What a Week

So this has been a rather long week. But its been great. I've discovered the more you put into life, the more you get back. Last night was my first night in, in over a week, so was going to blog, but ended up having an early night instead!

Here's a run down of each day/night;

Thursday; Went to an ice hockey match, as you may have read below

Friday; As you may also have read below, I went back to Helsinki for a birthday party. It was great to see so many old faces. Its strange to think how close I was to some of the people in Helsinki when I was only there a few weeks, and I've been in Turku for months, but wouldnt say I'm all that close to anyone here (yet). Was a crazy party, and that went on to the small hours, so definitely worth the trip back. And the cake was great :p


Saturday; The birthday boy (who kindly put me up for the night) took me to look around his university buildings (we couldn’t think of anything else to do, and it was a nice day so a pleasant walk). Its the Design faculty, so was an interesting building with lots of sketches and models that they have to make in the metal/wood-shops. After that we walked along the coast for a while then headed back to the city centre where we bumped into some more of our course-mates and all went for a coffee. Felt so natural to be back in Helsinki, but have since decided that although I miss the people and crazy partys of Helsinki, I actually prefer Turku as a town. Being a country girl, I've never seen the appeal of living in London, so maybe its the same for Finland.

Sunday; Slept a lot, hehe. Then we had a BBQ. It was raining but we did it anyway. It was with the language circle. There were about 6 of us, so not bad a turn-out considering the rain. We have a little bbq ‘hut’ of sorts beside our building, so that was fine. Was interesting talking to the Americans here actually. They are surprisingly nice, hehe. I've also found the language cirlce is a great oppurtunity to mix with Finnish students and get to know more about Finland. For example, the often joke about how we have 'snow days' in England - 'imagine having the day off school just because it snows!' I miss snow days, they were the best, hehe.

Monday; Bumped in a Hungarian I know on the bus home from work. (as you do, hehe). He invited me out to this pub that does a student price on Mondays. Called Bar Kuka. Its quite a cool place, with funky interior. And there was a huge group of Erasmus students along with a band playing. Good chilled out night.


Tuesday; Went out with the language circle again. Just to a little café in town where you can play board games. We decided to give scrabble a go, but its quite hard to play English scrabble with a Finnish set, because there are so many letters that they don’t have. Try using K’s when you don’t have any C’s. Harder than it sounds, but we managed to complete the board and use all the letters with (almost) no cheating. See the evidence (for those looking that hard, the vowels with 'umlauts' or whatever they're called, we used as blank letters so could be anything).


Wednesday; Two guys that I knew from Helsinki were visiting Turku for the day before heading onto Tampere. So I took them to Koulu. I really like that place and they seemed pretty happy with it. One guy is from Bavaria, and Koulu brew there own beer, so its stronger than most of the regular Finnish stuff which I’m told isn’t that good, so he was happy with the ‘real’ beer there I think. Although obviously still not as good as Bavaria. Personally I cant stand beer, but they do a great blueberry cider which I recommend.

Thursday; It still doesn’t end. My tutors ex-housemate’s boyfriend (if you can follow that) wanted to start a regular club night in town and it was the debut so my tutor had a pre-party to try and get a good group together. Its been an age since I'd seen her, and I like all her housemates, so was a good night. The actual club night was good too, with good music from the DJs and a live band (The Oders) which were trying so hard to be a British Indie band. Don't tell anyone I said this, but they were actually pretty good. Sounded like Placebo would have done were they part of the 80's electro era. Quite funky. Check them out here.

And that was my mammoth week. Dont think I'll have another like that in a while. It seriously messed with work on thursday - I made so many mistakes. It wasnt any better on friday, but because I knew I was tired, I took my time doing everything so didnt leave work till late (but didnt mess anything up!). Next week there will apparently be students in the labs with my supervisor running a class for them. Will be nice to see some new faces, and have a bit of life in the lab. Theres been a terrible flu going around, so lots of people have been away. However, I went to a seminar and got chatting with some of the people in the other labs. Seems there are some friendly faces around, and people are starting to speak to me in English, which is nice.

Oops

I was planning on writing a little post on my sift throught some of the Turku second-hand shops, including a list of my fabulous purchases. One of which was a lovely little coffee-pot, but I've already managed to blow it up, I can smell it burning now...

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am somewhat of a negligent cook, often getting distracted and forgetting that I left food cooking, returning to find the kitchen on fire 30mins later (not an exaggeration, this has happened). So is it really any surprise that while in Finland I've already ruined a good saucepan (rented from the university, so will need to be replaced), and now this little tea-pot kettle thing. Terrible shame. Although the impressive thing is I was right there when it blew up this time. Was just my stupidity not lack of attention that did caused it.

Anyway, as for my shopping trip, I decided to investigate some of the Indian import shops that I was told about on the north east side of town. People were right, there are a lot of things in here you can get cheaper than the supermarket (once you work out what they are of course). What I liked though, was some of the familiar products - I found PG Tips, Birds Eye Custard powder (custard is very much a foreign concept abroad I have learnt), corned beef, beef burgers (which had to be purchased in 1kg bags) and condensed milk! First bacon, now custard - whatever next!

Why is everything available in liquorish flavour?!

Liquorish-toffee flavoured yoghurt, its not actually as bad as it sounds.

Today I browsed the yoghurt section in the supermarket and thought I found a toffee yoghurt. I didnt know what the word before 'toffee' was so decided to ignore it. I got home and tasted it before I translated it. Turns out lakritsi means liquorish (an insanely popular flavour here). Perhaps the black pot should have been a hint... Was pretty good actually :)

TPS - Ice Hockey!

Tonight I headed to Turkuhalli to watch an ice hockey match between the Turku team TPS and a team from Lahti. Was good fun, and I've decided I actually quite like Ice Hockey. Its pretty fast moving, so more interesting than football, but the goal is really small so it still takes a lot to score (I like to play Basketball, but watching it is pointless because they just score so often really). Anyway, I really had no idea about the rules and fouls and things, but its easy viewing and you get the point - get the puck in the goal. Simple.

Anyway, we as the uni group took up a whole stand (which was quite a big deal considering the hall wasnt all that packed). We even got a shout out over the speakers - over 100 international students of the university of Turku! Well they did us a good deal - only €5 a ticket!

The match is broken up into 3 half-hour sections, and we scored in the first session, but then Lahti's team equalised in the second third. Luckily though, TPS managed to score 2 goals in the third third giving us a 3-1 victory - Hurrah!


I seem to remember that we have a pretty good ice hocket team back in Guildford actually. I think I'll definitely go again while I'm in Finland and you never know I might carry it on back home!

Take a flight back to Helsinki...

Would you look at that - I went and passed my 100 post mark without even realising. Oops. I'll do some sort of monumental post for the 150 mark instead :)

Anyway, I want to share a track I kept hearing around when I first moved to Turku. But I listened to it again tonight because its mildly appropriate. Its by a band called C.S.S and the song is called Left Behind. The lyrics are about 'taking a flight back to Helsinki' and just drinking and dancing to forget about what she left behind. So I havent 'left anything behind' as such, and I'll be getting the train, not flying, but this weekend I return to Helsinki - wooooo! Its a friends birthday, and he's having a party, so kinda invited myself along :) Just need to find somewhere to stay for the night... bit cold for sleeping on a park bench me thinks.

Next Plane Home

I still cant decide whether or not I like this song. Its another one I hear everyday at work, and to start with I liked it enough to google it. Found out it was by Daniel Powter and then went off it a bit for some reason. So why am I posting it? Well this weekend I booked my flights home for christmas. Just 10 weeks, and I'll be back on home soil, ah...

So anyway, each time this song comes on it makes me think ahead to when I can get the 'Next Plane Home'

Rasmus Gig Review

I was running a tad late for the gig on saturday after having woken up late and getting sucked into the sales at the department store in town. Anyway, I finally made it, and it was just great. Finnish crowds are pretty different to those back home at London gigs. For starters, despite turning up over 30mins late, I still got a spot right down the front. And not only was I down the front, but I has plenty of room to move around/dance, and it wasnt ridiculously hot. In a lot of ways it didnt feel like a proper gig, particularly when everyone sat down between the support act and the band.

Talking of the support act, they were actually really good. I quite enjoyed their set. They played for nearly an hour, and I think there was only one song that I didnt like. They are called Von Hertzen Bothers, and its sort of synth rock I guess. You can check out their myspace page here. After the gig I managed to get the singer, Mikko, to sign my ticket :) It seems everyone knows Keira Knightly here too, so glad she spells her name the same way.


Anyway, after they finished the Rasmus came on. They started with Living In A World Without You, which was really good live. After that they went straight into FFF-Falling. So was glad to hear they were going to be playing some of their older songs too. And that they did, as well as playing tracks from the new album, they played, Guilty, No Fear, First Day of My Life, Chill and Sail Away (which was done as a duet with Mikko Von Hertzen coming back on stage).


Some of the new tracks that I has heard and werent overly impressed by have gone up in my estimation since hearing them live. For example, I didnt like the title track 10 Black Roses much, but its very good live. However, my favourite of the new songs is called Justify. Despite the intro reminding me of The Cure's 'Lullaby', the lyrics are what appeal to me most about it. Ghost of Love is also worth a listen.


They did some odd songs as well, such as Ghost Busters, and another song in Finnish, that had something to do with a moon... It took me a while to realise he was singing in Finnsih, but the guitarist held up a big ball of styrophone and said something about Kuu. Make of that what you will...

Finally for an encore they did In The Shadows.


Was a great night. And no worrys about rushing for the last train home. Just casually strolled round to the student village where I stole some posters off a notice board, and then caught a bus back to the Kauppatori where I had time for a cheeseburger before the next night bus home :)