The Diary of an exchange student

So, I wanted to go somewhere quite a bit different and far away . So now I am here, in Tampere, Finland. This blog is about everything that happenes to me that I feel like posting.

[wanderingfinland]

A weekend in a finnish mokki

[wanderingfinland]

A weekend in a finnish Mokki

A while back in september we were invited to Oona’s Finnish Mokki (that is a finnish summer cottage). It is a very finnish thing to own such a cottage in the middle of nowhere, by a lake, with no electricity and running water and ofcourse, a sauna! (The small cottage on the top picture is a sauna) Together we were 5 exchange girls and 4 finnish girls. First we had a hike around the woods and later a picnic by the fire. Finns seem to be obsessed with them and guess what we ate, sausages, how very typical. When it was already dark we went into the sauna (my first sauna in Finland) and since the proper way to do sauna is by going to the lake, we did that too. It was pitch black, raining and the water was so so cold, but it was worth it. Nevermind we could have won a screaming competitions. We wormed up and dried up by the fire place and fell asleep in the cozy mokki with the fire in the fireplace still alive, it felt like magic. It was one of the best weekends here in Finland.

[wanderingfinland]

A day trip to the Nuuksio national park near Helsinki . We really wanted to go to a national park, preferably to Koli in the east of Finland, but it is very hard to reach it with public transport so in the end we just gave up and decided to go to one that is easily accessible. We still needed 4 hours and 3 changes of transportation method but it was still very nice and the weather culdn’t be better.

[wanderingfinland]

A trip to Suomenlinna Island, 7. 10. 2016

[wanderingfinland]

A day trip to Helsinki, 7. 10. 2016

[wanderingfinland]

This past month

I haven’t written anything in almost a month. I had some posts uploading and then my phone wasn’t working properly so it wouldn’t post them and my sd card kept being rejected so I spent a lot of time trying to save my photos from disappearing an trying not to throw my phone out of the window from anger. Therefore my posting has stopped. But now I feel like I should post, If not the stories at least some photos.  Anyways in the last month I have gone swimming (in the middle of september), participated in a downtown orienteering, went to a couple of parties including a non planned ride on a “party bus”, got quite a bad cold, spent two days in a finnish summer cottage and experienced the finnish sauna, went hiking, got a visit from Slovenia, went to Helsinki and colored my hair (that I now regret) and became obsessed with the german band AnnenMayKantereit.  Next monday I am going to Russia, but before that I have an exam on wednesday, a party on thurseday, an essay to write until sunday and some more stuff to to for university, so it’s gonna be a busy week. Oh and post some more about this month on tumblr :)

[wanderingfinland]

The second Day of our Pori trip we went on a hike to the lake were we had our own Little picnic with sausages that Finns seem to really like as they eat them quite often and at every barbecue. The nature is so calming and peaceful with planks leading the way among trees. We picked and ate blueberries and lingonberries, also clovers, which was unusual, but good.

[wanderingfinland]

[wanderingfinland]

Last weekend we had a trip to Pori, because we wanted to visit the beautiful Yyteri beach. As life in Finland is quite expensive we decided to go couchsurfing, which is also a really nice way to get more in touch with Finnish culture, while staying at a Finn's home. It was the first time for all of us and we really didn't know what to expect. Eero, our host, was really nice. He took us to the beach in his car and even went swimming with us. We didn't do much city exploring, there isn't much to see anyways. We were hanging out with Eero discussing cultural stuff and ever really and ate some local Finnish food. The beach in the above pictures is stunning. It is one of the most amazing things I have seen in Finland so far, probably because I wasn't expecting to see something like that here. The sea had 14 degrees, but we went in anyway and once we were in it was okay. I had lots and lots of fun.

[wanderingfinland]

My room is slowly starting to become more cosy. :)

[wanderingfinland]

Aurora spotting

Last night me and Mandy went to Benita and Mareike’s place in Rauhaniemi, near the Nasijarvi lake, because there was supposed to be some aurora activity. Around midnight we went outside, all bundeled up and with snacks to wait for the northern lights by the lake. Unfortunately the activity was not so high and we could only see a grey-greenish hue in the sky. Better luck next time, the aurora season just started anyways. We talked well into the night and finally went to sleep, which reminded me of the sleep I got at the airport since we were sleeping on the floor, only this timeit was bette, I had a sleeping bag pillow and blanket. In the morning benita made us some pancakes with fake nutella, that is actually quite good. I had a walk back to the city center with Mandy. The air was so fresh and crisp, you could feel the autumn in the air. Today was a really sunny warm day. The kind of autumn days I love.

[wanderingfinland]

What a day ...

Where to begin? With my laundrey adventures I think ... So I went to the laundry room with bags full of clothes, bed linen and tiwels to wash. The first step was figuring out how the machines worked, because verything is in finnish (I found some english instructions for one of them) and after the first machine was done I noticed that my washing hours were yesterday not today as I had in mind the whole time. Oh well ... I loaded another one and failed miserably with the washing function which I solved after a few minutes of panicking, an emergency stop, a call to my mother and some blind guessing at what the buttons mean. No one wrorte their name on the list for the second machine, so why not load this one too. Except after I got back after a while I found a note in finnish (bad translation with google translate bad it said something about using the calendar since it’s there for a reason). Finaly the dryer. That went quite well actually, If I put aside the finnish girl giving me death glares because I was running 5 min late. She stoped after a while when she saw I am abit clueless with the whole finnish wash machine thing.  But that is not all. I managed to activate the fire alarm  while cooking, because I slightly burned some meat and there is a non functioning kitchen vent, as in it has no button to activate it. After a minute that seemed like hours of horrible horrible beeping we managed to turn the thing off by throwing out the batteries.  To reliev the stress I ate half a packet of liquorice mentos, although I wish I had chocolate.  It has been raining since I woke up and I think I’ll just stay in bed for the rest of the day, watching series and planning some trips.

[wanderingfinland]

Yesterday we went on a trip tu Turku. We came home at 11 in the evening and although there were Aurora predictions for the night I went straight to bed and fell asleep immediately, because I was so tired. We walked all the way through Turku, saw the cathedral, library, castel and so on. We had lunch on a boat (vegan and spicy, not to My liking at all, but it was cheap and the owner was really Nice). What was really interesting was the ferry wich takes you to the other side of the river, probably because there are not so many Bridges. All in all it was a Nice trip. Looking forward to many more. Oh, and the library? I could live in it, it so beautiful.

[wanderingfinland]

[wanderingfinland]

[wanderingfinland]

Today was a very lovely Day. It was really warm and sunny, enough for a tank top and a thin sweater. I woke up really late (at 11) and then went on my daily walk around the Peltolammi lake. After lunch I decided to go to the arboretum, which was nice and calming. Also, the squirrel I met was not afraid of me at all. At last I treated myself to liquorice ice cream in lidl. So today and yesterday (walking by the biggest lake in town and then heading to a Finnish party) were happy days. Looking forward to my trip to Turku this Friday.

[wanderingfinland]

While a family of Finns was walking by the lake all dressed Up for Late autumn, caps and all, I went swimming in the lake. It was a bit cold because it wasn’t the warmest of days but I went in anyway.