Vappu \(^o ^ )/

Vappu - celebrated on 31.04.-01.05, it's kind of a special celebration here in Finland - it doesn't even exist in Austria, so it was something totally new to me :D

I was planning to go to a gig in Helsinki on April 31th, but in the end, as I was sitting at the train station, I followed my inner voices and decided to celebrate Vappu properly and in Tampere with my friends. I could have joined the party in Helsinki, but it just felt sort of wrong to go to any other city but my second home town that day. And it was one of my best decisions ever made!! :D The night was amazing and the day that followed felt just crazy after experiencing Finnish people throughout the cold, calm winter xDD



First off, I met some Au Pair friends one of our favourite local bars - Raideri. :D
we had some drinks before going to the centre, where all the people came together around midnight to sing some sort of hymn, shower in sparkling wine and crown the "Suomen Neito" statue with a traditional students' hat. - but that was just the beginning of the night! ;P

we had some more drinks, enjoyed the happy, drunk party people all around and then we parted ways - the Au Pair guys went to meet another friend of theirs and I went to another cool bar to meet some of my finnish friends :D so the party went on at "Jack the Rooster" and everyone was just succumbing to the spirit of Vappu, an extatic night indeed :P

The next day, 2 giant cranes reached the riverside of Tammerkoski to follow another special Tampere tradition - the baptism of the newcomer students xP      

Awakened from Winter Sleep ...^^

Hello there!~

I'm sorry for having been so inactive lately. I was quite distracted by a lot of events going on, followed by a lot of thoughts. Therefore, I've also got a lot of stories to tell again ;)


mmh, I guess the first thing I'm gonna talk about is the weekend that a friend came to visit me. She happens to have a lot in common with me, though we host quite different personalities: we're both Austrians, both doing EVS in Finland and, surprise, surprise, we even got the same name! I was really happy to see her again after the last Mid-Term camp, she's a great listener and I had a few thoughts and stories to share with someone that gives me the feeling of knowing what I'm talking about and understanding my point of view. She stayed at our house and we spend a lot of time in the city centre, the Moomin Museum, at the observation tower and in a certain nice coffee - haha, when was the last time you were sitting 6 (!) hours in a coffee? xDD

Talking about Austrian people, I also received visitors from home! - my mum, my sister and my godfather :D it was just a short stay, practically 3 and a half days to spend here and we arranged a lot of program so as to see as much as possible during that time! One day, I let them explore Helsinki, another one I introduced them to my precious Tampere and the third one, we took a cruise to Tallinn. We had a lot of fun and it was great to see them again! In some way, it felt like they never really were that far away, but still it was different to meet them face to face instead of skype conversations.
They were all joyful themselves, looking forward to the end of my project in summer and my return to Austria, and as much as I'd liked to deny it that time, I fought with mixed feelings about this. Of course, I'm missing them and want to spend time with them every now and then, but after staying almost a year in Tampere, it has become like a second home to me and I don't really want to let go of it just yet. That's why I'm seriously considering to stay as an Au Pair and then deciding next year, if I want to qualify as a kindergarten teacher in Finland or in Austria.
It's a fact that right now I'm full of pride and happiness if I look at the life I'm living now. I feel like I'm exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do. I've listened to a lot of opinions telling me that it might just be the life in a city itself that attracts me so much, but I'm confident that I wouldn't feel the same in just any other city, because it's not only the opportunities, but also the way of living, the country's identity and the people that have charmed me to this point. This is just the beginning of a thought that needs to be developed further, but my interest has been awakened and caught, so I need to decide carefully and always keep in mind that one thing that every opinion of those I talked to comes down to: "I need to decide whatever makes me happy right now."


And there's more :D recently, I've spend more time with the other German-speaking people in Tampere itself, with the Au Pair girls from Germany. Speaking in suddenly so much in my mother tongue again, has completely confused my mind and it's actually still hard to flawlessly switch between these three major languages that I'm using here xD
...but I really enjoy being with them. Yesterday I spend the late afternoon in the park with Christin. She's been here longer that me and she's also gonna stay longer. The sun was shining and I can confidently announce now - spring has reached Tampere! :D the snow is gone, sunrises start at 5am and it won't even think of going down before 10pm. People have become more lively, sitting at the riverside with drinks and friends, street musicians take out their drums - it seems somehow different from what I've experienced in this northern city up to now! :D

....and it feels only a little strange going out to a bar, while the sun is still high up in the sky xDD

For me, Tampere has just become a little more charming these days... :)

I've also been to 2 more gigs - "Toxic Rose" played at Jack the Rooster and once again, I saw Archie from "Santa Cruz" at an acoustic gig at Amadeus Bar ^^ wonder when I'll finally get to see the whole band xD

Easter and Tallinn ^.~

Heii!

First of all, thank you for more than 2.000 awesome pageviews!! *o*/

Today, I have a lot to tell about the Easter weekend ;D
I met up with many people and I:

- saw some Austrian friends again
- took a cruise to Tallinn
- had dinner at the Hard Rock Café
- received an Easter surprise package from home
- took part in a drinking game with Norwegians
- played CSI Miami in Finland's National Museum of History
- visited an Exhibition about Japanese Textile
- defeated Czerni at "Angry Birds" in the Museum of Design
- drew the "Imperial and Royal Eagle of Austria" on some friends' wall in Helsinki


It was quite stressful at times, but really fun!


...so Thursday morning I took an early train to Helsinki, from where I went to Tallinn by ship - together with David, Kristina, Thomas, Lukas und Anzi from Austria!
David and Kristina are currently studying in Jyväskylä for a term, while the others came to the north for holidays. Anyways, I hadn't seen either of them since the beginning of the new year, so I was looking forward to the trip a lot and as expected it was great, though they were running sort of a bet, whether I'd regret coming along or not (due to crazy behaviour xD ). In the end there was one moment that I honestly felt vicarious embarrassment - just 5 words: "Helsinki tram" and "bad Austrian songs". Aside that, it was just awesome and Tallinn is a really beautiful medieval place!

When we returned to Finland's capital in the evening, we had dinner with 2 more Austrian friends that had arrived meanwhile - Sophie and Czerni - at the legendary Hard Rock Cafe!


Friday afternoon, I went back to Tampere, where I spend the following night. In the morning I received an Easter surprise package from my parents :3 lots and lots of chocolate and a few more things - thank you!!!


Later on Saturday, I took another train to Helsinki and met my friends again, this time staying longer ;)
We decided to be culturally active for once in a while and visited the National Museum of History. It was really interesting (actually been a long time since I last visited a museum... :) )
As we were walking from room to room, we ended up finding these huge table platforms with touchscreens, displaying information about whatever was to be shown inside the room. It was obvious what came then: playing CSI Miami xDD haha, if you go to that museum once, don't miss that!!


We rented a room in a hotel near the port and ended up playing a drinking game from Jyväskylä ;D (guess you can imagine what Finnish drinking games are like :P ) after some time 2 Norwegian girls knocked on our door to ask if they could participate! I cannot help but say that Norwegian totally sounds like French! :O and they were telling us about Norway - that, to them, Finland and Sweden are so "CHEAP" !!

Sundays are Sundays everywhere, so there wasn't really much to do, but we found another museum that was open, so we went to see an exhibition about Japanese textiles in the Museum of Design and it turned out to be really interesting!
There, we also found some tablets to play Angry Birds and of course we didn't miss the chance ;D

Each day, we became less and less people, as one after another flew back to Austria and on the last evening, there were only Sophie, Czerni, David and me left. Sophie and Czerni were still residing in their hotel and David and me were couchsurfing at an apartment in central Helsinki. Our hosts were really nice and we had a lot of fun together. They had a guest book and also a wall where visitors could write or draw anything on. That was the point where David jokingly challenged me to draw the "k.u.k. eagle" of Austria, but I was like:

...and this is how it turned out to be:

So, after a really active weekend, it was also relaxing to come home on Monday and have some more hours of Easter holidays before going to work again. :)

Weekend Stories :)

This weekend was sure crazy! It had it's ups and downs - or rather it started off awesome and then in the end got a little bad, though all in all it was a good weekend and definitely an interesting time! ;P

Friday night I went drinking a Finnish friend! :) We met some time ago at one of the concerts and it was great meeting him again. I had so much fun, enjoyed great music, found my way out of a labyrinth bar, played an E-guitar and I can proudly say that I survived going drinking with a true Finnish guy :P though where this led is not meant to be documented at this place.

Saturday followed with sleeping almost 24 hours and recover from the night before :3

Starting on Sunday, unfortunate things were happening. Suddenly everyone was talking to me about how awful life is, that everything's just fucked up and I couldn't help but stand there in the middle of the chaos thinking "just what's going on here?! what a crazy Sunday" (though telling this to another Finnish friend of mine, she said "Sundays are always like that... :)" )
also, I found my little sister to be in a bad situation, involving shattered friendships and a guy...sometimes it's not easy to be away from the ones that you hold dear, if you know that they're in pain...but I believe this is also an important lesson that I learned during my EVS - how to cope with this in that kind of position!

...but even Sunday had it's nice moments, like when I went to cinema with Lilli to see "Beautiful Creatures". One of the best finnish decisions ever made is to show movies in the original language, which means, for most of them, in English. :)

Northern Lights reaching Tampere ( * - *)

17.03.2013, ~ 23:00 was the time when I finally saw it - the famous NORTHERN LIGHTS, Aurora Borealis!! :D :D :D

Living in the south of Finland, I knew chances aren't that high to observe them, though way higher than in other countries around the world, and I guess this experience is something almost everyone that comes to Scandinavia is hoping for, but that night a solar storm caused the Aurora to be visible all around the entire country and it was just breathtaking! *o*

There's no words to express the feelings rushing through your skin that moment...it was simply amazing!

Thanks to not that high quality camera and too many street lights around, it was hard to take pictures, but that's about the best one:

Legend says a fox is running across the sky and his swinging tail creates sparkles that become what we call the northern lights.
...it's also said that one who's seen the Aurora once will be rewarded with luck. :)

At any rate, I'm entirely happy that I had a chance to observe them. It's not just about experiencing a special phenomenom, but about reaching a goal set long before moving to Finland and standing right underneath this burning green curtain awakened undescribable sentiments...

Amaranthe live @ Klubi, Tampere

Moi!! ;D

Wednesday evening was the time to go and see Amaranthe in Klubi, Tampere. (^ o ^) \m/
It was an awesome performance and I'm so glad I had the chance to rock with them on their tour!

It's been a while since I enjoyed an evening this much :P Great music, great performance and great new friends!
I went there alone, since my friends, who also like this band, live in different cities of Finland and Amaranthe was playing in each one of them! xD but that didn't matter, since I met cool new people and I had so much fun!

Amaranthe is an amazing band in many ways and one of the most interesting facts is that they actually have 3 singers and each one of them is absolutely needed to create this kind of music! Also, they were really happy to play in Tampere (again), saying it's the best gig in Finland, and welcomed the fans with, of course, "PERKELE!!!!" xDD Elize was also greeting everyone in the front row by holding hands - me too :3
Their new album is about to being released, streaming right now here (check it out!!):

http://www.imperiumi.net/index.php?act=page&id=54

...what's left to say is that I hope to have a chance to see them again sometime soon and up to then:

" Thank you, Amaranthe, for introducing me to an awesome night that became even better with every second! You rock! \m/ "

Mizuki in Tampere - ♪♪

Mooooi! (^ . ^)/

Mizuki from Japan came to visit me in Tampere (and this time we managed to find each other immediately!!)

It was so much fun and I believe I've never been talking so much Finnish like I did this weekend, since she doesn't know English quite well. --> proud of myself!! (^ 3 ^)b

We were walking around, visiting Tampere's churches and went shopping in Koskikeskus and Hämeenkatu.
The sun was enlightening a clear blue sky, which made it seem like spring is coming, though that might still be too early for Finland.

Mizuki also brought me a little present - real japanese Miso-soup!! ヽ(*´∀｀*)ﾉ (tried it today and it's really delicious! - ありがとう!! 楽しかっ た! - ♪ ♪

We also had some fun drawing manga-style and exchanging infos about our countries. She showed me a lot of great music and I taught her some German and French :3

Besides, we made plans for meeting again, at least for "Sauna Open Air Metal Festival" in Tampere and "Opera Festival" in Savonlinna (〃＾▽＾〃)