Sorry I kept you waiting this long, I was busy. There have been a couple of highlights in the meantime, but some trivia first:
I need to add some information about shopping in Finland, the Alko stores - how could I forget them last time!? Alko is the place to get harder alcohol than beer (or what they like to call beer here). It usually is very tidy and clean, well sorted and complemented with some smooth jazz playing in the backround plus there are no kiddies around since that is not the kind of atmosphere they look for and you will always be asked for your ID anyway - so already the differences to germany are quite obvious. And they become even more striking when you look at the prices, which would almost certainly cause germans to riot - something they are not exactly famous for, but I imagine this could be enough to achieve that.
Furthermore christmas stuff is capturing the stores these days and I bet back home people have been annoyed with it for quite a while by now becaue somebody appears to have decided that everybody is to become excited about christmas months and months in advance - I am glad people are a bit more reasonable (or maybe only treaten as if they were) here.
And now the weather.
I always concidered talking about the weather to be either the weather forecast or an admission that you have run out of sensible topics, but it is not like that here.
Several weeks ago it started snowing all of a sudden and within two days there were 10 cm (be aware that my estimates are legendary bad sometimes) of snow covering the ground. If you had not found out already now you could clearly see who was south-american as they were freaking out when they saw snow for the first time in their lifes. I hope they lke it, there might be plenty to come.
another nice view from my balcony
The days after the snowfall provided the worst skating conditions I have ever seen - even though I have been to east germany: you never knew if what you were about to drive on was the remaining rests of snow and ice, wet or frozen leaves, and loose chippings - or a deadly cocktail of all of these - right until the moment you stepped on it.
Speaking of deadly: When the snow fell, or rather the snow storm raged, I decided it was a good idea to go out jogging. That of course meant wearing short trousers... and gloves inevitably, I am not crazy. Maybe clowns should consider changing their oversized shoes to that kind of an outfit as it produces lots of laughter. During jogging I, as usual, liked where I was too much to actually care where it led me (it looks like I get lost, but it is not like that at all). When I got the slight impression of snow-blindness luckily it turned dark so I decided to head back home. Unfortunately that meant I had headwind all of a sudden, decreasing my sight to about half a meter as well as cooling me down quite a bit. Soon my perfect Hansel-and-Gretel-style plan to find my way back showed its flaw: my footsteps had been mostly snowed in. Somehow I made it nonetheless in the end, by which I had an estimated 2kg of snow in my hair and on my glasses and a thin layer of ice on my knees - that was fun, I can hardly wait for the next snow to fall.
The weather soon turned to rain, everlasting clouds and fog again as it is the fate of a seaside town. Jogging has become perfectly comfortable/boring since then, there even are street lanterns in the forest!
Having dealt with minor topics like Alko, the weather and my survival let us now move on to more important tings:
We have got a have a sofa! I repeat: we have got a sofa!!
we have got a sofa!!!
Somebody leaving his flat left it in the floor for anyone to just take it and luckily my flatmate was first to find it. As you can see it is pretty enormous and hardly fits into the kitchen, you almost have to climb over it just to get in - just how I like it. Of course that also means it does exactly not fit into the lift, so we had to carry it upstairs all six floors. A ruined back is a little price to pay for a sofa as comfortable as this.
What is more I added a plant to the flat since I was told I had to add some colour and the effect is just overwhelming.
welcome to the jungle
Well this is not where it stands anymore because it looks kind of lost and will need more sunlight anyway, so now it really ties my room together.
bugs not allowed to be cultured and use cutlery
I had Anna kindly (finally) paying me a visit and checking out some local pubs with me. Also I got a nice welcoming present (would be an unusually nice gesture in germany, so thanks once again) including the book "How to Marry a Finnish Girl". I think it might help me understanding the finnish mentality more and hope it will not be too spoiling. And it surely already helped me understanding american stupidity when it comes to efficiency, democracy, enlightenment and more, i.e. "And Finnish still doesn't have different words for ‘he‘ and ‘she‘"... which clearly makes it the most advanced language in the world.
very affordable considering the level of play
Too bad she (respectively you) could not make it for the Kirjala-turnaus which is exactly like the Deutschland Cup - except for being better in every single aspect but one. It is held between Finland, Sweden, Russia and Czech Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IIHF_World_Ranking) (!) in an ice hockey obsessed country in an arena only 10km away from my home... and a beer costs slightly less than 8€, how nice. NOT.
I went to see Russia - Sweden first.
The stadium was not too crowded, so nobody bothered if you took the place you had originally paid for. It had been a similar story with the security checkings, a friendly nod was all the attention I got. That might sound like horrible chaos and the end of the world for a german but it is actually really comfortable.
Ruotsi 2 : 3 Venäjä
It looked or rather sounded like the audience was completely russian, I guess it is what they are best at: playing ice hockey and being noisy. Okay, that was unfair, they also know how to establish dictatorships and get drunk.
Next up was Finland - Czech Republic and of course the stadion was full this time. Although Finland lost in the end it was a fantastic match.
Suomi 0 : 1 Tšekki
Early in the first peroid the finns scored the only goal of the match almost all on their own and then tried to make up for that the rest of the game, resulting in lots of offensive play from them and the most impressive defending by the Czechs including awesome counters and in turn spectacular nullifying of those.
A lovely little bonus was to understand what the fan behind me was shouting: "Hyvä! Menemenemenemenemenemene, nyt!! Ei!" because that shows my language skills have to be at least primitive by now.
My finnish exam I just got back also suggests that: To continue the course you had to achieve at least a two, which I assumed to be pretty tough, until (afterwards) I found out grades do not reach from one to six, but from five to one instead... so my 5- (all credit goes to Nanna!) is not that bad, although it contains some really silly mistakes. Especially mean is dealing with Russia (venäläinen and venäjällä instead of venäjäläinen and venäjässä, you know what I mean) - my theory is that this exception only fulfills the purpose of inciting everybody against Russia.
Now that is a sympathetic note to finish (finnish, haha) on! Next update should be on time again.
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