#xmasacademy

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Just a random tree during winter in Rovaniemi, where -30 degrees is the most frequent temperature 🌡️❄️

Picture by Borgogni Isabella, 2017

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Rovaniemi... A magical place, where Christmas is in the air all of the time! 

Yes you read that right, Christmas is alive through the whole year in this city. And don’t be surprised since it is also known as “The hometown of Santa Claus”.

My first time in Finland was exactly in this city, 10 years ago. Of course, it was for Xmas :D . I loved the place since the moment I stepped out of the plane. It was full of snow and as I remember it there were giant snowmen at the airport.

The best memory was visiting Santa Park, where I got to meet Santa and a couple of Elves that spoke Bulgarian, my mother language, to me and my family. It was amazing. I got to go to Elf school and learn the Elf dance. I had a lot of fun. Every day in Santa Park is Christmas. Oh let’s not leave the Arctic Circle out of it. I crossed the border line of the Arctic Circle and guess what, I met Santa Claus there as well. And he spoke Bulgarian to us. IT WAS SO COOL!

This Xmas thing continues through summer even. Yes that’s right! And you can visit Santa in summer as well ;) . I myself haven’t had the chance to see the old man through summer though. But who knows, maybe one day.

And not to forget the beautiful Northern Lights. I wasn’t able to see them the first time I came here, in Rovaniemi, but last winter I saw some of the best Auroras (that’s how they can be called as well) for the whole season.

If You are still wondering if to visit Rovaniemi, then let me say that if You come here You will not lose, because it is a very beautiful place both through winter and summer! ;)

So... Tell me... Are You up for it?

Picture by Stoev Boris 2017

[cinnamonsnowflake]

Hello everyone!

As you could see in my description, this blog is partly connected to a university summer course I took, the Christmas Experience Academy in Rovaniemi - which was an amazing course btw - that you can read more about in my previous posts :)

As the summer school ended though, now I'll start posting a bit more about other things as well. The blog will still be Christmas related, but also Autumn and some of my passions and hobbies which you can find once again in my description 😊

Thanks everyone for following, lots of love and gingerbread for you 💗🍪

Picture by Borgogni Isabella, 2018

[cinnamonsnowflake]

Christmas Experience Academy: Learning Experience as a Student

HURRAYYYY! I got my Diploma for the completion of the Christmas Experience Academy and guess what... I got the Diploma from Santa himself, who even signed it personally! 🤩🎅🏻🎄🎓

I am really glad to have been able to participate in such a mind-stimulating and experience-focused summer school. I learned a lot and I also got even more aware of the impacts of tourism and experiences on an economical, environmental and personal level.

During the summer school many discussions arose about the different covered topics.

I would like to share here, as a conclusion of my summer school studies, some arguments from the last discussion we had in the Christmas Experience Academy.

The main topic was keeping alive the values of Christmas all-year-round in Rovaniemi as a tourism destination. We got divided into groups to think and elaborate some ideas about the topic and my group reflected over how to create an upholding Christmas spirit.

We thought that some of the core values of Christmas could be kept alive all-year-round through activities not necessarily strictly linked with Christmas itself.

The values we focused on are HOPE, BELIEF and POSSIBILITIES for everyone and everything, i.e. animals, humans, nature, the poor and the wealthy and so on. Such values could be brought in front stage by supporting eco-tourism, creating sustainable workshops suitable for everyone (gift wrapping and ornament creating with natural or recycled elements, cooking classes with variations of traditional foods for special diets etc.) and spreading the will to share and care with a “Secret Santa”-like activity open to everyone.

Such ideas would need a lot of development and work upon them of course, but we thought they could be a starting point for something new.

On the other hand, we discussed that we, as tourism students, are constantly thinking and studying about how to attract tourists and create in the destination more and more experiences. But then the problems of mass-tourism and overflow of tourists come into the picture, creating a chain reaction of “disasters” on the above mentioned economical, environmental and personal levels.

How to deal with this? There would probably be a need for a control over tourism on a global and local level. But achieving it requires efforts and planning to such an extent that is currently very difficult to reach in practice.

Welcome to the paradoxical world of tourism students and tourism in general. ✈️🌍

Picture by Borgogni Isabella, 2018

[cinnamonsnowflake]

Christmas Experience Academy: Post-Experience as a Tourist in Rovaniemi

My summer studies are over for this year and now I am here writing about what could I experience as a tourist in Rovaniemi during the summer school.

You may wonder about how could I still experience the city and its surroundings as a tourist, when having lived here already for a year so far.

Well, that has been made possible in many ways.

As you might have read in some of the previous posts, I got the opportunity to participate in activities that I had never taken part in before. And even in the places I had already been, I discovered something new I didn’t know yet.

The boat ride with the Happy Fox company (https://happyfox.fi/) I wrote about in a previous post enabled me to see the city I live in from a different point of view and provided me with lots of interesting information I didn’t know before.

I got the chance to take part in a photography-based tour in the nature provided by the company Beyond Arctic (https://beyondarctic.com/) which triggered my not-so-good-but-I-am-still-trying photography skills, and that connected theory and practice in a single experience.

I got to experience in a new way also some companies I had already been visiting as a guest before. Two of my personal favourites in terms of quality, service provided, friendliness and helpfulness are Choco Deli (http://www.chocodeli.fi/en/) and Arctic Light Hotel (http://www.arcticlighthotel.fi/en/hotel/). The first one offering an authentic and surprising gastronomy experience, and the second one granting the accommodation as a unique experience full of surprises and care.

Overall, Rovaniemi si a city where magical experiences happen (and not only because Santa is around). There is always something new to learn and to do during the whole year.

Rovaniemi never let me down so far and I truly believe it never will. And this could be the opinion of all the people willing to visit or study in this city.

See you in Rovaniemi! 👋✨

Pictures by Borgogni Isabella & David Kamilla Renata, 2017-2018

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Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, during one of the summer school’s lectures, we had an interesting discussion about light and darkness led by Prof. Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson.

He explained us more in detail about lightscapes, which means the constant interplay between light and darkness. In fact, they somehow complete each other, but also alter one another’s rythms.

Being two opposite, but still complementary entities, each and every of us students had a different position in the discussion about the topic.

Personally, I always had a “darker” position concerning the darkness vs. light contrast. Not in a negative way, though. As a matter of fact, I find tranquility and security in darkness. It makes me feel more comfortable and it fascinates me. It makes me happier than light. Total light bothers me. Both physically, by hurting my eyes and inflammating my skin, and emotionally, by giving me the feeling of criticism, noise and chaos. Usually the latter one is connected with darkness, but not in my case. I prefer the order I find in the disorder of darkness, to the disorder I see in the order of light.

As mentioned before though, darkness and light complete each other. They couldn’t exist without one another, or at least they could not be identified as what they are.

Only in light you can see shade and only in darkness you can see the stars and experience magical happenings such as Northern Lights or comets.

I believe that my tattoo, pictured above, is pretty much self-explanatory about my position as regards light and darkness.

Picture by Borgogni Isabella, 2018  

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The Nature of an Explorer - Beyond Arctic

Today, as part of my summer school studies, I had the pleasure to participate in a short photography based tour demonstration operated by the company Beyond Arctic (https://beyondarctic.com/).

Beyond Arctic is a relatively young company, founded 2 years ago, likely to provide the experience of a lifetime by combining exclusivity, customization, authenticity and learning opportunities. The company’s tours are photography based, meaning that whatever the activity, aurora hunting, backcountry skiing, snowshoeing, ice fishing, midnight sun tours etc., the main focus and the success of the experience are represented and guaranteed by great photography opportunities. For the less-used to the camera, the company provides guidance on how to set their devices in order to be able to capture the nature and its movements, while for the experts private and personalized tours are provided.

Today me and my groupmates from the summer school have been shown some of the best locations around Rovaniemi to capture stunning landscapes and have been given some advice on how to take good quality pictures.

I only had my mobile phone as a photography device, but I tried my best to render through the pictures the fascinating and authentic atmosphere of Lappish nature.

In such tours, the “throwtogetherness” (Massey 2005) of humans and more-than-humans with assigned creative capacities, such as photograhpy, is the one shaping the destination. The landscapes are experienced through all of the senses, rendering the experience as a whole embodied, emotional and educational.

Pictures by Borgogni Isabella, 2018

[cinnamonsnowflake]

When the Hotel is the Experience

Rovaniemi offers a range of unique accommodation options and one of them is Arctic Light Hotel (http://www.arcticlighthotel.fi/en/hotel/).

Situated in the city centre, in a historical post-war building that used to be the former City Hall, this award-winning hotel guarantees great service efficiency and a variety of comfortable design rooms, lofts and an all-year-round Christmas cabin. The hotel also offers a rich and tasty breakfast and is provided with a restaurant, a bar and a cozy winter terrace that can be booked also for private events.

This hotel really wants for its guests to create memorable experiences, and in some cases it is seen by them as the holiday’s peak-experience itself. In order to do so, the hotel tries to fulfil all of their guests needs, even the ones they don’t know they have. In fact, surprises play a major role in the creation of memorable experiences, and in this hotel’s case they can be made possible thanks to its  hard-working staff.

I have been a guest of the hotel myself last year and I can confirm all of the above mentioned. The hotel’s staff is always available to help or sort out any inconvenience and they even provide the guests what they don’t realise they need. In my case, I’ve been staying at the hotel for a week while waiting to furnish my student apartment and, as easily imaginable for a student moving for more than 3 years to a new country, I’ve been carrying with me A LOT of luggage. While at the reception desk, the hotel’s staff arranged for my bags to be brought in front of my room and the lady at the reception asked me the reason for such a great amount of luggage. I explained to her that I was about to study Tourism here in Rovaniemi and she kindly offered me to help me out in the future with any tourism-related questions I might have had in mind. She handed me the hotel’s name card and she told me not to hesitate to call in case I would need any information from them.

I will never forget such an amazing hotel service, and I was really glad to be able to get back to the hotel for an interesting lecture as part of my summer school studies.

Pictures by Borgogni Isabella, 2017

Collage by Borgogni Isabella, 2018