Leipzig part 2

So I am behind on a few stories here and since I might be without Internet for a while, since we are switching contracts, I should better finish some posts here.

So I am  in Leipzig for almost 5 month now. Totally crazy! So many things happened. I finished my internship, moved again, got a job and still didn't manage to get much done for uni which totally sucks but I am on to it.

For the internship part. Well it was pretty cool. i learned many things, met many cool people and could really imagine working for the foreign services in the future. The only bad thing came afterwards. 2 months are gone and i still haven't gotten my letter of recommendation. Obviously the people at the consulate think we just worked there for the fun of it. Will write another email tonight and hope that this whole thing is behind me very soon. Weird is also that I didn't learned much about the US during my internship. Maybe because I new already so much but it is strange anyway. But I learned tons about Germany and the region were I am from (Saxony-Anhalt) and now living (Saxony) which might be good fro the future. And I learned that just because people work for a government doesn't mean that they are necessarily smarter than an ordinary student. And it is obviously much harder to work for the German foreign services than for the US state secretary. ;)

As I mentioned , I moved again. After sleeping at a friends place for a week and staying at my parents place for another couple of days I was very fortunate to find and apartment with 2 lovely flat mates.  the two girls and i get along well and I think we'll have a good time together. After sleeping on an air mattress for 3 weeks I finally have furniture. More about the decoration of my room in another post, very soon. :D


Luckily in the same week that I found my new flat I also found a job. I am working now part time at Subway, the sandwich store. I never thought i would stay there more than a couple of month but who knows. The salary is super bad but the people are very nice and I get free food for every shift I do. So i am very lazy in cooking lately but at least i am eating healthier. And I worked over 50% more than I should this months. Not that I will get that extra money right away (stupid German tax system) but at least i can plan my vacation to Copenhagen for July now without worrying that i won't have enough hours in July.

So much for now!

Leipzig

On Wednesday the 5th, after spending some nice hours in Magdeburg (thanks to Tim and Andy for taking some time to meet me for lunch), I moved to Leipzig to start my internship. Well, moving is maybe not the right term. Since I still don’t have an apartment. I am staying at the moment in a youth hostel until I find a flat. Shouldn’t take so long, I hope. I looked at a room today in which I could move in next week. I will look at some other place tomorrow and decide but the room I looked at today is much cheaper and with the money I save I could buy a new laptop in case my old one cannot be repaired.

So I started my internship on Thursday and after 2 days I can say I like it. Everybody is super nice and although I didn’t do a lot during the first 2 days, the next weeks will be busy. Got 3 assignments 20min before my day ended on Friday. :D Perfect timing. But I will have a lot of research to do and that is something I always enjoyed.

That's more or less all I can say about my internship, at least in a blog. If anybody wants details please email me. :)

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.

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!

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)

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!