2012 Lapland, Norway: The Coolest Group Conquers Lapland

Some photos at this point. This is just after crossing the Norwegian border.

Tromso seen from mountain Floya.

Floya - a cold paradise.

"People will think we are crazy. No, people will notice we are crazy.". Swimming in the Arctic Ocean without sauna in Tromsoya island.

As I love being international, I have gathered a group of cool international students around me as being a tutor, but moreover also a friend. Our friendship has grown into one great levels and we decided to explore the north parts of my country, as it's unfamiliar to me as well. Our group consists of French girl Marine, Mexican girl Daniela, Austrial guy Martin and Italian guy Vittorio.

5.4

After spending the previous night in Vimpeli with Marine, we finally started our trip to the north, picking up the rest in train station in Kokkola. Our first destination was going to be Kemi, about 300km away. On our way I showed one of the only real beaches in Finland in Kalajoki. Sun was treating us well and it was truly beautiful, almost no snow on the ground. In Kemi we went first to see the melting Snow Castle, but, as it was "quite lame this year" (also according to the ticket seller), we didn't get in. The frozen sea seemed highly interesting to my foreign friends. After using 2 hours and 250 euros in Lidl and Alko, we had enough food and drinks for the following 6 days. Our car started to look like a chipsy caravan with all that food. So our trip continues to the north! The next stop was close to Pello, 140km away, when we crossed the Arctic Circle. Arctic Circle needs a jumping picture. Vittorio lost his camera cover and we returned to get it, but didn't find it. So we crossed the Arctic Circle 3 times during one day. Finally we could feel we are in Lapland - the landscapes were more and more hilly and snow cover reached one meter (in Kokkola there was almost nothing). The view was magical - full moon on right side, sunset on left side. When the sun was nearly down we reached our first overnight place in Muonio. Sky was clear and full of stars, night was getting bitter. After Italian pasta, few beers, sauna and late night conversation we fell asleep on our first night in Lapland. The first rule of the trip was made: "always put the food on the floor before eating it!". This was made because we managed to drop all the cooked pasta on the floor but decided to pick it up and eat it. Magical start.

6.4

First notes in the morning - the windows are full of steam. I open the door and a cloud of steam comes to me - it's fucking cold, I put a note. -21 degrees says the thermometer, great for a morning hike. After typical Finnish porridge breakfast, we're ready to go. Car is fighting against me when I'm trying to start it, but finally it gives up and engine starts. Perfect, we're not stuck already the first day. Temperature rises slowly to -10 and sun is shining beautifully. Perfect. We take a drive to Särkitunturi, a fell only 15km away. On our way we see a skiing center. "Tourists, yak", way say, and continue to Särkitunturi where it's silent as if there was no sound in world at all. It's about 3,5km climbing to Särkitunturi and there's snow until my hips. Luckily the cold night made the snow possible to walk on, except if you make a miss-step from snow mobile path... When we climbed higher we could see the biggest fells of the area - Pallas and Olos. Few sighs for the beauty of the place. Finally we reached the top where we started to prepare lunch in Lavvu. Standing in the middle of a fell lake, surrounded by woods and complete silence you can feel like no one else lives in this world. Sausages and bread and we get back to car and continue to the north! About 100km away there's a Sámi culture center (which has developed quite touristic), the center of Enontekiö municipality, Hetta. Instead of taking ski lift we climbed on fell "Jyppyrävaara" to see how it looks up here. Wilderness, as far as you can see. And a couple of fells, of course. How big is the world, we think! Lapland is treating us well with the most clear sky and only few minus degrees. We sledge down and decide to search for reindeer meet. On our way we see a very small sign, follow road to very small village with very few houses, where a very shy guy opens the door to say that his mum is skiing. About 10 minutes later the mum returns and being as hospitable as a Lapland woman can ever be, she sells us reindeer meat for good student price of 4€/kilo! Even providing as good recipes and tips how to cook it. Great! So we continue to Kilpisjärvi, about 200km north of Hetta.

The scenery is getting more and more epic. Trees are getting smaller and hills are getting bigger. In the end there's almost no trees at all. Finally we reach Peera, our second overnight place. We faced few major problems - I told we are only 4, while we are actually 5, to reduce price. So we leave Martin to the wilderness of Peera and go to see Risto, the owner of the accommodation place. Our expectations are not much - he doesn't seem very co-operative and sounds always just woken-up or drunk when I call him. There was no one else than us and there lives only few persons inside area of 20km. Our cottage is cold and there is no water. He offers his own kitchen and toilet. Secrectly we pick up Martin (he was still alive) and smuggle him into the cottage. As we go to get water from Risto's house, he offers us his Kota (kind of BBQ teepee) where we could cook the reindeer. Then he figures out that we cannot actually cook it and decided to make it himself. At that point we realise how friendly and nice person he actually is, and decide to tell him that we lied about the fifth person. He takes it calmly and is understadable and tells, that Martin can sleep with him if he's not hairy. He also offers us a free snow mobile ride to top of Peera fell! Why not? Reindeer is getting ready, let's go for a snow mobile ride! Most awesome feeling - being in the true wilderness of Finland, where even trees don't want to grow. The view is superior, you cant see any living thing and snow is untouchable as far as you can see. Conditions are getting dangerous and we get down to meet a reindeer herd. He's not at home but we see a pack of reindeers in his yard. So we return "home" to eat the reindeer and grab few beers. Risto tells us stories how he has been nearly in every country, but we're not sure if this is just the fact how Lapland people have tendency for lieing or has this person,  living in the middle of nowhere, really visited even Mexico 5 times and telling that it was "not so bad!".  The night continues until 5 in the morning and we didn't get eaten by wild animals while using nature as a toilet. Night is weirdly clear and the mountains look threatening. Now I start to believe in Lapland magic. Northern lights appeared but we missed them. Darkest secrets are shared. This night will be stored in my memory with special accuracy!

7.4

Another clear morning, Risto invites us for a breakfast in his house. He takes a photo of us as his "new family". Warm farewell and a promise that I will teach the guys to sing "Niin minä neitonen sinulle laulan" before we come back to Peera. We decide to go for a morning hike to Tsaikhaljávri close to Kilpisjärvi. The sunny and warm weather changes rapidly into cloudy and extremely windy conditions. We have a picnic digged down in snow like the Lapland bird "kiiruna". Landscape in Tsakikhaljávri is like in moon, only whiteness. If you wouldn't see the great magical fell Saana, you would think as if there was nothing else than white and flat in the world.  I'm getting snow blind and cant recognice any shapes on ground. Before we freeze to death we decide to go down, where the clouds are disappearing. The trip continues to Tromso, the biggest city above Arctic Circle outside Russia. After driving one hour trough uninhabitated tundra, suddenly we see the ocean and high mountains of Norway, an unreal moment. There's nearly no snow on ground and temperature is +3. We need to stop the car and go to the beach to test if the ocean is real or not - and after Marine tasted it we realised that it truly is. The great Arctic Ocean, I can smell the fish! When we continue to Tromso the conditions change again - it starts to snow and Im having troubles controlling the car in slippery, narrow serpentine roads. Norwegian drivers are mad and pass me by because Im not driving like crazy. After every curve it's just getting more and more epic. I can't belive that I just drove with my own car here where the tundra meets the ocean. Finally we are in Tromso, where is 1 meter of snow next to the door of our extremely small cabin. Norway turned out so expensive that the only affordable option for 5 persons was booking a cabin for 4, which only consisted 2 bunk beds and a hot plate to cook some food. Camping time!

 Being extremely hungry, we started to cook some Pyttipannu and soon the whole room smelt like sausage, oil and onions. The fatty meal was followed by several beers and drinking games, that served as a pre-party before heading for the infamous night life of Tromso! Indeed, some level of drunkness was acquired. It was about 4km to the night life but of course we'll not take a taxi and non of us is in the condition for driving. The trip doesn't feel very long though, even though it takes more than one hour because stopping to speak every random person. Finally we find few slightly drunk Norwegians who are willing to go show us some traditional Tromso party, and so we enter a slightly too expensive bar. Our budget was enough for only one drink, which costed nearly 15€. We had created a really nice fake story of what took this group of 5 students coming from different countries to this Northern city: I was going to Levi for skiing, so I took Marine who was couchsurfing in Tampere with me, on our way in a party we met Martin who was in Erasmus in Oulu and he decided to join us, and then on our way we met Vittorio hitchiking to Russia and Daniela hitchiking to Sweden and decided to take them all with us. Well, then we met Risto who's son is studying in Tromso and he asked us to go to Tromso instead where his son was going to host us. So, that's why we came to Tromso and now we are looking for this guy in the club, asking everyone "are you the son of Risto?".

 This fake story caused a lot of laugh, most of people not believing us while some did and even invited us to after party. Because of this amazing story we met a Norwegian guy studying PhD in fishing and, drunk as I was, I started to describe the fishes Risto gave us. In the end we came to conclusion that Norwegians hate us and started to go back home when the sun was already getting up. How fun! It took so long time to walk home, the 2km bridge felt like 20km and it was windy as hell.

8.4

Sunshine, few plus degrees, snow melting... A perfect day for a hike to Floya mountain. We are slow, hangoverish, breakfast takes forever, people wash their teeth for one hour.. Finally, we're ready to go. To avoid paying around 10€ for the gondole lift to the mountain, we decide to try to climb on the mountain, even though the locals dont think its a very good idea. After 10min walking we see that he was right - there is more than 1m of snow, it's rather steep and takes a couple of hours. So we return and they are laughing at us because they knew we would return. The view up on the mountain is amazing - it feels as if we're in the top of the world, and the snow is smooth and white as wipped cream. And there is more than 2 meters of it! It's windy and cold, but the view over the city is just undescribable, so we don't really care a shit. Snowy mountains all over that are reflected from the blue ocean. Time to lay down on wipped cream and see how beautiful the world is. And silent. I'm just so happy we came all the way here.

After a couple of hours we take the gondola down and walk around the city for a couple of hours. It's such a nice contrast between ugly buildings and old, wooden fishermen houses. Soon we get bored with the city and decide to take a drive around the whole Tromsøya island. We found a huge university and a long tunnel with for example a round about under ground! I don't know what is the point, there was no hills, it didnt go under water and not much traffic.

The evenining is relaxed, we cook the fishes Risto gave us and enjoy it with some white wine. This night we want to be sure not to miss the northern lights, so we take shifts the whole night so that someone goes out every 15min to check the situation. Tromso should be one of the best places in Europe to see the northern lights. I already fell asleep at 12, but after a couple of hours I hear loud screaming: "northern lights! wake up! northern lights!". And that was true - there was nice green aurora borealis! Not very big though, but definitely that was it. So finally our aim to see the northern lights was fulfilled and we could go to sleep!

9.4

Time to pack our stuff and leave this heavenly place.. Well, before that, we have to do something that can be done only up north, like in Tromso. Swimming in the arctic ocean! We couldnt find a sauna, so we decided to go just go to beach and make our car as hot as it can get (that is, 34c). There was some people who were looking at us like "are you completely out of your mind?". For sure we are! Air temperature -5, water temperature +2, freezing wind, why not going to swim? At least it was perfectly sunny and those amazingly beautiful mountains well telling us "go for it!". So we did! After returning to car we realised how big mistake it was: our feet were full of sea-urchin spikes! We just cou feel them because our feet were too numb for the ice-cold water. Well, decide to continue out trip to our next destination, a small fishing town Skibotn. It's pretty, tiny and totally dead, despite the camping area full of travellers. Finally time to go to Finland. It's just as beautiful as when we returned, and we realised that we actually already miss the hilly tundra landscapes after looking at these mountains and fjords for a couple of days. After some 100km we see a familiar road.. it's Risto's road! Why not go to say hello to Risto? There he was, cutting reindeer in his house. The guys had finally learnt to sing "Niin minä neitonen sinulle laulan" so they presented it to Risto, his teekkari son and a Swedish reindeer herd. We could almost see a tear in Risto's eye. He asks as to stay longer and offers us some fish, but unfortunately we have to continue our trip to the south. 400 more kilometers that day to drive. So we continue.

On our way to south we can't miss an advertisement in the middle of nowhere: "coffee and donut 50cent!". Why not? The place turned out a huge souvenier shop and we ended up buying a little bit this and that, but finally also coffee and donut! The owner is a friendly samí woman who gives us some leather for free to make bracelets. We continue and finally, late in the evening, reach our final accommodation in Pello. This is the most luxurous cottage of our whole trip, although also the cheapest (it's totally middle of nowhere). We listen to weird alien music from Swedish radio channels, have some BBQ in kota and laugh too much until 4 o clock. Time to have our last night in Lapland.. It's magical..

10.4

I was lazy adding photos, here's finally some. This is a group sleeping in Peera.

And this is table sleeping.

In the house of Risto, after sharing breakfast with him. His new little family.

Jumping in Kilpisjärvi

.. and falling down in Kilpisjärvi

Humanitarian help from Risto

I can feel the depression among my friends, it's the time to really get out of Lapland. 300 more kilometers and there's only very little snow and it's raining. Shit. So long my friends, I'm pretty sure this is just one of the amazing trips we're about to do together!

2011 France, Switzerland: Living like a French!

An awesome week behind! The schedule was really tight, but now I can really say I know how is life in France. And it is awesome - even though the language remains a mystery! My mouth is totally incapable to pronounce it. Lets start.

20.11

After 2 hours of sleep I rushed to bus and headed for Helsinki, enjoying the sun rise. An air plane took me first to Frankfurt and then I continued to Geneva in Switzerland. The language barrier started already in the airport when I couldnt find my bus and people couldnt help me, but after more than an hour I ended up in train station. I knew Geneva would be expensive, but man, I never thought that expensive! One small piece of pizza with water costed nearly 10€. Luckily I had brought some bread from Finland and survived without spending a single Swiss Franc. I managed to buy tickets to Grenoble and arrived there late in the evening. Everyone had gathered to get to know each other in Arthur's place and as I got there I finally got something to eat - a crêpes with chocolate! And something to drink as well, I dont know what was it but it tasted horrible and was called Charteuse. Luckily there was a variety of other drinks that had come from different countries - some of them even drinkable.

Unfortunately the evening didnt last too long because it was a Sunday night and neighbours didnt like 30 Estiemers having a party, so my host Thomas took me to his place. I got a short introduction to French driving style - it's crazy! We nearly killed one person, but the journey continued and he left his car partly in a middle of a street because he couldnt find a parking lot - "this is Grenoble!"- he told, and yes, I was really in Grenoble now! I lived in a commune of 4 guys with a German girl Maria, pretty unique experience!
 

21.11

I've been never so alert in an Estiem event before as I was this morning. My awarness rised to completely new levels when I saw the place I had arrived - MOUNTAINS, everywhere! Every direction I watched I saw only mountains, and at the top of all I saw the glistening Mont Blanc. Nice, I could handle living here for 3 days! As a breakfast we ate croissants and other sweet stuff- French style! First we were introduced to Estiem and had an Estiem questionary, which I won, yay! Next was the academic part, a great guy from HP, Pascal Marion, had come to talk to us about the topic "Crisis Management". And how interesting was that! This guy really had charisma. He told about 6 steps, starting from pre-crisis and ending to post-crisis. So a short glance of crisis situations in a company. I really enjoyed the lecture, one of the most enjoyable lectures in my life - partly for the interesting subject and partly for the amazing lecturer. Some more croissants afterwards and then we had a nother lecture about financial crisis. It was not as interesting but not the worst ones I've been, I did enjoy it. It's just that Im not exactly an economy student and especially the cases he gave us to read included some unfamiliar vocabulary. Both of those guys had amazingly good English skills for a French and I bet they have lived quite a long time out of France. Well, the last lecturer took me back to reality and the English sounded more like French, cute. We got a case about a crisis in NASA after a failed space shuttle launch (or a "lunch" as the lecturer pronounced it :P). For some of us this was the first case practice, so we did enjoy it.  We realised it was already dark and we had been in the university for 11 hours, so they day was a lot more enjoyable than any day in my university! Succesfull start for a vision event. After the academic part we ate some great local food, Tartiflettes, and drank some French beer playing "Snaps". It turned out that Karl was incapable to count due to the pressure of the came (or the alcohol!). Finally we ended up in a small pub where was no one else than us, so we had a private pub and danced all night long. The French people proved they're a lot better dancers than Finnish!

Early morning in Grenoble

Grenoble at night

After winning an ESTIEM quiz I won a typical French hat! I love it!

what else than.. playing SNAPS!

After party

22.11

Another early morning in Grenoble.. and the magnifient view - mountains, everywhere!

After another early morning I was happy, that we didnt have any academic part that day. After we were introduced to the exchange and studying opportunities in the university we had lunch (food in French student cafeteria is excellent!) and then separated into two groups, one group went to the castle Sassenage and another to city tour. I went first to the castle, which was situated in a very beautiful place just in the root of a mountain. The castle visit was quite boring, the introducer didnt speak (or didnt want to speak) English so it was translated by Karl and Arthur. She spoke way too much about all the paintings which were not so interesting! When we came back it was already dark so the city tour wasnt as nice as it could have been, but I really like the city. After that we did some shopping and I did some great findings. Then I get lost and tried to find the university using a map of Lyon until I realised, that it's a wrong map. People didnt want to help me because I dont speak French so I was circling around for almost 1 hour until I suddenly found a familiar road and found the university!

The summer was ON! +18 in November, wow!

LG Lappeenranta

Castle Sassenage

Grenoble in sunset

Being late is not a problem in France, since everyone is late at least for half an hour. Next step was a nice dinner in a cute small restaurant "La Petite Idée". The food was really excellent - this is just turning into an eating holiday. After the dinner it was time for some bars - first was a Mexican style bar with sand on floor. We drank a couple of Tequila- drinks and Mojitos and headed for another one, which was one of the coolest I've ever been to - "La barberousse". It was like a small pirate ship with music too loud and table catching a fire every now and then. With the Grenoble- guys I bought a bottle of something yellow - drinks in this place are also very unique. So we danced again all night long until the owner asked us to get out. Thomas lived pretty far from this place so it was a good 45min night walk in completely empty streets! (Okay, it was Tuesday, not exactly a party day).

La Petite idé!

After party

After-after party... :)

23.11

There's many ways to flush a toilet.. In Thomas' flat you can do it like this!

The University - Grenoble INP

I <3 Grenoble

Needless to say - I was tired! But as a good motivation to wake up was the return of the great Pascal Marion. This time we dealed with the problem "Changing technologies" when companies have to all the time keep up with the technology development and, in best case, to be a step forward to the others. Again the lecture was very interesting.

Romans

After lunch it was the time to leave for Lyon. On our way to Lyon we made a stop in Romans visiting Krohne (a German company producing measurement systems). There we met the production manager + few employees who were not aware that less than 50% of us understands French, even less speaks it! After recovering this shock they started to have their presentation in English. One of them was quite okay with English but especially the production manager's English caused a lot of difficulties. But still, how can I judge him, he was in his 60s and was not making any top-management decisions in international level, so for a French his English was very acceptable. We made a tour around the company to have an overview with it, and if I didnt learn anything else, I learnt why sometimes it's better to buy the components from China than from France (it's not a question about price, it's a question about quality!!).

Back in the bus and I fell asleep due to previous nights parties. In Lyon I was extremely hungry but eager for some campus party. They served us with some baguettes and excellent sausages. And then was the alcohol part.. Good wine - check, extremely small beers (but strong) - check, whiskey and vodka - check.. Of course I had brough a Finnish delicacy "Koskenkorva" with me (which is actually not more than a typical vodka). So we played Snaps, limbo, danced, sang... drank more.. sang more.. dance more.. then was the after party in a place I dont know, and an after after party (now I didnt know either the place nor the people).. And the same goes with the next morning when I woke up at 7, obviously not in a right place, and tried to navigate to my host's place which I, obviously, visited the last night, and found it after one hour! How glad was he to finally find me, having thought that I had been killed or something ;D (NB! This is not the kind of story you might think - this is just falling a sleep in after-after-after*x party!)

24.11

Work hard - play hard, yep, that's ESTIEM!

Yes, we did also work. The academic part of this Vision was exceptionally interesting, I must say!

Im not sure how many hours I slept, but I had only time to change my clothes (and I had lost my jacket last night) and then head for a lecture. Fighting to keep my eyes open I was confronted by the general manager of Krohne France, a remarkable man - Jasques van den Bosch.

He told me about a topic "Crisis, what crisis?". Well, I thought about the crisis that morning when I was wandering around the campus area, confused by the illogicality of the system (in one place was buildings E, H, I and K, but where the hell is the building J?? Almost 1km away, or so it felt!). But Jasques was talking about completely different kind of crisis, and he was damn good at what he was telling! After one baguette I had forgot my crisis situation. Thank god I was not the only one, few of us felt so sick they had to go back to bed to recover and the caretaker of the department had left a not that the whole department smells like Whiskey.. Anyway, we were divided in groups and we had to prepare a presentation about few topics, our topic was something like "How should and employee act in times of crisis?". We were pretty productive and innovative with our power point of pictures representing factors like "don't panic" or "think out of the box". Jasques told us some personal tips, which I will not reveal in public! ;)

I don't know how I felt all the time, "oh, this is SO French!". Being so overwhelmed by the "Frenchness"

The next step was the city tour. We were separated in two teams and had to find places according to clues that were given. We also had to accomplish tasks liks "sing the estiem song" or "take water from the river" and so on.. In the beginning it was fun, but after 5 hours my feet just didnt enjoy the situation anymore. In the end of the day we finally reached to beautiful old town of Lyon and took a funicular to Fourvieré with an amazing view over the city! Not mentioning the amazingly beautiful Basilique, one of the most beautiful I've ever visited, from inside and outside. Looking down at the city it just looked so small, just like a lego city. And then after all, few million lives there. It was the time to return to the campus to get some food. I was already so hungry that I had to grab one croissant. Rejané had prepared a dinner for us in her flat - potatoes with some special melted cheese and again delicious sausages. Yam yam! It was nice to have finally a relaxing evening after all the running around.

But the evening didn't end up so peasefully. We decided to go to night club where was actually an ESN erasmus party that night. The place, Boston Café, was so full of people that we could hardly walk. Drinks were also rather expensive. We spent there a couple of hours until I was almost falling asleep and had to return to the campus. The bus was as full of people as the club!

25.5

Again morning lectures. One lecturer from the university had come to talk with us about "Economical Intelligence", what ever it means. We found this approach rather too philosophical - c'mon, we're engineering students, not humanists! Anyway, now we for sure know what means "serendipity" and use it in our future career which will make us better persons (btw this is ranked top 10 hardest English words to translate, and we learnt it in 1 hour)!

"Drinking is illegal especially by the riverside and will be fined" - Yep, but we're ESTIEMers and we do this

Next step was something I like - wine tasting! We had a real professional teaching us wine tasting. Now I can tell where the wine comes  from (hypothetically) by rotating the glass and gargling the wine in my mouth (without spitting it off!). Few of us (especially the Finnish!) were angry for the ones who threw the left-over wine away so we decided to drink all the left-overs. So the wine tasting turned into wine abusing! I found my favorite and bought a bouttle. This amount of alcohol made us hungry, so we started to hunt a cozy bakery to eat a baguette. We didnt find one, so we end up in a dirty and suspicious kebab bar, where the bar tender didnt speak any English. Without more like 10 glasses of wine I wouldnt have entered that toilet - it was in the end of a narrow, stinky, dark tunnel. It was just as small, stinky and brown as I expected. (BTW there is one thing in French building style I dont understand - why to doors always open INSIDE?? For example, the tunnel was so narrow that the door could open only partly. This inconvenient also coused that I had difficulties to get out of the small toilet! How is it for big people, can they get out at all? Just wandering..) I ended open ordering a pita with French fries (??) because no one understood English.

Weird food in a dirty and weird place

After changing our clothes it was time for a gala dinner. The restaurant was really cold and of course we had put our neat small dresses! Anyway, the food was excellent. And the wine. After party was in La Voile where was only few in addition to us, music was way too loud and drinks were way too expensive (a beer 6€, a vodka with coke 10€, what?!). We danced there until 2 and then I walked home without shoes, it was definitely a wrong decision to take high heels! And I had to walk over 2 kilometers. In a bus a faced a cute hitting attempt from a German Erasmus student, who wrote in his address book as a name "the hot blond behind me" and gave it me to add my numnber :D I did not, but it was still pretty creative!

 26.6

Last night and I can feel it in my bones! We had a final discussion about the topics and my group made a summary of some lectures and had a presentation. Last thoughts included the word "serendipity" plus many of us miss Pascal Marion. We went to ice skating which was pretty funny thing - many of us couldnt even stand on ice skates while the Finnish were skating around like professionals (no wonder, we had ice-skating lessons 2 hours a week every winter in elementary school). 

After ice-skating we desperately needed something warm. So we went to the christmas market and bought some vin chaud = hot wine! Just as I and Karl got a huge cup in our hands, the others decided to go to cafe, so we had to drink our vin chaud extremely fast! This caused such a warm feeling that after a hot chocolate we decided to drink another one (not as fast!). Then we ate again some excellent food in a romantic small restaurant in old town. With one, of course. We had scheduled a pub crawl after that but it was pretty impossible to accomplish because all the pubs were so completely full that a group of 30 couldnt fit in any. Finally we found a nice place where we were entertained by a half-naked French group and we enjoyed 3 liters of whiskey with coke. Afterwards we went to the same night club we had been few nights before and it was just as full as before! We ended up playing some stupid games in a table and amusing the Frenchies around us. And it lasted and lasted and lasted until it was so late there was no more busses going (or so early, I would say). We took a metro (without a ticket, of course) to a closer station just to notice the first tram will go after an hour. So, after all the calories I had gained during the previous week, it was time to walk the rest 2 and half kilometers! Not too bad, it was only 6 o clock when we arrived "home", I had even 3 hours to sleep before I had to wake up and start my journey back to Tampere.

I had even so much energy, that I decided to do a city tour in Genevé. The biggest problem turned out to put my luggage in a locker! I needed some local cash, how inconvenient it is to be in non-EU- country! In money exchange they didnt want to change such a small amount of money so they asked me to go to ATM. Then I had a problem how I could brake this paper money into coins! The locker costed 6Fr, so I bought a Swiss chocolate which costed 11,5Fr, so this left me 8,5Fr. With my coins I went happily to the locker just to notice that my suitcase is too big for it and the bigger one would cost 9Fr, and I had only 8,5Fr! I tried to beg 0,5Fr but no one spoke English. I did not want to give up and take another 20Fr, so I decided to empty my suitcase so it would get a bit smaller and fit in the small one. And it did! I managed to put my empty suitcase and all the clothes in the locker and even close it. But then I faced another problem... I had a 5Fr coin and the biggest coin it can take is 2Fr! Crap, crap, crap, just when I managed to put my suitcase there! I decided to take a risk and leave it unopen while I try to brake my coin into smaller coins. It was not that easy since not so many spoke English. Finally I managed to do it and my stuff wasnt stolen yet AND I MANAGED TO CLOSE THE LOCKER!

And so I was happy and donated the rest of the money for a violist playing Mozart in the poshy, expensive streets of Genevé. All the 10 hour journey to Tampere I slept perfectly. Reality struck me when I had to pull my suitcase in 0 degrees, wind and rain, and finally 5 o clock in the morning reached my own bed. It was a hard trip but what else can I expect! Altghough I enjoyed the Vision in Luleå more (even I was in fever and it was damn cold), it was still pretty good experience!

In High Estiem.