the least significant bit

I’m finally back from the study abroad semester in Finland. The time went by very fast and it is hard to realize that it is actually over now. The cities mentioned in the title indicate the travel route back home.
After we came back from our Kuusamo trip we had only 1 day left to do all the pre-departure stuff: pack our bags, tidy up the flat, say good bye to everyone, …
We (Masse and me) left Oulu on January 20th by train, heading to Helsinki where we stayed at Niko’s flat. During the 2 days in Helsinki, we did a lot of exciting things like visiting the ‘Ice Bar’ (see picture) and the islands near Helsinki. Although the temperature was only about -10°C when we visited the islands, it felt more like -273,15°C because of the gusty winds and insufficient clothing. I think this was the most frosty thing I’ve ever experienced during my whole time in Finland.
Our plane from Helsinki to Berlin left on Monday at about 4pm. In Berlin, we had to switch the plane which resulted in some hours of waiting. We finally arrived in Vienna at about 8:30pm. After about 1,5 hours on the autobahn, we arrived at our final destination in Hartberg.

At the Hemingway Bar in Helsinki:


At the Ice Bar:

On the ferry from Helsinki to the islands about 2km away:


Here is the full Helsinki photo set.

From 16th to 18th January, Teemu - a finnish student who is going to do a study abroad semester in Austria - invited us to a secluded cottage on a lake near Kuusamo. We were a group of 6 people: Teemu (FIN), his girlfriend Kaarina (FIN), Masse (AUT), Benjamin (GER), Romary (FRA) and me.
Kuusamo is located about 220km from Oulu and 50km from the Arctic Circle.

The cottage:

Besides from going to the Sauna every day, we did a lot of exciting things which were quite new to me, including ice-fishing and driving with a snow-mobile.

Ice-fishing:

Driving the snow-mobile on a frozen lake:

All the other photos are available on my flickr photo-set.

After at least 2 weeks of total absence of the sun due to heavy cloud cover, it showed up again 2 days ago (nearly no clouds before noon). I was able to take this photo at around 11am before I had to go to write an exam. After the exam it was quite dark and cloudy again.



By the way, here is the weatcher forecast for the next 7 days:



As you can see it is actually not that cold as it should be at this time of the year.

We have also been to Rovaniemi & Arctic Circle a few days ago to see some sights (e.g. Santa Claus Village). Unfortunately, the weather was quite bad (rainy) but hey, at least I can now tell everybody that I’ve seen the world’s northest McDonald’s

There’s a photographer who publishes a new photo which has been taken in Oulu every day: Oulu Daily Photo
(I have to use tinyurl.com to link to this blog because for some crazy reason WordPress returns an ‘500 Server Error’ if I use ‘blogsp*t.com’ in my text. Anybody has an idea what the hell is going on here? Update: It might be some mod_security related issue but I’m not sure yet how to solve it)

Sorry for not blogging since quite a long time but I’ve been pretty busy (and also a bit lazy) in the last couple of weeks. So, what happend in the 45 days since my last post?
To start off, we’ve been visiting Helsinki, Tallinn and Stockholm a few weeks ago. Photos are available here. We went to Helsinki by train where we stayed for 2 nights. Then we took a VikingLine ferry to Tallinn. I didn’t expect much from this city and also didn’t know very much about it. However, it was really awesome. Especially the old-town with its medieval buildings is definitely worth a visit. Also the nightlife and our charming little hostel (which has only 9 beds) were really nice. After two days we decided to visit Stockholm and booked a Tallink ferry (Tallink rocks because they offer free WiFi internet on their ships). Stockholm was also quite nice. Unfortunately, the weather was quite bad (rainy). We did some sightseeing by boat (which I can recommed if you’re too lazy to walk) and took a ferry back to Finland on the same evening.
When we arrived back in Oulu the landscape was covered with the first snow for this winter. In the following days it continued so snow and also got colder (about -10° to -15° C average during the day, minimum was about -23° C). However, it became quite warm again during the last days. The current temperature is -1° C.
What else happened? At university the 2nd period started which means that we got some new courses (and finished a few from the 1st period). In Finland the semester is divided into two periods. New courses for this period: Software Engineering, Body language and gestures, Business English (courses from the first period which are not finished yet: Systems Development, Programming of Web and Mobile Applications, User Interface Design, English for Engineers, International Marketing, Digital Image Processing, Symbian Programming).

Yesterday I went to a sports shop to buy a new running jacket because I’ve lost the old one (please don’t ask me about the circumstances). After 2 hours of deciding which jacket to buy I spent another 3 hours to think about if I should take medium or large size.
Finally, I made my decision and wanted to go to the cash desk but somehow ended up in the ice hockey department. The result was, that I bought this:

I’m looking forward to use them as soon as possible.

At the evening I wanted to ‘test-drive’ my new running jacket so I ran to Nallikari Beach. Although it’s quite far away it really paid off. That area is really nice. I’m going to take my camera with me when I go there next time.

I’m currently sitting in a train from Helsinki to Oulu and we’re going to arrive there in about 3 hours or so. We landed in Helsinki yesterday and spent the rest of the day/night doing some sightseeing (more or less) and visiting some pubs (EUR 5,- for 1 beer is tough). Maybe I’ll upload some photos to my flickr account later.

As you might know I’m going to do a study abroad semester along with Masse (alias Mitch) at Oulu University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Our plane will take off in exactly 1 month on August 29th 8:00am. After a stopover in Berlin we will arrive in Helsinki at 2:25pm where we will stay for the rest of the day and check out the nightlife
On the next day, we will continue our trip to Oulu by train. I’ll keep you up-to-date if there happens anything interesting during my time in Finland, so stay tuned

PS: Here’s a nice snowkite video which was recorded somewhere in or around Oulu as far as I know: Watch it