Spanish student in the frozen Finland

Vappu is the most important student party in Turku (and in Finland, I think), the main day is the first of May, but this week there were a lot of events going on. And the best part is the weather because there was incredible weather, so everything was better. Also, I was sad because at least two events were cancelled, and one of them was really interesting for me, even my tutor had suggested it :( So, this week I have Lost in Turku (last post), then this event which was cancelled, but I cooked tortilla with some friends and then we went to play pool, another day we went to the river just to drink and chill and it was really nice, there was an attraction park also (I didn´t have entrance) but we went to see how it was and it was very crowded and after that I went to a concert of Finnish bands and then I went out. There is also an event today and then next week is coming with a lot of parties and the Vappu day! Finally people are in the streets!!

Lost in Turku was the last event I did for my 'Get Finternational' course and it was one of the funniest events I have done in this course. We had to form a team and then we had to find 10 points painted in a paper map and we had to do an activity at each point. They were activities related to the finnish culture mostly. I found it very interesting because also people who are not studying the course could go with us. We were a team of six and we really had fun. Finally, you are a bit tired because it´s four hours walking all the time but it was a good experience. I learned new things in some of the points and it was very dynamic. I really liked that in some points there were candies or pastry, it was very nice considering that it was the time for lunch (at least for me). I think I wouldn´t change anything of the activity, it´s good to try to understand a paper map nowadays again, feeling lost in the city you had been living for 4 months. And also the activities related to Fin...

Most of the Finnish people recommended me to visit Stockholm, so this Easter I had a visit from a friend from Spain and we decided to visit it with two more friends from the Erasmus. We were there on Thursday morning and we came back on Sunday morning, but it was time enough to see the most important things. We visited four of the 14 islands that Stockholm has, and we are totally in love with the city. It´s a very lively city (compared with Turku there is a big difference) with a lot of beautiful buildings, it´s bigger than I thought and I think it´s a place you can visit more than once and you´ll always see new things. There are also a lot of parks and places to have a picnic or just chill with your friends. The only thing I don´t like about it it´s that it´s very very expensive, and also they use a different currency so it´s difficult to calculate some times how much are you paying and also I had a fee when I paid with the card. We also did a free tour in Spanish and I have to say ...

I want to share a website I found very interesting about curiosities of Finland. I can say that, now, three months and a half living here I knew some of the curiosities but others were new for me. If someone wants to know more about this country it´s very interesting! https://wonderfulwanderings.com/interesting-facts-about-finland/ I can feel number 2, the language is very very very difficult and hard to learn! Sauna is one of the most common things to do in Finland, you can´t visit Finland and not go to the sauna! They say joking that there are more saunas than cars, so imagine. For number 7 you need to go in summer but in May also there is light most of the day, so sometimes is a bit complicated sleep, also because they don´t use blinds as in Spain. About number 9 I agree, I could see the Northern lights when I went to Lapland and it´s magical. Also, I could experiment number 10 cause I did the Husky safari when I was in Lapland and it´s amazing. I knew about Heavy metal ...

I wanted to dedicate one post to Assarin. Assarin is one of the students restaurants of Turku, I could say that it´s the most famous one and it´s the one I go the most. I talked in another post about the price, for being students we only have to pay 2.60€ and we have buffet of salad, rice and potatoes, water or milk and bread, and then we can choose between the hot meals, in Assarin normally there are 3-4 options to choose, and in the other restaurants there are usually less. In my opinion, Assarin has the best bread of all of them, they have a lot of types of bread and also butter, it´s really common here eating the bread with butter. Furthermore, there is always one type of fruit that you can take, the most common is probably banana, orange and apple. I find it a very good opportunity to eat varied at a good price. There is always at least one option of meat and one option of fish and vegetables. In this restaurant, there is also another part with three vegetarian ...

When I posted about Tallinn I didn´t say anything about Riga, so as it was part of the trip I would like to talk about it for a bit. We only spent one day there so maybe it´s better to have a couple of days to visit it better, but it wasn´t my favourite place to visit. I like it but it wasn´t special for me, although I have to say that it was very cold and we were a lot of hours in the street and also a woman tried to rob me, so maybe I can not be totally objective with my opinion. The free tour we made was interesting because it was a bit different, we went to places which are not popular and touristic, and I really like doing this kind of things when I travel. Riga is not a really big city but if you want to visit different places and not just the touristic area I think you will need more than one day. There are a lot of buildings which are worthy to see, at least from outside, different churches and other kind of buildings. For me, people were really different from Finland and a...

I found quite interesting that at the university there are seminars quite often of different topics and they are interactive and interesting. Also, if you go to two or them and write a report you can use it for some course. This morning I went to one of the seminars, it was very interesting to me because it was about how people react psychologically after a terrorist attack. I was thinking about being a specialist in this kind of situations, like catastrophes in general, so I wanted to go today. I think it was very interesting and it wasn´t boring at all. I believe that this kind of activities are really useful when you are studying something you like because the seminars are usually about some topics related with the career but which you don´t study at class, so it´s like an "extra" for the students. Today at the university there were a lot of them at different times and about different topics. At my home university, we have seminars about interesting topics also, but we c...

I´m so tired of this weather...I think some entries ago I talked about 'spring is coming', well, bullshit! Last Saturday we have such a perfect day, it was sunny, really warm, about 13 degrees, I was soooo happy, people were next to the river drinking beers, playing cards, playing chess, it was like a summer day which you want to be at the street all day long. I even took off my coat and I was thinking "now spring is coming", I´m pretty sure. It was the hottest day since I came here but then...on Sunday it was snowing again, unbelievable! Also on Monday and Tuesday was snowing and cold again, so now I´m a bit depressed having this weather again, I´m really looking forward to having sunny and warm days, I think I would like Turku much more with spring weather. And I really want to spend afternoons and evenings next to the river enjoying with friends. Spring, we are waiting for you!

Today, I came to the main library of Turku and I found a shelf with some books and magazines and it said free books, so you could take a book if you are interested in it and also you can bring some books to other people. I found it very interesting and it´s something that promotes culture and reading habits in youth and adult people. It´s not the first time that I see something like this, I saw it some times in Spain but here the culture of the libraries is more into the people and the places for reading, work or study are much better than in Spain. There were most of the books in Finnish, but some of them were also in English so I could take one for me, and I´m really looking forward to reading it. Something funny to say is that also there were gossip magazines and that reminded me about my grandmother because she is always reading them.

The last post I was talking about pastries but now I´m going to talk about all the things I ate these days with my parents. the first day it was very late so we went to one place really near to the apartment, and I really liked it, it was a place of pizzas but they have Finnish products, we ordered one with reindeer and one with salmon and they were very good! My parents really like salmon so we ate more times, we tried the famous salmon soup in Helsinki and I have to say that I was surprised with the flavour, it was good; we ate salmon also with the black bread from here in a kind of toast, and also another toast with shrimps. My parents don´t like so much fast food places but because of the expensive restaurants here on weekends and the timetables for having lunch we ate in two fast food places, of course, one was Hesburguer, the most famous in Finland, it´s everywhere! And the other one was a street stall called Grilli, in Turku, and I also have seen at least three Grilli stalls; an...

This last week my parents were here visiting me so we tried to eat as much traditional food as we could, avoiding paying huge amounts of money (because Finland is much more expensive than Spain). I´m pretty sure that we tried all of the pastries typical from here because each street stall we saw we bought something to try it. One pastry is really expensive, the less we paid it was 2€ in a really nice cafe in Porvoo and the most maybe 3.5€. I can´t remember the names of them because they were Finnish names, but of course, we tried the cinnamon rolls in the best place to eat them, in a cafe called Regatta in Helsinki, it´s really nice!!! We tried also the one that it´s pink in the top and has strawberry jam inside, I made the Carelian pastries for them (the frozen ones), we tried one pastry which was like bread but a bit sweet and it was very good, and another one with kind of spreadable cheese on the top, and that one with something yellow inside and on the top; also my mo...

My family came to visit me last week, so I went to Helsinki to pick them and we decided to visit Porvoo because it´s near Helsinki. Porvoo is a very small town for almost one hour by bus from Helsinki. We took an Onnibus bus in the morning and we spend a couple of hours there. It has these typical red wooden house next to the river and a small old town, but it´s nice to walk through the streets. There is a church with a tower and a lot of wooden houses all around. There is a ski slope in the city also!! My parents were surprised by that. There is not that much to do there but it´s a good place to walk and see the local shops about souvenirs, clothes, chocolate, etc. We had a break in a very good bakery, we took hot chocolate and some typical pastry, it was homemade that morning and it was delicious! Also, the place was really cozy and the woman was kind talking with me, and she asked me if I knew Finnish and I had to speak the basic things I know with her but she was surprised. Fin...