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



 

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!

Lappi on ihana!!!!!

So I'm back from Lapland. Still exhausted, since i just came back this morning, and I still have to much work to do so here are just a few impressions for the moment, the stories follow later.









So enjoy the pics and feel free to be jealous :P














more pics you find in my picasa album

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