So after a fun filled weekend in Muornio we had a short quite weekend back home just chilling out. We went to see that stardust film and it was really good so definitly recommend it i really enjoyed it. The good thing about finland is its probably not economic to dub films so they just subtitle them instead (probably why their english is so good too) so we actually understood it.
I finally took my week off! it was great because my boyfriend mark came up the first weekend until monday night, and then on the thursday i jetted off to helsinki for the weekend with my parents and grandparents meeting me there.
me and mark stayed round oulu and just went shopping and to the science museum and out for meals - hes now a fan of reindeer too. It was just really great to see him after nearly 2 months! one night we had a games night at our finnish friends house which was good, they had this game called carcasonne which we´ve never heard of but was easy enough - kind of like an elaborate game of dominos but you have to build a village type thing instead. then we played poker and in some very strange twist of fortunate events (since i still dont entirely know how to play properly) i won which was very cool so it was a good night in all.
i had a couple of days off to kill so one day went to this spa in nallikari, oh my god it was divine! i had this treatment where i had a back massage, then a face mask and massage, and then they put me in a bubbling jacuzzi and indian head massage. i may have to go back before we leave.
the hotel in helsinki was absolutly fabulous! i was so excited when i got into my room i had to ring mark and tell him there and then! the room was gorgeous and the tv even said "welcome madeleine steele, please pick language.." very posh! helsinki is a beautiful city which was good because i was half expecting it to be a bit of a dump. we spent the friday just wandering round looking at the shops and cathedrals and stuff and finding out whether there was anywhere that did the rugby the next night. we went out to this traditional lappish restaurant and it was fantastic, all the decoration inside was like being in a log cabin and the food was delicious (reindeer again). saturday we went to this island fortress called suomenlinna which was nice but it was really cold. we had a right fuss with the rugby though because this bar had told us we could watch it at midnight however debbie texted us in the middle of another fab meal telling us she was watching it at 10 so we only caught the last ten minutes! ah well there was a black jack table with the flukiest croupier in that bar too so that was a laugh. sunday we only really had the morning before we flew our separate ways so we just went to the olympic stadium and this winter garden. again it was just nice to see my family and my mum brought me goodies from england too. it was just torture getting up for work monday morning...
well again i was going to put some photos up but the city library wont let you upload anything so ah well until next time.
24 October 2007
4 October 2007
Are you sitting comfortably?
Ok so I´m actually halfway through this exchange but I´v only just been sent the link from uni, so here goes the past six weeks...
At first we were mainly just finding our feet, ie moving in, sorting out bank accounts, buying a coat (didn´t think it would be cold in august!). Oulu isn´t the largest of cities anyway so its easy enough to figure out. Where we are living is fab, its more like a holiday home which is great compared to halls.
We visited this beach called Nallikari and went for a paddle and some food. Most of the holiday/ activity places are open during the summer in Finland so we arrived at a bad time but ah well. That night we went to the university open party - pretty much the universities hold a massive party for the students at the beginning of the year and a lot of the students tend to dress up in boiler suits which are colour coded for the different schools! it was novel at first but you see students round town in these jumpsuits and just think why? and do you ever wash? But yeah found out that the Finns favourite pastime during the winter is getting completely off their heads so its been a fun trip as you can imagine. We had to leave for a little while in the middle of the party however as we went to the AIR GUITAR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!!! Oh my god it was, in no word of an understatement, awesome. There were people from all over doing a air guitar sequence to a song of their choice and the attention to detail ie tuning and everything was well good, then in second round they all had to do a performance to this ozzy osbourne song. There was a lot of wolfmother i was pleased to hear and one guy even did dueling banjos! I wanted this mexican guy to win because he was doing backflips and allsorts but Debbie wanted this french guy to win but unfortunatly it wa a bit like eurovision where a country wins just because of the country and not the act so this crap fat japanese guy won and he didnt even do anything good! The uk guys performance was a bit crap as well but what do you expect.
The next day we went to Sweden. Literally we got a trian north to Tornio and walked across the border. When we got there we kind of understood why people thought we were going to ikea - that was really the only thing there, so went for a chinese and went home but at least weve been now...
The next weekend we went to Tampere which they call the manchester of finland - no its much nicer than manchester! A friend of debbies lives there so it wa good because she took us out to some cool bars and clubs and we got to try Jaloviina which is a finnish shot - suposedly half purest vodka and half purest congac and its probably like drinking lighter fluid but ah well cant say were not embracing the finnsh culture.
In Tampere we visited the moomin museum (weve gone a little moomin crazy over here) which wa so sweet there were all these hand made models and the attention to detail was fantastic but you werent allowed to take pictures. Then there was the gift shop...
We also went to this spy museum which had loads of espionage stuff from the wars and then fun stuff like invisible ink. Apparently the guy who wrote james bond was a spy (but then again it figures)
We spent the whole of that sunday trying to find this stupid black sausage thing, which is supposedly a traditional food in Tampere, probably just black pudding, but couldnt get any. In finland everything is closed on sundays and so theres bugger all to do, only thing to do is travel so had 5 hour train journey in the pet carriage. This is wierd right, they have a carriage for pets and their owners but its like being in the twilight zone because theres no chaos - literally dogs and cats few feet from each other and they just sit there!
After all the excitment from the prevoius weekend we were going to have a nice quiet relaxing weekend, but no that ended up being a 4 night bender with a trip to a science museum on sat and a 12km hike on sunday. Nice one.
We went to a sauna party one night. Before I came here Id been warned that the finns really like their sauna and that they consider it a social thing however they go in naked apparently which isnt too appealing for this very modest brit! Fortunatly the party we went to isnt like everyones walking around naked, the sauna is a separate room and i dont think any of the girls there actually went in anyway (youd spend the rest of the night blowdrying your hair and getting ready all over again). But it was a good do got to meet the finnish radiography students and also two english lads who are staying in same halls as aaron. we have ventured into the sauna at our house with towels on and it is soooooo good!
There are I think a grand total of two nightclubs in Oulu - 45 special which is a damn good rock club and onnella which apparently has all kinds of music but i havent been yet. Fortunatly most bars dont close til 3 most nights anyway so its good. We generally tend to go to a bar called never grow old and 45 special. We went to see a band on the saturday but we thought the support act was the main guy so we thought wed gone to see this guy called Huoratron who we caught the last 5 mins of cos we didnt realsise he was on. Instead we were entertained by DJ Scotch egg who im embarrassed to admit is british and he was crap - any idiot can put nintendo themetunes to drum beats. The crowd was hilariuos though trying to dance it made my evening.
The science museum was pretty cool I think its more for kids but it had loads of cool stuff to do like a bed of nails to lay on (actually quite relaxing) whereas you wouldnt get anything like that in UK thanks to health and safety.
Last wekend we went to a town called Muonio which is in the heart of lapland (but not where santa lives - thats for later) it wasnt snowing or anything becasue its still autumn but it wa really pretty because theres loads of woodland in finland and this goes double in lapland. we saw the northern lights the first night - its so cool its like this big green ghost floating around the sky. saturday we went for this hike up this hill and went to the one pub for a cheeky few. sunday we went to this husky farm where they keep and train the dogs for sledding it was so cute there are aparently 420 dogs there and it sounds like they treat em and train them really well which is good and we got to hold the puppies! we also went for a meal and got to try reindeer, its really nice like really rich beef so will definitly have to have it again, just got to try bear now...
Weve tried to do some finnish things aswell. finnish people are really into nature (probably because theres so much around) so weve done things like hiking and fishing and mushroom picking - theres somethig really novel about running around a forest going "ooh a mushroom" and then picking it up. tradional finnish food tends to be fish in breadcrumbs served with mashed potatoes and weve had that in hospital canteen aswell as other meals but they are just a little bland. reindeer was good but i dont think il bother with lingonberry porrige again its just these sour berries and flour in a goo.
the hospital is ok. the language thing is a bit difficult but if you just get stuck in it seems to help and most of the staff have basic english. you just tend to notice the little differences like how they wear socks with sandals to work and how the patients just strip off in the room rather than put a gown on (that was a shock first time!)
well i was going to stick some photos in but my cameras battery has gone so itl have to be next time. at least from now on theyl be short and sweet.
At first we were mainly just finding our feet, ie moving in, sorting out bank accounts, buying a coat (didn´t think it would be cold in august!). Oulu isn´t the largest of cities anyway so its easy enough to figure out. Where we are living is fab, its more like a holiday home which is great compared to halls.
We visited this beach called Nallikari and went for a paddle and some food. Most of the holiday/ activity places are open during the summer in Finland so we arrived at a bad time but ah well. That night we went to the university open party - pretty much the universities hold a massive party for the students at the beginning of the year and a lot of the students tend to dress up in boiler suits which are colour coded for the different schools! it was novel at first but you see students round town in these jumpsuits and just think why? and do you ever wash? But yeah found out that the Finns favourite pastime during the winter is getting completely off their heads so its been a fun trip as you can imagine. We had to leave for a little while in the middle of the party however as we went to the AIR GUITAR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!!! Oh my god it was, in no word of an understatement, awesome. There were people from all over doing a air guitar sequence to a song of their choice and the attention to detail ie tuning and everything was well good, then in second round they all had to do a performance to this ozzy osbourne song. There was a lot of wolfmother i was pleased to hear and one guy even did dueling banjos! I wanted this mexican guy to win because he was doing backflips and allsorts but Debbie wanted this french guy to win but unfortunatly it wa a bit like eurovision where a country wins just because of the country and not the act so this crap fat japanese guy won and he didnt even do anything good! The uk guys performance was a bit crap as well but what do you expect.
The next day we went to Sweden. Literally we got a trian north to Tornio and walked across the border. When we got there we kind of understood why people thought we were going to ikea - that was really the only thing there, so went for a chinese and went home but at least weve been now...
The next weekend we went to Tampere which they call the manchester of finland - no its much nicer than manchester! A friend of debbies lives there so it wa good because she took us out to some cool bars and clubs and we got to try Jaloviina which is a finnish shot - suposedly half purest vodka and half purest congac and its probably like drinking lighter fluid but ah well cant say were not embracing the finnsh culture.
In Tampere we visited the moomin museum (weve gone a little moomin crazy over here) which wa so sweet there were all these hand made models and the attention to detail was fantastic but you werent allowed to take pictures. Then there was the gift shop...
We also went to this spy museum which had loads of espionage stuff from the wars and then fun stuff like invisible ink. Apparently the guy who wrote james bond was a spy (but then again it figures)
We spent the whole of that sunday trying to find this stupid black sausage thing, which is supposedly a traditional food in Tampere, probably just black pudding, but couldnt get any. In finland everything is closed on sundays and so theres bugger all to do, only thing to do is travel so had 5 hour train journey in the pet carriage. This is wierd right, they have a carriage for pets and their owners but its like being in the twilight zone because theres no chaos - literally dogs and cats few feet from each other and they just sit there!
After all the excitment from the prevoius weekend we were going to have a nice quiet relaxing weekend, but no that ended up being a 4 night bender with a trip to a science museum on sat and a 12km hike on sunday. Nice one.
We went to a sauna party one night. Before I came here Id been warned that the finns really like their sauna and that they consider it a social thing however they go in naked apparently which isnt too appealing for this very modest brit! Fortunatly the party we went to isnt like everyones walking around naked, the sauna is a separate room and i dont think any of the girls there actually went in anyway (youd spend the rest of the night blowdrying your hair and getting ready all over again). But it was a good do got to meet the finnish radiography students and also two english lads who are staying in same halls as aaron. we have ventured into the sauna at our house with towels on and it is soooooo good!
There are I think a grand total of two nightclubs in Oulu - 45 special which is a damn good rock club and onnella which apparently has all kinds of music but i havent been yet. Fortunatly most bars dont close til 3 most nights anyway so its good. We generally tend to go to a bar called never grow old and 45 special. We went to see a band on the saturday but we thought the support act was the main guy so we thought wed gone to see this guy called Huoratron who we caught the last 5 mins of cos we didnt realsise he was on. Instead we were entertained by DJ Scotch egg who im embarrassed to admit is british and he was crap - any idiot can put nintendo themetunes to drum beats. The crowd was hilariuos though trying to dance it made my evening.
The science museum was pretty cool I think its more for kids but it had loads of cool stuff to do like a bed of nails to lay on (actually quite relaxing) whereas you wouldnt get anything like that in UK thanks to health and safety.
Last wekend we went to a town called Muonio which is in the heart of lapland (but not where santa lives - thats for later) it wasnt snowing or anything becasue its still autumn but it wa really pretty because theres loads of woodland in finland and this goes double in lapland. we saw the northern lights the first night - its so cool its like this big green ghost floating around the sky. saturday we went for this hike up this hill and went to the one pub for a cheeky few. sunday we went to this husky farm where they keep and train the dogs for sledding it was so cute there are aparently 420 dogs there and it sounds like they treat em and train them really well which is good and we got to hold the puppies! we also went for a meal and got to try reindeer, its really nice like really rich beef so will definitly have to have it again, just got to try bear now...
Weve tried to do some finnish things aswell. finnish people are really into nature (probably because theres so much around) so weve done things like hiking and fishing and mushroom picking - theres somethig really novel about running around a forest going "ooh a mushroom" and then picking it up. tradional finnish food tends to be fish in breadcrumbs served with mashed potatoes and weve had that in hospital canteen aswell as other meals but they are just a little bland. reindeer was good but i dont think il bother with lingonberry porrige again its just these sour berries and flour in a goo.
the hospital is ok. the language thing is a bit difficult but if you just get stuck in it seems to help and most of the staff have basic english. you just tend to notice the little differences like how they wear socks with sandals to work and how the patients just strip off in the room rather than put a gown on (that was a shock first time!)
well i was going to stick some photos in but my cameras battery has gone so itl have to be next time. at least from now on theyl be short and sweet.
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