Reading Festival

Well, after a month of partying and no sleep, I went back to England for a nice weekend of rest. Nah, not really. I arrived at the Reading Festival at about 3am on Friday morning after a whole evening of travel. I had to go into Helsinki, get the train to Tampere, fly to London and be driven to Reading. Suffice it to say, when I finally got there I was in no mood to party and went straight to bed in the tent that my friend Sam had put up earlier, along with Charles.

Me having fun at the festival. Look how excited I am!

The place seemed surreal, walking past the thousands of tents at night, smoke and fog billowing over them, shadowy drunk people everywhere - if I wasn't so tired I think it would have been pretty scary.

It was actually easier to sleep in the daytime

My first bad experience came in the morning - the toilets. There's something soul destroying about festival toilets. If you think you've seen some pretty nasty stuff, well, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen a festival toilet. Any dreams or ambitions you've ever had are crushed once you gaze into the hole of doom. This was best put by some graffiti I saw scrawled on one of the walls - "Warning: Don't look down. And it has nothing to do with vertigo."

Toilets aside, the first day was great. We headed to the arena at about 2pm and ended up staying there until the end of the final act at midnight. The Subways were the first band I wanted to see, and they were great. Later on, Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand put on amazing shows that had the whole crowd of 50,000 people singing along. The atmosphere was amazing. After the music I met up with some friends from school that I hadn't seen for a while and hung out at their tent for a few hours.

Charles' and Sam's opinion on the current band differs somewhat

The next day was the big one for us...Muse were playing. I've been a big fan for a while now and I've heard so many reports on how great their live shows are so I couldn't wait to finally see them. Before that we had Feeder and The Streets, both of which were great. Then came the Arctic Monkeys who are probably the biggest band around at the moment. The crowd went mental, which is normally good but unfortunately I was at the very front, centre stage. I had a great view, but being in front of 50,000 crazy fans moshing about violently is quite a painful and tiring experience. For Muse, which I knew would be even more intense, I made sure to move back a bit..into the main moshing area, for a rest, which is a strange thing to do but it was actually much better there. They put on an amazing show - my face was thoroughly rocked off. I didn't think anybody could beat Radiohead live (especially as they're my favourite band), but Muse were just so spectacular that I think they've done it. They held the attention of every single person in the crowd, which is quite an achievement, as even some of the other big bands were complaing that the crowd lacked energy.

Me waiting for the music to start
(Yes I know I have no pics of any actual bands...sorry)

After Muse (and about 5 hours of continous standing in front of the stage) I headed to my friend's tent. We lit a campfire (well actually, we stole a campfire) and ended up drinking until about 5.30am then I went to bed for another 3 or 4 hours sleep - about the average I got on each of the 3 nights annoyingly.

On Sunday I stayed at the arena until about 2pm and then packed my stuff and set off for the airport for another night of travelling. So finally I can rest. Oh wait...I have to start university this week!

End of the EILC, on to England...

So today the Erasmus Intensive Language Course came to an end with the final exam. Everyone on the course seems to be very sad, because so many people are leaving this weekend to different places across Finland. Robin is going the furthest, to Lapland, and others are going to places like Tampere, Turku and Oulu. Quite a few of us (myself included) are staying in Helsinki, so I suppose it's not the end of the world.

However, I am flying to England this evening to go to the Reading Festival for the weekend. This means I'll miss out on the massive party tonight (and no doubt tommorow) and a final chance to say goodbye to so many new friends. It's a big shame but there's nothing I can do. So to everybody leaving, goodbye, good luck and hopefully I'll see you sometime!

I fly back on Sunday but I'm in a bit of a pickle...the plane arrives quite late at Tampere airport so I will miss the last train back to Helsinki (it's 2 hours away). I don't know what I will do, as I start university on Monday and obviously really need to be there - I've already missed the first week! I may end up stuck in Tampere overnight. I guess I didn't think this trip out well enough, but that's what happens when you book tickets months in advance. I'm heading to the station in an hour and will meet up with Robin for one last drink before he goes to Lapland. If I make it back in one piece I'll hopefully be able to update my blog sometime next week.

Moi Moi!

Booze-cruise to Estonia

So it's been a pretty crazy weekend (again). On Thursday we went out exploring Helsinki looking for good clubs. Problem is we spent ages walking around as nobody would agree on where to go. We walked in a massive circle and finally went to Fever, which is where most of the exchange students seem to end up anyway, despite their intentions. As it was already late we stayed a few hours and I caught the last train home at 2am and went for classes at 9am.

On Friday we went back to Fever (see what I mean about that place), as all the other clubs seemed to have massive queues or high entry charges. A few of us stayed until closing time, 4am, then I stayed at a friend's apartment in Helsinki until 6am and headed straight for the ferry to Tallinn in a daze with about an hour of sleep.

About 17 of us went, gradually meeting up on the massive ship. After breakfast consisting of coffee and doughtnuts I met up with the others on the deck and we lay in the early morning sun for the 3 hours it took to get there.

Chilling on the boat

We got to Tallinn at about 11.30 and headed for the old town, which we walked around for most of the day, stopping to eat in McDonalds of all places. As I've mentioned before, it's a lovely place, very beautiful and well preserved (Tallinn, not McDonalds).

Sightseeing in Tallinn

Outside the big church at the top of the hill (can't remember the name) we bumped into Robin's indentical twin, which was nice.

Robin with his twin

I feel sorry for the 'twin', he must have been very confused when a group of foreigners decended on him asking for a photo. He was cool about it though and saw the funny side. Apparently his name is Joe and he is from Germany!

We then walked around some more and finally headed to the biggest supermarket we could find. Tallinn is where the Finns come to buy alocohol. It is very, very expensive in Finland but Estonia is like another world. It is insanely cheap. Coming from London I could not believe the prices when I first saw them. We just could not understand how the prices could be so low and ended up walking round the shop for ages unable to decide what to buy. I bought pretty much everything I could carry - 9 x half-litre bottles of Carlsberg for 50 cents each (!) and 3 bottles of vodka for just 4 euros each (!!!!). In Helsinki, at least in a bar, it would cost you about 4.50 euros for a half litre of cheap beer, whereas I bought eight and a half litres of one of the best beers for the same price!

Looking cool on the boat

On the 3.5 hour journey home we consumed some of our alcohol to lighten the load (ok that's a really bad excuse). Watching the sunset at sea was really nice. We also started to debate where to go when we got home but as usual nobody could decide, except for 'anywhere but Fever'.

The survivors on the boat home

I went back to Pasila with Simon and some of the others, because I didn't want to go all the way back home to Leppavaara just to come out again later. After eating pizza on the roof a large group of us went out back to Helsinki, to a reggae club night of all things. I seperated from the group and went to a friend's birthday party at her apartment in the city centre - I wanted to go to both but it was late so I had to skip the club. I stayed at the party until 4am and headed for the night bus. At the bus stop things took a turn for the worse as I bumped into all my neighbours and my friend Rob from England (we came on exchange together). They had been clubbing (I had been invited too but couldn't be in 3 places at once!) and were heading home for the afterparty. I ended up in Rob's flat until 6am being force-fed yet more beer and finishing the night with an unusually-large shot of vodka, thus ending my 48-hours without sleep.

I slept until about 3pm, woke up to find a Frenchman had moved into my flat and am about to attempt studying for the first time, before we go out tonight to the 1 euro bar!

futismatsi! (football match)

On Wednesday eleven of us went to watch Finland v Northern Ireland at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki. Being British I'm supposed to support N. Ireland, but anyone from England knows it doesn't work that way. Besides, I wanted to cheer on my temporarily-adopted country. On Tuesday some of us bought Suomi (Finland) t-shirts and flags so we were well prepared. Rachel and Diedre, the two irish girls, came with us wearing green. Few of the Finnish supporters seemed to wear the national colours so we kind of stood out as a group.

Spot the foreigners

Anyway, it was good fun although the Finnish are terrible at football chants. Literally all we heard was 'SUOMI! SUOMI!', whilst the Irish were constantly singing a wide range of songs. No wonder Finland lost! We tried singing English football songs, replacing 'England' with 'Suomi' but it didn't work too well and we kept chanting 'England!' by habit. Fellow-englishman Andrew came up with some classics though - 'Who ate all the reindeer' and 'There's only one F in Finland!'. I don't think they had much of a positive effect on the team though. If anything they seemed to perform worse!

Final score: Finland 1 - 2 Northern Ireland

Tonight we're going to a fireworks competition, which sounds interesting, then I think we're going clubbing. Only problem is we're going to Estonia tommorow and need to be at the boat by 7am. I don't know how I'm going to survive this weekend. We went to a club last night too and had classes starting early today. I haven't slept properly in weeks now, and I have the exam coming up next week so there's lots of studying to do, then next weekend I'm going to the Reading Festival and there'll definately be no resting there!

Random Pics!

Too tired to write much, so here are some random pics. The first two are some of my favourite photos I've taken. I got some great close-ups too but I'm saving them for now.

We were surrounded by birds when I took this

It's hard to capture them when they move so fast

Covered in toilet paper in Jenny's flat, for some reason

Me, Filip and Sebastian on the boat to Suomenlinna at Helsinki harbour

Robin taking advantage of the all-you-can-eat ice cream at Golden Rax

By the shore at Nuuksio

Lunch at the uni cafe

Tommorow we're visiting some village for the day and then in the evening eleven of us are going to watch Finland v Northern Ireland at the Olympic Stadium. Being British I guess I should support N. Ireland, but I'm making an exception this time. Anyway, it's always more fun to support the underdog! Today I bought my Suomi (Finland) T-Shirt and flag and we've learnt some phrases to chant. Unfortunately, I do not yet know the Finnish translation for 'the referee's a wanker!' but I'll try to find out beforehand.

Sauna Party, Beach Party, Roof Party...

Ok so I finally have time to update my blog. A lot has happened over the last few days. I went to the beach party on Friday and have only really just got back - I've been away from my flat for about 3 days now. Every day I say to myself I'm going to study and then I get distracted. For example last night I was finally on my way home from Kannelmaki on the train when my phone went - it was Rachel asking if I wanted to go into Helsinki with all the others. I wanted to say no but then I turned around and saw they were on the train behind me! We ended up going to a 1 euro bar, where the drinks are all...1 euro. All night until 4am! Not a good idea. I've now been drinking about 6 nights in a row. Hopefully tonight will be much quieter.

Anyway on to the sauna...

On Wednesday most of us went to the sauna in the evening. I wasn't really interested in going, but when I found that pretty much everyone was going I decided to go for it. Besides, you can't really go to Finland for half a year and not visit a sauna. Everybody in Finland goes to the sauna regularly. Almost every home in Finland has a sauna, and pretty much everybody has easy access to one. There are over 2 million saunas for just 5 million inhabitants.

Getting drunk after the sauna

Anyway, needless to say it was hot. Extremely hot. The temperature inside reaches over 100C if you sit at the top, which is what most of us did. It is traditional to spend a few minutes in the sauna, then jump into a lake or the sea for a swim, then go back into the sauna again. I did this 3 times. Once you are thoroughly warmed up it's incredibly refreshing to swim, even if normally it would be a bit cold. It's also tradition to bring beer and food, like sausages to eat outside in between sessions. After an hour of sauna and swimming we pretty much just drank and ate for the rest of the night. Fun was had by all! By the end of the night we were singing along to Radiohead on Luca's guitar.

Singing along to Radiohead's greatest hits

On Thursday we somehow ended up in a gay bar, probably because it's the cheapest place in Helsinki. Obviously we left pretty quickly - I think my friend put it best: 'I like this gay bar so much, I don't think I'm ever going to visit another one in Helsinki!'

Earlier in the day we visited Suomenlinna (Fortress of Finland) by sea, which was very nice. I got some great wildlife pictures which I'll probably post later.

Exploring the beaches at Suomenlinna

On Friday we went to the Finnish National Museum, which was quite interesting. Better than classes anyway!

Group photo at the National Museum

Later that night we had a party on one of the beaches in Helsinki. It was great fun, we started in the evening and watched the sun set over the sea.

Beach party

I stayed until very late then went to the London Pub with a few others, which was alright and stayed at somebody's place in the centre as I had missed the last train back.

Night time on the beach

On Saturday I stayed in central Helsinki, visiting the Toyota F1 motor show, where I took lots of freebies and watched the free rock concert but didn't stay for too long as it was way too crowded. Some of us then got the tram to Linnanmaki Amusement Park, one of the biggest attractions in the Helsinki area. I wasn't too impressed but the wooden roller coaster was good and the view from the ferris wheel is one of the best you can get in Helsinki.

Linnanmaki Amusement Park

Later that night we had a party at Kannelmaki on the roof of the student flats. Again, it was very atmospheric, the view from up high was great and we watched the sun set quite spectacularly. The Italians cooked us dinner and the English made the desert!

Drinking on a roof...what could go wrong?

I stayed the night there and as I said earlier as I tried to come home on Sunday I was dragged back to Helsinki for more drinking. At the 1 euro bar we met some Finnish people who said they can get us some tickets to the Finland v Portugal match in September, which should be good. Hopefully we are going to watch Finland v N. Ireland at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday, needless to say we'll be wearing Suomi shirts.

Lots of us are interested in going to Stockholm my boat so it was great luck that we got talking to another Finnish guy who happens to work on the Silja Line that runs the boats! He said he can get us very cheap tickets, which would be great. On Saturday we're going to Estonia so it probably won't be this month.

Craaaazy Finland

This blog isn't going very well. I haven't had a spare 5 minutes to update it since last week. Everything is so hectic, as soon as I finally get back to my flat, something else always comes up and I end up out all night. On Wednesday we had a sauna party, which was amazing, then on Thursday we had the student bar night and on Friday we had a beach party which lasted all night. I'll go into more detail on these later, especially the sauna which was very interesting. I've only just got home from the amusement park and as I was out all night at the beach I have been away from my laptop for 2 days. This would not happen in England!

Tonight I'm heading to Kannelmaki for a party on the roof of the student flats. The Italians are cooking for us, which should be interesting. I will properly update my blog when I can but for now make sure you look at my Finland Photos gallery (the link is on the side) where I've put up some more pics.

Moi Moi!

Hiking in Nuuksio

Today about 20 of us went hiking in Nuuksio National Park, which is just outside Helsinki. It's what you'd expect really, heavily forested with quite a few lakes, which our Finnish guides had a habit of jumping into.

There are over 200,000 lakes in Finland. This is one of them.

We hiked for about 5km and had lunch by a lake, then we were offered the choice of going back to the bus stop with one of the guides or continuing on a much longer and tougher walk. Needless to say I chose the latter.

This was the easy bit

We ended up walking for many more hours, in the almost 30C heat, taking a 'shortcut' that involved going off the path and through the dense foliage, ducking under low branches, walking along precarious planks of wood and climbing up and down steep inclines.

A lake. Yesterday.

It was much tougher than I expected, but definately worth doing. There's no point coming to Finland if you don't want to see the wilderness.

Onwards to Estonia...

Today I went to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, by boat. It only takes 90 mins on the fast ship from Helsinki. It's a popular destination for buying cheap alcohol as the prices are massively cheaper than in Finland, where state-run shops have a monopoly on alcohol sales. It's basically like Calais is for the English. However, it's also a great tourist destination and has one of the best-preserved old towns in Europe. Pretty much every building in this area is historic, it's incredibly picturesque.

There are sights like this at every turn

View of the old town

Sounds painful...

Being from London, the prices of everything were amazingly low. I think I could just move to Estonia right now and still live confortably off my student loan for life.

I got back quite late which is annoying because I haven't had a decent night's sleep since I got here and tommorow we're going hiking in Nuuksio National Park which will probably be hard work.

If one more person says I ate Rudolf...

Today we went to a restaurant near Helsinki Central station. And I can honestly say it's the best tractor-themed restaurant I've ever been to.

I wasn't really looking to be too adventurous with the Finnish food but when I saw the dish called 'Pimp my Reindeer' (yes, it was actually called that on the menu), I knew I couldn't turn it down. Most of us went for it as well, and I think everyone was pleasently surprised. It was actually really nice, one of the best meat dishes I've ever had. The Finnish beer, Koff, on the other hand was nothing special. I get the feeling I'll be trying many other drinks so I'm sure I'll find something better soon.

Afterwards a few of us went to an Irish pub, which was a bit surreal what with being in Helsinki, as it seemed just like in the movies, crammed with merry people singing along to the live music. We then went to a nightclub (which are apparently pretty rare) and stayed there until about 4am, which is a bit annoying as I had to get up early today as I'm going to another new country!

Karaoke Fun!

All the students went to a bar last night for the first weekly social meet. I'm still not quite sure where it was, I just got on a tram with some of the others and I don't really remember how I got back either. I think we walked. I met many more Erasmus exchange students at the bar, and quite a few today (which I'll mention later), so that brings the total number of people I now know to maybe 40.

The English Crew

So apparently that image is of a heavily-sunburnt me singing Uptown Girl with the 3 other English people on the course (stunned faces of the other students not shown). What better way to break the ice than pick one of the most embrassing songs possible? I tried to get the Germans to sing a David Hasslehoff song and they were up for it but there weren't any available.

The evening climaxed at sometime in the early morning with a whole bunch of us singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Many photos were taken but I hope for the good of mankind that no audio or video record exists.

Bohemian Rhapsody (That's me hiding at the back)

Later today we went on an adventure around Helsinki as part of our course. We were given a list of questions that we had to answer, such as when a particular church was built (which we couldn't actually find out even after visiting) and the prices of particular items at the harbour market. We were purposely put into groups of students from the other classes so that we'd meet more people. I think I now know almost everyone. This course really is great, there are so many trips and events organised. Tommorow we're going to a Finnish restaurant to sample the local food (and beer).

Finnish is hard

So I missed the first 2 days of the language course because of my late arrival, and it seems like it's going to take a while to catch up. I missed all the important things like greetings, numbers, verb endings etc. I'll have to study but I don't know when I will have time.

Finnish is completely different from English and is not related to any of the Germanic languages. It has no article (e.g. 'the' and 'on') and the word endings change depending on the meaning, even names. For example to say 'I live in Helsinki', the word ending changes - Mina asun Helsingissa. I think that once I learn the rules it will be quite a fun language to try and speak. The words are a lot longer and quite confusing for an English speaker to read but I'm already catching on.

The people on the course are great - we're all European students on the Erasmus exchange programme. They're all very friendly, I've already met people from Greece, Germany, France, Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy and a lot more countries I've probably forgotten. No other English students yet but apparently there are some in the other class. We're going to a bar tonight so I'll meet more people there. I've heard it's karaoke night - what could go wrong?

Welcome to Hel

I arrived in Helsinki today. Being English I'm used to talkative taxi drivers, but the one from the airport today was pretty much silent and only spoke when encouraged, even though his English was great. Apparently this is a national characteristic of the Finns, they're supposed to be quiet and shy but also very straight-talking. I'm sure I'll find out if this is true over the next few days.

Helsinki (judging from the taxi journey), is nothing like how I imagined. I thought even in August it would be fairly cold and a rather miserable place, but it's extremely warm and looks incredibly vibrant. There are lots of young people and things going on in every street. Apparently it hasn't rained for 2 months!

Anyway I have to go exploring now, I have to be at Helsinki University tommorow morning for my language course. I wonder how hard the Finnish language will be...?