My classes have been going well, and last Monday I started my Finnish Language and Culture class, which will be lasting the entire semester. So far it has been interesting and the Finnish language is very different from English and German. For one thing, the Finnish language has no genders, unlike German where you can have masculine, feminine, and neuter (neutral) nouns that affect the different articles attached to them. For the Finnish, they only have one word for he/she and they use it interchangeably. Another aspect of the language that makes it strange is the fact that you have instances of double letters (aa, ii, kk, etc.) that drastically affect the pronunciation, but in Finnish you have to pronounce every letter in the word, so it is very important to recognize the double letters or you can go from calling someone their name to calling them a "toilet". It is also interesting that the Finnish language is constantly trying to adapt to new words in order to keep the language strictly Finnish. One of the examples given by my professor was the word computer. For the most part, many languages just simply use the word computer. The Finnish, however, have adapted the word to be made of the words "information" and "machine" leading them to using the word "tietokone". I have only just started the class, so I'm not really able to speak much outside of saying "mina olen Evan ja mina olen amerikkalainen", which basically means that I am Evan and I am an American. You might notice that I didn't capitalize the Finnish word for American, and that's because the Finnish don't capitalize nouns, even proper nouns, unless they start the sentence.
Sitsi Parties:
While I am on the topic of language and culture, I had the chance to attend a Sitsi party the Friday following my last post, and it was a strange experience to say the least. For people not familiar with a Sitsi party, it can be a formal or informal gathering where participants can come together and enjoy each other's company. There are several rules to the Sitsi, some of which they don't tell you before hand. One of the most important is that you never show up late to a Sitsi. If it starts at 6 pm, you are there about 15 minutes before hand. You then wait to be invited to sit at the table by Toastmaster, who will lead the entire party. Some of the other rules vary from toastmaster to toastmaster, but another of our rules was that we were supposed to keep all electronics turned off and put away to encourage us to get to know who we were sitting with. We were also grouped by what we listed as our home country and were expected to come up with a short five minute program representing our country. During these programs, you were not allowed to talk, interrupt the program, or use the restroom. After each program, we ate traditional Finnish food, sung songs and it lasted nearly three and a half hours. It may have been long, but it was a ton of fun and I hope that I can attend other Sitsi parties.
Banking Fails:
Now I know that you are probably wondering why part of the title is called "banking fails", and the answer is simple, I lost my bank card and have been forced to open an account here in Finland so that I can transfer money to my account here and have a functional debit card. I have an account set up with OP Pankki, which is a bank that was recommended by Aalto University for exchange students. I had been planning on setting up an account, but I wasn't as pressed to do it before I lost my card. I just recently realized that another problem is that my bank back in the U.S doesn't allow international transfers for a personal account so I have to rely on Western Union to be able to get the transfer set up. The moral of this story: never do anything when you are abroad (or anywhere for that matter) without making sure that you keep important cards and documents in a very secure location that basically makes it impossible to lose them.
Tallinn Tales:
 |
| photo courtesy of visitestonia.com |
Ok, I think that's enough for the embarrassing tale, and time to explain the second part of the title. This past Saturday, I had a chance to go and explore the Old Town of Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia, and is surprisingly modern for a region that most Americans (myself included) would consider to be a poor country. The journey started by selecting the ferry that I wanted to use to get there. There are four main companies that handle trips from Helsinki to Tallinn. The companies are: the Silja Line, Viking Lines, Tallink, and the Eckero Line and most of them are fairly affordable to purchase tickets from. I chose the Eckero Line mostly because they appeared to be the cheapest at 25 euros for a round trip ticket. Unfortunately the ship is so large that I couldn't really get a good view of it, so above is a photo of the M/S Finlandia operated by the Eckero Line for cruises to Tallinn. My ferry left at 8:30 am, and the terminal it was located at was about 40 minutes away from my apartment, so I got up around 5:30 am, and made my way there. Once I was on board, I simply waited for our three our trip to arrive in Estonia. The photo on the right is the view of the city from the ship. Once I landed, I made my way through the port (since Estonia and Finland are both part of the Schengen Zone, it isn't required to have a passport to enter the country) and found my way to the Old Town. The country of Estonia has had a very rough history, with only two instances of the country having its independence, with the first coming after World War One, and the second coming when Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all decided to break away from the USSR. The country has been divided between Sweden, the Hanseatic League, the Teutonic Order, Livonian Order, and the Russians for the most part of its history. The city of Tallinn was granted to the Hanseatic League following a crusade sanctioned by the Pope back in the 12th or 13th century. Under the Hansa, the city became a major trading town and it is from mostly this time that the Old Town began to take shape.
This was the first gate that I encountered on my way into the Old Town. Like most older cities in Europe, the main part of the city was defended by its city walls, and Tallinn still has many of its towers and gates intact along with the wall. Once inside, the first thing you notice is how narrow all the streets are, and you know that it will be easy to get lost. While I don't speak Estonian (or Eesti in Estonian), almost everything in the city is written in English, Finnish, Russian and sometimes German along with Eesti. I started my journey in the lower section of the city. It is known as the lower city because it was where all of the non upper class citizens lived, and coincidentally, the lower city is lower than the upper city. After wandering for about an hour just trying to take in the sights, I finally decided to stop into the St. Nicholas Cathedral to check it out. The cathedral is currently being used as a museum and includes a very unique painting called the "Danse Macabre" (pictured on the right). The painting is an artifact from about the 15th century, and it is considering the last remaining set of paintings containing the dance of death. The painting depicts death dancing with the Pope, Holy Roman Emperor and other rulers and lower class people to show the equality of death. It only cost five euros and was definitely a good way to kill some time. 
Following the street from the cathedral, I decided to continue wandering until I came across a gate leading to the upper city and decided to check it out. What I found was an area that was not as narrow as the lower city, and housed the building currently being used by Estonian Government as their meeting area. The most prominent building of the upper city however is the Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (pictured to the right). They didn't allow photo's or video cameras inside the building, but take my word for it, it is beautiful inside. The ceiling is painted a lovely shade of blue, while the rest of the structure has almost a golden glow coming from it. It is a fairly small cathedral and with some event taking place when I was there, most of the church was closed off. After about 20 minutes in the cathedral, I started to feel hungry, so I decided to head down to the lower city for lunch.
Remember how I said that the city was easy to get lost in? Yeah, this was the first time I got lost. I wandered the upper city for about 30 minutes before finally finding the gate that had led me to the upper city. I then decided to simply walk down a random street in the lower city checking out the menus of the cafes and restaurants that I saw. I finally settled on a pub nestled near a few shops. The pub is called "Hell Hunt", which actually means gentle wolf in Eesti. I got a nice meal for about 12 euros, including a service charge and a drink. As you can see above, you can get a decent amount of food for the price, and it gave me a chance to sit and relax after walking around for so long.Following my meal, I decided to head back into the city and see what else I could find. I happened to be walking down one of the streets and noticed an inconspicuous building that happened to be the Estonian History Museum. As it turned out, the building that houses the museum is the original guild hall built by the Hansa in the 14th or 15th century. It was a great way to learn more about the country and a few odd facts about the country. Here's one: Skype was created by an Estonian, and another: The first recorded records of humans in Estonia was approximately 10,000 years ago.
I spent most of my remaining time in the museum and around 4 pm I decided to head back to the port so I could catch my boat back to Helsinki. It was a good thing I got there early, because my original ferry had been cancelled and I had to transfer to the Viking Lines, which was pretty painless. I loved my time in Tallinn, and I will probably be going back sometime in spring or summer to see what it looks like.
That does it for this update, and I'll be posting again in two weeks and I'll be visiting a new area and while I don't want to ruin where I'm going, I will give you a hint in the picture below. Bye for now, and Go Gamecocks!
| photo courtesy of Google images |
No comments:
Post a Comment