Spanish student in the frozen Finland

One of the trips that I considered that you should do if you are in Finland is the Lapland trip. I went with the ESN (Erasmus student network) to the trip and they organized the cottages and buses to Levi, where we slept. We spent there 5 days and it was really amazing. Our cottage was a completely disaster, our door was broken, we didn´t have wifi, we didn´t have beds for everyone, just a few beds and sofa beds...but it made the experience funnier and now we have a lot and a lot of stories to share and remember. I´m not going to write every day like a diary because it will make this really long, so I´m going to talk about the important things we made there. Obviously, the worst part was the eleven hours by bus, but I also have a story about the way back at the bus. We visited the Santa Claus village, and it was quite exciting but I was a bit disappointed, like you can imagine, it was a really touristic place, and the worst thing is that there were two Santa Claus!!! They wer...

I have to say that I haven´t tried all the typical food from Finland, but I tried a few things, so I´m going to tell you about them. One very typical thing to do in Finland is making a fire and burn some sausages, this kind of sausages and bigger than the normal ones, and on the fire, they are really good. Most of the time, they eat them with a beer or tea. People here love tea, I have to say that I´m not a fan, but I can understand with the low temperatures they want something hot to be warmer, but I prefer hot chocolate! Actually, I have tried a lot of hot chocolate here, and in every place, they taste different for me but I like them. Other food that is typical is the reindeer meat, I tried once in the student restaurant and I have to say that I don´t like it, but I want to try it in a different way, like in a burger to see if I like it more. Also, the “black” bread, but I prefer the white one, and now I´m used to eating it with butter, and it´s very good (although not as healthier...

I had one course that is called Get Finternational, the point of that course is that we have to make different events related to Finnish culture, so it´s quite interesting. One of the events that I chose was to go a prom. We went to Naantali to see a Finnish prom and that was really funny. First of all, we got to Naantali and some students from the school were waiting for us to show us the school and the small city. The school was amazing, there was a TV in the hall and a pair of billiards to play, I was impressed with that, it´s really different in my country. Then, we went to the lake, obviously, it was frozen and we also saw the Moomin world, but it was closed. In the lake they were making a fire to cook some sausages and marshmallow, they were so good. After eating the sausages and enjoy the nature we went to see quickly the centre of the city and came back to school. At the school, the other two students explain to us how the education works here, in Finland and a bit about th...

I´m just talking about different places I´ve visited, but it´s because I believe that is the most important information for everyone. Later I will about more topics, I promise. Now, I want to talk about a short visit to a place that is here, in Turku. Actually, it´s a museum about farms and houses or something like that, but it was closed when we went there. The name of this zone is Kuralan kylämäki (I don´t even know how to pronounce it), you can go there by bus in 20 minutes or less. It´s a beautiful place, but, like everything here, you don´t have many things to do, just walking around and enjoy the nature. The day was really really cold so we were there for 2 hours more or less and then we came back home to drink something hot. I remember that it was about -18 so we were frizzing, and also our hair was frozen!! I don´t know how is the museum but I have to say that the zone is very quiet and nice just for spend a few hours without worries. I want to go in spring to see how it looks...

One Saturday in January I went with a few friends to visit a small city near Turku, this city is called Rauma. We woke up early and took one of the first buses in the morning to have enough time to visit it but when we were there we realized that you don´t need much time to visit it because is quite small! First of all, we went to a building which it is one of the highest in Rauma and we enjoy the views from the top, but it was cold (typical here), so we took photos and return to the city. The centre is small although is cute, there are colourful houses (it´s also something typical in Finland I guess), and I really like that kind of houses. But I have to say that there are a church and a small river and nothing else to see, so I was a bit disappointed because of that, but at least I saw another city in Finland. We ate in a pizzeria some of the group went to the art museum, and the Spanish people of the group went to visit a mall because it was snowing, then we went for a walk, but, as...

Hi again! I´m going to talk about another place that I went at the beginning of my stay here, and this place is an island called Ruissalo. Ruissalo is an island really close to Turku, now, in winter, you can go with the bus number 8, but I think that in summer you can go by boat (I´m not sure). I went with two friends and we spent one morning there, actually, it´s a small island so you can see it entirely in a few hours! It was really beautiful, we went to a beach and it was peaceful (and cold of course). Next to the beach there is a sauna, where you can go and do ice swimming (I really want to do it), and the fact is that it costs 5€, so it´s okay, but when we went there we saw the sauna and I don´t know what we were reading that we read 35€ and I was disappointed with the price and then some Finnish guy told me that it was 5€ and I felt a bit stupid. But it was nice, we were walking over the snow, in the middle of the forest and we saw footsteps of some animal, although the cold I r...

One of my first trips was to Helsinki, I went with a friend to spend one night and although the cold weather and the darkness (when is about 3 p.m it starts to be darker and darker), I really like the city. Helsinki is so different from Turku, Helsinki is a big city, with big buildings and a lot of lights and shops, and Turku is a small town but more comfortable to live (in my opinion). We went on January so the lights of Christmas time were on and that was really cute, I remember that there were two reindeers made of lights (sooo cute!). The first day we visited the city centre, a market, the harbour, and some buildings and, of course, we took hot chocolate because it was so cold! We slept in a hostel and the next day we went to visit Suomenlinna. Suomenlinna is an island quite close to Helsinki, you can go on the ferry and you can use the card for public transport as in the city, so it´s cheap to go. It´s a small island but in my opinion is beautiful, it´s, like everything here, pea...

One month later I´m here, writing about this new experience that I´m living. The 2nd of January I arrived in Helsinki from Madrid, it was a really tough day. First of all I had to get up about 3 a.m in my town (León, in the northwest of Spain), then I had to go to Madrid to take the flight, but I had with me two huge suitcases which exceeded the allowed weight, so I was really lucky because I didn´t have to pay. Also, I had another problem, one hour before the flight my backpack was broken! Luckily my father could repair it. More random things happened to me, when I was in the airport check I had to take away my boots, there were a lot of people and a big queue to the control and when I could finish the control one of my boots wasn´t there, but finally, I could find it. I had to say that the flight was good, when we arrived in Helsinki we met another Spanish girl, who now is my friend, and took a train to go to the train station in order to take another train to go to Turku (where I l...