Moin moin ...

Ich liebe die Schiffe, das Meer und den Hafen,
und ich liebe es, nach ´ner Party, ... am Elbstrand einzuschlafen.
Ich bin ein Hamburger Jung und ich komm voll in Schwung,
wenn ich hüpf´ und spring und von Hamburg sing.
Schon Störtebeker wusste, dass der Norden rockt
und hat mir seinem Kahn hier gleich angedockt...

So as somebody might have guessed, I was in Hamburg. For just one day but Hamburg is always worth it. It's my third favorite German city and it has been a while since my last visit. And it is so amazing how the city has changed since my first visit about 10 years ago.

After searching one hour for a parking spot, we ended up right in the Speicherstadt. Which was nice since we could walk around the harbor and the little distance to the town hall and Binnenalster. My friend Steffi went with her boyfriend to the Miniatur Wunderland while I was doing some sightseeing and shopping. I am just not that much into small trains and pregere Northern Europe and the Alps in original size. :P

For the first time I went up the famous church tower of the Michel (St. Michaelis church) which was pretty cool, literally. It was freezing and so windy but definitely worth the few Euros for the entry. I took some nice pictures of Hamburg from above. Then I went to the city center - if you can call it like that - around the town hall. I did some shopping, went back to the harbor to look at some ships and finally ended up in the newly constructed HafenCity.

Well I have to say I love architecture. Historic and modern likewise. I wanted to study it and I still think I could have been a good architect. So i was curious about the new area with the high prized office and apartment buildings. So ähm yeah well I felt like I was back in the GDR. The only difference between these new buildings and the GDR Plattenbauten (prefabricated concrete slabs) is the prize and that you have a bit more glass windows and walls. Seriously I don't get why you would pay millions to live in a concrete and glass cube just because it is right at the harbor. Weird. But I found one building in which I would actually move into. It was white and was the only building with round shapes. You can see a little bit of it in one of the pictures.

Nordisch, wohoohoo, nordisch by nature ....



So much for Hamburg. I am still trying to find a job in Leipzig and waiting for one specific call. Wish me luck!

Sunset and Sunrise at the Baltic Sea

So I'm back in Germany and well the way I chose this time wasn't one of my smartest ideas.

I spend my last night with a new but good friend and 2 cats. Interesting combination but it was very nice just to relax a bit.

Then I spend 26 hours on a ferry. Well it was not so nice. The ferry was very small so you couldn't really do much. And after the 4th old drunk Finnish or Russian man tried to talk to me I really had enough. And all the complaining Germans. Seriously do you have to complain when a night light isn't properly working (and it needed to be fixed right away!). Oh and i caused the biggest drama when I did put my Laptop cable across the floor. Oh how could I do that? ;) So the positive thing was that there was free Internet access on the boat, so I survived that time more or less.

We arrived on Friday night at the harbor in Rostock. I was very lucky to reach the subway in time because with my luggage AND my bike I might have just given up on the way between the harbor and the city center. Then I tried to sleep a few hours at the train station. Well it was one of the best sleeping places I had so far but unfortunately I wasn't the only one there so it wasn't really quiet. Around 5:30am I took a train to Warnemünde and had a great breakfast alone at the beach. :D The pics of that morning and the whole last week you can find under this link. I'm too lazy to upload everything a second time.

Enjoy!

PS And of course there was no Hanse Sail, it is of course this week. But it was crowded enough in Rostock.

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. :)

Visit to Magdeburg

So, after a few days with my parents I 'escaped' for a day to my University town Magdeburg. I have to admit it was one of the best days since I returned. I had the chance to meet many good friends, eat ice cream and having a little bbq. A really great day, till I arrived back at my parents place than the nagging started again. ;)

That visit was full of very funny conversations I had with different people. When you meet with 3 fellow political science students (or former students) after 5min you talk about politics and what is just happening at the moment in the world economy. That happened with the same people at my goodbye party and was just funny to see that we did the same thing when we met for an ice cream this time. I guess we all studied the right thing after all. Who would have thought that about me? ;)
With friends I met outside the university the first thing we talk about was the women football world champs. Well i didn't talk about it just listened because i didn't care but it was just funny to see how different people are and what topics people think about. Good that we all are so different! :D

So thanks to all the people who had some time for me while I was in Magdeburg! Hope to see you all very soon again!

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.

Parental visit in May

So in May my parents and my sis were here in Finland for a week. After 5 days I managed to 'escape'. :D Well or something like that. But the time together wasn't as bad as i expected. It was nice not to be the 'evil' daughter for a change. ;) My sister hasn't been the nicest person since I moved out almost 7 years ago but since she moved out a month ago, she thinks she knows everything better. Yeah, sure!

Anyway, we went to Fiskars, a little village which is famous for it's knives and scissors. Then we haded to Hämeenlinna and Lahti on the second day. Spend a relaxing Sunday at the cottage and tried to find some weird submarine place somewhere at the southern coast on a very rainy Monday. We got lost of course and ended at a military base. Well that is so typical my parents no car atlas, no real travel guide just some vague description and then they think I should know everything. Jeah, because I drove with a car on every little street in Finland. Sure! Anyway, my sort of last full day with my family was spend in Porvoo, a gorgeous little town 40km east of Helsinki. On my b-day we went back to Turku, ate in the Viking restaurant Harald (but didn't get the funny Viking hats as friends of mine did a couple of days before us). Afterwards we had a little walk on beautiful Ruissalo, the island located right in front of the harbor of Turku. Then I got rid of my parents for 1 1/2 days until Friday, when they came after my last exam, to pick up most of my stuff to drive back to Germany. Since then I have white walls again, been sleeping in a sleeping bag and have practically no clothes to wear (not that it was much different before :P). So now I'm sort of counting the days till June 30th, when I go back to Germany.




And after that? Seriously I don't know, so please everybody stop asking me!


Enjoy the pics from my travels in May.

Germany Visit (part 2): one wedding and no funeral

... but a lot of friends and not to forget a castle


- visit of friends in magdeburg
- wedding of my cousin in wernigerode

Germany Visit (part 1): Berlin

So my first stop in Germany was Berlin, where i spent 3 wonderful days with friends.










Enjoy the pictures.



Thanks for Janine, Dana, Jennifer and Torsten for the nice company.

Helsinki, elections and the end of winter

After the 5 days in Lahti I went for 2 days with Nina to Helsinki. I've been so many times to Hki that I stopped counting and so I think I'm the perfect guide. I've done that also many time in every season by now. :D So since Nina is going to study in Hki next spring I've just went with her to the usual spots in the city enter including the Cathedral and the Kauppahalli. Since Nina was sick and I've seen everything so often we didn't really do much outside the city center. Although the weather was so beautiful but it was still very cold and when you are sick you cannot enjoy anything anyway. So just a small sightseeing tour this time.

March was also the month of the parliament elections. And how crazy it was. For the whole month all parties had their little campaign booth so the pedestrian area looked like it was Christmas market all over again. You got flags, candy, coffee and other things for free, if you wanted too.
And seriously I didn't noticed how annoying election ads can be if you are not allowed to vote. Half of my facebook page was full with ads from different candidates. Yeap new medias are great but you can also overdo it. Funny in Finland are the election posters. In Germany they are scattered all over the city on lampposts and you have very huge billboards sometimes but here in Finland you have all election posters from all parties together and usually there are not many slogans on there but instead all candidates from each party. And seriously people are standing in front of these billboards and actually checking them out. Well I guess most of the people heard about the populist party called Perussuomalaiset (PerusS) in English often called True Finns. And well yes they got a lot of votes. Too many for my taste and I can just repeat what a good friend of mine wrote on fb after the election: 'I'm so disappointed by the Finnish people.' So by now it is still not 100% sure what the government will look like just that my second favorite Finnish politician (first one is of course Muumin mama Tarja Halonen) Jyrki Katainen (to be clear: I just like him not his party!) will be the new Prime minister (Pääministeri). But seriously it doesn't look very good. Especially since the top 3 parties of the election are so very different from each other. Kokoomus (National Coalition Party) the Party of Jyrki as a liberal-conservative party, then the Social democrats (SDP) and the right wing PersusS. Very weird combination. And it looks like they may not include the Swedish People's party in the government which I very much dislike. I should maybe add that it is very common in Finland to have multi-party coalitions. The last governments had between 3 (2003) and 4 (2007) or even 5 parties as in 1995 and 1999. So Finns are not at all afraid about different opinions and parties in the government. But well we'll see what the new government brings. Everybody is already worried about the EU politics, especially concerning the Portugal financial aid, but also about immigration and the position of the Swedish language.

Last but not least winter is over. It took a while till the snow started to melt but it eventually did when the temperature rose at the end of march. Problem was for a week the whole city was one big ice skating ring. During the day all the now was melting and doing the night everything was freezing over again. So in the morning the whole pathways where covered with ice. It was horrible. So in the morning you could barely walk without falling every two meters, then in then afternoon it was even worse because at the same time your feet where wet because half of the ice had meted and the resulting hydroplaning is seriously not much fun. But after a week that whole mess was over so no slippery pathways anymore just water, lots of water. Hurray for my rubber boots. :D
At the beginning of April then the miracle happened: The river was ice free! :D Seriously nobody could believe how fast it was going in the end but now spring is almost here.

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!

Rauma

Moikka!

Between all those weird days as Runeberg's Day, Friendship Day/Valentine's Day and the upcoming Kalevala Day it's time for a short update.

So last week some friends of mine had an appointment in a little town called Rauma and that was for me the opportunity to join them since a 1,5h bus ride is much more fun with nice company. So Rauma is a special town for me. For once my best friend Tellu is living there and it is always great to see her but I also had my first snow in Finland there in October 2005. :) So for me this was the first time that I saw Rauma in real Winter and well I still have to say it is a little bit more interesting in summer but still very beautiful in winter. My Problem was that it was freezing cold and so windy that it made the sightseeing a challenge. As always I love to show Tellu Finland and it is always nice but to show her her own city is very funny, especially since I know the touristic sides much better. Anyway we did a little tour through the old city part which is THE tourist attraction. And surprisingly the Old
City of Rauma changed during the past 5 years. Most surprisingly the Hesburger (Finnish version of McDonals and makes the best cheeseburgers ever!!) moved out of an old wood building. Well besides the lacking of Hesburger I had a great day with good friends, learned a lot new things, went back on memory lane and realized how important it is to have cash money with you. :D They should really tell that to Americans before coming to Finland ;)

Enjoy the photographs!