Stockholm in November

My Swedish language course here in Tampere has ended and I'm really happy that we had such a great teacher that knew well how to keep the lessons both exciting and informative. My motivation did not fade and I am already looking forward to the continuation in January.
Learning a language requires of course also a lot of practice and what would be better than to seize the chance of living close enough to Sweden to be able to take one of these awesome cruise ships to the capital - and that's what I did! :D

So, together with Carina, one of my best friends in Finland (who also happens to come from my own home country), I entered yet again a Silja Line Cruiser, though this time from Turku. We visited our pink-haired fabulous friend Tom just before and then left to the west to spend 2 nights in the heart of Stockholm's old town!
Long ago I decided to once take some more time than just one day to actually see the city in it's fullest and that's what I did then. We enjoyed visiting the main sights, drink Glögg on top of the best observation tower as the sun set, go ice-skating at night on Kungsträdgården and explore nightlife at the Rocks Club. It was a great experience that I already missed the moment I left the ship once again.

Needless to say, the journey itself is amazing as well. Some say "are you insane?!" when I tell them that it's about 17 hours of travel, but time goes fast when you can kill the buffet, watch a handful of shows, go to casinos, saunas, whirlpools, shopping, bars and nightclubs all over the ship. It's a fucking 17 hours party!! And if you get tired of it, you can withdraw to your room and have some sleep or just private time. Another highlight is always to watch the sunrise and sunset on the open sea.. :) 

Upcoming Plans

I'm back! *-*

I'm sorry for not writing anything here for such a long time. The main reason for this is that my computer broke down with all my data lost D:
After investing quite a lot of money and time for repairs and successful recover, I can filnally update you here again.
Life's going smooth here, winter has come, temperatures fallen, the sun is continuing to vanish and everyone's more or less looking forward to the arrival of Christmas :)

I have decided to spend this time in my beautiful homeland Austria and do one of these things that I've been missing here the most - snowboarding!! :D And I'll bring a part of Finland with me!! :)

In addition I'm really excited about my friends coming to visit Finland during the first days of the upcoming new year! :D I was allowed to take the days off and I cannot await spending time with them once again! It seems like 3000km of distance won't keep me from seeing my friends rather regularly and since some of us made the first step, there's a sudden uprise of interest in Finland also within more and more of us.

Last, but not least - thank you for reaching a new record - over 4000 pageviews by now!! You keep it going!! :D :D

Trash Fest VI

Finally, some moment within this week that I can dedicate to update here, my dear readers! :D
Everything is going fine here up north and last weekend Helsinki called for a visit - it was TRASH FEST - time!! :D :D

The beginning of the day was really chaotic though - I was cleaning and tidying up the house for the weekend until I had about 2 hours left to shower, get ready and pack my stuff. >.< -I managed it, yess!! :D Then 1 hour before my departure I told my friend that I was meant to stay with for the nights that I'd be coming quite soon and received a rather shocking answer, stating that I would not be able to sleep at her place after all :O great, awesome! Nevertheless all the tickets were booked and ready, so I entered the bus to the capital city.
Luckily, if it comes to Trash Fest, there will always be a group of crazy, legendary Austrians around and one of these I happened to know from last year's venue! They had one bed left at the hotel room and took me in :3 it was so nice seeing Lia again after a whole year pretty much exactly to the day and even though we'd been planning to meet at the festival, I did not even guess to end up in her room. xD As she also had a group of friends staying in Finland for the weekend I got yet to meet some more cool people from my fatherland. Together we had as much fun as one Austrian can have with a handful of other Austrians, if you know what I mean ;) so, these 2 nights meant party non-stop and shaking up the calmer Helsinki! 

Note that the purple and the pink haired guys are Finnish, the rest of us belongs to Austria. ;)

With all the joy and all the alcohol it soon turned out to be quite much of a challenge to stay calm, so the fotographing was not as easy as it seemed. The morning after I proudly concluded to have been taking 1002 pictures during the weekend, of which these can be seen as presentable:

Well, even if the quailty does not match world's best, it's the fun we had and the memories transmitted by the photos that truly matter. :3
It was yet again an awesome weekend in Helsinki, and awesome group of party people and an insanely awesome Trash Fest VI !! Thank you so much to everyone that came along! And sorry to the guy who lost his beer in the earliest hours of saturday.. :)

Northern lights returning to Tampere

Yes, yesterday chances of catching the aurora off-guard were quite high, so I packed my stuff, put my thickest pullover on and headed over to Rauhaniemi beach. For a long time - quite some hours - the sky was filled with clouds, almost no chance to catch a glimpse on the stars or what lies beneath, but all of a sudden it started to clear up and it did not take long for the first arms of this night's aurora to reach over the horizon. It was not that strong, though, but still there. Moreover I'm quite happy that the pictures I took this time are quite a lot better than my first try. After all, it needs some practice. :)
...but watch for yourselves:

Note, however, that the camera showed me more intensive colours than I saw on the night sky with my eyes. At first you could have even been confusing the northern lights with strange looking clouds, because they were so light.

Also, the view I got when walking there (I decided not to take the but, so that I'd know the way afterwards and just for the sake of having a walk), was quite breathtaking sometimes:

I adore how the sky looks like velvet on the last one.. (*-*)

Visiting Rovaniemi and Chatting with Santa

So last weekend our journey took my friend Christin and me way up north, behind the vast forest lands and far away from proper civilization - until we even crossed the Arctic Circle and officially set foot on polar grounds. Though, it was not what you would expect - no icy desert with some reindeers and bears here and there (we were there in the middle of September after all, which meant that we just missed the first snow fall by being a couple of days too early)

The night we spent in Rovaniemi, capital city of Finnish Lapland, with two locals, close to the centre, meaning only about 15 minutes to walk. Even if Rovaniemi is considered a city, (the northernmost of Finland actually), there's no comparison to any other I've been visiting so far, excluding Vaasa.

So, even if we did not have any snow, there was sure some beautiful autumn landscape and trees in all kinds of warm colours. - like this:

Also, we could not catch a glimpse of the northern lights, since the sky was all filled with rainy clouds. Well, after all, we saw them at the Arktikum. There was a darkened cinema-like room inside the museum where you could lie down on pillows and look up to the ceiling and observe northern lights "secondhand". :P
They also showed to tales of how people explained the existance of this phenomenon. First and probably most well-known one says that it's a fox running across the sky, swining his tale and through that enlightening the sky. Another one claims that it's the dead playing football with the skull of a walrus. Watch it here:

We even met a German-Finnish guy who used to work at the Arktikum sometime and we ended up getting in for free, personal guide included ;D thanks, Philipp!

Last, but not least, we took a bus to Santa Claus Village, where we bought some postcards from the elves, enjoyed the strange feeling of listening to Christmas songs in September and met the one and only Santa Claus himself in his office, having some nice talk in German, though we did not end up sitting on his lap :P

what's new and in progress ;)

Hej ni!

I've spend all week keenly watching children's movies in Swedish together with my notebook and pen. ;) it's quite amazing how much I can understand solely from the other languages I'm already able to speak, though it's much much easier if I also have the subtitles to read while listening to how the words are being said.
- by the way, did you see this new Disney Version of "'Rapunzel"? If not, take some minutes and watch it - it's awesome and well worth being seen. :)

The language course is going on, though now my German Au Pair friend decided that she won't be coming anymore, but concentrate fully on learning Finnish instead, but no worries, for as always and wherever I go in this nordic country, I found another German girl to talk to and help each other with mastering the Finnish instructions on learning Swedish xD anyways it's still sad that in the end we couldn't pull through together, as we planned to, so good luck and all the best for learning Finnish, Christin! :)

Today is the first day that feels kinda cold here up north. These last days it was quite fresh during the day, but in the late afternoon the sun always tended to warm up the area again and rise the temperatures over 20°C...just hoping that snow's not coming yet ;)

Lately I've also found these Danish cookies at "Tiger", one great store to find anything you would not expect to buy when going shopping xD

...it reads "These butter cookise are from Denmark, a small country full of fairytales, kings and queens...and a rather large export of bacon. Our queen lives in a castle guarded by soldiers wearing bearskin hats. The queen loves her sausage dogs, and they love Danish butter cookies for breakfast...I imagine. I also imagine how the vikings would eat cookies in the afternoon. I eat mine in the evening with a nice glass of cold milk...enjoy yours - as you like"

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Last weekend I wanted to go to Tracon 8, one of Finland's bigger conventions, held in Tampere-talo, but since I did not reserve a ticket one month ahead, it was sold out by the time I arrived. In the evening, however, I gave it another try, as I wanted to attend the after-party and Overworld's first-time-playing-in-Finland gig --> and, YESS, I got in! ;D I went alone, so I started talking to some girls that seemed sympathetic and set myself a challenge with that - for I talked to them in Finnish only. After one and a half hour we came to talk about our homes and one of the girls asked if I'm coming from a swedish-speaking part of Finland, because of my accent.

GODDAMNIT, I'M SO PROUD OF NOT BEING ASSUMED AS A FOREIGNER ANYMORE, BUT A FINN FROM A SWEDISH-SPEAKING PART OF THIS CO'UNTRY! :D :D

...and with that I made new friends and got to know some people from Tampere, Helsinki and Espoo, of which some belonged to 2 bands I've already been hearing from. :) Jenlayn and Karmia - check them out!

Overworld's show itself was really great! I've already been hearing how amazing it would be beforehand and my expectations were all fulfilled. I got carried away with the beat and ended up quite exhausted after all the dancing, singing and headbanging.

(can you find me here? ;) )

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Wanna hear what's coming up next? 

- Going to Rovaniemi, cross the Arctic Circle and meet Santa Claus. ;)

That's the plan for the following weekend. This morning I met with Christin at the library to plan our trip and check the books for advices, sights and stuff to do. Now, I'm all into travelling xD looking forward so much to getting to know a new area and taking one step closer to the north pole.