Maja in Finland

Hi! Here I have some pictures and stories from my trip to Finland Oct. 11 to 15. If you're surprised that I traveled to Finland, well, so am I!

It's not a country I've dreamed about visiting or even thought about often. So perhaps it's strange that I chose to go there.

I had a week off school (just one class that I missed) and decided to go to Finland and visit Jane, a friend from high school who is studying in Jyväskylä this semester.

Going to a country I had no previous plans to visit, almost no preconceptions about, and no plans to return to was more or less a new experience for me and really made this trip unique. I looked at everything with extra interest and wonder because I thought, this is likely the only time I'll see this!

Finland is in the group of Nordic countries like Norway, but I thought it was quite different than Norway! As you probably know, Finnish is from a totally different language group. But it was more than that. The land was very different: everywhere mixed forest of small trees, many lakes, and rolling land. Then, the history of Finland is more connected with Russia than with countries located west and south of it.

The people, landscape, and of course language had a unique Finnish feel to it. Sometimes in Norway I feel like I could be in Canada or anywhere, but when I was in Finland, I really got the feeling that now I'm in a different country. Not somewhere that could be anywhere, but definitely in Finland!

But this short description doesn't do the country justice, so if you'd like to know more about what Finland is like you can read about it somewhere else. :)

Jane was a wonderful host and friend. She's a great tour guide and cook! Thanks again for everything!

It was nice to spend time with someone from home- with similar backgrounds from living in Edmonton, we sometimes responded to things in similar ways, and it felt good to have someone understand my background and perspectives without having to explain them. (Again, I'm not very good at writing about this. Sorry for my lack of eloquence. Back to some concrete happenings....)

I stayed with Jane in Jyväskylä for 4 nights. One day we went to the nearby city of Tampere to sightsee, and I also spend 6 hours or so sightseeing in Helsinki. Staying with a "local" and experiencing student life in Finland, I felt like I got a much better idea of Finland than the typical experience of being a tourist in Helsinki.

View of Jyvaskyla and its lake from a tower

lake

Jyväskylä surrounds a lake and there are trees all over. In the residential areas, it's almost more of a forest with houses in it than a city with trees in it. The university is large and has many historic buildings. Jane lives with one other person in an apartment about a 15 minute bike ride away from school. When she arrived her apartment was unfurnished. Now I really appreciate that I didn't have to look for furniture for where I'm living!

Her apartment has these brillant dish drying-rack cupboards!

Trying a new Finnish food: viili. It's like yogurt, but stretchy!

I was surprised that the students usually eat out for lunch and dinner, but it makes sense because there are lots of affordable and delicious restaurants, and the university has many cheap cafeterias. I definitely enjoyed the cheaper food prices to have some nice restaurant meals and spend time in cafes. I also went a bit crazy at a sports store sale and got lots of great training clothes. Seeing one- or two-digit prices again made it easy to forget that euros don't equal Canadian dollars....

(Telling you about Finland makes me realize that I haven't written much specific about my own university, town, food, prices, and so on in Norway. I'll get around to that soon.)

Classroom

I went to two of Jane's classes. A history class, where we watched a really good Finnish movie set during WW2 (I forget the name...), and a sports class, where there was a guest lecturer: the Secretary General of the Finnish Antidoping Agency. Now that was a subject I was excited to hear a lecture about!

I met a lot of other friendly international students who are Jane's friends. We went shopping, to a sauna (of course!), and watched a movie. One night, we went to a bar and were convinced to join in a speed-dating event that happened to be going on. Now that's something I've never imagined myself doing...

Walking paths and distances to any destination!

It was clear that physical activity was big in Finland. There are paved walking and cycling routes everywhere. Almost everyone in Jyvaskyla uses a bike for the main form of transportation. It was also normal that almost all the bikes were quite old and in unreliable condition! Thankfully, I was able to borrow one, saving Jane and I many hours of walking.

Jane and our bikes

Bike parking area in the main walking street

One morning we (happily) woke up to snow, and it stayed on the ground for days!

Brr!

Jane in the snow on the way to school

The common themes in sightseeing in each city were churches and tall observation towers.

Jyvaskyla observation tower

Spot the tower!

Tampere observation tower

I thought seeing the cities and surrounds from above was the best part of sightseeing!

Tampere from the tower!

Amusment park





A "beautiful waterfall" someone recommended we see. Bit of a letdown, haha...

Giant ninja helmet or garbage can?

Oldest train I've been in yet

One morning I checked out a sports complex built in old underground halls from the military. It was awesome. (I think I have a weakness for underground things. They are sooooo cool!)

Entrance hallway

Map of the complex

On the last day I did some sightseeing in Helsinki! All I knew about what to see was from the tourist brochures and Jane's advice. Oh, or does this count?

Unfortunately, my camera finally broke down just before I arrived in Helsinki. It's been working less and less reliably for the last half a year, but why did it have to die just now??! So now I have no more photos to show. It's been almost a month now since it broke, how will I write interesting blogs without photos? I will take some from other people maybe...

The highlights were:

An exhibit of bear statues painted by different countries outside a church (the picture is from the website)

A church inside a huge rock (Jane took this picture when she was there)

EDIT: I forgot to write that I also went to the Olympic stadium, of course! And went up the tower to have a nice view.

Suomenlinna, a fortress town on some islands which you get to by ferry. It was nice to see the harbour a bit on the way there.

Then I (unexpectedly) missed my flight back to Oslo. That sucked. Like a million bricks of guilt being thrown down onto my head by angry birds. I don't think we need to go into details. On the plus side, I'm really becoming skilled at taking short naps on the floors of public areas.

Now here's a trivia question for you: Who is a famous person (in the sports science world) who lives in Jyväskylä?
If you leave a comment with the answer I'm thinking of, you will win... the prize will be that I'll write a blog post on a topic of your choice.

Bye until next time!