The first whole day in Helsinki I got up relatively early and went to the city centre. Main station, Mannerheimintie, Kamppi. At the Kamppi square I was of course stopped at some point by those ‘spammers’, people wanting to collect some money for amnesty international, greenpeace, … well, theoretically good points. So I listened for example what that woman from amnesty had to say. I got what she was saying, reasons for why I should pay some money for certain projects, but because she spoke so fast, I thought that it cannot be that I understood anything. So I asked if she could talk a bit slower – so she did and I realized that I’d already understood right what she was trying to tell me
Of course I had to go to the senate square, too, get some icecream and sit on the stairs to watch all that busy tourists running around. And I finally managed to look at the cathedral from inside, just at that moment where a whole bunch of german tourists also entered the church. Somehow you experience then some kind of ‘shortening reaction’, just wanting to get out of there Surprisingly a lot of them obviously think that nobody understands them. like last year in Hämeenlinna. If they’d knew how many finns actually speak german *g*
On Kauppatori I found some nice old postcards, showing the harbour area around that market around 1900. And this sign, obviously not everybody in Sipoo is so happy about Helsinki’s expansion plans. (means: get away your fingers from sipoo)
On the esplanade there was a small concert, sounded like some children stuff, even though most of the people watching it were absolutely no children any more … anyway, it was warm, and all the benches there were full.
The spanish sculptures are now away, unfortunately.
On Kauppatori I then also met Jari, the ‘teacher’ from the conversation course I attended during the second semester. He was at that time in the center searching for a job. So we met to eat some pulla and coffee there.
DNA has some funny ads in the busses. This one says: don’t talk to the driver when driving. (however cheap it might be) – however you might speak to customers of that company. On another day on another bus I found another one, explaining why there might be people on the bus not speaking so much, that’s then just because they have the wrong phone company. Well, regarding how silent finnish busses are sometimes on the inside, … okei, I guess that ads did their job, but i’m anyway already a customer *g*
In the evening I met a friend from the laboratory I was working in last summer. We went for a walk along my old running track and ate really nice chocolate cake (that one from the backside of the fazer chocolate ) Somehow a nice feeling to be back there.
Later that evening, being back home, I was somehow so excited about everything that there was no way thinking that I might already go to bed. I then tried the Kalakukko bought in Mikkeli, wrote some postcards and then finally went throwing them to the postbox, thus I cannot say the next morning: ah, let’s keep them here, they are just too crazy to send to people back home. That evening somehow felt like you imagine being on some really good drugs without side effects except sleeplessness.
so I arrived at that post box a bit after midnight …
… and also passed by my old flat …
and checked out how the new student flats near to the street look like now. When I lived there they were just building them.
I took a picture from a close position already some time ago: klick. but there it was wintertime and not already in the middle of the night
As usual, some more pictures can be found in the gallery - this time actually almost all of them found their way to the blog.
The next day: Another sunny and warm day in Helsinki
And a link back to the overview post for these holidays
On early Tuesday morning I left from Kuopio, when the portugese guys were just leaving towards a presentation at university, to the south of finland. First I wanted to stop in Jyväskylä, but unfortunately the train connections were not really suitable. So I was chosing between Mikkeli, Kouvola and Kotka, whereas the latter would also have had required too much time on the train to get there. So I finally got off the train at Mikkeli, Itä-Suomen läänin (district of east finland) capital.
The weather was not perfect but yet still quite warm. So I put my backpack to a locker on the train station and left towards the city-center. well, it’s not such a ‘big’ city as Oulu or Kuopio.
As usual I went to the market square, you normally cannot miss it in a finnish city. And here I also found some people selling half and small kalakukko. I havn’t actually bought one in Kuopio, because I think you might eat quite a long time of one kalakukko when you are alone, and I also knew that I cannot really eat much of that ‘muikku‘, even though in small amounts it’s ok. But that I bought in the end of the early afternoon before leaving to Helsinki, arriving on the market place I just bought some ice cream, as usual
Towards the west(?) of the city center there is a small tower, but this was still closed, it wasn’t yet June.
But already from below one could see Mikkeli and its surroundings already quite well, giving some orientation where one might still want to go. On the right you see the cathedral of Mikkeli, on the left there might be somewhere the train station:
The church was, as far as I remember, just opened for about an hour, and I was lucky to be there at this time. From the inside it’s not decorated too much, as usual for protestant churches. But still, somehow there was something different, somehow already feeling that one was already a bit more in the east of europe.
Over the trainyard, there is a bridge, towards a lake and a small harbour on the other side. On my way there I saw a waggon, which I must have missed on my way from the station to the center. It’s Mannerheim‘s train wagon, which he used to travel around finland during the second world war. In this wagon he also met other leader from other states, like Hitler. The wagon was put there in 1992.
In between there was some rain, but not too much. And the clouds were interesting
Near to the lake there were different types of parking spaces:
Then I continued in a big circle back to the city, along an old little village which is 550years old, kenkävero, and back to the center throught a little park.
Then I continued my journey towards Helsinki, since I wanted to arrive there still around 5 to meet a student from the accelerator laboratory. I was staying at her place in almost the same dormitory as the one where I stayed last year. And she mentioned that there was a pesäpallo game of the swedish-speaking student group in Kumpula. I had already forgotten almost all the rules of it …
On the way to Helsinki a conductor of course checked my ticket and was telling me something then. I thought she might say something in finnish, thus I was somehow not prepared for english (which they usually use when they see your inter-rail ticket), and I just answered ‘Mitä?!’ after her first sentence. She was obviously surprised and continued in finnish, just telling me that the train is leaving on the other track from the same platform to Helsinki in Kouvola. Sometimes I did this switching to english on purpose when some fin spoke english to me a year ago, but this time it somehow came automatically
In Helsinki I then got off the train, took my blue matkakortti, loaded some ten euros to it, and just took a but towards Kumpula. The numbers havn’t changed, so it was somehow like going home. Being so excited, enjoying the warm weather and having about at least 15kg of luggage I arrived at the laboratory to meet M. , just ringing at the doorbell, and somebody opened – as usual you don’t know who did this, but well, somebody knows who you are since there is a small video camera installed.
So I brought my stuff to the dormitory. Quite funny that M. was living in the same type of appartement as I was, and also in the same room, i.e. up the stairs, then the kitchen is to the left and to the right there was her room, next to the bathrooms thus I somehow already knew that place. Also that small things: the drawer for knives and forks in the kitchen was of course not the topmost, but the second topmost, as usual.
Half an hour later we left from the lab to play pesäpallo with the swedish speaking student ‘community’ of the kumpula campus. I should’ve done this already when I was still living there, it wasn’t as boring as in EILC Course and even the rules somehow came back to my mind, even though with a lot of help. After this we went eating some pizza and I went home, just to leave again and walk around a bit through arabia and to arabiaranta, where now almost all of the planned houses there are build. But the park area next to the water is still quite unfinished.
That wooden path, which was almost broken last year, is now not usuable any more:
Myös pari kuvaa saksastakin (mut jatkankin siirtää lomakuvia tänne). Ilma on nyt täällä tosi lämmin, me päätimme kuitenkin mennä Blausee:en eilen, se oli mulle noin 36km Heidelbergistä. Tämä Blausee sijaitsee Hockenheimin etelässä (siellä on esim. formula 1:n ‘German Grand Prix’), Rheinin lähellä. Pari tunnin siellä jälkeen palasimme takaisin Schwetzingeniin grillaamaan.
Se pelto tuolla on sipuli-pelto. Sen takana oli koko pellolla vain persiljaa. Taustalla on Königsstuhl, ‘vuori’ jonka rinteella Heidelbergin linna ja voidaan myös nähdä Heidelbergin kaupunginosan Boxbergin rumia taloja toisella rinteella.
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Yössa yhdeltä takaisin Heidelbergiin kuutamossa:
At least one photo of the dormitory I was staying at. It was slightly on a hill southwest of the center of Kuopio in some forest, thus relatively quiet. On the panorama below it’s quite in the middle of the picture, on that small hill. The evening before I went up that hill (next to that bomb-shelter place described in the last post), found some other parts of the town on top (havn’t had taken a map with me, thus it was a bit of a surprise ) and then continued towards the skijumping area on the other side of the hill, next to the watch-tower which is seen on a lot of photos from Kuopio. This day, Monday, I actually planned to walk there again and watch the town from there.
Here you can see how zebra-crossings are suffering from the spikes on the tires of around 2/3 of the cars in Finland in wintertime:
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At the foot of the Puijo hill on which the tower can be found, a new pesäpallo stadium is being constructed.
Walking up to the tower, the track leads through some protected area. Near to the path you can find plates telling something about the history of the region, in finnish and english. Quite nice for learning new vocabulary, just taking a short look on the right if something was still unclear, despite the pictures
The whole skijumping area was accessible for everybody, no fences, nothing.
Then I went up that watch-tower. I was actually alone on the outside platform, nobody else was there. Tourist season was still to come, and it was not actually quite warm up there. And windy. First a panorama of the city center of Kuopio:
And another panorama, showing the city center on the left, and the forest in which the dormitories can be found on the right side of the picture:
Some signs should better only be followed during wintertime when the lake is frozen …
Somewhere in the center there was a german kindergarten:
As usual, some more pictures can be found in the gallery
the next day I was leaving to Helsinki, making a small stop in Mikkeli
And a link back to the overview post for these holidays
The main square of Kuopio is not situated near the lake like in Oulu to the sea, but as in almost all bigger finnish towns you can find a ‘kauppahalli’, a market hall next to it. In Kuopio there are fountains and sculptures on both sides, one of them is cleaned by students at vappu, just like in Helsinki. Even though this one is smaller, thus it might be easier to clean, without the need of lifting people up there. (the picture above shows actually the other side of the kauppahalli – the statue to be cleaned is on the other side)
somehow the proportions and the overall size of the orthodox church looked funny, at least in the context of the surrounding buildings.
After some time I bought some pasties and sweets to eat (that blueberry pasties by fazer are quite sweet and nice, maybe too sweet. and too expensive ) and went southwards towards Haapaniemi.
Since there wasn’t so much to see I passed by the center again to go to another ‘niemi’, to Rönö. Almost a central part of town, but yet very green. looks like the rich people live there.
In Kuopios harbour there were surprisingly big ships, but well, some of them went to Seinäjoki, wihch is 300km west of Kuopio.
The sticks to show where the actual parking lot is were still in place at the hospital’s parking lot …
… and also those signs which are not known and needed usually in Germany. But ok, they are anyway everywhere.
A well known hedgehog (kiroileva siili)Â on a car …
I guess you wouldn’t call a gym in Germany ‘fressi’ (fressen -> animals don’t eat, they ~; eating fast; eating without limits)
In Helsinki I havn’t seen those bunker entries so often, at least not in combined use as a gym. But in Kuopio I saw that a few times, also in Mikkeli and Tampere. In Oulu you cannot find this kind of rocks, thus I havn’t seen any bombshelters of this kind there.
View from the kitchen in the dormitory at 2 o’clock:
On Saturday Alex had then a big event to host for his project he is working on, thus he left early. I left around 12, enjoying some more of the carelian pasties before leaving with E. Unfortunately I somehow had to speak a bit english with her that morning, explaining something about the rhubarb cake, otherwise one could’ve said we’ve only spoken finnish
The train station was just on the other side of the road. As you can see, the table for the departing trains does not look too crowded I was going east, towards Kajaani and then continued to Kuopio.
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Somewhere a bit before I arrived at Kajaani, there was still a lot of snow next to the tracks (well, that were former heaps of snow, no wonder they survived you might say), but also in the woods there was here and there still some snow to be seen.
In Kajaani I just had about an hour to take a quick look at the city. Quite small, but there was an austrian consulate. Whyever. I continued along the lake from the railway station to the city center, taking a quick look at the church to return then to the interesting railway station.
As on so many railway yards in Finland, there was also in Kajaani some wood.
In Kuopio, M. picked me up from the train station. The 2/3 portugese students I stayed at in Portugal were staying for a night at my place last year in Helsinki when they’ve been on the way from Portugal to Oulu to visit the same language course I visited a year before.
We went to the student dormitory and then in the evening to a pizza restaurant owned by a friend of one of the erasmus students, thus it was only open for us after 9, some of us watched eurovision while enjoying quite good pizza. The finnish girlfriend of one of the portugese was also with us, thus I was talking quite some time finnish again, learning maybe some ‘savolaismurre’, but I guess she tried to speak ‘normal finnish’, since it wasn’t much of a problem. Or 100km south of Kuopio they just speak quite ‘normal’, who knows
Later we went to a club where most erasmus students seem to go, to walk back home then, since no bus was driving home as it was already light again outside, somewhen at 4 (ok, there it’s also light again in northern germany, nothing special ).
The next day I had to check how Huupisaaret looks now, but this time it was the normal situation, the one I got used to when I lived one august in Oulu. Also the fountains found back to their old size
And it was getting warmer (or I got used to the temperatures after having already enjoyed more than enough degrees Celsius this year in Heidelberg), so no scarf needed any more.
The market near to the harbour got also more populated.
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From my point of view, the finnish people are in general quite sorted. They wait until the traffic lights turn green (at least everywhere but Helsinki, but even there). A finnish exchange student here in Heidelberg who I met on my way back in Pirkkala is of the opinion that it’s the same in Finland and Germany, but I’m sure in Germany there are less people seriously looking at traffic lights. I’m talking about pedestrians, not about car drivers *g*. The first days in Finland I caught myself a few times just watching if a car was coming and then crossing the street. It’s not so common there, thus I stopped also doing this soon  And got used again to listening to the beeping sound of the traffic lights for the blind instead of looking at the lights. This system exists also in Germany, but it’s usually not at every crossing (it’s not at every crossing in finland, but almost, let’s say).
But still, signs are ignored everywhere, especially such:
Linnanmaa was ‘home’ for one month in 2006 and in Kaijonharju is the next big shop next to university (and a post office … ):
Even though I was more than twice in Oulu and one time for a month, I never managed to visit the cathedral (tuomiokirkko) in the centre. and you always cross that one street in front when you’re going from linnanmaa along huupisaaret to the centre, those days for example at least once a week to Onnela.
Suprising sticker on the glass door of the church. otherwise there is nothing on this door:
Sometimes I wish we’d have such nice bicycle roads in Germany. On the other side we can be happy to have them at least, comparing France or Spain where there’s almost none of them.
After having been in the Art museum (which is currently in NUKU, since the other building near to tietomaa is renovated)Â and having written some postcards I returned to alex place, preparing then the food and eating rhubarb cake from the day before, at some point the alarm clock started ringing, indicating that it’s alex and elina’s sauna turn in the common sauna in the basement. oikea suomalainen sauna again, not that strange thing you sometimes might find in germany, also called finnish sauna.
After having created our great karelian pies, we had to document our work *g*. Half of them were ‘normal’, the others contained that elk-meat, aubergine, zucchini, chili, … -sauce from the day before together with rice. very delicious.
When it started to lighten up again outside and I wanted to go to bed, Fabio, another EILC course student from 2006, an italian who is now back in Oulu for his thesis, called if we wanted to come for a beer to the centre. So we did, I mean, wasn’t dark anyway ;)
Since at 2 a.m. almost everything was about to close we went to the shore next to the harbour:
On the way back, almost at 3 a.m. the main street with the cathedral looked like this:
And it was possible to take panorama pictures in the harbour without the need for a tripod …
The next day Alex had a big project at work, I wanted to leave towards Kuopio to visit 2 portugese students I met once in Helsinki, when they needed a place to stay after arriving there and before going to the language course in Oulu in 2007, our successors ‘so to say’.
Like the last time I’ve been in Oulu, that’s been in winter, I walked from the city center over a few small, beautiful islands towards Nallikari, the ‘big’ beach on an island in front of Oulu.
As you can see, the trees were not as green as in Tampere, even though it had already been once 20°C, in the beginning of may. Near to the Nallikari beach there is this funny tower, from which one can look over the whole beach (and all factory chimneys of Oulu). Nobody was yet swimming there anyway.
On my way back to the city center leaving Nallikari at its north, I found one of the many ice selling wagons which was already opened, even though I havn’t seen there anybody buying ice but me. I guess I ate ice almost every day on my trip in finland
When I arrived at Huupisaaret, a small park with a lot of white bridges the waterlevel was surprisingly high. Places where you normally could walk were under water, trees just standing in the water.
Arriving at the power station the reason was clear they open the main gates only a few times a year, so also a lot of people stood there just watching the water.
I met an old man next to the ‘stairs for the fishes’, who was just on the way back home from the city center and still had 8km to go. Even though it was quite loud, it was possible to talk, but it was interesting how he talked to me. So either that was his way of talking simple finnish with some foreigner, or using mostly ‘sentences’ without verbs or other unnecessary stuff was normal for him. Anyway, interesting to see how extremely you can still shorten the already often quite short finnish sentences without loosing too much information
The fountains in the river were also not so lively and high as usual, normally it’s maybe about 2m high, now, that the waterlevel was so high, they hardly managed to be visible:
In the evening we then cooked minced elk meat, aubergine, zucchini, mushroom – cream sauce with pasta. The rest of it was used the next day for further creative but yet successful and tasty experiments
… and working a bit throught alex and my cd collection, whereas my was only represented by my mp3player and viikate, olavi uusivirta (ja sometimes paula vesala), scandinavian music group, and alex reminded me of ultra bra, showed me an emma salokoski album, quintessenz, and a lot of stuff I already forgot … and the sun was again somehow confusing my feeling for the actual time of day, as usual.
) and then continued towards the skijumping area on the other side of the hill, next to the watch-tower which is seen on a lot of photos from Kuopio. This day, Monday, I actually planned to walk there again and watch the town from there.
