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 ;)