Conclusion about my study abroad

It’s time to write my conclusion about my study abroad in Lappeenranta and Joensuu (EILC). It is quite difficult, because I’m still thinking a lot about this time and I’m not really finished with it. However, I will give you a short conclusion.
I will start from the beginning.

First of all, if you have the possibility to go by car, you should do it. If you don’t like too much driving, you can choose car train and ferry as we did.

Secondly, if you have the opportunity to attend the EILC (Erasmus Intensive Language Course), you should definitely do it !! The time during EILC was one of the best during the whole study abroad program. Why? Not difficult, first of all it was in the summer, so you can enjoy the warm weather and the lake, sitting on the beach, parties at the beach and so on. You can meet a lot of nice people before starting the real Erasmus semester. Joensuu is a nice city and in my opinion a good place to study. Don’t worry about learning the Finnish language, everybody is able to pass.

Let’s move on to Lappeenranta. Lappeenranta is called the summer town. There is a reason for that, in autumn and winter there is not really much activity there. With activity I mean public events. September is the last month where some events take place. During the autumn and winter month it is just another Finnish town, but I think there are not much towns in the east, southern and middle Finland area where this is different. Only towns with special skiing areas can offer more.
Nevertheless, Lappeenranta is in my opinion a nice town. It would be no problem to survive there longer than one semester.

Ok, maybe I should say something about Finland itself. Finland is a very
nice country. If you have no problem with short winter days and long summer days, then you can go there. The country side is very nice, the nature is beautiful, even when they don’t really have mountains there. You can do every kind of sports activity during the whole year. Nearly everybody speaks perfect English, so surviving is not a big problem, and if you stay more then one semester you should learn Finnish. I think if you really want to learn it, it is possible. I will not mention all the good and bad things and the little things that make Finland the country it is, because it would be a never-ending blog entry.

Finland is a good country for living and in many ways quite similar to Austria. Some things are better, some things are worse. If you want to know details, you can ask me personally, because writing everything down is just too much at the moment. Maybe I will make a separate blog entry with some examples.
Must do activities are: Lapland (National Park), St. Petersburg, National Parks in common, Helsinki, Savonlinna, Great Lake Saimaa (boat, swimming, grill, ...), maybe Rovaniemi (Santa Claus, Martiini), Tallinn by ferry, if you have time and money maybe Stockholm by ferry. (and so on)

In some ways living in Finland can be very expensive. But I guess it is also possible to find cheaper places. For example in Helsinki a 74m² apartment costs about 900€. As far as I know, Fins don’t really earn more money than we do in Austria. For my room in a shared apartment I paid in Joensuu 160€ (3 persons apartment) and in Lappeenranta 290€ (2 persons apartment). The one in Joensuu was quite fucked, but the one in Lappeenranta was brand new renovated and it was the biggest room. Smaller rooms are available from 230€. A meal in a restaurant can start at 16€ all included, but it is also possible to eat for 5€.

Shopping is not really different to Austria. Some stuff is cheaper, some stuff is more expensive. I never checked the prices one on one, but I didn’t really realize a big difference. Of course alcohol is a lot more expensive, but that is Finland. For 0,5l can of beer, you pay in the best case 0,99 cent. For the cheapest 0,33 l beer can you pay 0,66 cent. The bottle of wine is available from 5€. Austrian Stroh Rum 0,5l costs 15€. One big advantage by going by car, is of course that you can bring a lot of stuff with you ;)

Now to the most important part of Erasmus or study abroad, the people. First of all, whatever you think you know about different countries, the chance to change this opinion is very high. I would say I changed my mind mostly about Poland and France. Austrians experience with polish people is mostly not a good one and therefore there are a lot of stereotypes. The people I met in Joensuu and Lappeenranta truly proofed this stereotypes wrong and I’m really glad about that. Also my meaning and another stereotype about French people was changed. Yes, they do speak English ;)

There will always be people who want to stay in groups of there own, I mean with people from the same language. I think this is a really big mistake and I’m glad that I found a lot of people who tried to make friends from other countries. Every country had this kind of groups, I will order them from beginning with the worst: China, Spain, Germany and France. Those were the biggest parts of the people, that’s why it was easy to recognize. I met some Chinese people, they are nice and polite, but when it comes to party or do some activities they always stick with Chinese.

Of course not all people of the named countries only stick in there language groups, but a big part of them did. Ok, maybe if there would have been 20 Austrians, it would be more difficult for me to stay in foreign language groups.

I give you some examples of Countries I met: China, Japan, Nepal, India, Chile, Nigeria, Canada, England, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Greece, Austria, Germany, Czech, Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Finland. I think a very nice collection (I hope I didn’t forget any).

I hope I can stay in contact with a lot of people. I know it will be difficult, but nowadays with Skype, MSN, ICQ and E-Mail it should be not that big problem. Just let’s talk some times and maybe meet again in the near future.

Ok, I forgot to mention one group of people, the Fins. The easiest way to know Finnish people is of course your tutor and people of the same lecture. Any other way to get to know Fins is a bit more difficult. I have to say, that my focus was more on the Exchange students, because it is hard enough to get to know a lot of them in just one semester. Would I have stayed more than one semester, I would have focused more on knowing Fins. Because first of all it needs time to get in contact with them and it is mostly your turn to do it. Fins are great people and if the know you and you earned there trust, you find the true Fins then. Because Fins are not that silent as everybody thinks, yes maybe in the beginning. Unfortunately I don’t know much of them, but those I know I enjoy there company.

I guess this was enough to read for this time, maybe I will drop another thought on my study abroad later.

Thanks to all the people who made my study abroad probably one of the best times in my life. I already miss you and I hope I will see some of you soon. Thanks also to Finland and the Fins, kiitos paljon!