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| Metso Automation |
10.2
The others started from Helsinki on Monday 7th, but I decided to wait until the Estiemers come to Tampere. They looked quite dead after Sitsit- party the previous night (it's a kind of academic formal drinking party, where everyone sits around a table, sings, eats and drinks). On Thursday they visited to Metso, had some lectures and a great cottage party in Längelmäki, including hot tub, smoke sauna, hole in ice, sled hill and Finnish sausage. That's the best of Finland in winter time!
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| Table Shuffle in pub Las Vegas, Hervanta |
11.2
Time for 4-hour-final. After that 3 of the girls, Elmira, Tea and Sidika came to my place - I was their host. We got dressed up, and headed for the city centre for the gala dinner in Amarillo! Great, great food, and the company was even better! After Amarillo we returned to Hervanta to have an "after party" in pub Las Vegas. First we played table shuffle and, after few drinks, headed to the dance floor! First there was only few of us - me, Elmira, Naomi and Sebastian, but in the end all the Estiemers were dancing. We danced like 3 hours - great music there, the Dj was all ours, just like a private club! (some drunken Finnish tried to fit in, but they couldn't, we were too powerful). Music for everyone - Stromae for the Belgians, Scooter for the German and Petri Nygård for the Finnish (I'm not responsible for that!!). Great night, but at 3 o clock the pub closed and we went to sleep. :)
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| Picture: Teija Valkeinen |
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| Me throwing "karttu" in academic kyykkä world championship | . Picture: Teija Valkeinen |
12.2
Academic Kyykkä World Championship! It's the second biggest student event of the year (the biggest being Wappu, 1st of may celebration) in Tampere University of Technology. It's a traditional Finnish game, played mostly in winter time and very popular among university students (most people don't know the game, there's no professionals, this is the biggest competition and it's rather a drinking winter festival than a sports competition - it's not taken that seriously). I bought some beers from the shop, but I didn't notice they were 1 class beer, a pilsner, 2.7%, and they froze because it was so cold. A better option is to drink "Minttukaakao" (mixture of Mint vodka and hot chocolate, tratitional Finnish). There was few mobile saunas and hot tubs, and 3000 students, drunk, in the morning already. Seems like the international students were the most wasted. Anyway, it was cold, very cold. I had like 5 layers of clothes so I wasn't freezing, while the foreign ones were. Our first opponent team was "The Democratic People's Republic of North Hervanta", wearing ironically soviet- style clothes (Hervanta is the suburb where the university is situated, most biggest and famous of all suburbs in Finland, soviet- styled buildings, used to be called the "DDR of Finland" due to it's reputation) We played one game and the Turkish left, then there was only Finnish and a brave German guy Stefan (who had lived one year in Finland..). The last 2 games we won, but being too frozen, we gave up, didn't want to continue. Despite of the cold, it was so fun. Kyykkä is probably the most corrupted game, it's about cheating and giving bribes, manipulating the judges who are drunk as well. If you want to go to pee, you have to go to the forests were is 1 meter of snow. If you want to warm up, you can go to sauna, hot tub or just lay in the sun, which is already pretty warm in February (in Finnish perspective). Not mentioning the dangers of the game, see - the bat, "karttu" is very heavy, and sometimes the players have too much alcohol/strength/adrenaline in their veins and karttu takes a nice curve in the air and lands to someones head. One unfortunate friend of mine got karttu to his eye and that needed few stitches and a black eye. Also, the ground is very slippery and it's not nice to get a heavy bat on your feet, I can tell you that.
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| Democratic people's republic of north Hervanta. The fish, pike (="hauki"), means a kind of throw were the bat "swims" between two blocks without wiping any, and players wish bad luck to the opposite team by screaming "hauki!!". |
After Kyykkä was sauna and pizza. We had rented a club, Volume, in the city centre just for us for 2 hours and that's were we went. First there was only Estiem and Indecs (our guild) people, but later in the evening it was so full of people you could hardly move. And we danced, danced danced, At 12, after being 4 hours there, I was so ready to go home, but there was overload in taxi so I had to stay. After 2 more hours I finally took a taxi with Naomi and Rita - tired but happy I went to sleep.
13.2
Others had left back to home, Zhao and Sevgican were the last ones in Finland, they had flight the next day. So we went to city tour! It was so very cold and windy, that unfortunately I couldn't show everything I had wanted to. The southern ones didn't have enough clothes. But hopefully they enjoyed the city tour - and that was the end of Vision in Tampere! Once again, a great Estiem event. Of course this didn't feel the same for me as Vision in Luleå because I live in this city, but meeting new people is always great.
There are some super plans for March! Something extraordinary! Something I have been waiting for a long, long, time! It's called A-M-E-R-I-CA! Yes! I will be going back to America! 8th of May, I will be flying via Amsterdam and Atlanta to West Palm Beach, Florida, escaping the freezing weather, which has continued already for 3 months and 2 more are coming (the Great Finnish Winter, 5 months of freezing cold). I will be staying in Lake Worth, Florida for 2 weeks and plans are at least to go to Miami and then - the best of all - South Carolina!! Yes, it's only about 1000km away, and I'll go there with my family to see my host family! Probably making a visit to Jacksonville and Savannah on the way - spending 2 - 3 days on that trip. Doesn't that sound just amazing! For me it does, at least.
