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.