Friday evening. It is like the whole country is outside in the countryside and the cities are practically dead!

Speaking of dead, Juhannus is also a day were a lot of people die here, either because they drown since they are so drunk, burn because the are drunk while dealing with the Juhannus fires or just have other accidents because of alcohol abuse. Although this year the number of people who died on Juhannus was pretty low with 'just' 9 people. Last year there were 23!

That's why I'm happy that me and my friends don't drink so we had nothing to worry about. I was invited to go on Saturday afternoon which a bunch of friends to the mökki (cottage) of a befriended family. We had a wonderful time with playing games, eating good food and just enjoying the good company. Unfortunately the mosquitoes enjoyed my company as well. During the 4 hours we were outside I was bitten by around 40 mosquito and ants. I counted the bites afterwards! My legs really look like a crumb cake! So bad. But besides that It was a lot of fun.

Parental visit in May

So in May my parents and my sis were here in Finland for a week. After 5 days I managed to 'escape'. :D Well or something like that. But the time together wasn't as bad as i expected. It was nice not to be the 'evil' daughter for a change. ;) My sister hasn't been the nicest person since I moved out almost 7 years ago but since she moved out a month ago, she thinks she knows everything better. Yeah, sure!

Anyway, we went to Fiskars, a little village which is famous for it's knives and scissors. Then we haded to Hämeenlinna and Lahti on the second day. Spend a relaxing Sunday at the cottage and tried to find some weird submarine place somewhere at the southern coast on a very rainy Monday. We got lost of course and ended at a military base. Well that is so typical my parents no car atlas, no real travel guide just some vague description and then they think I should know everything. Jeah, because I drove with a car on every little street in Finland. Sure! Anyway, my sort of last full day with my family was spend in Porvoo, a gorgeous little town 40km east of Helsinki. On my b-day we went back to Turku, ate in the Viking restaurant Harald (but didn't get the funny Viking hats as friends of mine did a couple of days before us). Afterwards we had a little walk on beautiful Ruissalo, the island located right in front of the harbor of Turku. Then I got rid of my parents for 1 1/2 days until Friday, when they came after my last exam, to pick up most of my stuff to drive back to Germany. Since then I have white walls again, been sleeping in a sleeping bag and have practically no clothes to wear (not that it was much different before :P). So now I'm sort of counting the days till June 30th, when I go back to Germany.




And after that? Seriously I don't know, so please everybody stop asking me!


Enjoy the pics from my travels in May.

Summer is here - jeah!!!

I hope you got the Sarcasm here.

It's unbelievable but we have around 30°C for almost a week now and I truly hate it. And if I here another person asking me 'Great weather, isn't it?' I probably going to lose it.

I just hate the heat. You are sweating all day long and when you are going everywhere by bike it is even worse. I wish I has a pool in which I could just lie all day long. But well I am definitely considering building my future summer cottage not in Finland but on Greenland or Iceland. ;)

Ok so much for now. Will try to post some pics and some stories about my parents stay here during the next days.
OH and I'm coming back to Germany on June 30th. I think. ;)