My First Day in Russia

In the beginning of my second semester in Finland (first days of February), I was urged to sign up for an ESN trip to Saint Petersburg (further just St-P or Big P) in April. Since I wanted to go there long time ago, with a nervous feeling of not enough capacity, I agreed to go. Together with Honza, Petr and Tyler we filled in the sign up forms, chose every possible extra activity described later (but ballet) and started to look forward. So make some coffee and prepar for another superboring adventure.

A few memories from trip to Stockholm

Because we’re young (and stupid), we’ve decided to go on one-day-two-nights ferry trip from Helsinki to Stockholm. The date was 31st of October, so exactly the same time when American children blackmail adults into giving them sweets for ruining their houses. Perceptive reader may guess by now that it was Halloween.

Days 30 – 59, Lokakuu Joensuussa

After a month of living in Joensuu and writing this blog I of course lost motivation, became lazy, instead of procrastinating by writing I started procrastinating procrastination by other stuff like guitar, frisbee golf, sauna, etc. Didn’t write as often as I wanted. I decided to do so now and summarize the whole month, during which Joensuu became little bit boring (but this blog should be ultraboring, at least I keep in the original topic).

Days 19 – 22, Kansallispuistoissa

Terve kaikille! After to weeks of successful procrastination an unknown higher power made me to sit and finally write something, what I’ve already forgotten. As you may know, I lost all my photos from this trip as well, so I must say an enormous THANK YOU to Zuzka for her pictures and all the photos in this post are from her (except of the corrupted ones). It seems like years ago, before this passive stage our overly active Czech friend Zuzana (it’s not an insult but compliment, thanks for taking us with you, ZiZi) asked us (me & Jani) to come with her, her mom and Píďa to Koli – national park north from Joensuu.

Equipment

I know you always wonder, where do all the “beautiful” pictures in these boring articles come from. Now the mystery is going to be revealed. Maybe you’ve already found out in each photo description. This is not an excuse for poor quality of photos, but these products are so unique that it’ll be a sin not to write something.

Days 26 – 29, Viikonloppu Helsingissä

Ok, now I’m like 1,5 week late with my Finnish diary, so I’m gonna skip to recent events and write about them before they disappear from my fly-like 3 second memory. Don’t worry, I’ll write about the rest soon. The second thing is: I’m superstupid. Deleted all my pictures from Joensuu, tried at least 1K recovery / repair programmes, nothing helped. So when posts will be finally written, they’ll be boring as hell without pictures. Anyway, now just important stuff: After long time I spent a weekend “in Europe”, specifically in Helsinki. It was pretty intensive, so let’s start from the start.

Day 14, Cycling Joensuu

This Sunday (instead of church as usual) I went to a cycling competition whose main purpose was to get to know Joensuu that I already knew well. Anyways, Jani, Times and me formed unbeatable multi-neighbourhood dreamteam with all possible winning features calles Voileipä (butterbread), with intention to win, not to have fun.

Day 13, Ruunaa “Rafting”

Few days ago I signed up for a trip to Ruunaa – small village close to Russian border and also hiking & recreational area. So on saturday I was already awake in the middle of the night (9 am) and getting on the bus  with couple of exchange students barely standing on their feet, occasionally falling asleep. The  bus journey driven by unknown Finnish bus driver took 1,5 hour and huge deficit of sleep overcame excitement from the trip so I couldn’t watch beautiful Finnish forests everywhere around us.

Day 12, Friday the 13th

Fhuuu nothing bad happened, still alive. Just had my first non-vegetarian meal in canteen and it was awesome!

Moreover, I had a nice walk in the evening :)

Day 11, Lehtiä Ilosaaressa

A special day. Woke up early, full of energy and elan. I was going to my first festival in Finland, was full of expectations and butterflies in the stomach and hoped that my 2 months long pogo-deficit will disappear today. So I went to student union office to buy a ticket (12 EUR, I was even more sure that it’ll be epic, for this money it must be). Fortunately, they had one of the last (500) tickets, lucky me. Then me and Jani traditionally overate at lunch (delicious “casserole”) and threw a frisbee – special moves were better now, but I forgot the basic ones again and the food inside my stomach could’t decide if it should stay or should it go (out).