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



 

Sturmfrei! :)

So my parents are for 2 weeks on the Canary Isles which means I can finally do what I want to do. And today it was this:



So let's hope it will make it in one piece to Magdeburg. But before I go to the b-day party of a good friend, I will go to a local ski jumping competition in the neighboring city. Will be interesting. I hope. A friend will be the stadium commentator and i haven't been to that ski jump yet, just saw is from far away. And unfortunately I missed the Nordic combined summer grand prix this year :'( Well and, of course, one should support the local kids :D So a lot of reasons to watch crazy kids doing an insane sport :D

Salpausselän kisat 2011

So, as in the past 5 years, at the beginning of March it was time for the Lahti Ski Games (Salpausselän kisat). This year due to the World Ski Championships in Oslo a week later than usual but still a must for me. Well that is the only constant in my life and I'll hold on to that till well till I'm ready to grow up and let go of my favorite sport. ;) So I'll probably hold on to Lahti forever. :P And please don't imagine me now as a 60 year old grey haired women in a bright blue jacked screaming at twenty something skiers who could be my grand-children. ;)

Well anyway, I was for about 4 1/2 days in Lahti and as always I wasn't alone. My sister was visiting me for a week and two other friends came also to Lahti (Angy and Nina) and well Katrin is living there so a whole bunch of people. To sum it up it was a great time with a few downs but more ups. I had an access-all-areas-pass which made me feel like a VIP. And this time I didn't even have to work part time as I did at the Nordic Junior World Championships in 2010. So I could go wherever I wanted including the media center, using the internet there, eating jummy food and in general warm up. :D So It was the most comfortable ski competition I've been to. :D No frozen feet!
So I was able to see all the competitions I wanted to see. Which where? Well Nordic Combined of course.

So if you haven't googled Lahti Ski Games by now I maybe should explain what it is. Well it is the combination of the 3 Nordic winter sports cross-country skiing, ski jumping and my favorite Nordic combined. So at that one weekend in March all three World Cups are held in Lahti which means 4 days of world class sports for a few Euros (or like me for free ;)).

The competitions I saw were great as always but my highlight was of course that the Nordic World Cup would end in Lahti, meaning the medal ceremony for the World Cup winner, or more important for me the second in the World Cup ;) , would be held in Lahti and I had the access-all-areas pass, so perfect chances to finally get some decent pics myself.

Well you can evaluate the pics yourself. :D

I had a good time even though everybody got sick and I felt more like a nurse than a friend or sister. ;) But now I know I can survive in a pharmacy with my 'super' Finnish skills. Thanks to our 'great' Finnish teacher in Turku and Riina and her ear pain. ;) (one of the many awful texts in our Finnish book)

So did I miss to mention anything important? Well not really, but we also went on Friday night to a Heavy Metal concert which was Ok but the day was so long that I was too tired to stay at the concert till 2am or maybe I'm just getting old. ;) And on Saturday I went out with a new friend and well it was interesting. :D There are some things you don't really want to see. :D Well I'm just glad that I'm probably the only one remembering how crazy everybody around me behaved. Hurray to teetotalism. ;)

Well also the 6th year at the LSG were great so surprise, surprise, I'm coming back next year. The room is already booked and a companion organized.


Nähdään vasta vuonna, Lahti!

Salut!

Bonjour en France! Je suis maintenant dans un petit village près de la frontière suisse. :) Je rends visite à une bonne amie ici. La météo est bonne, mais il n'y a presque pas de neige.



Ok enough with French. So I am here in the French Jura mountains for a week. At the weekend I was at the Nordic combined competition in Chaux-Neuve and now I am just enjoying the last two days here before I go back to Sweden on Wednesday and Thursday to Finland. There is not much to tell about the weekend just that it was quite nice, besides the freezing cold wind on Friday and Saturday. So just a few pics here.

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

jääkiekko - ice hockey

Yesterday I was again at an ice hockey match. The 10th game of the season for TPS from Turku, my favorite team. Well and they lost again. 9th loss in a row! But seriously that's more or less what i expected of them after they won the national championship last season.
But well Hitomi, Adam and me got really great tickets this time, 6th row, very close to the ice rink and since half of the seats were empty we changed the seats after the first part and were sitting then in 3rd row behind the glass. Very exciting i can tell you. You expect every 5 minutes to get hit by the puck and can practically feel the pain of the tackles into the walls. Anyway Turku lost but the match was worth seeing anyway.
Why? Well a game last 60min. And in this game the referees gave out 168 penalty minutes: 76 for TPS and 92 for KalPa. Just too bad all the fighting took place in the other end of the ice but well here you see the 'best scenes' of the game. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0laf1Rxys0

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! :)