better late then never

Here a little flashback on my trip to Finland in March. I know it is already the end of May but i was busy and well better late than never :D

So from March 1st until March 8th I was in Finland, in Lahti, Turku and Helsinki to be precise. And I am so glad that I have so amazing friends there. I never had to pay for any accommodation just for trains and buses which were super expensive as always. But well it's Finland after all.

In Lahti, usual, I went to the Lahti Ski Games. Same procedure as every year you might say, just that this time I didn't have so many friends around. But well with 2 Katrins in the city I still had a fun time including a night out with dancing and watching ex-skijumpers, coaches and Nordic combined athletes getting drunk and hitting on ugly old women. Well if they need it! :D
Oh jeap and then there was 'some' wind again. looks like every 3 years or so Lahti weather just sucks. So half of my comps were canceled and this year i didn't had a press accreditation so no place to sit and warm up. Really need to work there next year to make it fun again. :)
But to spice things up I almost killed myself. Totally by accident of course! Stupid Steffi doesn't listen when people tell her: Don't walk over the frozen lake. Steffi just sees ice fishers on there and thinks: If they can do it, I can do it! I ended up ankle deep in water and knee deep in snow, made it to the shore, totally exhausted and scared as h*ll. After almost crashing my car a couple of years ago, I think this was the second near death experience in my life. I hope the last one. At least i won't go on a frozen lake ever again!

Oh and in Lahti I finally had the chance to watch an ice hockey match again (Ok not true I watched a regional league match in February in Leipzig but well that doesn't really count). It was a pretty cool game. The Pelicans from Lahti won, who later came in 2nd in the Finnish championship. Nothing compared to a match Turku but  we have the second biggest arena in the country so of course the ice hockey stadium in Lahti looked kind of cute to me. :D

And this year I got another cool souvenir from Lahti. During the last 2 years I started (thanks to my friend Katrin) collecting bibs (start numbers) from different Nordic Combined athletes. and this year I got one from my favorite ski jumper. Too bad that he fel in exactly the bib from the team competition that i got but he was Ok in the end and kind enough to sign the bib. Now i will have to frame it together with my Mikko bib from last year and then i will have some cool wall decoration in my new room.

All in all I was from Thursday till Sunday morning in Lahti. And if i say morning i mean my bus to Turku left at 4am! So after dancing half of teh night I spend the rest sleeping in the bus, or well trying.

I arrived around 7am in Turku, went straight to McDonalds, the only one in Turku and the only place open that early on a Sunday. I had 2 cocoas (I LOVE OBOY!) and killed 2 hours before surprising my friends. Oh my goodness. Who would have thought people could be so happy to see me. Surprise visits are just the best. I was for 2 more days in Turku and went on Tuesday morning to Helsinki to visit other friends. :D Seriously it is so awesome to see people again who you are so close to but haven't seen in 6 or 9 months! 
I then did some sightseeing with my friend Laura and just relaxed the last days in Helsinki.


I had to fly back early in Thursday morning. early means i had to be at the bus stop around 5AM. And of course the troubles started already there. i didn't have enough money for the bus and was almost kicked out of it again. But a nice man gave me the 15c that were missing. Can you believe it that somebody makes such a fuss about 15c. Ok in Germany nobody would have borrowed me that money and i would have been kicked out of the bus for sure but in Finland it was a surprise for me. The whole bus was full and nobody besides the driver would have checked if i paid or not and in Turku the bus driver would have taken me in for free but well Helsinki people are always different. So and then the bus driver almost drove the wrong way and we were so very late that i nearly missed my flight. So much stress so early in the morning. But also no surprise here, always when I travel everything just goes wrong. But I arrived eventually in Berlin were I spend the rest of the day.

Unfortunately the weather was really bad so i didn't really do anything besides waiting to meet another friend for diner. Around 9pm I finally caught my train back to Leipzig. Totally exhausted and somehow i caught some stomach flew on the way which made my next working day a very short one.

So much for my trip to Finland and Berlin. Don't know when I'll be back home in Suomi but everybody, especially the people in Turku told me to move back. Well if it was that easy. But I think if I ever go back for longer I might not leave again. third try is the charm, isn't it?

Next trip: Copenhagen in July. I hope! :D



 

Sun and fun in Sverige and Suomi

So I'm on the road for more than a week now and well it's been fun. I stopped counting on how many surfaces i slept. I just have to say Airports are not my favorite but at least it is not as cold as the train station in Bamberg in the end of December :D

I was in Sweden from Monday night till Saturday evening. I met a lot of great people, learned a lot and am sure that I have enough power now to survive at my parents place for a while.

On Sunday morning I arrived in Finland and well i was supported to go back to Germany on Tuesday but due to great people here I got a bed (the first real bed i slept in a week!) for 2 more nights so I had more time to meet people, buy some last minute things and just enjoy the wonderful weather. So it is Wednesday and tonight I'm going to Vantaa (next to Helsinki) to spend my last night in Finland at a friends place.
Tomorrow at 6pm my ferry to Rostock is leaving. I will be there on Friday evening, will try to find a place to sleep at the train station because thanks to the Hanse Sail you can't find a bed in the city anymore. But well at least I will get some of the atmosphere my parents experience a few times in the past.

So and i might get a job next week so everybody cross your fingers that my future-boss won't kill me when i tell him that i have to do an internship still and won't be able to work in September or October. :)

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.

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.

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. ;)

Hair and sledging

So after several complains it's time for an update (or two or three? ;)). But how to summarize 2 month without writing a novel. Well I try to be short. In general not that much happened. I did a lot for my uni courses and tried not to die during those weeks with -25°C. ;)

So in February after my visit to Rauma not much happened. Besides that I went to a Finnish interpretation of the musical Hair. I love this musical and have seen different productions already in Germany so I thought it wouldn't be that difficult. I know almost every song by heart in English and German so why not try it in Finnish. Well it wasn't such a smart idea I can tell you. First of all the musical, as part of this whole Turku 2011- Capital of Culture year, was performed in the Logomo building which is an old factory building. And well there is no heating. So I froze my butt of while trying to figure out what the story is about. Seriously I didn't get anything. The three main characters were represented by 3 groups of people. And well the whole musical was played by middle aged people, at least that's what it should have been. But seriously who wants to see mid 40s till mid 60s women and men dancing like in trance and on drugs in Hippie clothes. I had nightmares for days! But the songs were nice in Finnish. ;)

Listen yourself to recordings from the 70s.
Hiukset
Täynnä elämää
Niin paljon meitä petettiin + Kuljen valoon aurinkoon

March was a bit more exciting. First of all there was Laskiainen in the beginning of March. So what is that? Well in other parts of the world you call it carnival. But it's not really like in other countries with dressing up and so on. Finns have their own tradition and Finnish students as well. So first of all you eat special kinds of pulla during that time. They are filled with marmalade and cream. I, of course, bought some of these very expensive Laskiaispulla. Well not enough cream and my pulla are definitely better. ;)


A student tradition on Shrove Tuesday is going sledging. And so the students from Turku gathered at Vartiovuori, a little hill area with a big park south of the city center, to slide down a hill on crazy self-made sledges. Seriously those guys are crazy. We saw half naked beach volleyball players, a Finnish train, the burning Mylly-bridge (which collapsed in 2010 because of the very strong winter), a Kalevala scenery and 2 times the game 'Angry birds'. It was very funny to watch. But I couldn't stay the whole competition since my sister was visiting me and well she got sick on her very first day and that's why she was not in the mood of spending 4 hours outdoors. Anyway enjoy the pictures.

 And the winner was the Computer Science student club called DaTe with their interpretation of Angry Birds.

OK need to get my beauty sleep now since my cousin's wedding is tomorrow so it will be very long day since my parents want to party the whole night, at least that's what they told me and I'm the designated driver. ;) The next update hopefully follows then on Friday. I promise!

Turku2011 opening ceremony

So the opening ceremony of the 2011 European Capital of Culture in Turku was äh well nice if you watched it on TV or were one of the invited guests or journalist because as an ordinary citizen of Turku, you had practically no chance of seeing a thing. It took me more than an hour to get to the harbor, was almost frozen to death because of the -16°C outside and was practically then running with 50.000 other people to get a good spot to watch. Well that was impossible I saw some lights in the back and heard a little bit music far away and that was it. Oh and there was some fireworks but also nothing that special. So a complete waste of time and energy. And afterwards it took me two hours to warm up completely after I got home. :( Let’s hope that the rest of the year is better organized.

Back on track

Moro!

Hmm been absent for a while or better say just too busy with other stuff and now i noticed that somehow the files where i from time to time wrote something down to post it here later is somehow gone or at least i cannot find it anymore on my laptop. So there won't be much on what happened here in Suomi during the last weeks since i cannot really remember it anyway. But if I forgot something important, then just remind me and i will write a little bit about it.

Just a short summary of December.
Well I was here, no internship in Germany because I am stupid. That is all i am going to say about it. And please I don't need any questions about uni or my future right now since i feel already bad enough about it and I don't need more pressure. Thanks.

So December. It was äh COLD! FREAKING COLD! Even for Finland. We had snow, very much snow which is very unusually for December at the coast here. And 3 weeks long under – 15°C is also very unusual. So we were all freezing and well not spending much time outside. But it is still one of the best month to spend in Finland.
Here December is call Joulukuu. Joulu means Christmas :D So it's the Christmas month. And Turku is the official Christmas city in this country.

So Joulukuu and in general the Christmas season starts with the openings of the Christmas markets all over the country. In Turku it opened at the end of November, at the first Advent weekend. The Christmas market here was very small but very nice and traditional, no drunken people, no weird smell of liver or other disgusting things like in Germany :) And in Turku Christmas market is just open on the Advent weekends. I was at the opening, - 20°C and of course I wasn't properly dressed. I thought my toes would freeze off.

At the same weekend was the traditional Åbo Akademi Christmas concert of the two choirs and the university orchestra. It was as 5 years ago the perfect start to the Christmas season. This beautiful Christmas music filling every corner of the cathedral. Very special I can tell you.

Anyway the next big thing was December 6th. And no it is not St. Nicolas day, ok it is but that is not important. The 6th of December is Finnish Independence Day. That day is very special. It is not celebrated as a big party like in countries as the USA or Norway but it is very quiet and a day to remember all people who fought and lost their lives for the independence of this country. The student unions of all the universities organized every year a torch procession from the student union buildings to the main cemetery. As 5 years ago I was of course a part of that procession. This year I even got my own torch. It felt pretty amazing being part of that big group of students that walked to the city in remembrance of the past. Since the procession was around 6 you could see in many windows two blue/white candles flickering. That is part of the independence day tradition. As well as watching the presidents ball in the evening on tv. I missed parts of that but well I have seen it the past 3 years so besides the different dresses it is not that much different every year.

Then I went one evening with Carolin to the so called 'Best Finnish Christmas Song' singing in one of the local churches. It is somehow tradition that in December people gather in the Churches to sing together. Sounds weird and well it was little bit weird and great at the same time. We went to Mikaelinkirkko which is a huge Gothic church, very nice and for me it was the first time that I've been to that church and well it was impressive. So was the singing. I love Finnish Christmas songs and charing that with a few hundred other people was so great. :) Definitely a great tradition.

So next on the agenda was Lucia Dagen. A Swedish tradition which comes from the days of Catholicism in the North. Well as in Sweden also in Finland there are Lucia celebrations and a Finnish Lucia is elected who is doing the whole traditional events in Helsinki. Since Turku has a big Swedish community we had also our own Lucia celebrations in the Cathedral with our own Lucia. I was a little bit late so I didn't got to see much but it was also more about here the songs and speeches. Luckily it was in Swedish so I at least understood more or less everything even if I didn't see it all.

Before Christmas it was time to say goodbye to a whole bunch of people. And that wasn't nice at all. I miss my flatmate Eva, my German friend Carolin, the crazy Peruvian girl Vicky, weirdo Adam and Hitomi my Japanese cherry blossom. :( Well life goes on, somehow although more or less all my friends are gone now so I have to make new friends.

For Christmas as I mentioned in an earlier post I was invited to a family Christmas diner with delicious food, singing, more food, Christmas story reading, caroling and well food. :D I think I gained around 3 kilograms during the holidays. If you want to know more about Finnish Christmas food just read this http://www.dlc.fi/~marianna/gourmet/season1b.htm and that is more or less everything I ate on Christmas.

The Wednesday after Christmas my friends Katrin and Tellu visited Turku at the same day and it was so nice to see some good friends again. From time to time it is just nice to see and hug some people who know you longer than 4 month and understand you better than many other people.

New Years Eve was a little bit quieter than Christmas. I was alone in my flat with my DVD collection which my mom finally send to me and since there were people blowing their money in the air I had my own private fireworks and didn't even need to leave the cosiness of my apartment. :)

So last Monday the new semester started here and that means new exchange students. Well haven't met many of them but well. Got also a new flatmate, from China, but she is already here since August which is nice that I don't have to tell so many thing for the dozens time. Seriously I am so tired of answering questions like: 'How long are you in Finland?', 'What do you study?', 'Why did you came to Finland?' .... bla bla bla. I know that it is necessary if you meet new people here but seriously I explained everything already a thousand times and at one point it is just annoying.

So that was it for the moment. Should get a little bit sleep before the Combined race and grand opening of the Culture capital year tomorrow. :)

Oh yeah I forgot: Turku is next to Tallin the culture capital of Europe so if you have the chance you should visit this amazing city this year. There is a lot going on.

Will tell more about opening ceremony during the next days. Hopefully before I leave to France.
Jeap I am going to France next Wednesday. The first time that I leave this country since August! Woohoo!!

Nähdään! (See you!)


PS: Happy New Year to you all! :P

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.

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

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!!!!!

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

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 ;)

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)

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*