To winter or not to winter...

Looking out of the window, especially the exchange students from southern countries had several nice moments today. I didn't (neither my father would, but he's in sunny Austria now). You can imagine - it started snowing. It seems as the winter finally arrived in Helsinki.

Anyway, that's not really the winter anybody may like. It's snowing, yes, some people consider that as romantic, beautiful or whatever. Actually, I haven't that much against it, but snow coming from the front (like the rain here) together with the unevitable heavy wind isn't really comfortable for me.

Strange for me was the impression seeing Finns having accidents (three accidents during a 3-minute walk home from university) with their cars (NB: 5 centimeters of snow on the street!) like usually only people from Vienna do. I thought snow shouldn't be a big problem for them, but you always learn something new here in Helsinki.

Today I signed up for the Freshmen's party next Thursday. It's a big event for students (there are no courses on Thursday and Friday!), moving around from bar to bar in crazy clothes (my team still thinks about a good theme for that) getting the drinks there almost for free. Isn't that a nice opportunity to save money? Also, I finally got my IxESN Card (International Exchange Erasmus Student Network) which means lots of dicounts in many matters of life in Helsinki (free entrance in clubs, cheaper drinks, special offers in stores, ...).

Tallinn, the sun in Helsinki and some Ice Skating...

Finally, after a quite "busy" weekend, I find some time to drop some lines again. I spent the weekend with some colleagues in Tallinn and I just love this city. It offers everything you need - life works like in Scandinavian cities but there is still a kind of the influence of eastern Europe concerning the architecture and last but not least the prices ;-). Unfortunately I don't have a single picture of Tallinn, the weather was terrible and I haven't got the indoor pictures (mainly at night) yet.

Yesterday, Sunday, the weather in Helsinki seemed to be nice for the first time. Sure, I could see the sun once before but on our yesterday's way to the icering I was missing my sunglasses for the first time, I left them in the flat. It wasn't that big problem though (we left around 4pm so you can imagine for how long we could see the sun) but me without sunglasses in sunny weather - that's nearly impossible.

Ice-Skating then was a funny experience, especially seeing all the beginners fighting against the ice, the skates and themselves. Also I had problems, Finns seem to have pretty small feet. Size 46 was much too small. But after some tries also I could try iceskating for the first time (since 1995 I guess) and also playing Icehockey. Don't worry, I still have all my teeth (and the others too, at least - if they lost one - it wasn't me!).

First day at university

Today I finally had my first two courses at university. Finnish for foreigners and English in international environments. Both subjects are quite nice, especially Finnish is a bit strange at the beginnning.

I'm really happy about having chosen English in international environments. We're just a very small group of ten students, all exchange students and from lots of different countries: Netherlands, France, Spain, China, Russia and Kosovo. And there will be a lot of work to do. I like that ;-)...

Tea Party

Monday is good time for tee, I decided. So what to do? Invite some other students, make some tea, add rum and sugar and here you are: really nice party with nice people from many different countries!

Sunlight in Helsinki!

It wasn't really a stressful day, monday the 14th of January. Most ERASMUS students had something to do at university, but I have my free day - so relaxing again before the Finnish course starting tomorrow was just perfect for me.

In the late afternoon I could imagine that it's also sometimes sunny in Finland - at least I could see the sun shining on the building next to my flat. Anyway - with that photo you can get a clue about my room's view ;-).

Exploring Helsinki

After some grey days today seemed quite a nice day to explore the city by day. I got up at 12pm (yes, it was a bit longer yesterday, photos may follow ;-)) and a bigger group, mainly consisting of Dutch, French, German and Austrian students left for Helsinki downtown.

We were looking forward to slightly better weather but in downtown it was terribly windy, raining and also a bit snowing. But still +2°C even though I always think it's much colder ;-).

All in all a very nice afternoon - we went for some coffee on a sailingboat in the harbour with quite nice prices compared to the generel level of the living costs here. At least we found out there that coffee is so much cheaper than beer...

Tomorrow university should start for me but I'm one of the lucky guys: I have course on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Finally - for the first time in my university life, I can enjoy all the advantages of 4-day-weekends every week. So university life will start on Tuesday at 10:15 with the wonderful course "Finnish for exchange students". I can only say "Kipis" to that...

Arrived!

Fin(n)ally I can drop some lines here. Internet access doesn't still work in my room and I finally got my user/pass for university.

The only thing I can say until now is that the first experiences are just wonderful, my roommates are from the Finland, Germany, United States and Iran. Our flat is quite nice, (still) clean and in an area the Finnish people call "concrete hell". The surrounding buildings aren't really beautiful ;-). But: shops are close, it's 75 Meters to the university and there are trains to Helsinki center every 2 minutes.

For everybody who is caring about me: You should know that I'm feeling wonderful. It couldn't be better.

More information and of course photos will follow - as soon as I have my internet access at home.