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| This is were the journey took place: Luleå in the north of Sweden |
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My journey, about 1500km (roundtrip)
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That was it, the beginning of my ESTIEM story. I'm officially in love with this organization - or I would rather call it a state of mind.
19.1Midnight in Tampere. A heavy snowfall and the temperature is just above 0. A perfect weather to start my Nordic trip! I was sleeping in Tampere train station, waiting for my night train to depart at 1 am. Full of enthusiasm! Finally my train arrived and I went to my sleeping cabin, which felt like sauna. There was already 2 other girls sleeping there, not Finnish, probably some tourists on their way to Lapland. I only got few hours of sleep on my 8 hours journey because it was so hot, the train was loudy and the rail bumpy. 9 o clock and we were close to Kemi. I got up and watched the sunrise and snowy forests - beautiful. In Kemi I had to find the bus to Haparanda, Sweden. It was pretty cold and I didn't know which way to go. Some man asked me "where are you going?" and I said "to Haparanda", and so he told me he's going to that direction, jump in. It was a really old bus and I was the only passenger for a while. Half an hour and the language changed - I was in Sweden. In Haparanda bus station I had to wait for an hour for bus to Luleå, but I didn't feel like I was in Sweden. Everyone spoke both languages, I tried to speak Swedish but always the answer came in Finnish. Funny. Then the bus arrived - the bus driver spoke Finnish, of course - and we left for Luleå. After 15 minutes the bus broke down, I only understood "så småningom", which means "little by little". Northern Swedish accent is really hard. "Så småningom" we got a new bus and the trip continued.
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| "Igloon", the "lokal" for students of industrial management |
Luleå bus station, -15 degrees, windy, no food for 24 hours. I walked around this weird city and saw a sign - "Tasty burger: extra pris, cheese mål, 49 kronor". After cheese mål I was strong enough to find the bus to Porsö, where the Luleå Tekniska Universitet is located. My suitcase weighed 20 kilos. Fortunately the Luleå local transportation system was really practical and easy - I had no problems with finding the bus and getting myself to Porsö. The guideline was really good and I found my way to the Igloon, the "lokal" for students of industrial management in the university. I was one of the first ones to arrive, there were just the Swedish and an Austrian guy Christian. I introduced myself and later the others arrived. I met my host, Simon, changed clothes in his place and the event was ready to start. First a quick university tour, then food and time to chat with others. So many new people and complicate names, I could remember only few of them. We were able to buy some beer there and so the party got started! One of the Swedish guys was singing and playing guitar, it was quite nice after a long day. Relaxing. It was weird how it felt like I had been friends with these people for years after few hours. I guess that's the Estiem spirit! We were meant to go to a student bar called "Stub", but unfortunately there was a dress code and we couldn't drink in the Lokal after 11. I didn't really want to go to sleep so we went to Emma's place to play some Estiem-game. Time flew and it was about 2 o clock, I was too tired to walk to Simon's place (2km away) so I slept overnight at Emma's place. :)
6.30, alarm clock was ringing. I couldn't believe the 4 and half hours passed already. I took a shower and then it was time for the morning Jägertee! The German guy, Raphael, had brought this bottle from Germany, and without asking he made one cup for each of us. I had a sore throat so this hot drink felt good, and the strong alcohol made me more alert and ready to go to lecture! Haven't really been drinking at 7 am before. We were the first to arrive, and believe me or not, I wasn't even tired! We were introduced to the topic: leadership through engagement and had some workshop about it. We were a team with Juho and Raphael and got a case about a restaurant and it's empolyees, our job was to figure out how to engage them more to their work. We made the poor Inga make snow sculptures to get more engaged to her job - how creative is that?! Raphael even invented that Inga had started drinking due to her lack of work.
After the work shop we headed for SSAB - a steel company. Which proved "very very good", according to Börje who had been working for SSAB for 40 years. Everything was "very good", the slap-steel, the company, the transportation, everything. Even though they had some problems and the factory had been shut down for 10 hours and they loose 10 million krons every hour. Börje was the best example of an engaged employee! I am a fan of Börje! Keep going! The factory was huge and very impressive. And very, very cold. I think it was even colder inside. What comes to talk about spaces and places influencing engagement, I wouldn't find this freezing factory an engaging environment. 4 hours passed and the company visit was over - and we were frozen. Next was a city tour! We were introduced to a huge pig made of ice, which was also an icy slide. How cool was that!! I found my inner childishness while sliding down again and again. So much fun. I wasn't really sure if we were in our 20's or still 10 years old. But who cares! The next thing was the frozen sea. Very, very slippery, I fell down all the time. But this woke up our inned childishness as well! The Turkish people became even younger - maybe 5 years old - rolling on the snow, sliding in the ice and having a snow fight. Coldness can't get funnier than that, and actually I didn't even feel cold, being so eager to slide and play. We had about 1 hour time to circle around the city (actually this time was for discussing about the topic), but it was so cold that I couldn't stay outside for an hour. The city wasn't even really big, but quite nice. A metropolis in the north. That was it.
Back to university and to change clothes. International dinner was in our schedule that evening! Everyone had brought some food from their own countries. I had some traditional Finnish rye bread and of course - Salmiakki (it's a candy made of ammonium chloride, doesn't that sound appealing?). Too much food, I didn't even taste everything. Flavours from Turkey, Germany, Finland and Sweden. After eating we continued we did the same than yesterday - played Estiem-game, talked, had some competitions.. The most important thing of the internationa dinner was that everyone had brought some drinks from their home country. There was of course Jägermaister from Germany, Minttu from Finland and many others, that I can't remember. Also the very famous home-made Luleå wine (I think Lovisa was responsible for that..).. Of course everyone had to try everything. And buy Swedish beers like yesterday. They taste really weird, in the beginning I didn't like it at all but in the end I got used to the taste of Swedish corn beer and it was just ok. Just like yesterday, we weren't allowed to drink there after 11, so we continued in other place close to Emma's appartment (which was quite far from the uni). Someone had put the sauna on and I noticed the sauna was full people, wearing clothes and singing Yogi bear. So began the weird sauna party, everyone was wearing less or more clothes - in the end everyone was less or more wet. And Yogi bear continued having more and more strophes. People went roll on the snow, someone even brought snow the sauna and the party was getting pretty epic. We put some frozen clothes on the snow and they looked like ghosts. Because my clothes were a little wet, I decided to stay at Emma's place that night as well, as did many others. 7 persons sleeping in Emma's place that night. I call that team spirit, or estiem spirit!
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| The German table (mostly from Dresden!) |
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| "What is the name of the game?" SNAPS!! |
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| The epic sauna party |
21.1
Don't really know how many hours I slept that night - probably 3 - but I can tell you that I was tired when the alarm clock started to ring at 7. Breakfast and lectures! We visited to Aurorum Science Park and had to make a case about how to engage employees in a company in recession when they had to fire some workers and close a whole department. Our succedd wasn't very good due to our lack of sleep. Then it was time for "Pimp my pulka"- workshop on a hill nearby! Again, we became child. I don't know if I have ever had so much fun with sleds and gliders! We made different varioations and glided faster and faster. The slope was just perfect - really steep but not too long. The weather was arctic. It was snowing so bad I could hardly see down from the hill and the wind was really strong. We cooked some hot dogs and had hot chocolate which warmed us. Actually I wasn't even freezing since I was on the move all the time. It wasn't a really good idea to slide down in a line of 6 people, the snow flew to our face and we couldn't see anything. At least it was fun, a lot of fun. We had to walk back to university (about 3 kilometers) which was hard. The wind got stronger and sun was already getting down (at 3 o clock). We got lost and had to ask advice a couple of time - after 1 hour we were finally back to university and a little late from the lecture, held by the great Tim Foster.
He was an amazing lecturer, probably the best I've ever met. And first American who admits that Americans are stupid (what comes to politics and economy). Even I was a little tired, I listened carefully every single word he told. He was talking about different ways of leading, you can be either "the boss" or "the leader". After the lecture we had a lunch and then World Cafe (kind of discussion group). I was feeling a little sick, but I really feel like I learned a lot from world cafe. I had some great ideas and enjoyed being host and telling about the ideas that have been brought up. That was the biggest effort I had made in the academic part of the event. I was so glad to go to sauna after walking 1 hour in the snowstorm. My shoes were soaking wet.
They had booked 2 saunas, the other one was closer to Simon's place so I went there. Now everyone had a swimming suit, not a weird combination of clothes. This was more relaxed, few sauna beers and singing. After 2 hours we prepared ourselves to the real party which is held in the same place we were the day before. This time the place was full of people - mostly Swedish. It was nice to talk to some "real Swedish" as well, not only our to our international group. For example I talked with a space engineering student who gave me some Swedish overall patches, what a nice memory from this trip! We danced for quite a long time and decided to go to sauna again (at that time clock was about 2am). I don't know how so many can fit to the small sauna and even sing and dance the Estiem- song in there. And have snow fight inside the sauna! Hours passed, it was so much fun. In the end there was only 4 of us, and I decided to leave and start to clean up (the place was a mess). Finally we were ready to leave. Raphael's frozen pants caused a lot of laugh, and so did Juho, who was sleeping in Emma's appartment and was meant to open the door for us. He didn't wake up, no matter what we did. We banged the door, windows and did everything, but probably only the neighbours woke up. Luckily our researcher, Julia, woke up and opened the door (our intention really wasn't to wake her up!). We decided to put an alarm clock at 5 am to drink some Jägertee, but unfortunately the clock was already 5.40am! So we went to sleep, being really tired.
1 hour of sleep and the alarm clock ringed. It was time for the 4-hour-final, the outcome of our discussions about the topic. Our outcome was 0 at that point. My team: me, Juho and Raphael had 0 ideas, the only idea was to go to sleep. Finally we got an idea, to have a performance about a good leader, the bad boss and an engagement consultant. We made a nice story which was quite humorous but it also had some great points - how to enable employees to get engaged to their job. I was very satisfied!
Luleå is very famous for Yukigassen. It's a Japanese snowball fighting- game, and the team in Luleå is the second best in the entire world! We started to play Yukigassen, it it was much harder than I had guessed. I died all the time (you die if you are hit by snow ball). But fun to watch! The Swedish had used a lot of imagination to bild the Yukigassen playing field. I was part of the German team, because there wasn't space in the Finnish team (there was 7 Finnish and only 6 can be in a team).
In the lokal everyone was sleeping. 4-hour-final had took the last pieces energy out of us. Gala dinner that night - whery do I find energy for that? I went to change clothes to Simon's place (the funny thing is that he hasn't even noticed that I haven't spent there a single night) and then back to igloon. The Luleå weather is not very good for a nice dress and small shoes. After pre-drink we headed for the bus stop, and my feet were already frozen. The bus never arrived. I sipped one beer to get warmer. After half an hour we used the local transportation. In the bus we sang Yogi bear as always, plus some other international songs, so we weren't really sorry for having to spend half an hour in the coldness. The dinnes was held in "Fiskekyrkan", which is a nice restaurant and night club in the evening. But it was really cold in there. Must have been like 15 degrees, I was freezing. All the girls gathered around a heater. The food was very, very good. I was starving! And so was the wine. We played the Estiem-game and the locals were looking at us like "wtf are you doing?". I tried to warm myself by dancing salsa (that I cannot do!). Because of my tiredness (and the pushy latino-guy), I choosed to spend the rest of the night on the couch, trying not to fall asleep as Marcus did (and he was almost ejected for that). At 2 o clock the taxis arrived. Raphael gave the taxi driver a wrong direction so we had to walk for some 15 minutes - I was frozen. We were meant to have an after party in Igloon or somewhere in Anna's place. Everyone was just too tired to do that, so I went to sleep to Simon's place after farewell, for the first time!
There was a weird happening in the night. I woke up when Simon arrived, don't know how much the clock was, but I was so confused due to the lack of sleep that I didn't remember where I am (and I wasn't drunk!!). I thought that I have gone to someones appartment and sacked out there - I was horrified. It took like 15 minutes to find out, that I'm actually in Simon's place and I haven't done anything wrong. A relief!
23.17 o clock, few hours of sleep. I packed my stuff and went to eat breakfast in Igloon. Last hugs and I dragged my suitcase to the bus stop - I was ready to leave for Finland. As soon as I got to the bus, I fell asleep imidiatelly. In Haparanda I noticed to my shock, that I don't know if there's a bus going to Kemi on Sunday. I don't even know what bus it was that I used to come to Haparanda. I asked my mum to search from the internet and there should be a bus after an hour. Another problem was that I didn't have any euros and wasn't sure if they take krons to go to Finland. The bus arrived and luckily they took my krons! In Kemi I had to wait an hour for the train so I slept. I had lost my voice and I had fever. I shivered all the 8 hours journey from Kemi to Tampere, trying to get sleep. I really felt horrible.. Finally I was at home. I slept as many hours as I had slept during the last 4 nights! I still had fever the next days, it took 3 days to recover.
So what can I say about ESTIEM? It's the best! Getting new friends, learning new things, traveling.. Can't describe! All these people come from different cultures but in the end they are one big unitary group! Singing the Estiem- song, playing the Estiem- game... I love that. I love being and Estiemer. Can't wait for the next Estiem event! ... which is actually only 2 weeks later, in Tampere. I will be organizing that one, and we have some great plans for the Estiemers.
