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!

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!

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!

Hyvää Ystävänpäivää!

So happy Friendship Day! :)

Since for many different reasons I don't believe in Valentine's Day I very much like the Finnish version: Friendship Day! Friends are in my eyes one of the most important thing in my life and often you don't thank enough for all the things they do for you! :)

So this is now my way to say thanks to all the people who are and were there for me to share joy and sorrow with me when I needed it. I love you all so very much and am very grateful that you are part of my life. :) KIITOS!

Stockholm

so my short trip to France was accompanied by a few hours in Stockholm and with 20kg of luggage i was walking for around 3 hours through the city (insane, I know!) and as always I like to share a few pics with you.
I'm not sure if i ever gonna like Swedish people but the capital has its beautiful sides. Especially during sunset. :D


PS Finally updated my picasa photo album with the last pics from January :) Enjoy