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. :)