Finland Lappeenranta Vappu Meeting

Last but not least it is time again for a blogentry, I'm a bit lazy but I try to catch up a bit.

There was this idea of some Ex-Erasmus students to meet in Lappeenranta (Finland). First of all to meet each other and otherwise to celebrate vappu.

What is vappu? A question I heard often these days. Some say vappu is the nearest thing, that Finland have regarding the carneval. Some other say it is the Finnish version of the American Spring-Break parties, and there are others who say that it is just another day off. Whatever kind of definiton you are choosing, vappu is worth going and celebrating.

Paul, a German ex-Erasmus student, started the whole thing, and a lot of people thought that this is a great idea. In the end, we were just three guys, who really were ex-Erasmus students. Paul, Benjamin and me. Thats sad, but fun is all that matters and we had already some friends in Lappeenranta.

My flight went on 27.4 to Helsinki (169€ both ways) and from there I drove with the train to Lappeenranta (39€ one way). I didn't arrange any room with friends, so I booked myself a room in a hostel/camping-place. You know, I don't want to bother anyone, and sleeping on a friends floor is maybe not the best choice anyway. However, next time probably I will arrange something else, because the rooms are not really cheap. (Hostel 60€ per night incl. breakfast, Hotel 80€ per night ex breakfast) There would have been cheaper places, but the student houses are open starting from 1.5 and the Karelia Park hostel from June - August. It was holiday, and I'm not a student anymore, so why not spend some money.

When I started this trip, I thought, hey looking forward to see Finland in spring time. HAHA, guess what, spring has not arrived there yet. Maybe two or three weeks later, but at the time I was there, it was like this:




Everything grey, and yes, the fucking lake was still frozen !!!

What did I do?
I walked a lot ... The weather was, except one day, very nice and sunny. The warmest day was 17°C and the coldest (night) was 0°. Actually the 0° night was the vappu night ^^

On Tuesday I met with Mahesh in the city centre. Mahesh was one of the exchange students who settled in Lappeenranta. He has quite a success story to tell, he is running his own company now, and it seems that it is very successful. Informations on that you can find on his homepage http://www.redsolution.fi .We enjoyed the sun at the coffee house and talked for some hours. Good Luck to you and your company Mahesh!!
The funny thing when I sat there, Benjamin walked by (at this moment I didn't know that he is in Lappeenranta too), so quite funny *g*.
In the evening I met with Paul, who cycled the way from Helsinki to Lappenranta in two days, grazy guy. Even more grazy is, that he cycled back from Tallinn to Germany. First night he slept in my hostel room, because his sleeping strategy was not really well planned ;)

On wednesday, another day in the center, I did a lot of shopping, and again walking, sitting in the harbour, reading, enjoying myself and my free time. Actually I do not remember what I did the rest of the day *g*.

Thursday was the official start of vappu. At noon the students met at the city center to start vappu. Therefor they do that:



They put the student hats on the statue, just like in Helsinki, only a bit smaller.
After that they walk, in order (color of the faculty guilds) to the harbour, where the new students get there baptism.





For the baptism, the new students, in there overalls, have to slide into the lake. (remember, lake was still frozen *gg*). As you can imagine, it was cold. Here are some impressions:









A nice experience, .. and NO I didn't do it *g*

After that we spent some hours in the sun and having a beer.
In the evening there was a festival at the university. The bad (organizational) mistake was, that the entry fee was 20€ and that you can't bring your own drinks. As you can imagine, Finnish students weren't that happy about that, so inside there were 40 people and on the outside there were some hundreds ^^, so was I, together with Teemu and some Polish girls. Was a nice evening, even with 0°.

On Friday was the official vappu day (Mayday), where traditionally all Fins make picnics and barbecues with family and friends. At the harbour there was a market with stalls, an everywhere you can see the students making the picnics.



It was a very nice, sunny day, which I enjoyed a lot. Relaxing is always the best on holidays ;)

Saturday was already time to leave, so I went to the Railstation, back to Helsinki, there I spent some hours of shopping, and after that my flight brought me back to Munich.

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!

New Year's eve in Helsinki and the way back

Hei my friends, it took me a bit longer than expected, but now I try to write the missing blog entries. For the summary about my study abroad in Finland you have to wait one more entry.

Ok, first I will tell you something about the New Years Eve in Helsinki. My friends (Maxx, Roland) and I, Roman and his friends Thomas and Martin, we went on 31st to Helsinki to celebrate New Years Eve.

After checking in at the Hotel (Arthur) near the center, we relaxed first to have enough power for the rest of the night. After lunch we went at 2030 to the senators square to check the place because the main event was there. At this time there were not even one person there, so we went to the center to go to a pub and drink some. We stayed there for nearly 3 hours and played also some card game.

Afterwards we went back to the place, and we were not alone, thousands of Fins joined us and when we arrived at the square some thousands of people were there. I would guess that there were more then 10000 people.

There was some live music and show and at midnight after the countdown the firework show started. It was very nice in my opinion, the only strange thing was, that there was not even one stall where you can buy alcoholic drinks. Every Fin knew that and brought own drinks, we didn't ;(

We made a lot of nice photos and a lot of even nicer videos, but I haven't got them yet. I will publish them when I have them.

After the show we went back to a beer bar where we celebrate again new years eve at 100, the new years eve from Austria ;)
The night ended at the entrance of a nightclub, where the entry fee would have been 7€ even when it was only possible to buy drinks for half an hour more, lol.

UPDATE: Late, but I didn't forget, the videos from New Year in Helsinki (sorry no time and no motivation to mix it with music):

The countdown and firework:



After the countdown second part of the firework:



The days after we spent with a lot of shopping, I spent hell lot of money on souvenirs.
At the 2nd of January we went back. First with the ferry from Helsinki to Travemünde (Germany), which took 27hours and was a "ride on the wild side", because the sea was quite rough. We arrived on 3rd of January at 20 o'clock and had to stay there until the next day, because the car trains leave at 1930 from Hamburg Altona. We stayed at a private room and went to Hamburg on the next day to do some final shopping. At 1930 we left with the car train and arrived on 5.1 at 900 o'clock in Vienna. After breakfast in the Pertl's residence (thanks a lot) I drove home. I arrived, ... maybe more with the body than with the mind (at the moment).

It is over ;(

The captain leaves the sinking ship as last. Ok, maybe I'm not the captain, but in the end I also have to leave Lappeenranta for good.

Tomorrow on 31st of December I will go to Helsinki to celebrate the New year there with my friends and also Roman has some friends there who are joining us.

I don't know if and when I have a possibility to write the next entry, so in the worst case I can write it on 5.1, because then I'm back in Austria. On 2.1 we will go by ferry to Travemünde, which we will reach on 3.1 and on 4.1 we will go by train to Vienna.

I will not write my Finland summary now, so be patient. I really need time to write one and I'm not ready at the moment to accept that I have to leave.

See you soon, and if there is no possibility to write an entry before,
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008 !!!!

Christmas Eve

Finally Christmas eve arrived and we spent it with a lot of cooking and baking. I already mentioned the menu plans before, so I will show you here how it looked like in the end ;)

I already started my preparations in the morning, because the dough for the Apfelstrudel has to be made earlier to rest a bit. After that Martin and I cooked the potatoes and eggs for the (Slovakian) potato salad.

At 1330 we started cooking and begin with cutting all the ingredients for the onion soup and the potato salad. No, nobody was hurt in the end. The onion soup was Romans responsibility. After finishing the soup we put it in the oven to bake it with bread and cheese and in the end the first meal of the day looked like this:

Meanwhile Martin was already finishing his (Slovakian) potato salad.


We made "Wiener Schnitzel" to the salad. The strange thing when it comes to breadcrumbs in Finland is, that they don't have them the way we do at home. The breadcrumbs here are flavored, so you have to choose between breadcrumbs for meat or for sweets.

We were already nearly full after the soup, but of course we also had to eat the main meal. And it was also very delicious, like the soup.

As dessert I planned a Apfelstrudel. Directly after lunch I started to make it. After putting the ingredients for the first of two Apfelstrudels on the dough, Roman read what was written on the description for the breadcrumbs, which should be for sweets. One of the ingredients in the breadcrumbs was Paprika !! LOOoOOL
Ok, a bit nervous now, because I already put it in, I just put more cinnamon and sugar on it :) In the end there was no difference and it was very good.

The skin was a bit too crusty, because I left it too long in the oven, but for next time I know a trick to solve this problem.

So we were finally finished with all the eating, we made a small break and after this break I started to bake some cookies for the party in the evening.

First of all I wanted to bake some "Vanillekipferl" (vanilla rolls) and secondly I baked some "Nußhäufchen" (nut something).

Me rolling the vanilla rolls:

So at the end when we were nearly finished, it looked like this:

Yeah, I know, we are damn good ;)

So finally the Christmas party took place at Evi's flat. There have been surprisingly less people, so that we have to start with 6 people, but later on fortunately we were 10 people. Actually I thought that all the Chinese will come, but they did their own party with only Chinese people allowed ;(

Nevertheless, it was a very nice evening even when we were a bit tired sometimes because of that much work, but my conclusion is, that it was a good Christmas evening worth to spend. Luca also brought some self made Tiramisu and Jose brought some Finnish pulla both have been also very delicious .

The party ended at 230. Thanks all for coming and sharing Christmas with me/us.

All the photos are online in my Web album as usual, have fun!!

Christmas plans

After another good bye evening yesterday, we planned our Christmas day/evening.
The actual plan is, that we (Martin, Roman, Jose and I) will start cooking at 13o'clock at my place. We bought everything today at Prisma, which took us about 2h15.

Our Christmas lunch will be:

1. onion soup (with bread and cheese baked)
   
2. wiener schnitzel with potato salad
3. apfelstrudel

We never made this things on our own, so I think it will be a very interesting experience *gg*.

Afterwards we will bake some cookies for the Christmas party, which should take place at Evi's place. Wish us luck with the cookies also *g*
There should be a lot people there, hopefully!

For all my people at home and friends all over the country:

Frohe Weihnachten !!
Merry Christmas !!!
Hyvää joulua !!

Enjoy the day and enjoy the life ;) (even when I'm not near :)

Bad start in a weekend

Staying longer in Finland than it would be necessary is normally a good thing. The bad thing is, that you are the last man standing and that you have to manage a lot of good bye's.

After a heavily celebrated Farewell Party in Gigglin Marlin the first huge wave left on Thursday, continued yesterday when I brought Chris and Arno to the train station and still continued today when more then 10 people left Lappeenranta for good.

Before Gigglin we met at Chris and Martin's place to talk and make a pre-farewell-party, nice as usual. Where we also continued to decorate their Christmas tree.



Let me give you some impressions from the last Gigglin Marlin (you will find more photos online soon):





On Friday some of us met for the last time in the nice cafeteria at the fortress. At the start we planned four persons and in the end we were about 14. It was also very nice last "Kaffeeklatsch".

It was "funny" to see how all people especially the girls tried to not cry at the train station. I think if they would play "Time to say good bye" through the speakers everyone would let it go ;)
Ok, maybe even I would loose that fight then *g*

I am sad, but I know that I can and will stay in contact and hopefully some day we meet again, somewhere in the world.
So for all that already left and of course for my dearest friends, thanks for everything it was an honor to meet you and share an Erasmus semester with you.

Good Bye's and the last Uni stuff

The last few days the first people already left Lappeenranta to go back to their home countries. In the next few days a lot more people are following and also leaving Lappeenranta for good.

This means, beginning with Saturday we are all alone ;(
Ok, not so alone, because there are still people left, but not much and nearly all people I hung around have left then. Therefore today will be the last real party in Gigglin Marlin, maybe a smaller one also on Friday.

The stuff for the university is nearly done. There is still the documentation for project02 in parallel computing to write, a paper for Finish-German Tandem and last but not least the Finnish For Foreigners exam on Friday. But I think that I maybe will not make the exam, I'm thinking about it. Because I have a lot more points that I need for Erasmus so it would be not necessary and I could focus on the other stuff including my project work for my home university. But I will decide on a short term, so we will see. (needed ECTS 15 - at the moment I have 19 without FFF2 exam)

I already mentioned my project for the home university, where still a lot of work is to do. I will focus on that for the rest of the time I stay here or at least until my next visitors come from Austria on 27.12.

Nothing more to say for today, this will maybe change after the party tonight and the farewell evening with our Tutor Tuija tomorrow.

Nähdään!

A week in the cottage and around Finland

I haven't written for quite some time now, but there is a good reason for that behavior. I had some visitors from Austria, what I already mentioned in the blog entry before. I will describe you the week and apologize before hand, if it is a lot to read ;)

Before I started my week with my friends, I had to finish the Parallel Computing Take Home exam first. We got it on Tuesday and I nearly spent 10 hours a day from Wednesday to Saturday to finish it as early as possible.

Day 1 - Helsinki / Arrival
Günther, Silvia and Claudia arrived last Saturday the 8.12, but I couldn't join so early because I had to finish my exam as I already mentioned.
So on Sunday at 830 in the morning, I drove to Helsinki to meet them. It took some time to find the hotel, because nobody told me that there are 1000000 hotels called Scandic something *g*. And it became more difficult, because Günther described me the way from their point of view when the arrived with the taxi. Unfortunately the taxi drove in the other direction *ggg*.
In the end I found it and I finally can greet my first Austrian visitors.



On the first day we walked around Helsinki to see some sights and enjoy the town. We were really lucky, because all days before it always rained the whole day, but on this day and the whole week we always had nice weather and even sunshine. You don't believe it, here is a picture (the rest of the pictures is already online):


We visited a lot of places and in the evening it was time to board the ferry to Tallinn. We decided to go to Tallinn with the last Ferry at 21:45 and stay the night on board in a cabin. The funny thing is, that it would have cost 218€ all together with 2 cabins + 4 persons to Tallinn and only 4 persons back, BUT with 2 cabins + 4 persons to Tallinn and 1 cabin + 4 persons back it cost us 66€ all together, LOOL. Don't ask me how this is possible, but it is!!
We had a rough sea and that's why Günther was most of the time of the cruise on the "sun"-deck to get fresh air and not vomiting. *gg*

Day 2 - Tallinn
At 7 in the morning we left the ferry to walk to the historic center of Tallinn, which is also on the UNESCO heritage list for it's historical value.
I can understand why it is on this list, it is a really nice town.
When we start walking through the center it was still dark and we got impressions like it would be already night. During I checked a picture I made the minute before and I saw some smoke in it. I asked my friends, who the hell blew smoke in my view.... actually nobody was smoking. In the end I recognized that something in the inside of my camera burned down, because I also had to reset it and initialized it again. The funny part is, it is still working. Here is the picture with the smoke:

We moved on to the center where we found a really cute cafeteria at the marketplace. It calls itself "Tallinn's best cafe" and I would believe it, it was really very nice with a lot of delicious cakes.
After again walking around, because still nothing has opened so far, we visited the christmas market, which is also situated on the marketplace. Of course I bought some presents for my parents. The market was nice, but Estonian didn't bargain, that was the bad part.
Of course we saw a lot of sights again, here we are on the "top" of Tallinn with probably the best view over the old town:


After lunch and again a lot of shopping and sightseeing, we went to our ferry with which we left Tallinn at 1645 to go back to Helsinki. We were very tired so we slept a bit in the cabin.

Back in Helsinki we drove up north to Lappeenranta directly to our cottage.

We rented a cottage near Lappeenranta (14km) in Mehrenlehti. It cost us 450€ from Monday to Sunday, not much for 4 persons in my opinion. The cottage and the sauna was already heated up when we arrive at 2345. The owners showed us everything and after that, Günther and I decided to have our first sauna turn at 2 in the morning. It was great, I don't know why I haven't visit Sauna earlier *gg*, yes, it was my first time in 4 month.

Day 3 - The cottage
In the morning we had the first chance to see our cottage at daylight and also the nice scenery, which welcomes us with mythic fog all over the lake. But have a look on your own:

The cottage (left), with sauna (middle) and grilling place (right):

The lake:

We went to Lappeenranta city center to do some walking, talking and shopping. But resting for the rest of the day.

On this day I brought my Take home exam to my professor, where he can have a look and tell me if a passed or not. The first thing he said was something like "..dare you, you wrote so much.." hahaha,.... yes, I had like 17 pages for 4 questions and for the first one 5 and the second one 4 pages. In the end I passed, thank god ;) But I didn't get the points so far, because he said he had to read it carefully, because I took a very different approach than anybody else. ;)

Day 4 - Lappeenranta
The plan was to see the sights of Lappeenranta. It has not much sights, so we weren't in a hurry *gg*. The morning started even better than the morning before, sunshine :)
You don't believe it, look at this picture I made in the harbor of Lappeenranta:

Ok, sunshine doesn't mean that it is warm *gg*. However, we spent a nice day walking through Lappeenranta. We visited the old cafe at the fortress of Lappeenranta, wow they had delicious cakes *gg*

We also visited the oldest orthodox church in Finland, which was the first time opened since I'm here to visit it. Ok, maybe we should have ask the group inside if they paid for the tour *g*

In the evening we went to the christmas party at Gigglin Marlin (after sauna), which was organized by the student union. A very funny night with a special appearance from a girls dance group. You maybe can guess why I really liked it *g*



Day 5 - Long sleep and Ylämaa

After a long night, we had a longer sleep, ok for some it wasn't even long enough *g*.
The program for this day was a visit in Ylämaa. It is a small town with a big mining history. Because in Ylämaa there is a rich deposit of spectrolite and other stones.

The first impression was not very good, because everything was closed and the "town" was extremely small. After some time and questions we head back to the "stone city" and fortunately the before closed shop was open now. I bought me a ring for my thumb and the others also bought some stuff. The ring is made from bloodstone. It breaks very easy, as Günther recognized after 3 minutes. He unpacked the ring, dropped it, broken *ggg*, not even once weared *gg*. But the lady behind the desk was nice enough to give him a new one for free.

After some shopping and grilling in the evening we went to bed.

Day 6 - Very long sleep and shopping
Nothing special on day number 5, just more sleep and relaxing and do some shopping in the center of Lappeenranta.

Day 7 - Imatra and Ruokolahti
We went to Imatra to see the rapid canyon. Afterwards we went to the church hill in Ruokolahti, just to visit the wooden bell tower and the church there. Which looks like that (bell tower)

After the usual sightseeing we went back to the cottage to spend the last evening there. We also walked on the frozen lake.

Today I brought them back to Helsinki Airport, where they left at 16 o'clock.
Thank you three for the visit, it was really a very nice week with you and I enjoyed it a lot.

A lot of photos of this week are online in my gallery.

Holiday, Friends and take home exam

Terve!
Let's start with the heavy part of the topic, the take home exam.
At the moment it seems that I'm quite good in time. I worked the last days nearly around the clock to finish it as soon as possible. There is just one task I haven't done yet, the others should be solved or fine. My plan is to be finished tomorrow night, that I can start with my holiday.

And there is the second and third topic of my title. On Saturday my friends Günther, Silvia and Claudia arrive in Helsinki and on Sunday I will join them in Helsinki to spend a whole week with them. It is my first visit from Austria and I'm really looking forward to it.

I will give you a list of what we have planned:

• Sunday night, going with the ferry to Tallinn
• Monday, spending the day in Tallinn and going back in the late afternoon
• Arriving in Lappeenranta where we rent a very nice cottage on the saimaa lake
• On Tuesday we will have a look at Lappeenranta, and I also have to bring my take home exam on that day to university.
• The rest of the week we will visit: Savonlina, Mikkeli, Ruokolahti, Imatra, Ylämaa

As you can see, a lot to do for one week.
I'm very happy and looking forward to this week, hopefully everything is fine and we can enjoy a week with friends.

Nuku hyvin ja hyvää viikonlopua!

Take home exam and other stuff

Moi out there!
I haven't written for days and the main reason for that is, that I have a lot of work to do for the university. I have to mention this sometimes, so that you don't think I'm doing nothing ;)

On Monday we finished our project 01 for Parallel Computing, which was a program including PVM functions. The main job of the program was the multiplication of matrices. So the master process sends the values to the slaves, they calculate it and send the result back. (short version of the function) Of course we also had to write a documentation for it.

Today I had my final presentation in "Presenting in English". It was about traveling in Europe and I in my opinion my partner Mikko and I did quite well. The final task will be an analysis of our own presentation.

Ok, and last but not least we got our take home exam in Parallel Computing yesterday. Yes you read correctly, it is a exam which you can take home and fill it at home. Of course it is more difficult then a normal exam and believe me it takes a looooot of time. I hope I can finish it soon enough, because on Sunday I will meet Günther, Silvia and Claudia in Helsinki to spend the week with them. That means that two of my days for the exam are lost, therefore I have to do it faster, that means.. At the moment I do nothing else, except writing this blog entry, which by the way is part of my small break.

We had to send our pre-master project report for our home university yesterday. There is not really much movement in the project, mostly because there is just no time at the moment. But as far as I know, I am not the only one who has a slow start. I have to invest the whole January for it to catch up and of course the next semester for my master thesis. First of all I have to read a lot, I mean A LOT and that actually takes time. So, hopefully after the take home exam and my "holiday" week with my friends from Austria, I will find the time to really start through. There is "only" Finnish for Foreigners exam left on 21.12 and the second project for Parallel Computing until 23.12.

moi moi

Middle of the Weekend Report

Why do I again report in the middle of the weekend? Easy, because I think nothing more interesting will happen, because today I'm just relaxing.

On Friday we went again to the swim hall, this time Martin and Florian joined us, before that I met with my Finnish partner to finalize our presentation. It will be held on Wednesday. In the evening there would have been the birthday party of Iris (Happy Birthday again!). Why "would have been"? Because I thought, having a Glühwein party before, would be a nice idea. Actually it was a nice idea, but it ended too late for me to join the birthday party, because they already left to the nightclub.

As I already mentioned, Roman, Martin, Florian, I and later on Martti had a Glühwein party and played some cards (president and asshole). Not much of them drank the alcohol, therefore Roman and I had to finish it. This was also the reason why Roman didn't join me when I went to the nightclub to meet the others ;)

Arrived in the nightclub at midnight, the rest of the birthday party was a bit drunken. Ok, let's say they were near the coma ?! ;) I will not comment the condition and behavior of some of those girls, I will just say "some girls shouldn't drink that much".

However, I joined the group with the guys from Nepal, Japanese, India,... . It was nice and I enjoyed to ask the Japanese guy some questions about Japan, which are reeeealy very important.... ok, for me *g*. You can maybe imagine ;) I hope I didn't bother him too much. By the way, Japanese names are sometimes not that easy to remember :)

After nightclubbing, I went home. When I walked to my place, I saw that there is still a party going on at Chris place. So I went there and joined them. Some of them were also a bit drunk, but the behavior is much more nicer and funnier then from some other people I already mentioned. For example running some rounds naked in the public *gg*
We also played some Rugby, or let's say just throw some rugby ball. After the final snowball fight I went to my room, kind of watched a movie and fell asleep.

The rest of the weekend I will relax and do some stuff for the university. There is still some stuff to do, because this week I have my final presentation in "Presenting in English" and I have to finish the document for Parallel Computing Project 1.
But the really worse thing is coming Tuesday or Wednesday, then we get our "Take Home" exam in Parallel Computing, for which we have one week time to finish. Don't think that this will be an easy task. More on this later.

Hyvää viikonlopua !!

A new grade and new Vocabulary

Yesterday we got the second grade for this semester. It is the grade for Mobility Management, what is worth 4 ECTS. You can remember?! The lecture with the project where we have to use this damn network simulator and the always the "same tone" voice of the lecturer, which is a kind of hypnosis to fall a sleep.
However, the content was quite interesting and I finally got my first 5 grade in LUT. Nooo, don't worry, 5 in Finland is not the same like in Austria *gg*. Actually last time when i described the grade scale it was not exactly correct, therefor I will explain it again.

5 excellent ?
4 very good 1 in Austria
3 good 2 in Austria
2 satisfactory 3 in Austria
1 passed 4 in Austria
0 failed 5 in Austria

ok, that's how I would translate it. We will see if our University also see it this way, I have to ask.

There is nothing else to report at the moment, this week I have again some work to do, like Parallel Computing Projects, Presentation for Presenting in English and some other stuff.

Vocabulary of the day - Wednesday and Thursday this time adjectives:

• hoikka - slim, thin - schlank, dünn
• laiha - skinny, thin - mager, dünn
• lihava - thick - dick
• pitkä - tall, long - groß, lang
• lyhyt - short - kurz, klein

• sievä - pretty, cute - hübsch, niedlich
• nätti - pretty, cute
• komea - handsome - gut aussehend, attraktiv
• laiska - lazy - faul
• iloinen - happy, glad - glücklich

Something to think about

Two days ago I read an article. In this article the author mentioned, that the British government warns the youth to put too much private information on social network sites like facebook.

In a survey the found out that a lot of people put their private pictures (parties and so on) on this sites. They also warn them, that a lot of companies look through the internet for information about a person before the hiring and that some didn't get a good job or have no chance for a career because the company found a "bad" picture in the internet.

This is maybe possible. I also have a lot of pictures in the internet and some of them are surely not bootlicking. If a company decides to not give me a job, because they found a bad photo of me in the Internet (with bad I mean a photo from a party for example, dancing on the table or whatever...), is it really that bad? I mean, of course it is not very funny if I do not get the job because of that.

BUT, ask yourself. Do you really wanna work in a company which makes their opinion about a person on a lousy picture of you. Where skill doesn't matter, but one picture ruins everything? Ok, a picture of you killing someone, or being part of a Nazi group may be considered as good evidence, but a picture of you drunken at a party ?!
This is what you are and if you really have to change that all for being part of a company, it is your choice.
Maybe it will become more important if you are really in a high position like CEO, Politician or whatever you define as a high position, but to get a job?
I even would accept when I get the job and they ask me afterwards, if it is ok for me to remove the pictures, because it maybe doesn't look that good. I would accept that, I would delete them.
But before hand, just to avoid being kicked out before I'm in?!

Think about it and tell me what you think.

I also started a poll on that question, let's see how it will end.



To not make a own entry, I will put the vocabulary of the day here:

• puhdistaa - to clean - reinigen, säubern
• pestä - to wash - waschen
• siivota - to clean up - aufräumen
• levätä - to rest - rasten, ausruhen
• levähtää - to make a rest - sich ausrasten

btw. Date, Sunrise and Sunset and Daylight :

Nov 28, 2007

8:44 AM

3:06 PM

6h 22m 24s

Vocabulary of the day - Friday and Monday

Hello again, friends of the Finnish language. As you already recognized, there were no vocables on Friday. It was because of our spontaneous trip to Joensuu. However, of course I have them here and will write it right now:

Vocabulary of the day - Friday:

• lainata - to lend, borrow - ausleihen, borgen
• maksa - to pay, cost - zahlen, kostet
• sovittaa - to try (on) - probieren, anprobieren
• kuvato - to describe - beschreiben
• varata - to book, reserve - buchen, reservieren

Vocabulary of the day - Monday:

• ottaa - to take - nehmen
• kuunnella - to listen to - zuhören, anhören
• häiritä - to disturb - stören
• opetella - to learn - lernen
• opettaa - to teach - lehren

There is nothing else to tell for today. Pidä hauskaa !!

Joensuu Trip - Team Vessapaperi Reunion

On Friday I didn't went to Finnish for Foreigners, because it was to hard to get up and it would had started at 830,... I decided to sleep a bit longer and make something else useful.
During the morning I talked with Dimitris and Zdenek when they have time for us. They had time this weekend, so I decided spontaneously that we (Roman and I) go to Joensuu for the weekend, to reunite team vessapaperi for the last time in Finland.

As Roman is not the spontaneous guy he was not really happy about changing all his plans on a short term, but I knew that he will also join, so I made the decision for us *gg*

We left Lappeenranta about 1430 and had a 3 hours drive to Joensuu, where I slept at Dimitris place and Roman at Zdenek's place. First of all, thanks guys for your hospitality, kiitos paljon!!! (Also thanks to Dimitris Flatmate Tobias)

We arranged a party at Dimitris place to celebrate the reunion. I can not much say about this party, the only thing I can say "it was hell of fun" *gg*. We wasted a lot lot of alcohol, including my two liters Schnapps which I brought with me. Some more people joined Magda, James, Ula, Björn and so on.... Thanks to all of those people, it was hell of fun !!

We also went to another party in the house, it was kind of a costume party. It was ok, but not that fun. We made on this evening with my camera 172 photos, so you can imagen how much stupid photos there are, lol, and on the next day after checking those pictures, a lot of funny stuff appears.

On Saturday we (Roman, Zdenek, I and the hangover) went to the center to eat. On the afternoon the rest and I went for a coffee and in the evening we decided to spend it comfortable like watching a movie and being lazy. Before that we also visited Tobias, not Dimitris Flatmate, another Tobias from EILC. There would have been a small party at Gosias place, but I really needed no more alcohol on this weekend. Sorry for not coming to Gosia, Emily and Kuba, but gladly we met in St. Petersburg before.

After breakfast we left today. Thanks to all for this nice weekend, I hope we will meet in the near future again and I hope we will stay in contact. THANKS !!!
For all those people who I didn't meet and greet, sorry !! Special sorry to Veera, the hangover was just too bad and on the day before nobody went to the center ;(

Ps: I'm thinking about, not publishing the photos... some are just too bad *gg*, and at the moment I'm just too lazy to separate them.

UPDATE: photos are now online, I hope I removed the worst and only the most harmless are online.... if you find one, which is not, tell me, I will remove it!

Vocabulary of the day - Thursday

Hello fans of the Finnish - language *gg*, because I think nobody else will read my "Vocabulary of the day" blog entries ;)

However, who thinks that I already know all the vocabulary of the days before is wrong *g*, it needs time :)

I don't wanna waste your time, so here are the five vocables:

• tajuta - to understand - verstehen
• voida - to can - können
• palella - to freeze - frieren
• kääntää - to turn, translate - umdrehen, übersetzen
• hakea - to fetch, get - abholen, holen

There is not much more to say for today.
I'm still looking for an accommodation for Günther, Silvia and Claudia who are coming on 9th of December. So if you have any suggestions, write me.
Roman and I also are nearly finished with our challenge for Parallel Computing seminar.

Nähdään ja nuku hyvin!

Finnish Tandem Dinner - Finns cooking

After swimming on afternoon, it was time for another evening with our Finnish-German Tandem group. This time it was time for the Finns to cook something for us. I can say it was very good. They cooked "Aidin hyvät lihapallot", what translated means "mothers best meatballs".

Which looked like this:



Niko and Nikita in action:


I was the whole time so f****** tired, that I sometimes nearly felt asleep, all because of the swimming *gg*.

However, they also made some dessert:

Kiitos paljon! for this very nice evening, sorry that I was soooo tired ;) Good that I didn't felt asleep, because they would have painted my face *g*.



At the end of course, the vocabulary of the day:

• pudota - to fall - stürzen, fallen
• keittää - to cook - kochen
• vihata - to hate - hassen
• kysyä - to ask - fragen
• vastata - to answer - antworten

Nähdään ja nuku hyvin !

Vocabulary of the day - Tuesday

I will continue posting my Vocabulary of the day, I hope it doesn't bother you ;)
I also decided to write the German translation too.

For today I will continue with some verbs:

• pitää - to keep (pidä hauskaa! -- have/keep fun !) - haben, behalten (pidä hauskaa! -- Hab Spaß!)
  
• tehdä - to do/to make - tun, machen
  
• jättää - to leave something somewhere /allow - etwas wo lassen, erlauben
  
• tuoda - to bring - bringen
• käydä - to visit - besuchen
  

Pidä hauskaa !!

Swimming and Vocabulary of the day

Today Roman and I finally were swimming in one of the two swim halls in Lappeenranta.
(Lappeenrannan Uimahalli)
We talked about this since a very long time and today we went there. It was very nice, even when the swim hall is not that big. The main pool is 25m with 6 lanes. However, it was good to make some activity and hopefully we will continue it.

Another thing I want to start today and hopefully also continue, is the "vocabulary of the day". I want to choose five different Finnish vocables each day, which I want to learn. At the beginning I will start with verbs.
So here are the first five vocables for today - Monday:

• antaa - to give - geben
  
• kirjoittaa - to write - schreiben
  
• uida - to swim - schwimmen
  
• esittää - to present - präsentieren
  
• ohjelmoida - to programm - programmieren