The dawn of the last month...

... and it's raining. Again.

Recently it has been raining too much for my taste here in Finland. The sky is grey, dull and dark. When I leave my apartment, it's dark and grey, when I come home from courses it's dark and grey. Sometimes it's dry but freezing cold. But lately, the temperatures rose and a lot of water comes from the sky. Unfortunately in form of rain. I dislike rain in December.
Yesterday I've been excited to see the sun for perhaps 20 minutes. It faded away so quickly though and left nothing but rain. I feel so gloomy and depressed lately, mainly because of the weather. But alas, the whole Finland-experience would be nothing without a winter-depression.

Apart from the weather, I can complain a lot about the university work I have to do at the moment. I've been having two exams last week in Finnish (which I passed both with a good mark - hooray!) and this week I had one in Finnish and today one in art history. I still need to finish one paper which is due on sunday, then I am free and can enjoy the shitty wheather. I could read a book. Or commit suicide. Whatever.

It's so sad for me this month, not only because my time here will soon be over - just 31 days left! :( - but also because christmas is approaching and I will be so far from my family this year. At least my mum promised me to let the christmas tree stand in the living room until I've returned home. =) And then we'll have a nice after-christmas. I'm kinda looking forward to that.

I've not been updating my blog very often lately, mainly because I was too busy or simply because not so much has happened.

I've been to an ice-hockey match though at the beginning of this month, at the 4th. It was the team of Turku against someone else.
It was very exciting for me to see this match as I love to watch ice-hockey from TV and have always longed for being in a stadium. Now finally, I made this dream come true!
[A picture will follow later]
In the first third not so much happened. In the second third the other team shot the first goal and the playing got a bit more interesting. There has been more action. However, the third third finally was as I'm used to watching ice-hockey. There have been bodychecks and aggressive play. The team of Turku scored a goal but shortly after the other team made a second goal. TPS was not able to catch up.
I had popcorn for 4€. I love the salty, Finnish popcorn. I prefer it so much to the sweet German one!

Last friday, the 5th there has been a TYRMY-event again. A Pikkujoulu. Prechristmas-party. It was awesome and I got pretty drunk.
We went to a karaoke party again afterwards. I sang a song together with my Japanese friend. :D It was the same song I actually sang the week before, too. There has been a karaoke-event at the 27th of November, too. At both times I sang Sonata Arctica's FullMoon. I was shaky and damn nervous at the first time and I heard every note I did not hit but the Finns liked it. Perhaps they were just too friendly to say how awful it sounded. However, my performance in December was not good. I was too drunk.

Hm. Despite of saying there was nothing going on, there have indeed been some nice events and happenings!
At the 6th of December, Finland celebrated its independence. Me and my swedish friend as well as a finnish friend participated at the Torchlight parade. I was surprised that this parade was not pompuous or cheerful, no, in contrary it rather felt like a mournful funeral march - especially as we headed to the cemetery. It ended up to be a very nice experience though.

For the second to last time I will have my list here:

What I've done so far

- I've been to a Finnish excavation.
- I've been to Helsinki (3x).
- I've been to Tampere.
- I've been to Espoo (2x) and visited a school there.
- I've been to Tallinn, but did not actually see much of it because I was too tired.
- I've been to five concerts (Moonsorrow, Unioni-festival, Turmion Kätilöt, Korpiklaani, Crimfall on the ship to Tallinn).
- I've been to a karaoke-bar three times.
- I met a lot of Finnish and also international metalheads \m/.
- I've been to a heavy Finnish halloween-sitsit! \m/
- I improved my Finnish-skill a lot!
- I've been to sauna and established some kind of girls' sauna evening together with my Swedish friend.
- I started to learn swordfighting.
- I visited Turunlinna.
- I visited the art museum of Turku.

What I still have to do

- Prepare everything for my departure (sell my goods I don't want to take with me,  return books, sign out of university etc.).
- Go to Stockholm.
- Go to Lapland.
- See northern lights.
- Sauna more often.
- See Ruissalo.
- Visit more museums in Turku, esp. Aboa Vetus!
- Find some cute christmas presents.
- Send postcards from Finland.
- Visit Levykauppa X.
- Become a Finn. :D
- Find a Finnish boyfriend. xD

Heviristeily

From thursday to friday, I've been on a cruise from Helsinki to Tallinn together with TYRMY.

I've never seen so many happy Finns. Finns can buy cheap(er) booze on the ship and in Tallinn, so Finns are happy! I, as a German, nevertheless thought "holy crap, this shit is expensive!"

Song of the day, I got not tired to sing together with my lovely Hungarian friend, was this:

I'm on a ship...
if you don't know ...
well, now you know ...

;)

However, I left this ship without a hangover. I was just a bit tired because I've been really sleeping perhaps for an hour or so, else merely relaxing a bit in the bus back to Turku.
I purchased some bottles of Koskenkorva Salmiakki, I love this shit, and some Glögi. Unfortunately, there was no mead in Tallinn.

On the ship, Crimfall was playing a gig, and another band whose name I forgot. I am not the greatest fan of Crimfall, mainly probably because I don't like the female singing, but the bassist reminds me very much of a German friend of mine. That's why I went to him after the concert and asked for a photo.

  

He asked if he should change his shirt because he was wearing some jacket. I said "I don't mind." And before I was able to think I said "You can even take our your jacket if you want". xD That's how this pic was made...

After the cruise, I went to the after party. There was a sauna. I think I never saw so many half naked men before... I kinda like this country. xD

Time flies by ...

They say, time flies by when you're having fun.
Well, I do definitely have a lot of fun here in Finland, but also university work is quite keeping me busy at times, especially ever since the second period started. Two courses ended, but one new course started and one old course suddenly developed into something much more workintensive. *sigh*
I have to write two learning diaries at the moment (which aren't just notes on the lectures, instead it's rather like a comment on the lecture). The one is from a lecture from the last period. Actually, I need to be more precise here: For last period's lecture I have to write a learning diary (which is already complete!) and some more individual learning tasks. Of the latter, I still need to write a few. I have time until the end of this month.

For the new course, which started this period, I have to write a learning diary too. It was the third lecture today, expected are at least 10 pages. From the first lecture I have already 1,5 pages full. So I will probably meet the minimum quite easily. I just have to write down my notes right after the lectures (which would be like now) and then it'll go quite smoothly.

For my Finnish courses, which I always considered to be quite fun and interesting, the workload suddenly has increased. I have to write a thing called mielipide until next monday and I still have no clue about what to write it. I will probably have to do it on saturday or sunday, because I won't be here on thursday and friday. BUT I don't have much time on sunday, neither on saturday, so ... AAAAAAAHH!!! It will be hard to write one page in Finnish!
I have two more tasks for the week after, also in Finnish. *sigh* I'm at the moment struggling whether I really want to do these tasks or not. I tend to think that the other courses are a bit more important, as I will have these in my final certificate, not the Finnish courses. Hm. I don't know. Tough decision.


----

Enough of school work said here!

It's the 12th of the month again, so it was about time for an update.
Now I'm here in Finland for 3 months already and only 2 are left. I already get sad when I think of going back home to Germany. :(

I wanted to update my list and here we go:

What I've done so far

- I've been to a Finnish excavation.
- I've been to Helsinki (3x).
- I've been to Tampere.
- I've been to four concerts (Moonsorrow, Unioni-festival, Turmion Kätilöt, Korpiklaani).
- I've been to a karaoke-bar twice.
- I met a lot of Finnish and also international metalheads \m/.
- I've been to a heavy Finnish halloween-sitsit! \m/
- I improved my Finnish-skill a lot!
- I've been to sauna and established some kind of girls' sauna evening together with my Swedish friend.
- I started to learn swordfighting.
- I visited Turunlinna.
- I visited the art museum of Turku.

What I still have to do

- Go to Tallinn (planned).
- Go to Stockholm.
- Go to Lapland.
- Visit a Finnish school.
- Sauna more often.
- See Ruissalo.
- Visit more museums in Turku.
- Become a Finn. :D
- Find a Finnish boyfriend. xD

Korpiklaani and some other monsters

I was so disappointed when I checked the tourdates of my favourite Finnish bands before I went to Finland because not a single one of them seemed to be giving any concerts at all or just not in Europe during the time of my stay here in Finland. Among these bands I looked up were Korpiklaani and Ensiferum and Kalmah.
So I thought I just have to take what I can get, so I bought tickets for Moonsorrow and Turmion Kätilöt right after I arrived here. :) These concerts have already taken place and I wrote about them in this very blog.

When I prepared my presentation about Korpiklaani two weeks ago, I found out that they in fact do give a concert here! They were in Helsinki to support Lordi who are releasing a new album. I went to the concert just for Korpiklaani though because I just love these guys!

The concert was really nice. I was aware of the fact that they are not as popular in Finland as they are abroad but it was really strange to see how few people were there to see them. It was easy to get a place in the third row although I just came to the stages 10 minutes before the gig began.
And the crowd was not as crazy as in Germany.
Here's the setlist of this evening:
Tuonelan tuvilla
Ruumiinmultaa
Metsämies
Juodan viinaa
Petoeläimen kuola
Sumussa hämärän aamun
Uniaika
Louhen yhdeksäs poika
Vodka
Ievan polkka
Rauta

The most funny thing this evening was for me when they played Juodaan viinaa. Jonne sang the first two lines of the first stanza, then stopped singing, smiled and said "Unohdin tekstiä" (I forgot the lyrics). He improvised something and sang than again the chorus. The second stanza has therefore been sung by Cane, the guitar player. It was awesome. :D
I did not notice any more missing text lines though ... but well, Finnish is not my mothertongue and if he sang something completely different, I wouldn't have even noticed.

If it was after me, they could have continued playing for the whole evening! But it was Lordi's turn quite soon.
I hope to see Korpiklaani again quite soon, either here in Finland or in Germany.

I will put some pictures to this post later on!

Halloween sitsit, perkele!

I've been to one of the famous finnish sitz parties (sitsit) organized by TYRMY. The theme was halloween, how fitting for the date!

The contents of a sitsit are mainly singing, drinking, singing, drinking, eating, singing, drinking, singing, drinking, eating, singing, drinking etc.
There's a lot of songs and also a hell lot of booze! Nothing else would you expect from a country like Finland. Perkele!

For me, it was kind of a pity that all foreign students were put together to one table. I would have loved to get into contact with some more Finnish people, but they were all too far away. Well, yes, Iiris was at my table, but she'll go to Germany anyway. :D
The worst thing for me though was that all the German speaking people were in one corner. I have nothing against these people in General, I just actually try to avoid German people as much as I can. Which of course does not succeed as I always find myself in the middle of a German group. *sigh* That's life.

The halloween costumes of some of the people have been just so great! Actually most people had stunning costumes. For example Jesus, or a faun, or an ice-hockey player or a crazy chemist or a spartian. There have been the bunny from Alice in Wonderland and the Cheshire cat too! Most people were dressed up as something dead though. Vampires, skeletons, witches (which do not necessarily have to be dead though...) and so on. I just loved the costumes!
I had all my nice stuff in Germany - unfortunately - so I had to improvise and just wore my corset with a short skirt and bought myself a witches hat. xD I was sooo unique! There were like 3 witches on my table. :D

There are a lot of pictures on Facebook. Maybe I will copy some of them later, if I have the allowance.

Halftime!

I've been counting my days of my stay here recently and it turned out that today is the day of halftime!

From now on, I will have stayed more days here than I am going to be here. It's kind of sad that the counter of days to come goes to zero now rapidly. :(
But then, on the other hand, I kinda miss my hometown and affordable beer and my friends there, of course, too. Not necessarily in this order.

There are still so many things in Finland I'd love to do and I think I can't accomplish them before my time here runs out. Which, of course, is kind of sad.
University is just eating too much of my precious free time! And I don't have enough money for the most fun stuff, too. But I'll manage, anyhow.

University-wise two courses are finished now. One new one will start next week.
In December I will then be having 4 or 5 tests, all in two weeks, so it won't be much fun. Actually I should just sit down and learn for these exams the whole november. I know that I won't do that. ;P

Time is running out.
It always happens when having fun. *sigh* So I guess it's a good sign. Perhaps. Perhaps I'm just too busy though, which would be sad.

Well, anyway, there will be much more content in the following blog posts!

Turun linna

This week is awfully dull. It's exam week and therefore there are almost no regular courses. I have a hell lot to do, but it anyhow feels rather tiring when I don't have the need to get out of the house because of a lecture. Other people I know have organized some trips to either their family or to go abroad and see Norway or Sweden or Lapland. Just I stayed here because I thought I had courses. Voi vittu!
I end up sleeping like 12 hours a day at the moment. It's just so fucking cold in my room, so I rather lay down in my bed to get warm, but then I get tired and when I wake up 12 hours have passed and I just think "what the fuck has happened?".
I'm plagued by vitutus and I think I am a bit homesick, too.

***

But then again, today I met my tandempartner (a Finnish-German tandem, yay!) and we went to Turunlinna which I haven't seen yet. It is the oldest still preserved building in whole Finland, some 700-ish years old. From the outside it looks - to me at least - rather ugly.

I just don't like how stained it looks. I'm just used to something entirely different from the German castles I often visit. Turun linna is not really comparable to these German castles.
But it's really huge!

It does not look so huge from the outside, but we spent like 2,5 hours inside and we were not reading everything, not looking to closely at everything they have exhibited there. Most interesting to me was the medieval part of the castle.

I love the decoration! :D

A model of Turunlinna in winter, apparently.

My second favourite part of the exhibition was the children's museum. I just love children's museums! Where you can open boxes to get more information, where you can touch different kinds of fabric, where you can investigate and do whatever you like. They even had a puzzle where we could dress up a knight! :D I love that!
If I should end up in a museum I will definitely want to design exhibitions for children!
They even had one area where one was able to dress up with medieval clothes and take photos. So lovely! However, we did not do that.

To sum this up, it was a very pleasent day today! :)

Tampere, Turmion Kätilöt ja Vitutus

Last friday I've been to Tampere, together with two Finnish friends who originally come from there. I asked them for a trip there because I heard that the metalscene in Tampere is supposed to be the most active. If you come to Finland as a fan of Finnish metal, you may find Turku quite disappointing since here's only two pubs having a Hevi-theme. Most of the bars here are more orientated to a mainstream audience. As far as I heard, Finnish people don't even like the music that is played in these normal clubs, still they go there and spend too much money on too expensive alcohol. Hm.

I'm rambling, so I should come back to the actual topic again: Tampere.
I imagined Tampere to be a bigger city than Turku, interesting and perhaps even more nice-looking than Turku. However, Tampere was indeed bigger and interesting, but not nice-looking. It is, in fact, Finland's oldest industrial town and therefore the shapes of industrial buildings like factories where still omnipresent in the image of the town.
Very interesting though was the dome (tuomiokirkko) of Tampere where Elina wanted to drag me at all costs. I'm glad she did because it was truly impressive! The outside looked rather medieval, although it was only built in the 20th century. And the inside was very nicely decorated! There were feathers and wings everywhere, a truly unique motive.I've never seen something like this before in a church. And there was a snake in the highest spot of the ceiling which was very interesting.

I may upload some photos later.

Also, in Tampere, I met my old friend again to whom I've lost contact for about 7-8 years. 2005 we were host-sisters in pupil's exchange. She stayed with my family and I stayed with her family for a month. It was the first time that I was living in Finland for a little while. And I loved it! It's so great to be back!
It was very nice to get into contact with her again and to meet her in Tampere. :) I hope, we'll meet again during my stay in Finland. It is already kind of loosely planned to go back to Tampere because we all wanted to visit a café which was closed last friday.

***

Yesterday I've seen a Finnish industrial metal band called Turmion Kätilöt. It was a very nice concert, I enjoyed it a lot!
Actually my plan was to get totally drunk but however I did not have enough money for that. One other day I just have to get totally wasted here, I sorta promised it. (Damn Finns that they take said things so seriously! I still have to work on that.)

Well, yes. For those who are intersted, Turmion Kätilöt played the following songs:
Verta ja lihaa
Mistä veri pakenee
Grand ball
Jalopiina
USCH
Tirehtööri
Nimi kivessä
Teurastaja
Hades
Minä määrään
Pyhä maa
Suolainen kapteeni
Vedetäänkö vai ei.

I only knew like 4 or 5 songs but still it was a hell of a concert!
I definitely want to see them again when I have the chance.

***

Vitutus. Vitutus is something very Finnish. I encountered this state of mind just recently. It is some kind of being really pissed off by something or nothing at all. You just happen to be very pissed all of a sudden.
This is what most Finnish people seem to have almost always. It has also happened to me before quite very often even in Germany, so the state of vitutus is nothing new, just the word. And I fucking like that word! It explains this feeling so well.
Friday morning, the last thing I thought in my dream was "minua vituttaa" and just then my alarm clock started to ring. I still wonder what I dreamt about that it got me so pissed.


Something very sweet was said to me yesterday by Matti and Iiris, and something similar even by Elina the day before:
All three of them have a feeling about me like I'm not a foreigner actually but rather a Finn.

Again, this is like the greatest compliment somebody can make to me! :)

There are people who feel like they are born to the wrong body, I just feel like I was born to the wrong country.

Almost halftime

It's so sad how time flies by when having fun and trust me, dear readers, I'm having a lot of fun here in Finland! Well, recently I've rather been having problems with my flunssa I've been suffering from for one week now already and it just does not seem to get any better.
That's why I unfortunatel had to miss a concert which most likely would have been just awesome. But well... Sometimes there's just nothing one can do. Unfortunately.

I'm now here for already two months - arrived at the 12th of August - and three more months are still left. I will fly back to Germany on the 12th of January. So each 12th of a month I will talk about my progression.

Between the last 12th and today a new personal goal was born: I want to become a real Finn! In the end, I'd love to live here, work here, in best cases even have a partner here and whatnot. But I won't plan this far, I'm too much of a realist for that. But I want to achieve my goal by fulfilling a few requirements.
What does it need to become a Finn?, I've been thinking. Well, this list is probably full of prejudice and mainly based on what I as a foreigner think of typical Finnishness. It may not be true at all!
Some prejudice first:
- Finns are always grumpy.
- Finns are shy and don't really talk.
- Finns love to drink booze.
- Finns are good at doing music.
- Finns go to sauna completely naked and take a bath in a frozen lake thereafter.

I may add some more to the list when more comes to my mind.

Of this list, I luckily already fulfill some prerequirements. Due to my melancholic/sanguine temperament I am on a good way already to become a Finn. This temperament makes me calm, thoughtful (mostly of heavy, depressing thoughts), slighty lazy and grumpy. And I hate people. I have a natural mistrust against people I don't know. I want my peace most of the time. According to the prejudice, this is just what a perfect Finn is like - except for the being lazy part perhaps. Let's rather say... Finns use their resources in the best way. Why take the long way if you can have a short one? Okay, I take it all back: Finns are like the laziest bunch of people I ever met... Except for the Italians, which are worse.
However, I am aware of the fact that not all Finns are like that what is depicted here. Many people I got to know here are very happy and talky and partyloving people. They're outgoing and enthusastic about everything. Some of them are able to talk for hours. And sometimes I even like to talk with them along for hours! Depending on the chemistry, of course.

Last month, I started to list what I have done so far. This time, I will rather make a list of things which I have to do and comment on their completion status here.

Become a real Finn

- Be grumpy,silent and cold on the outside, but the opposite once somebody is able to break the ice. (100% completion)*
- Speak fluently Finnish. (30% completion, perhaps)
- Fall in love with Finnish music. (100% completion)
- Go to sauna, preferably naked and with an icy lake nearby. (0% completion)
- Get drunk together with Finns (and probably totally wasted thereof
). (0% completion)
- Spend a winter in the high north or see at least some northern lights in the south. (0% completion)
- Like Finnish food and drinks. (50% completion -- I'm at the moment pretty unsure what it contains. I really love Salmiakki and Fazer chocolate and Punajuurisalaatti. But there are some things I haven't tried yet. Mämmi for example. And normal dishes, not just sweets...)

This will be probably updated. Perhaps.
*= Apparently I smile too often to be a real Finn. Damn! 

What I've done so far

- I've been to a Finnish excavation.
- I've been to Helsinki (2x).
- I've been to three concerts.
- I've been to a karaoke-bar twice.
- I met a lot of Finnish and also international metalheads \m/.
- I improved my Finnish-skill a lot!
- I've been to sauna.
- I started to learn swordfighting.

What I still have to do

- Go to Tampere (planned).
- Go to Tallinn (planned).
- Go to Stockholm.
- Go to Lapland.
- Sauna more often.
- See Ruissalo.
- Visit Turku castle.
- Visit museums in Turku.
- Become a Finn. :D
- Find a Finnish boyfriend. xD

Hevi Karaoke!

I've been to a karaoke-bar yesterday with the members of the Finnish Heavy Metal Organization of the University here.
It was pretty fun.
I actually wanted to sing something too after I had my second beer, filled out the little paper and Lorna, a scottish girl, handed it in because I was not so sure about it.
However, when I finally got called to sing, I was too sober again and was just frozen to the bench. "Nah, I can't do that, leave me here, please!", I said while a German and a Finnish guy both tried to convince me to go to the stage. I just felt like a total fool in that moment. Like a loser.
(Well, to be honest, I actually did sing something, together with Alex, who comes from Germany too, funnily not even very far from my place. I suppose it will be possible and likely that we'll somehow keep the contact!
We ended up singing Aqua's "Barbie Girl" for no particular reason. Just to blame ourselves to the bone... xD It was funny anyhow, even if I can't get rid of the feeling that the people rather made fun of us.)

I am, probably. (A loser. Referring to the paragraph before the last brackets.) It wouldn't have been half as bad as I would have imagined, I suppose. I was just way too intimidated by all the Finnish people.
You know, Finns are said to be soooo shy people who only can open up their mouths and talk to you when they're drunk. But they however can sing so astonishingly well when they had a beer or two. It was sheer amazing. Among the three dozens of people who were there there were only like one or two who did not sing so nicely, the rest was just freaking awesome.
"Each Finn does at least have two bands", said the Finn I just met yesterday. "Especially the guys who are into music. The girls may not have a single band, but all guys who are into music or Heavy Metal do at least have two bands."
That explains why so much freaking good music comes from Finland, I suppose.

Also, I can check one part of my Agenda to become a Finn I did not even have on the list until yesterday:
- Teach Finnish to a Finn. :D

It turned out that my new acquaintance just lives next door. So we went home together after we've been chatting in front of the bar for an hour maybe and ended up chatting in front of the main door of our houses again for hours. It was around 3 when I came into my room, it was a bit before 1 when I left the bar. Amazing actually how we were able to talk that long even though we just met that very evening.
Even more remarkable, that we had at least 1/3 of the conversation in Finnish! And I explained to him why the word susi (wolf) is in partitive sutta.
[The rest is boring explanation stuff, you may skip it if not interested!]
I have learned in my kielioppi-course, that the syllable "si" which can be found quite often at the end of some nouns and at the beginning of the personal pronoun sinä (you, sg.) has in old Finnish actually been a "ti".
So it was like tinä istut (you sit) instead of sinä istut. Note that the -t at the end is the usual ending for verbs in 2. ps. sg., probably still deriving from the root tinä.

Nouns however, are declined like this:
katu (nominative; street), kadun (genetive; of the street), katua (partitive; the street).
And nouns ending on -si, like vesi (water) look like this:
vesi (nominative), veden (genetive), vettä (partitive).
It does not make sense that s suddenly becomes d or tt. However, it you imagine the s formerly having been a t it does indeed make sense.

Does that make any sense to you? xD I suppose not. I should not start to teach Finnish with the most difficult parts first. You should be aware of the changing of the consonants p, k and t first, to fully understand this. I am too lazy though to explain this here.

Coffeeeeee °,..,°

I'm sort of proud of myself today!

I did not have any classses today so I used the day to get some things done I've been wanting to do for a while now. These include:
- cleaning my room
- change bedlinen
- buy water
- buy a coffeemaker and coffee
- recharge my mobile phone
- look for a new nice skirt.

So after I had lunch I went into the towncenter and first went to a Kioski, in order to get some money loaded to my mobile phone. Usually I greet the person at the counter in Finnish ("moi!") and then switch to English. Today, however, which makes me incredibly proud, I managed to say what I wanted in Finnish! I'm pretty sure that I made some grammar-mistakes or used a wrong word but the young woman did not react like "Ah, a foreigner, I better talk English to her because she does not understand my language" (usually Finns are like that), instead she continued asking for details in Finnish.

When I went to some clothing-stores to look for a nice skirt, some salespersons approached me, talking only Finnish with me.
After almost two months it anyhow feels like I'm ready for acculturisation, finally! I'm one step closer to my goal (becoming a Finn), because I start to rather speak Finnish than English when dealing with salespersons. And one other thing happens more and more often: When I'm talking with a Finnish person (usually in English), I suddenly forget English words which are then replaced by Finnish ones. Like "Last week I've been at ... uh ... keskusta together with a friend and we went to get some ... jäätelö. But we found out that it was too ... kallis...". Sort of. Finnish people can at least understand that. But I'm glad that I produce more and more full Finnish sentences instead.

Also, I have my coffeemaker now. Did you actually know that Finns are the people who drink most coffee in the whole world? Not the Italians, no, the Finns! I find this pretty remarkable. Finnish people are coffee-junkies. And now I have the possibility to become one, too, again. (I sometimes really missed my coffeemaker back home in Germany.)

However, I was not able yet to fill one part of my today's agenda: To clean up. I will probably do that tomorrow. Now first, I need to make the coffeemaker ready to go for tomorrow morning.

Drinking, singing, fighting

It's been a while since my last post here, but nothing really has happened during the week. Just the last two days are worth telling about, I guess.

During the week I've been to university almost each day. I learned more Finnish! Especially interesting was the short information about reconstructed historical Finnish. It made many things so much clearer for me! And even some Finnish people I told about that were surprised. It's always so interesting to learn a language because people who speak that language since ever are having a totally different view on it. That's actually why it is so much fun to me to teach people my own mothertongue, German. Because they see things I do not see. They make me think about why I say something like this and not otherwise. So I'm really happy to have another language tandem again! I'm going to teach one Finnish girl German and I'll learn even more Finnish from her!

Apart from Finnish courses, I did also have courses related to Baltic Sea Region. I really like the course Knowledge about Finland - although I do already know about half of what is taught there.

But I actually did not want to talk about university at all actually. Except for the Euroopan Kielten Päivä maybe which was at friday in the Educarium building. Some students have prepared tables with information about, well, Europe's languages obviously. Also, some institutions of the university like the language center have introduced themselves. It was really nice for me to learn some words in Hungarian. :D They actually became rather useful later on!

Because ...

duh-duh-duh

... at Saturday evening there as a Get-to-know evening organised by TYRMY, the association for Heavy Music here at the University of Turku. It was really nice to meet some new metalheads! Although I spent - unfortunately actually - most time with the other exchange students.
For the first time I've been talking to this one Hungarian girl who is also in all three Finnish courses I'm having. I knew that she was into metal too, but, well, as always, I'm just too shy to approach people by myself. But yesterday was kind of different. And it came in handy, too, that I learned a few Hungarian words. :D Not that I needed to talk in her language - not at all, she speaks English and Finnish too - but it was kind of nice to surprise her by saying "Égészségeré" or however it is spelled. xD (For those who don't know, that's "Cheers" in Hungarian.)

After that very entertaining evening there with the metalheads, I went to a karaoke-bar together with a few of my new acquaintances. Three of my friends were already waiting there and I suppose they were actually pretty pissed that they had to wait for that long (my apologies to all three of you! ._.)
It was really fun though in the karaoke-bar. We all metalheads ended up singing Ensiferum's Lai Lai Hei. :D It must've sound awful. :D But it was fun!

I'm so looking forward to next weekend because then even more TYRMY-people will go to the same karaoke-bar! That'll be awesome!

Today I had my first lesson in medieval sword fighting. Woohoo! :D
I learned how to walk correctly. How to hold a wooden stick to make it look like a sword, how to stab people with a dagger and how prevent being stabbed myself. :D
I can now truly say: Minä tapaan ja tapan uutta ystävää. (I meet and I kill new friends.
 -- This is one of the funny things of the Finnish language: These two words sound very similar and for a foreigner it's really hard to pronounce the difference. So whenever I say "I meet a friend", it may sound like "I kill a friend" to all Finns.)
I'm really interested to take this sword-fighting course! Why actually not?

One spontaneous adventure...

Last saturday after the Moonsorrow-concert I made acquaintance of a guy named Aki. We were chatting a little bit after the concert and when Honoka left me, he stayed with me waiting for my bus to leave at 5 am.
Now, this thursday he gave away a free entrance to a festival in Helsinki called Unioni-festival. I've been seeing posters for this festival everywhere and I was so sad that I could not go there because there was going to be Insomnium and Arch Enemy playing. But since I've already been to Helsinki last week and I'm constantly being low on money I decided not to go there. Well... but then it happened that he actually made it possible to skip the entrance fee for the concert. Still I was thinking like maybe the whole day if I'd want to go there or not (Of course I wanted to go there!) and calculated how much the bus tickets would be. In the end they turned out to be some 28-ish euros because I booked so late. I think that was pretty okay for seeing two bands I really like!

It even got more crazy. When I arrived to Helsinki, Aki was mentioning "Ah, by the way, we're going to meet Arch Enemy at around eight."
I was like "What? ... Wait ... what?!"
Of course, that was the day when I just left my camera at home. xD As usual. If something like that happens I always forget something anywhere.
I was pretty excited because I've never been backstage in my whole life before. Apart from that ... well, these band people are just people like you and me. They use the same toilet paper as we all do. (Hopefully...) Still, it was interesting to see these people from so very close. And to be present when an interview is just being taken is also very interesting.
And uh ... to prove that I was there there's been made - of course - a photo too. xD

Ah, I just don't like how I look there. But no one looks really amazing. Alissa can look so much better.
Of course, as always in situations like that, I end up saying something entirely stupid. This time it was "I like your hair!" as if I was just some ... girly fangirl-thingy. xD But it's true, her hair is pretty amazing. (I wonder how often she has to dye it to keep the blue colour upright...)

Also, I of course left more money than I actually wanted because I had to buy this Insomnium t-shirt.
And the prices for alcohol in this club were just like hell. 6,50 for one beer! I'm so looking forward to going back to Germany if it comes to affordable alcohol. Other than that, I'd really like to stay in Finland forever. <3

Needless to say that the rest of the evening was just plain amazing! I missed almost the whole gig of The Man Eating Tree because I needed to get some cash for that Insomnium t-shirt but what I've seen has been quite nice.
Lost Society was also a new band for me but their live performance was really enjoyable. These guys just have so much energy! Amazing!
Of course, Insomnium was great! I actually discovered them only this year just a few weeks before I went to see them live at a festival in Germany. But I really love their melancholic music.
And Arch Enemy. Whoah! I saw them already at Wacken and at Rockharz. I think Alissa is doing her job pretty good! Although I must say I never saw them live with Angela, so I can not really compare it.

Yes... I've been here in Finland for a bit more than a month now and already been to three awesome concerts. I'm very curious about what'll be coming up next.

One month in Finland!

This is with much delay, my apologies.
I will just copy something I have previously posted. These are some thoughts about what I have already done here in my first month in Finland and what I am still up to.


Previously published at 15. Sep., 10:52 am

Oh noes, I missed the date totally because I was too busy recently.

But three days ago, the 12th of september was the day. I am now in Finland for one month already. 4 months to go.
I thought, this would be a nice occassion to think about what I have done so far and what is still on my to do list.

What I've done so far:
- I inscribed to university and got (almost) all paperwork done. (I still need to print and sign one paper for my home university which I only received two days ago and I did not have access to a printer until now.)
- I've been to a finnish excavation and found a lot of iron nails and met many interesting finnish people there.
- I made acquaintance of quite many people from all over the world. Of these acquaintances there is only a small handful of people with whom I'm spending my time. I'm glad that among these people are only three other Germans (three German guys, because I don't like girls), then a Swedish girl, an American girl, a Japanese girl, a French guy. ... I think that's it.
- I got to know far more Finns than foreigners, which is great! I try to become friends or at least good acquaintances with these Finns, because my purpose of being here is to improve my Finnish after all.
- I've seen my beloved Helsinki.
- I've been to two concerts. :)


What I still have to do:
- Go to sauna. Yes, I haven't been to sauna yet. What a shame! I need to do that, but probably I first need to get rid of my flu.
- See northern lights. Apparently there was northern lights activity in southern Finland last weekend, but I was too tired on friday and was inside of light-polluted Helsinki on saturday so I did not see them, unfortunately. :(
- I want to go to Northern Finland.
- Visit Stockholm.
- Visit Tallinn.
- Watch an ice-hockey match in a stadium.
- Find a finnish boyfriend. xD (Well, this is semi-serious. I know how much of a problem I have with closeness and then I will be gone back to Germany at january so it would not make sense at all! But ... hm. I'd really like the idea to be married to a Finn some day, because I love these finnish lastnames.)

Well. Anything else I want to achieve here? I will think about it and tell about my progress at the 12th of October. Perhaps. Or later, if I forget. :D

Moonsorrow! (13. Sep.)

One of my favourite bands - Moonsorrow - was giving a gig in Helsinki last saturday. They were accompanied by Crimfall, a band I vaguely knew thus far and which I actually found quite good. I have to admit though that I'm not at all a fan of female voices (hah, although I'm a female myself xD) so ... hm, I preferred the male sung parts of Crimfall.
But Moonsorrow! Aww, it was soooo awesome!

I went to the concert with a japanese girl from my finnish class. Yes, it's awesome, isn't it? Here are people from far-away Japan who are learning how to speak finnish! Also, a Japanese girl who loves finnish metal. Plain awesome! Honoka, I love you! :D
It was a very nice day we had together. And this although I had a big and ugly flu and therefore took some Aspirin to get rid of my headache. Of course, I needed to drink some beer too. I only thought one would get drunk more quickly if you take Aspirin and alcohol. But apparently there's the danger that your tummy may bleed which is not nice at all. I was lucky that day, but please, kids don't do that at home!

I will ask Honoka later if I'm allowed to add some of her photos to my blog.

And for all who are interested, the setlist of Moonsorrow looked as followed:
Tulimyrsky
Pimeä
Jumalten Kaupunki
1065: Aika
Taistelu Pohjolasta
Jotunheim
Muinaiset
Pakanajuhla
Sankaritarina

Plain awesome! One of the best concerts I've been to this year and by far the best gig of Moonsorrow I've seen. 

University and the first gig! Week 4 and 5 (1. Sep. - 14. Sep.)

University in Finland is a bit different to what I'm used to in Germany. The greatest difference may be that here each term is divided into two periods. And that has a huge impact on the process of creating a timetable.
There can be courses which will be offered in period I and II. That likely means that the course - like in Germany - contains one lecture in the week and lasts until the end of the term.
Then there's the possibility that a course is only meant for one period. In this case it's likely that there will be held two lectures in a week. The tests will then be written at the end of the term.
Then there's courses which are twice a week but go through the whole term.
And there can be so-called Blockseminare like on Germany.  That basically means that the whole programme of the course is put into 4-5 longer sessions. This can be quite annoying if these sessions are inmidst of a week and therefore impossible to come to all sessions of the course, except if you skip the other...
It was sooooo difficult and frustrating to generate my timetable this term because it's so much easier in Germany! There you just go into the internet platform, roll in for the courses you want to visit and it automatically generates your timetable. But I guess I did it quite well here in Finland nevertheless.

Another thing which is different are so-called book-exams. You don't go and listen to a kecture and write a test based on what has been said there, no. Instead you are given one or more books and have to read them on your own and then finally write a test at the end of the term. I would have loved to listen to a lecture about Finland's prehistory, but unfortunately, this course is one of these book-exams. So I decided not to take this course, unfortunately.

I did not only want to talk about University here, although the title says so.
Also, I've been at a little concert organized by TYRMY at the 5th of September. It was held in a small pub here in Turku called Rokbar. There were three not so well known finnish bands presented: Iskulintu, Gladenfold and Korpikuusen Kyynel.
Iskulintu was pretty interesting, something I've never seen before! There were just two guys, one playing an electric kantele and singing, the other playing a drum with a stick which ressembled very much a stoneage-hatchet. :D They are most likely to put into the wide category of folkmetal or something, but it was so refreshening that they were so different. There were no bagpipes, no whistles, no violin and all the like, just the kantele. So very pure. And it sounded like they were straight coming from the midst of a dark, finnish wood. I really liked them and I'd love to see them on a medieval market maybe.
The second band, Gladenfold was something like Power Metalish, perhaps. I really liked them, they were powerful and not boring to listen to because their music was pretty varied for me. Also, I really liked their vocals which is by far the most important thing for me. If I don't like the singer's voice, I won't like the band.
And that was the case - unfortunately - for the last band of the night, Korpikuusen Kyynel. I was expecting something like a Korpiklaani-clone, so a partyband singing songs about drinking booze and stuff... I listened to one of their songs beforehand on Youtube or Facebook but shut it off because I did not like the female singer's voice at all. So I did not even stay for their gig but went home instead.

Also, it was very interesting that evening to meet two German guys who both are into Metal obviously and who both do not live so very far away from me in Germany. The world is soooo small. <3

The third week (25. Aug. - 31. Aug.)

The beginning of the week was as usual: I spent my days from the early morning until the late afternoon at the excavation. I found a few iron nails, enjoyed my stay there with my finnish fellow archaeologists and of course got wet again.
If I'm allowed to (I will ask beforehand) I will upload one picture here which I've done with my mobile phone because I found the construction so interesting. Because it rained to much, the finnish team has built some kind of roof out of plastic planes to cover the archaeologists from the heavy rain while they were working. It looked pretty funny and adventurous but actually proved to be quite efficient!

That were the first two days of the week.
Wednesday began the Orientation Week for all new Exchange Students. That's why I was not able to go to excavation anymore - unfortunately - but stuck in university. It was quite nice though to meet the people I'm going to spend a lot of time during the next few weeks and months. People from all over the world! How interesting!
One thing which bothers me though is the fact that among the exchange students there are too many other Germans. I try to avoid having contact to Germans as much as I can because I'm not here to speak German. Of course, it's not possible to avoid them entirely. Most of the time I'm speaking english even with the Germans. xD Mostly because we're in a group of more people and there's at least one among who does not understand German.
Well. Since Serena has mentioned it in her blog (I may link this later if I don't forget), there was a welcome fair at friday of this week where different studentoranisations presented themselves. It's so very interesting what finnish students are doing here! What kinds of clubs and activities are offered at this university!
There's even one club for Heavy Metal. It's called TYRMY. I found this very interesting! It was actually Serena who introduced me to this club. She's an American girl doing her Masterdegree here in Finland (oh how I envy her!) and she's studying musicology. Actually, she says, she's a very introvert person who has difficulties with getting into contact with other people (just like me, heh), but she took herself together and spoke to me in order to ask me if I heard of TYRMY already. I suppose this is how a nice friendship was born. :D I will continue envying her. I hope she's okay with that.

Well... what happened else in this week? Nothing much more, I suppose.
One thing worth mentioning is maybe that the weather - of course - stopped being bad and wet as soon as I switched my archaeologist's rubber boots to more comfy university sneakers... -.- As soon as I have to sit in crowded lecture halls, the weather got sunny and shiny and beautiful again! So ... probably Joonas is just right if he calls me an evil weather-witch (I just must not tell him that he's probably right with that...!)

I may add something more later if it comes to my mind.

The second week (18. Aug. - 24. Aug.)

Finland has greeted me with very warm and nice weather when I arrived (I had like two jackets on on my arrival date, mainly because they did not fit anymore into the suitcase, not because I expected a harsh cold up here) and I sweated like nothing. However, the weather pretty soon changed from this nice and sunny feel to something more uncozy: The temperature was around maybe 14°C and the rain did not want to stop at all.
At my third day of excavation I looked out of the window and wrote a textmessage to Joonas "Good morning, uh ... are we out today?" I expected him to answer something like "Nah, not today", but the opposite was the case. He said: "Put your waterproof clothes on and come out." Well... I did not bring any waterproof clothes to Finland! So ... the start of the second week of excavation was actually not so pretty nice. But it got nicer with every day and the end of the week it was dry again. Hooray!
My highlight of the week was that I bought myself a pair of winterrubberboots for a huge amount of money. But that was totally worth it! 

Because not much else happened, except for the excavation, and I do not want to annoy my dear readers with details - not to mention the fact that I actually am not able to recall all details anymore - I will just copy another text I have already written back then. It compares German and Finnish archaeologists, based on my own observations.
(originally published on the 24. Aug. at 7:24 am)

The digging method
Well, I have to state beforehand that this excavation here was a research excavation. There's a difference between research excavations and rescue excavations:
The first are carried out by universities and they are rather slowly proceeding. There are a lot of students who may have never worked in an excavation before, so they're there to learn it. I've been to only two rescue excavations now, one in Germany and this one in Finland and I'm not sure yet if the comparison is legitime...
I've been spending much more time on the latter kind, the rescue excavations. These are carried out by the office of preservation of ancient monuments and they need to be done as quickly as possible. This is also where money is to be expected because usually there's someone behind (private person or more commonly an orginasation) who wants to build some buildings onto the land which holds ancient monuments. We have pretty well knowledge (in Germany) about where monuments are to be expected. Se before anything can be built, archaeologists have to be send there and rescue what is still there. You can imagine, there's a lot of pressure because these people want to build their buildings as soon as possible. There's a lot of holes to be dug, hard physical labour. But also fun.

So... In Germany, on all my rescue excavations and also on the one research excavation I had to dig holes into the ground, using a shovel and a spade mainly. In Finland it's funnily very different. :D The area is divided into 1 x 1 m squares and each student gets one or two of these squares. Then he/she sits there on the floor and scratches away a few centimetres of dirt using a little trowel. You can imagine, the progress here feels really slow for me. But it's really relaxing. <3

I have to add there's a pretty interesting tool the finnish people are using: It's like a combination of shovel and spade I haven't seen before in Germany. I'm pretty sure this comes in quite handy.

The students
In Germany, studying archaeology seems to be equally popular among boys and girls. Perhaps there are a few more male people, resulting in a relation of 60/40 or 70/30 (men/women).
Finnland is different! On this excavation there were only 4 boys and about 20 girls. It confused me pretty much once I recognised that and I started asking if it's normal that there are so few men. Everyone said "Yep, that's normal!". One girl stated, the relation may be something about 10/90 or 20/80 highest. Funny, for me.

The smoking
One thing which really disgusts me at german excavations is that almost everyone seems to be smoking. Maybe I was just a bit unlucky with my team in this matter (these are awesome people nevertheless! they're just having a bad habit).
In Finland, I've seen only one smoker on the excavation so far. And he seems to be so ashamed that he's hiding far away in the bushes to smoke his cigarette. :D

The footwear
In Germany it is obligatory to wear safety boots with steel bars, since the spades have to be really sharp in order to cut the earth easily and tidily.
Finns however wear normal rubber boots on their excavations. :D Without steel caps. Okay, it's comprehendable if you read my complaints about the wet finnish weather carefully. Still it feels weird for me.
In summer, when the weather is nice, I've even seen a picture where finnish archaeologists wear sandals. Or walk around barefooted. That's not allowed in Germany.

I think these are all observations I can think of right now. I may add more if more comes to my mind.

The first week (12. Aug. - 17. Aug.)

This is a copy from a few thoughts I have previously written and published, on the 15. Aug. at 1:40 pm:

Suomessa

I am in Finland now for already 3 days, 4, if you take the day of my arrival into account too. I don't, because I only arrived at 5 pm and was tired like hell!
I only found the time to write a thought here just today.
I spent the other two days mainly with the mighty quest for doing the painful, but unfortunately necessary paperwork. Well, I want money here in Finland, so it needed to be done as quickly as possible.
I had to run from one place to another - luckily my tutor was with me, so I did not have to look for these places myself (I wouldn't've been finished by now...) - and finally put all into an envelope and send it back to Germany.

Now, I only have to wait for the offices to respond.
I really hope badly that they'll raise the money I get to a satisfactory amount. The prices in Finland are like hell!
In Germany I pay about 280 € for my 24 m² flat. Here, in Finland, I pay about 420 for 18 m². In Germany I can get a warm meal for 3 (= very cheap) or 6 (moderate) €. Here, a very cheap meal is around 6 - 7 €.
You see the drift, I guess.
I already ran out of money for this month because I have to pay two rents which have cost more than my actual income is.

***

Yesterday and tomorrow, I have been on the excavation in Turku. (You can read it in English and German as well...) The excavation method here is a bit different from what I have experienced in Germany. But I have to say that most of my experience in Germany is based on rescue excavations, and this here is a scientific excavation. These work completely differently. (If you're interested, I may talk about the difference in another thought...)

It's really nice to be here, though. I just miss one of my friends from Germany, who was also at the last excavation with me, who wanted to come here, too. Unfortunately he did not have time and money, so I am all alone. :(
Hardly anybody of the Finns talks to me.
I must be a really intimidating, evil looking person. Nah... it's just the stereotypical shyness of the Finnish Folk that plays a role here. They do not like speaking, especially in a language they haven't mastered. And my finnish is unfortunately not good enough to talk about more than about the weather or stones. But I'll try to improve because that's what I'm here for.

At least one thing has been really nice:
One of the few boys at the excavation has told me that he first thought I'd be a Finn because my pronounciation is so well.
Well, that was a really nice thing to say! :) I'm glad that at least my pronounciation is good, when even my vocabulary is small.

Yes. What I wanted to add, too, is that I'm glad to be back to Finland.
I really missed it. I just like the way the finnish villages and towns look like - I like the very finnish kind of architecture (at least what I see as very finnish) -. I like to hear the people speak Finnish even though I understand almost nothing except a few words here and there.
I hope, I can improve my knowledge of the finnish language during my stay here.

And for now, I guess I rambled enough.
I may tell more later.
Nähdään! (See you)

One month delay - time to catch up a bit!

What this blog is about:
Well, I am a German student of prehistorical archaeology and I am currently doing an exchange term in Finland, at the Univerisity of Turku.
I wanted to go there not especially because this university offers a variety of courses in archaeology in English (in fact all archaeology courses are given in Finnish), but because I just love this country, the language, the finnish people. So my interest in being here is not academic but rather personal. I want to improve my knowledge of the Finnish language which I have started to learn autodidactically around 10 years ago.

So, I've been here in Finland for more than one month already.
Actually I've been thinking about creating a blog for my stay here as soon as a friend of mine - who is also doing an exchange semester - told me about his blog. But until now I've just been too lazy to do so. Currently I'm thinking about whether to write this blog in German or in English, I haven't decided yet. And since I am speaking English here most of the time actually it feels quite natural to write this blog in English. And besides, I need to catch up one month or something, so I'm going to copy a few thoughts about my stay here which I have already written and which are in English. Maybe, from time to time there will be something German in between. If I feel like it.

Good. That being said.

I think I will start to tell about my first few weeks in seperate posts, sum up one week in one post or something because - to be honest - not so much has happened here in the first few weeks. If there's something more interesting I may write a separate entry for that.

Yes. Otherwise, have fun with this blog.
(I need to find out how to tweak the appearance a bit. Are there comments possible? Because I really appreciate comments.)