Banking Fails and Tall(inn) Tales

    I know that I said I would be updating you guys every week with what was going on here in Finland, but in the week following my last post, there just wasn't much to really say.  To get started, I'll let you know what I've doing the past two weeks.

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

A Week in the Life of a Walrus

   Hey guys, and welcome back to Seikkailu Suomessa!  Now that I have been in Finland for about a week, I just wanted to give you guys an update on what it has been like.  When I got off the plane at Helsinki-Vantaa, I met with one of Aalto University's tutors and she took me to get my apartment keys.  I spent most of my first night unpacking some of my belongings and sleeping.  After that I decided to venture out and see what was around my apartment.  There are a few restaurants in the area, as well as a popular grocery chain called Alepa within a few minutes of the apartment, and there is a shopping mall about 20 minutes away that has anything you could need.  I currently have two roommates; one is named Denis and is a Bulgarian who was born and raised in Spain, and the other is Jules, a native of the Ivory Coast who goes to school in France.  The set of apartments that I live in may not be the fanciest, but they are cheap, and the previous tenants have left behind things like dishes, pots, pans, blankets, pillows, ethernet cables, and some cleaning supplies, so its nice that I haven't had to go and buy these things.  The only thing that isn't too nice about living here is being about 20 minutes outside Helsinki's city center, but that is fairly minor, and I'll explain why later.  Now that I have given some basic information about my living situation, I'm gong to describe some of the other elements of life as university student here in Finland.

School:

   This is the Aalto University School of Business's main building.  The School of Business is divided into a few different buildings and a library.  As of right now, I haven't been able to explore many of the other buildings, but I plan on doing that sometime this month.  The main building doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside it is very nice, with multiple computer labs, a cafeteria, and various printing stations around the building.

  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Aalto University has split its Spring semester into three different periods, with the current period being Period Three.  Right now I am taking my Inventory and Supply Management class, which so far has not been too different from the way that USC conducts its classes.  The main difference is that my class lasts about 90 minutes to two hours, which is about twice as long as a normal class at USC.  Given that I have only experienced one course at this point, I can't comment too much on what all of the classes at Aalto are like, but as the semester goes on, I will provide updates on what they are like.

AYY, KY, and Social Life:
   You are probably wondering what AYY and KY are, and to start, I'll talk about AYY.  AYY is simply the student union that is responsible for helping all of the students at Aalto University,  They also organize events for students, and provide tutors for the exchange students.  Once you decide to attend Aalto, you are required to join AYY, and there is no exception.  KY is a part of AYY, but is an organization that focuses on helping business students rather than the entire university.  They are responsible for arranging most of the events that I will be attending this semester, including a Finnish Sitsi party that I will discuss in my next update.  KY is also the reason that the word walrus is in the title of this post.  When you join KY, during the first year you are called a walrus, which my tutors explained is because the Finnish word for walrus is similar to another Finnish word relating to education and it simply devolved to walrus after time.

   As I mentioned, if you are an exchange student at Aalto, you are assigned tutors that are there to help answer any questions that you may have about Aalto or Finland in general.  Each set of tutors have a group consisting of about seven to ten students.  In my group, there is only me and another girl from the United States and the rest come from countries like Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada and Malaysia.  During our first day of orientation, our tutors took us on a tour of the campus and took us to get our travel cards, which are the best way to use public transport in Helsinki.

   Last Tuesday was my first cultural event in Finland, and it was called the Lux Festival.  Basically it is a festival that allows artists from around Finland set up displays involving light in some way.  There were about eight exhibits and some of them were fairly strange.  My personal favorite was the fire-dancing show that took place on the steps of the Helsinki Cathedral (shown on the right) in Senate Square (Senaatori in Finnish).  Some of the other displays were interesting, like a projector that displayed a multitude of colors, and to experience the display, you put on these white goggles and moved your head around (Shown bottom right).

After the Lux Festival, the next event that was held for us was by KY last Friday.  They invited all of the exchange students to their building in Helsinki and organized a party where we could learn about KY and get to know each other better.  One of the biggest traditions they introduced us to was the overalls, essentially a jumpsuit that you wear that displays what school you are from and apparently is quite popular among Finnish and other Scandinavian students.  For KY, our overalls are dollar green, which denotes that we are from the business school and that we are students at Aalto University.  By going to different events that KY holds, you collect patches that you can attach to your overalls.  There are also three rules that must be followed when you wear them.
1. You do not wear you overall to class, you can wear them anywhere else but not to an academic           function
2. The only way to dispose of you overalls is by burning them.
3. You can only wash your overalls if you are wearing them while jumping in a fountain or by                 permission of at least two executive members of KY.

Exploring Helsinki:
  Since I am only taking one course right now, one of my favorite activities has become to simply roam around Helsinki and see where the different roads take me.  Helsinki may be the capital of Finland, but it is relatively small (only about 500,000 inhabitants in the city itself) so walking isn't too difficult.  I have been trying to go different directions each time I decide to explore or if I have already gone a certain direction, I try to go farther than before so that I can slowly begin to find my a around the city.  I also only have classes on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, so there are a couple days where I don't have to go to class, so yesterday, me and my roommate Jules decided that we wanted to go see Senate Square again, and check out Suomenlina, a giant naval base off the coast of Finland.

The first place we visited was Senate Square.  When I had last visited the square, it was fairly dark and the cathedral wasn't open yet, so we decided to use or precious daylight to check it out.  The cathedral towers over the square and provides a great view of the surrounding area from the top of the steps.  While Finland is officially secular, most of the people follow the Lutheran branch of Christianity.  Inside the cathedral there is almost nothing.  It uses the minimalist style, which is characteristic of Lutheranism, and the only two features that really stand out in the church is the large organ found above the entrance, and the mural that is at the front of the pulpit, depicting the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

   After checking out the church, me and Jules decided to then head to the Market Square (Kauppatori in Finnish) to catch our ferry to Suomenlina.  Unfortunately because it is still in the dead of winter, there weren't any market stalls open at the square, so I will have to go there to check it out when it is busy.   We boarded the ferry and set out to the island where Suomenlina is located.  I was surprised when we arrived to discover that since the decommission of the militaristic portion of the fort, it has been turned into a residential area.  The fortress itself is not Finnish, but Swedish in origin and unofficially finished construction in 1750.  Following a war with Russia in the earky 1800's, the fortress fell under Russian rule along with most of Finland.  As with Kauppatori, most of the sights and museums were closed on the island, so I will be going back in the spring when they are open.  The picture on the right is the view from the Artillery Row of the fortress (and just for refrence, it was about 3 P.M. when I took the photo).

Challenges:
   While I have had a lot of fun here in Finland during the past week, there have been a few difficulties.  The biggest problem I have run into so far is simply the language barrier.  I do not speak any Finnish and although most people do speak English here, it is difficult to get around or buy food when you can't really understand Finnish.  Another problem I had was dealing with public transportation.  This was a fairly simple problem to fix, and despite living 20 minutes away from the school, it is not as daunting to ride the bus as it was once.  Over time, I have started to learn the bus numbers I need and about what time they arrive at their stops.  There is also a travel card that you can purchase that allows to pay for either a one month or three month period and it allows you to travel on any form of public transportation in Helsinki without having to pay outside of the fee for the one/three month plan.  Culturally I haven't experienced any issues, but considering I haven't been here long, I'm sure I will run into a few later this semester.  The weather has been another issue, and one that I can't solve.  It is usually either snowing or raining, and with the cold temperatures, it creates an abundance of ice.  So far I have yet to figure out how the Finnish can walk or drive on the ice.  There is also a distinct lack or sunlight right now.  As it stands, the sun will start rising at about 9 A.M. and will start to set at about 3 P.M. which means that you only get a few hours of full sunlight.

That pretty much does it for this update, I will post again next week describing the Sitsi party and whatever else I encounter in the next week.  Until then, go Gamecocks!