Winter is coming..

well, this blog entry is dedicated to Lasse - for regularly making sure that I do not forget to update here ;)
January always seems the time to deal with all different kinds of stuff, and to make all the decisions .. all the more I'm grateful that someone helps me keep in mind that I do not want to let this blog go to waste and of course I've already got a handful of brand new stories to tell you about! :)

First of all - brace yourselves, winter has come to Finland these last days. A lot of ice, snow and thermometres waaay beyond the freezing point. And once again it has turned the rainy autumn sky into a beautiful open horizon above what the finnish natives themselves call the 'land of snow and sorrow' ;P

One amazing fact is that wherever you may live up here, you always got some forest and lakes within shortest walking distance and no matter what day or time you choose, you'll always find yourself in the middle of legendary landscapes. don't believe me? - take a look for yourself ;)

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During these last days my host family also decided to take a week of holidays in Thailand, so I had one week off, including a free cruise ride with Carina, one of my friends studying in Joensuu :D we had a lot of fun, since she already visited me some days before departure to check out Tampere and let me take her to ice swimming (cold as fuck but the Finns do know well to compensate it with 120° C sauna so that by time you're glad to cool down again outside at -16° C )

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So then Friday came and we entered Silja Serenade in Helsinki to take us to the west! Since being a finnish ship, of course it was hosting some sauna area as well, including awesome whirlpools - no question we had to try that out! :D

It was the second time for me to travel to Stockholm with that boat and the 5th time to go there all in all - just gotta love Sweden's capital!
Also, we finally fulfilled our plan of getting ourselves a 'fika', though it was awfully expensive around the city centre >.<

Time and time again it becomes quite interesting to observe the silent, introvert, sometimes grumpy finnish personality to change all over to the complete opposite in a way that you can only experience when watching them at sea xD Finns do not go to Stockholm to visit the city (if so then only for some shopping), they go there for the sake of the ship itself - tax-free alcohol, entertainment, buffets and 32 hours of partying with equal thinking individuals. Though, those who manage to get up in the morning usually go to the city. Then again it's a funny phenomenon how they crowd up when leaving the harbour and coming back by the time the ship is preparing to leave xD

However, this time we decided to do the same and just enjoy some shopping while walking around. We came to end up in a Viking Shop in the heart of the Old Town district, which was pretty cool. ;)

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Another nice surprise is that there's two of my friends, Sarka from Czech Republic and Lara from Spain, that were once living in Finland with me as volunteers, then went back home and now decided to return .. :) Lara already arrived to Turku and Sarka will soon be in Helsinki. It's great to see some of those again that were sharing the same experiences together with me and then moving so far away from each other, as it is funny to realize that we actually learned each other's name automatically by adding the country of origin to it xD 

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