What a beautiful place...

I love Tampere. And that because of reasons I want to show you through some pictures that I have have made lately. I think you will understand me, once you have seen the pictures.

It seems so empty...

I have packed! Almost all my stuff is in bags now. Kerstin will leave today and go back to Germany. She will take some of my stuff with her in her car and thus I will stay in my little room with just the necessary stuff for the last week. The last week? It sounds odd. Better not listen to that words... I don't want to grasp the idea of what it means...

Two days in Stockholm

Last weekend Liane, Julia and I were in Stockholm, the maybe most beautiful city! The journey started in a chaotic way, since we missed our bus, which goes differently on saturdays. Still we could catch the train and we were off to Turku! In Turku then we indeed almost missed the train then.. At the main train station the trains were so completely tight in the schedule, that we just had about 2 minutes to get the one to Turku Harbour. But we got it and just e few minutes later we could already see the Viking Line - the ferry which would take us to Stockholm.
Our room was minuscule, but nice. And we had a mirror instead of a window even as we had a cabin above the water line. Already 5 minutes after we took step onto the ferry we could see masses of people with more masses of alkohol under their arms. Unbelieveable - how fast can you be to get yourself alkohol??? It was loud, it was crowded, but all in all a really nice experience. As I have already had a travel by ferry with Kerstin when I came to Finland, the vibrations were not new to me. After a short and not restorative sleep we arrived in Stockholm and already the first step out into the harbour told me, that this is a beautiful city!
But well... let yourself being convinced by some pictures... :)


Some of the streets really looked awesome. Luckily we didn't lose our ways. :)

So nice!!! Just like in a fairy tale. Where is the bunny walking along saying, he doesn't have time?

The harbour. I felt like having a swim.

Me. Obviously. :D

Another possibility to jump into the cooling refreshing water, since it really was a hot day. I actually got some tan there!

I love that picture.

Pispala

Gone mad now? Guess, it's Vappu!

On wednesday and thursday we celebrated something called Vappu. As I understood, it was the Finnish labour day on thursday and every year whole Finland is going crazy on Vappu. And you really saw the changes immediately: Suddenly there where masses of people in the city center, the Hämeenkatu (the main street in the city) was completely blocked, there finally was a market at the market place (!), and the Finns where also drunk in the mornings, not just since early afternoon. ;)

Wednesday evening we had a nice little party with AIESEC. We had the so-called Vappu-Sauna. It seems to be a tradition, to go to sauna every Vappu. So we had our sauna on the last floor of a building of Hämeenkatu and we had a wonderful view over Tampere. It was fantastic. Of course we ate a lot and drank as much as well... We also had a little program for the audience. 9 people of us entertained rest of the people with some Improvisation stand-ups. It was fun!
Afterwards (after we left the sauna and went to the bridge where a statue got a hat, which is quite a boring things to watch), we went to the friends of one of our people and continued our night there. We had self-made music there, more alcohol and we played a game called Mölkky. You could compare it with a form of bowling, if you are really imaginative. But the main point is: I won! :D I crashed them all!
The next day we all met again at Tammerkoski (the river) for a picnic. And of course also there have already been masses of people. This had one major reason: All the new students of the Technical University of Tampere were supposed to be baptised. In the Tammerkoski. So we sat there and this wonderful view on hundreds of new students, all in there overalls (a Finnish students tradition - every department or field of studies has another color for their overalls, and then there are certain kind of parties, where all the students wear these overalls and get signs which they can sew onto their overall), waiting to be dipped into the freezing water of the river. This baptizing lasted for hours. They started at 1pm and where still not finished at 4pm. After some time, Anja and I decided to get us some icecream. So we went and fought our way through the market and got our icecream. We went to Laukontori then, where the harbour of Tampere is located, had a coffee in one of our favorite coffee houses, and in the end went to Hervanta (the part of Tampere, where the Technical University is) with some friends. There we ended our day with more fun and another party.