My summer plans

Hello!

Finally I have some time to sit down and write about how I am doing. Haha and I was so concerned about being bored in the spring since I do not have many courses and most of my friends are writing their bachelor's so they basically live in the library with their laptops. How wrong was I! I do not have more than 3 lectures per week to attend to but I do have a deadline in each course weekly (it takes hours writing one essay etc, god I miss Germany where we didn't have any deadlines, only the exam in the end of the course!!). I have also been working 3 days a week (no weekends), I have started to do some sports (finally I have been able to go running, oh how I love being outdoors!) and every weekend I have been travelling (only in Finland though). In the mornings I go running/for a walk, then to the lecture and lunch and then work and boom it's evening and I go to sleep! No time for boredom! :)

This weekend I didn't go anywhere but a friend of mine visited me :) We had a girls night, reunion of former kayakers! It was an awesome weekend with the best company, plenty of food and delicious drinks :) I am glad I got to know these girls while kayaking and I am excited to return back to the kayaking life; I got a summer job in a big shipping company's office in Helsinki so I'll stay in my parents house where I grew up (22km away from Helsinki city center), train the junior kayakers and possibly participate in some kayaking competitions in relay etc this summer! :) The week in pics below:

Haven't been much home... :D

Going for a run :)

This is where I run :)

Unfortunately I got a flue so my much waited training period ended up being very short. Well, now I'll rest and hope I'll be fit for VAPPU! Vappu is a traditional Finnish celebration, the best one if you ask me! I'll tell you more about it in the next post since it's a huge thing here and it definitively deserves an own post :) What I can tell you now is that we walk around on the streets wearing the high school graduation hats and enjoy the coming summer :) Unfortunately I forgot mine in Espoo at my parents' house but my mom kindly sent it so my vappu is saved!! :) There is no vappu without the hat!

The graduation hat! Still so white; the rule is that it can't be washed so you can imagine how the old people's hats look like since we party (hardy ;)) wearing those hats!:)

This is how the Finnish speaking Finns' hat looks like from the inside.
The Swedish speaking Finns have different colours in the inside.

 Oh, and I have enjoyed the company of my childhood friend (it wasn't unproblematic though since she didn't have a bottle opener so we had to watch a couple of youtube-videos of how to open a wine bottle without a bottle opener... (ei mennyt niin kuin Strömsössä ;)) and Finnish smoked salmon from the market :) Oh and we had a company excursion to PricewiterhouseCoopers which was interesting but the best part was definitively to meet friends whom I hadn't seen for a loooong time! :)

Oh so delicious fish!

Well the cork didn't come out and the wall got black....

Didn't help much...

I do not have much time left here in Turku and soon I'll start working full time (only for the summer). Now as I think of it I feel sad for not returning to the US.. But then again I won't have much spare time to think of what I am missing out of since I'll work, be a coach as a side of working, visit my my grandparents, stay in our summer cottage, go to a big concert and meet up with friends! :)
So all in all life is good and I'll have a great summer ahead - it's all about the attitude!! :)

Have a great becoming week dear friends and family! :*

Espoo and Helsinki

 Hello dear friends and family!

Last week I spent 5 days in Espoo/Helsinki and only 2 here in Turku :) I don't usually visit my family that often but now I had 2 job interviews and I had promised my sister to go and look for a wedding gown for her (or maybe she had promised me not to go with someone else; I am so fond of weddings that someone might think I am the one getting married :D).

Since there's so much to tell and a pic tells more than a thousand words instead of text I will only post pics from Espoo and Helsinki :)

My hoods :)

 

So pretty (and windy :D) up here!

A great combo: forest and the sea

This is where I always go running: the sea on the left and the forest on the right :)

Probably my favorite place on earth! So lucky I grew up by the sea

So relaxed

Judging by the pics you wouldn't believe Espoo is the second biggest city of Finland, would you? :)

My dad made soup from moose meat :)

Cinnamon roll, a traditional Finnish dessert :P

Unfortunately I do not have that many pics from Helsinki but here are some from the central parts. We have two harbors right by the city center (less than 2 km from the main street) and a couple of others a bit further away - the sea is really important here :)

A big cruise ship back there :)

A tourist in Helsinki ;D

The city hall is the light blue building behind the boat

Helsinki is on the opposite side of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. They are only 80km apart and Helsinki is pretty much straight above Tallinn. Actually it was built as a competitor for the Hansa city Tallinn. The sea is very important for us Finns and it makes a dominant part of the cityscape of Helsinki.

That was it for today, have a nice week! :)

Lotta :*

Finnish Easter

Easter is probably every Finnish kid's favorite holiday after Christmas. Not because the end of the fast since we Finns are mostly only officially members of the church but we never go to church unless it's someone's wedding or funeral, but because Finnish kids dress themselves as witches or Easter bunnies, decorate some willow branches and walk from door to door to say/sing a short rhyme and give away the branch to then in turn get sweets. Oh, how I loved it as a kid! Well, now that I think of it we do this one week before the actual Easter, on Palm Sunday.

Me and my friend as witches. I guess we are 4 years old?

And here again with my best friend since 1992 :D

Easter is originally one of the most important christian holidays but dressing up as witches doesn't nowadays really have with the religion to do. Atheists (even officially atheists) do it and as a kid I never though of the religious origins of Easter.
We also do buy Easter egg and decorate houses with some Easter related stuff but in my family it has never had a religious meaning. Actually most of the families take the advantage of the holidays and travel somewhere. We used to travel to Lapland in the Easter, since it's the perfect time of a year to visit Lapland: it's not too cold so you can actually be outside skiing, it's not dark 24/7 and there's still a lot of snow. On the way back from Lapland we used to stop by at my grandparents so I actually associate Easter with the witches and visiting my grandparents. My gramma used to boil eggs that we then painted and my grampa always hid a chocolate egg under his pillow and when I heard the cock crow (well not a real one, it was my grampa, but kids believe everything you tell them :D) I was allowed to search for the egg.



What else... Oh, we grow Easter grass but I don't know why ;D We even do it in the schools and kids are so proud when they see the grass they grew with their own small hands to grow :D Oh, and I almost forgot to mention one traditional Finnish Easter food. It is very delicious but to be honest... it looks like poop! Finns love it, almost all of the foreigners hate it! I'm pretty sure if it looked at all more attractive foreigners might not have huge prejudice towards it. And well, the other thing is the taste: it's made of malt just like beer so it's not really sweet but not salty either. Usually we eat it with milk/cream and maybe a little bit of sugar. It's mostly a dessert, but it can also be eaten in between the meals as a snack or to be honest, whenever you want :D So I think it's the appearance and the taste that makes mämmi so gross - if you are not used to it. I love it! :P

Easter grass in Finnish design bowls which you can find in EVERY home

Mämmi. Every Finn recognizes this box :D
There are 0ther manufacturers too, but this is the most famous

Mämmi with milk. Yummy! :)

Then there are some regional traditions, like the oven cheese (uunijussi in Finnish :)) that for example my gramma makes herself. To be honest I didn't know it was a traditional Easter food since many don't even know of it's existence (I guess it comes from western Finland) and my gramma makes it every now and then. The cheese is of milk which is not processed but straight from the cow so due to it's high fat percent it's pretty sweet. It's made in the oven and can be eaten both warm or cold.

Uunijussi / oven cheese made by my gramma

Oh, the elegance ;)

 This year my Easter consisted traditionally of visiting my grandparents and spending "quality time" with my family. The absolute highlight of this Easter was to go to Scandinavia's biggest bridal gown shop! It doesn't have anything with the Easter to do but my sister is getting married and the shop is in Tampere, the 3rd biggest city of Finland, 200km northwest from Helsinki where most of my relatives live. Oh, I have to say that me and my aunt where a lot more excited that the bride herself. It's not that she wouldn't be excited, it's because I am extremely fond of weddings :D Haha I know what I am going to do if a career as an economist isn't my thing ;D

How can you not love this?

White fur coats behind the chair....!

Unfortunately this Easter wasn't all about happiness and glory: I had totally forgotten that everything is closed in Easter and I had emptied my fridge...! Usually people end their fast in the Easter but I then again started it... At least I ate a lot at my gramma's and I do have some extra after spending the last 6 months in Germany so I will survive this compulsory fast :D (don't worry I did find something in the freezer and in situations like this I tend to be very creative ;) Happy Easter everyone!

Life in Turku

Hello!

Feels weird to write a blog here in Finland and to be honest I keep forgetting the whole blog, but here it comes again!

I was back in business (aka student life) right away after my arrival since we had the annual gentlemen's dinner two days after I arrived in Finland. It's a dinner girls arrange for the guys from our faculty. There's always a theme (dress code), food & beverage, program and on behalf of equity guys arrange a ladies' dinner then in the autumn. It's this kind of special parties/events where you get those tokens you collect and sew on the overall (lazy people use glue :D). So now I have sewing to do :)

The token. This time the theme was sailing :)

My faculty's overall from the back...

...and from the front

Actually I would say that the Finnish student life is pretty awesome! The thing is that well, yes, there is a lot of alcohol involved but there's also (non alcoholic) events during the day. Every day I can see someone walk around in the city center wearing the overall going to an event (well, the city is not very big, approximately 180 000 inhabitants and there's 2 universities, the Finnish and the Swedish and 2 polytechnics, also a Finnish and a Swedish so Turku is definitively a student city. It's not that I could see overalls every day in every Finnish city). Well, I'll tell more about the student life in another post since that's definitively a theme worth writing about - today I'll write about the city itself.

Turku is located approximately 160 km west from Helsinki. The reason why I am writing about the 6th biggest city of Finland is that I happen to study here and I really enjoy the city! :)
Turku is very old, actually the old capital of Finland before Russia moved it to Helsinki. The city is full of pretty old buildings and it's divided into two: this side of the Aura-river and the other side as they are called with a very strong Turku accent which I find extremely funny! :D Sometimes it's very hard not to laugh when business men in their suits are talking serious business with this funny accent :D I am from the capital city area so I'd say our dialect is the closest to the written language. We do have some own words but pronunciation is pretty close to the written language. Haha, I might not be objective saying this and someone might disagree but haha, that's just my point of view ;)

There are several bridges to connect the sides

The pic is taken from this side of the river towards the other side :)

So back on track: This side, where I live nowadays (I used to live on the other side) is older I guess, at least the most important parts used to be here since the dome is here, the universities are on this side and there's an old square which is called the old great square. Nowadays then again the city center and the main square are on the other side of the river. I like it how the river is a central part of the cityscape even if the river it's not as big as the Danube and the water is grey due to the thick layer of mud on the bottom :D We don't care though, (well, sober people don't swim there) when the sun is shining and it's warm enough both sides of the river are full of people having a pic nick or just enjoying the sun and all the cafes and restaurants along the river are full!

We don't really go out and eat here that much since the prices are pretty expensive so I was surprised three years ago as I arrived here to see all these crowded restaurants. Maybe the small size of the restaurants has something with the crowdedness to do ;) I love walking along the river in the evening because there are lights everywhere and it's very atmospheric! Luckily my work is by the river, 2,5km from where I live so I can take a nice walk along the river when I go to work. Well, I have to be realistic now: since we are in Finland and it's spring you never know what the weather is like. When it's raining and it blows from the sea which is 4km from the city center I hate the 2,5km walk! Waterproof mascara is definitively a thing here!

The main building of my university, Åbo Akademi

The dome in the night

Small restaurants in the old buildings by the river :)

The riverside in the dark :)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention one of the most important sights here: the castle of Turku! The castle, like all the castles in Finland, is very simple; totally different from the well known German castles like Neuschwanstein. Our castles are very old, from the medieval times, when we were a part of Sweden so they are built by the Swedish kings. Even if our castles are a lot more simple (just like the Scandinavian style all in all :D) than the famous European, they are interesting spots to
visit and they are all built by a lake or by the sea like most of our cities :)

The castle of Turku

This pic is taken last May I guess and that's why it looks so green. Actually everything is still gray and in northern Finland there's still plenty of snow. Half of my family is up there skiing atm :D  Well, this was a little sneak peek to Turku, come visit me to see more ;)