Fun With Flash Photography

I am still alive and well here in Helsinki! Apologies for failing to update for so long but the last week has been insane. I've been out on the town every night for the last 8 days and I'm going out tonight, so this lifestyle has really been quite a drain on me. As I mentioned in my last update I went camping last weekend and will write an update about that soon.

Bus stop at night

Now as for the rather random topic of this post, I'm doing a group presentation on Monday about flash photography so I've been messing about with various techniques over the past few days. I've got some great shots, although I haven't actually got all of them at the moment as they're at my friend's place.

The highway through Leppavaara

We've borrowed 2 large professional flashes from the university for this project and have been getting up to all sorts of antics with them. They can be activated by remote, so we've been placing them in fun places like trees to scare pedestrians, by the road to look like police cameras and we gave my friend's flatmate a hell of a scare once he got out of the shower!

Matrix Style

I've got quite a good time in Finland lined up, with a trip to Russia in November just paid for, a trip to Stockholm also in November about to be booked and I'm going to see my first ice hockey match on Tuesday at the biggest arena in Helsinki. I'll write another update as soon as I have some spare time!

Porvoo

Last Sunday I was at a loose end with little to do and in order to stop myself from resorting to studying, I decided to go somewhere. So I went to Porvoo by bus from Helsinki, which takes about an hour.

One of the many historic streets

The city of Porvoo is the second oldest in Finland, after Turku. It is a popular tourist destination for Finns, with a charming old town composed entirely of wooden buildings dating back centuries. Despite the label of 'city', it is very small and can easily be explored in an afternoon.

The old town, seen from the bridge

To be honest I was a bit dissappointed with Porvoo. While it has a very charming atmosphere, there is little to do except walk around and look at the buildings. One of the biggest attractions in the city is the cathedral, which was unfortunately heavily damaged by fire this year and is thus closed to visitors and completely covered up.

The town hall

I had a look around the old and new town, walked along the river toward the sea and also had a look at the historic railway yard where they keep the steam engines used in the summer for tourists.

There haven't been enough pictures of me on my own blog recently!

And that's my trip to Porvoo. Sorry if it was a bit less interesting than other places I've been, but that's how it was! I may return in the winter with some friends to see the Christmas market, which is apparently worth visiting and I reckon the town would look great in the snow.

As for now, I've got to pack because I'm going camping tommorow!

The zoo at night, Film Festival, exploring Helsinki

Random things tend to happen a lot in Helsinki. On Friday such a random thing occured when I got a text from a friend inviting me to the zoo for a special late-opening. After going a bit over the top on Thursday, it was nice to be able to do something that didn't involve alcohol, so I went into Helsinki to meet her in the evening.

Helsinki at dusk

We got the metro out of the city and then the bus that took us to the zoo, which is on an island connected by a bridge. The last remnants of the sunset provided a spectacular backdrop and the best view of Helsinki I've yet seen, although the picture above doesn't quite do it justice. The zoo itself was very entertaining, although fairly small compared with others I've been to. It was interesting to see the nocturnal animals, such as the owls and some of the cats at night when they are most active. We got the ferry back to the market square in the city where I bumped into some friends and then headed for home.

The Sibelius Monument

I woke up fairly late Saturday and with nothing planned I remembered that the Helsinki film festival was on, so I checked the website and found that a film I had wanted to see for quite a while was on. Which was great, except there was only one showing and it was in 30 minutes, so I ran to the station to get the next train and rushed to the cinema. The film was Grizzly Man, a documentary about the true story of an American environmentalist who lived with bears and was eventually eaten by one. It was facinating, moving and even quite funny at the same time and had some of the most amazing wildlife footage you'll ever seen. I highly recommend it!

Pretentious artistic view of the Sibelius monument

After the movie, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and went exploring around Helsinki. There is still much of the city that I haven't seen, as even though I spend so much time there I'm always heading from A to B and rarely stop to appreciate the surrroundings. I had my camera with me and so I walked to the Sibelius monument which I had heard was quite a sight. It's certainly an interesting shape, as you can see in my pictures but I'm not sure if it was worth crossing the city to see it!

The olympic tower

I wound up next to the olympic stadium and was surprised to find the observation tower still open, so I took the lift up. The view is very impressive and is probably the tallest point in the city. From the top you can see for miles around in all directions, thanks to the flat terrain.

View of Eastern Helsinki from the olympic tower

After walking around the lake visible in the photo above (which is a very pleasant area for a city centre) I went back home, only to come out again later to do another kind of exploring...trying out new clubs!

Freshers Day

On Thursday we had the freshers and international student initiation party at Evtek and it was great fun. Much more elaborate than the usual 'get stupidly drunk', instead we had to complete a number of tasks...while stupidly drunk. We had to form teams of 4-5 people and were given clues to five different locations, all of them bars in Helsinki, where we would meet the tutors and be given a task to carry out.

Preparing for the craziness

The day began at Evtek with drinking games out on the field, which my team missed as we were still in class. Many of the groups were in fancy dress ranging from military dress to superheroes, movie stars and togas (which were worn by the only other team of foreigners).

The other exchange group wore togas.
Army-dudes and Robin Hoods in the background

The clues were quite easy to figure out, especially with internet access, so we headed to Helsinki fairly quickly after stopping to boil an egg on the way (which had to be carried unbroken as one of the rules). My team, at that time just composed of me, Xavier and Stephane went to the Karaoke Bar, our first waypoint. As luck would have it we were the first arrivals which earned us bonus points and the challenge was simple...to perform a dance. After a beer this was very easy and we proceeded to earn even more extra points by singing a Finnish song in a karaoke bar full of Finns and actually did very well - we were applauded and complimented by all!

Stephane and Xavier making the movie poster

The next bar was Heavy Corner, a metal bar on Pohjoinen Rautatienkatu. The task there was to create a movie poster by cutting up newspapers and magazines. By this time we were joined in the team by Cesur who suggested making a poster for a porn movie, as the judges were all male and this would most likely impress them. I wanted to give it a uniquely Finnish taste and came up with this idea...

Sorry. We were drunk.

Needless to say, our poster got the biggest reaction and secured us yet more points. We then headed to a small restuarant/bar in NW Helsinki where we were told to come up with our own task. I came up with the idea of a speed-drinking contest against the Finnish tutors, which we won quite comfortably, which was quite a surprise.

The aftermath of the drinking contest

After this however, I had to leave to join my friends who were going to the erasmus party at Club Prive so we didn't win the competition, but we had great fun taking part and it certainly beat a day of lessons.

The score sheet - as you can see we did quite well

Drinking all afternoon from 12.30 and then all night at the club until about 3am was quite an interesting experience and not a record that I want to beat anytime soon!

Weekend Travelling - Jyvaskyla

Ok I've had quite a week so this is a bit late, but better late than never here's the next part of my trip...

Tampere to Jyvaskyla

After spending Saturday exploring Tampere, I headed to the station for the 1800 train to Jyvaskyla. I was going to visit Jyvaskyla anyway, but I had a bit of great luck (and quite a surprise) when I finally got in touch with my Finnish friend from home, just two days before leaving for Tampere and found he lives in Jyvaskyla! He offered to let me stay and I gladly accepted. I also called Nina from the Helsinki EILC (erasmus language course), who just moved there and arranged to meet up in the evening.

Jyvaskyla Town Church

My friend, Antti, met me at the station and we headed to his apartment which was conveniently just around the corner. After my first real look at Finnish TV (which seemed to mostly be English programming!) we went out to the centre. Most of the bars and clubs in Jyvaskyla are arranged along a single pedestrianised road, which is definately a good idea as in Helsinki we seem to end up wandering from one end of the city to the other looking for places to go. We started off in a Finnish sports bar then moved along the street to a rock club, which is the first I've been to in Finland and was very good but a bit empty.

The view toward the university from the town

In the rock club we met with Nina and her friend Natalie and after a few drinks went to Memphis Bar where I had possibly the most expensive beer I've ever had - €5.90 for 0.6l! Needless to say we didn't stay long and headed back to the rock bar which was now packed and had a queue and stayed until closing.

Walking around the lake

On Sunday I managed to drag myself out of bed early and went out to do some sightseeing and properly explore the town. There wasn't too much to see tourist-wise, the church in the centre was nice and the view from the observation tower on the ridge was quite impressive and unlike everywhere else I've been in Finland there are actually some hills in the surrounding area so it's a bit more interesting to look at.

Jyvaskyla University

After a couple of hours I was joined by Antti and we walked along the shore and around the lake using the two bridges. One of the bridges connects the two halves of the main Jyvaskyla University campus across the water, which has to be the most spectacular university I've ever seen. Antti described the location as 'alright' - I suppose the students there get complacement but coming from London I'd do anything for these surroundings!

Nina preparing to conquer the tower

I decided to go off on my own and see some of the museums but ended up callling Nina and walking with her around the edge of the other lake, toward the ski jumps. Jyvaskyla is the winter sports centre of Southern Finland and features some very scary looking jumps. I could see them in the distance from the city, but up close they're terrifying. So what did Nina do? She insisted on climbing to the top of the biggest one.

The stupidly high ski jump

I decided to keep my feet on the ground, but I am reliably informed that the view was spectacular. Having said that I did climb the smaller one, which is still extremely high and looks suicidal to jump off - I can't imagine what it would be like for the skiiers. They must be mental!

One of the steamboats in the harbour

I met with Antti and said goodbye, then got the 1930 train back to Helsinki, which took 3 hours and collapsed into bed ready for university at 8am the next day!

Weekend Travelling - Tampere

I had another three-day weekend and the weather was nice, so I decided to go travelling again while it's still possible. With Turku done it was time for the next big city...Tampere!

Helsinki to Tampere

I've wanted to go to Tampere for a while as I've heard good things and in fact I did go there a few weeks back but only to visit the airport, so I saw very little of the city. Now it was time to explore.

Old City Hall in Central Square

The plan was that I'd leave early on Friday to give me the whole day there, stay the night and spend most of Saturday there too before moving on to my next destination. Unfortunately, this didn't happen as I got very drunk on Thursday and passed out in my room, only to wake up on Friday afternoon. I headed for the train as quickly as I could and arrived in Tampere at about 4pm.

Best Lenin Museum EVER!

This gave me enough time to see the Lenin museum, which is rather unique. It claims to be the only museum dedicated to Lenin in the world. It also seems to be run by hardline Communists. Everything about the museum seemed heavily biased and made excuses for many of the evils perpetrated by the Soviet Union. Of course, this made it all the more interesting. I've never visited a communist hall of propaganda before!

Industrial Tampere at night

I was able to see much of the city in the evening, visting the olympic stadium and seeing the remaining industry lit atmospherically in the moonlight. Tampere is known as 'the Manchester of Finland', which is to say there are lots of old cotton mills and factories in the city with chimneys and smokestacks dominating the skyline. It gives the city a strange character, to me at times it seemed just like being back in England.

Aleksanterin kirkko

In the morning I headed out early, passing the charming Alexander Church on the way. I headed straight for Pyynikki ridge, which rises above the city and has an observation tower. From the tower you can see for miles around, which is to say you can see a lot of trees and lakes.

The view from Pyynikki observation tower

Afterwards I went to the Finlayson Centre, a large arts and entertainment complex inside the converted Finlayson Mill, which is famous for being the first in Finland and was opened by a Scotsman (and explains the seemingly-British look of the city).

The view toward the Finlayson Centre and the Tampere rapids

Inside the centre I visited the Media Museum, which I found particularly interesting as I studied media at college and the Spy Museum which was good fun as it doesn't take itself too seriously. Afterwards I headed straight to the station and got the train to Jyvaskyla, my next destination. I'll explain why I went there and what I did in my next update!

For now, there are lots more photos on the second page of my Finland Gallery.

Another week in Finland...

It's been a while since I last posted, so here's a quick update on the week. On Wednesday a few of us went to a sports bar in Helsinki to watch Finland v Portual and amazingly, Finland actually played quite well and managed to draw 1-1. If only they had played that well at the match I went to! We hung around for a bit afterwards and then went home in time to get the last train.

On Thursday it was the welcome party for erasmus students at Studio 51, a club I had heard many good things about. Inside it's very big, at least compared with some of the other clubs in Helsinki and all-in-all I enjoyed it, although I was very drunk. Before the club we played a drinking card-game in Kannelmaki for a few hours and I seemed to be the unlucky one, having to down several shots of vodka and a few other drinks.

In the club a few people even came up to me, introduced themselves and somehow already knew my name, which I found very confusing until they mentioned that they had been reading my blog!

Anyway, it's very late and I have classes at 8am. I've only just got back from travelling over the weekend. I've been to two new cities and had a great time. Where did I go? Well, I'll post about it over the next few days, so you'll have to wait and see!

Weekend Travelling Part II - Aland

After a very short amount of sleep, we got up early on Saturday and walked to the port for the 0845 ferry to Aland. The trip took about 5.5 hours, so we had plenty of time to catch up on sleep on the way, as well as take advantage of the breakfast buffet.

From Turku to Aland

The ferry trip, while long, was actually quite interesting. At no point does it feel like you are actually 'at sea'. Aland is actually made up of several thousand islands, some fairly large, some tiny, scattered over a wide area. The massive ship snakes in and out of these landmasses, it's quite an impressive feat of navigation, at many points just narrowly passing jagged rocks - one small mistake would easily end in disaster. Aside from the scenery, there was professional live music and not-so-professional karaoke singing to keep us entertained.

Spectacular skies on the ferry

A quick bit of background before I get on with the story...Aland initally belonged to Sweden (as did the whole of Finland), but upon gaining independance Finland insisted on holding onto the islands, despite their undeniably Swedish heritage and closer proximity to Sweden. The islanders also voted overwhelmingly in favour of union with Sweden. In the end Finland got its way, although the islands were demilitarised and promises were made over the protection of the peoples' culture - as a result Swedish is the only official language of Aland and is still spoken by the entire population. We heard very little Finnish after arriving. The Alanders are very proud of their homeland and seem to fly their flag at every opportunity. In fact I don't think I saw a single Finnish flag anywhere!

Mariehamn, the capital of Aland

We arrived at about 1415 at the ferry terminal in Mariehamn (the capital), which is actually quite a distance from the centre of the city. Actually...city is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, even though that is its official title. It's more of a large town and is by far the biggest settlement on the islands. Anyway, on the way to the centre we visited the tourist information office, where a not very helpful employee informed us that most of the main attractions were closed for the winter and that worst of all, the bicycle rental shops which we were going to rely on for transportation were also closed. This was not good. We headed for the bus stop to get to Godby, where the only youth hostel on the island is located only to find that on weekends there is only 1 bus a day, but luckily it was at 1605 so we had some time to explore Mariehamn while waiting.

Setting off on the long walk to Kastelholm

There wasn't much to see in the capital, as I said earlier it's very small and we were able to walk end-to-end a couple of times before the bus came. Aside from a couple of museums, there is very little to see, although its small-town atmosphere is quite charming. We got the bus to Godby and headed for the hostel to find that we were the only guests and had two huge dormitories to ourselves. However, time was of the essence so we left some of our stuff there and headed straight off on foot toward Kastelholm.

The view from the observation tower at Godby

On the way we climbed an observation tower which gave an impressive view over the area. The islands are relatively flat and mostly forested. Aland is much bigger than I expected - it took us 2.5 hours to walk at a fast pace to Kastelholm, even though on the map it looks quite close.

The castle at Kastelholm

We arrived at Kastelholm and were rewarded with a picturesque castle set by a beautiful lake. It was quite a sight, especially as there didn't seem to be any other people for miles around.

Traditional village at Kastelholm

Next to the castle was a historic village, with windmills, wooden houses with straw roofs and traditionally-ploughed fields full of crops. Normally you have to pay to visit this but as it was late in the evening and there was nobody around we were able to have a look for free.

The long walk back

The walk back took about 2 hours at a tiring pace without stopping - we wanted to be back before it got too dark. We headed to bed exhausted, with Gernot's foot injured from so much walking. We decided that he would stay in bed all morning as he was in no position to walk and I would leave at 0730 to see some more of the island. I had to be back by 1330 so we could make it to the ferry.

The largest church on the islands at Palsbole

It was refreshing to walk so early in the day, with the morning mist still settling on the fields. I headed toward Palsbole, where the largest church on the island is located, on my way toward Vando, in the North-West of Finstrom. It took almost exactly 3 hours without stopping to get there and I had to head back almost straight away to make it to the ferry, but the scenery was worth it!

A field of sunflowers near Palsbole

I met with Gernot and we got a taxi a taxi to the ferry (there were no buses). The weather suddenly turned worse as we arrived at the port, so the timing was perfect. Nine hours later and we were back home in Helsinki!

You can see more photos from my trip to Aland in my Finland Gallery.

Weekend Travelling Part I - Turku

I was worried that I would never get a chance to see much of Finland, as I don't get any holiday from my university at all until the end of December (when I have to go home). I've now got my timetable and luckily, while most days are insanely long, I have no classes on Fridays which gives me a nice 3-day weekend. I decided to take advantage of this at the end of my first week, by travelling somewhere although I wasn't sure where to go. I called around and nobody else could come, they either had uni or no money, except for Gernot who was in Tampere and wanted to go to Turku so I decided to meet him there.

I even made a map!

The train left Helsinki at 0903 on Friday and arrived in Turku 2 hours later. Turku is the former capital of Finland and its oldest city. Situated in the far South-West of the country, it was the first major point settled by the Swedes due to its close proximity to Sweden. It has been burnt down an amazing 30 times, leading the Russians during their rule to move the capital further East to more easily-defendable Helsinki (and no doubt where they could keep a better eye on things). Turku is now considered Finland's second city and also has one of the largest Swedish-speaking populations in the country.

Turku Castle

I admit I was a bit dissapointed with Turku. After a few hours of walking around the city, I had already seen most of the main sights. Having been burnt-down so many times, there are few historic sights left and much of the city seems to be generic concrete and steel apartment blocks. The river is nice though, with a few historic ships to visit and near the harbour there is the rather impressive Turku Castle, although it was mostly destroyed in WWII and has subsequently been only partially restored.

The old town square

The best part of the city for me was the remaining historic area, around the Cathedral of Turku. It's quite small, but very pleasant and has more character than the rest of the city. The cathedral itself is impressively large and is the main landmark in the city.

Cathedral of Turku

The city was also extremely quiet, which was strange after coming from Helsinki. We seemed to be the only people in the castle and even the promenades by the river were deserted. Things picked up a bit at night, when we met with Sebastian, Lena and Sophie from the language course who now study in Turku. After going to a riverboat-bar, we followed Sebastian to a few other bars packed with students (and much cheaper than Helsinki).

Sebastian insisted I took a photo of the first arm-stamp he got in a club in Finland

We had to head back fairly early as on Saturday me and Gernot had to get the 0845 ferry to Aland, between Finland and Sweden. More on that soon!

For now, there are lots more photos in my Finland Gallery on my Flickr site. Please take a look!

Best .Taxi. Ride. Ever.

I'm going to quickly recap a few of the events last week, before I dicuss my travels over the weekend. I started university on Monday (I'll discuss uni in more detail another time) and many of the days are from 8am - 7pm, which needless to say is ridiculously long and leaves me with little free time, so I can't update this blog as often as I'd like.

Anyway, on to the more interesting things...

On Wednesday I went to Maija's birthday party at her apartment in NE Helsinki. She was one of the language course tutors, so quite a few of the students went together - me, Rachel, Jenny, Giulia, Andrew and we met a few others like Sebastian and Luca there. One of my tutors, Kaisa, was there which was a nice surprise as well. We stayed at her apartment for a while before getting the bus back to the centre and going to Lost and Found, a former gay club. For some reason it seems that every club or bar in Helsinki claim that they used to be gay! This one was just like every other club I've been to so far, although it was a little small. The most interesting time came when we left at 4am, with no trains or buses running at that time it seemed that we would have to get a taxi. And then we saw it... the KARAOKE TAXI!



Basically a mini-bus with a karaoke system, we all piled in and headed for Kannelmaki for some random reason. I'm still not quite sure why I went - it's quite far from where I live and I had to be at classes by 8am! Maybe it had something to do with...KARAOKE TAXI!!! The first song was a clear choice...the winning entry by Lordi in the Eurovision Song Contest. Then we moved onto singing some popular Finnish songs as you can see above and then finally 'My Way'...with the foreigners singing in Finnish and the Finns singing in English, rather confusingly.



Once at Kannelmaki we all headed to Luca's flat and I eventually fell asleep on the sofa, only to wake up at about midday when I should have been at uni, and with the flat completely empty. I swear there were about 10 others there when I drifted off!

Not much else to speak of for the rest of the week...I went to BarFly on Thursday night where by coincidence I met pretty much every student I know from my university, got horribly drunk and ended up going to McDonalds with my neighbours from Leppavaara.

Ok that's enough for now...I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard. I've been walking for 6 hours non-stop both today and yesterday (more on that tommorow) and have to be at uni at 8am!