Final Days

Huzzah! I've just finished reading my 800 page environmental law textbook for my LAST exam tomorrow. So I'm free to deal with other thought provoking questions of the universe, such as 'what is the point of red velvet cake?'* 'who made that yellow snow outside my building, a person or a puppy?' and 'how the heck am I going to fit all my worldly possessions back into my backpack?'**

For what is possibly my last post for this trip, I thought it would be fun to write a list of what I have loved here and what I miss from back home. I love lists. And then I can smoosh these things together and make a perfect Gab Land in my mind! Whee! I'm looking forward to being back in Aus, although I'll probably have a mental breakdown when I realise my adventure-fest semester is over.

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Walking into any cafe anywhere and watching a person personally make me my very own fresh cup of coffee with an expresso machine. No stale, burnt filter coffee in sight!
• Drinking in pubs and bars that serve cocktails, and food to soak up the drinking. I'm drooling over the thought of a pub meal.
• Going back to uni where there's actually interaction between people, with teaching and discussion and thinking about the law instead of just reading and exams.
• Being allowed to wear shoes inside again. (related: not needing to be ashamed of my holey socks)
• Sunshine! All the people who manage to live here full time, year in year out, you're brave and resilient and I salute you. 
• Cooking in my spacious and fully equipped kitchen. Although it has been a fun creative challenge finding ways make yummy food with none of the required implements. 
• Complete strangers (bus drivers, retail workers, crazy people) who are friendly and want to have a chat, or even just smile at you.
• My bed. My glorious wonderful bed! I may never leave. Also access to a couch, my butt is sick of sitting on plastic chairs 24/7.
• And of course, getting back to my partner in crime and lovely friends and family.Yippee!

Things I'm really going to miss:

• All restaurants having the ability to split the bill into any number of portions, even if you've shared entrees or a bottle of wine! It's utterly brilliant, and they don't even hate you for it.
• The beautiful large and entirely openable windows in every building. None of this security/fly screen bullshit ruining my view!
• Being able to eat a healthy meal at university for €2.50, including unlimited bread and salad.
• The ability to have a puppy (or any other type of pet) living in your university apartment, no questions asked. And being able to take your puppy ANYWHERE; on the overnight train, hotels, buses, etc.
• Rent for students that is actually affordable. I paid €42 a week to share a 2 bedroom apartment. Can you imagine that happening at uni accomodation in Canberra these days? No.
• A country without hideous McMansions, ruining the world with their waste and pretension. Cute wooden houses are the best. I want one.
• Reindeer wandering around on the roads being dopey and cute.
• Frolicking in the snow and smashing frozen puddles, even despite scary moments of slipping on the ice and falling on my butt.
• Superdooper fast internet speeds, thanks to the happy coincidence of being put in Kuntotie 3.
• Being able to trot off to other European countries in an hour or two, without paying thousands of dollars.
• Seeing Avocado flourish in his natural bear habitat. He sure is going to miss chasing those squirrels.
• The people I've been lucky enough to meet here, of course! But I'll see them again. One of my favourite things about being Australian is our propensity to follow through with travel plans and turn up on friend's doorsteps across the world. So watch out =)

Finland, if I could ever learn your insane language I would totally live here someday.
Rovaniemi, you are a strange little creature and I have loved my time with you.

Sad panda! And sad bear.

*there isn't one, it's just chocolate cake dyed red to make your poop look diseased.
**find Hermione's magical storage bag.

Russia Trip

The night before we left for Russia, Simon, Paul, Adele and I headed up to Ounasvaara to have a nice campfire, makes s'mores, watch Northern lights, and have a nice outdoorsy time.

Riiight there.

We thought we were in luck because the firepit ignited itself when we poked at it, but it took a bit of fiddling by Simon and moral support by the rest of us to get this beautiful fire going. We toasted marshmallows, but had a bit of difficulty making s'mores because by then the chocolate and biscuits were frozen solid. Still delicious though! A bottle of Bacardi later we stumbled back down the hill, with Simon making us run up and down all the cross country skiing slopes, and also trying to cut down a Christmas tree with his knife.

Toasty.

Although we had been talking about it for a while, it was a bit of a surprise when our trip to St Petersburg actually became really happening! There were a few small hiccups, such as someone accidentally misplacing our ticket for the ferry, but a bit of running around in Helsinki fixed everything.

Airport shenanigans

The overnight ferry from Helsinki was exactly what you would expect: pretty grim in an overly tacky way full of Russian people falling over themselves with drunk. We were lucky enough to be staying in the bowels of the ship (even under the car level!), probably right next to the man shoveling coal into the engine. Our neighbours included a man who flailed around and fell on the floor trying to open his door for a good 20 minutes before some staff came to help him in. It all makes sense when you see the duty free alcohol though, reediculously low prices. Basically cheaper to buy a bottle of vodka in the shop than to buy a single drink at the bar.

Soaking up the shiny tackery.

Cheeep booze!

Going through customs once we arrived in Russia was the scariest thing ever, because we're a group of 8 on a short visa-free visit, and having everyone with a copy of all the right documents, arrival and departure cards, etc. is a bit of a nightmare. As you can imagine the border guards were SUPER FRIENDLY and LOVING LIFE. But they let us all in without any trouble which was wonderful! All our worst case scenario discussions paid off because if you're super paranoid things usually work out alright.

Finding our hostel was a little bit suspenseful; as we were only paying 10 euros a night we were prepared for some dodginess. When Jamie led us and all our luggage up a damp, dark, cruddy and neverending staircase we didn't know what we'd find on the other side of the door, but thankfully the hostel was quite nice, with a spacious room for the 8 of us and beanbags to sweeten the deal.

We saw beautiful and crazy places like the Spilled Blood Cathedral, and the Hermitage Museum where our eyeballs exploded from looking at insanely rich and ornate artworks and general madness of decoration. Does a room really need a gold encrusted ceiling and twenty giant gold and crystal chandeliers and a throne and a jade urn as big as a bathtub? A lot of the time it takes away from the artwork on display because it's too over the top. There were renovations going on somewhere in the building, obviously they had been moving stuff around and one whole section was full of big heavy important looking boxes clearly filled with expensive artefacts, just sitting in the hallway between display cases. Is this the only museum in the world that doesn't have mega storage facilities? It was a little bit strange. All in all a surreal and amazing place to visit!

Inside the Hermitage

Spilled Blood Cathedral. It has a longer fancier name that I can't remember.

The food in St Petersburg was so much better than I could have imagined. I was expecting a pretty basic 'food is for nutrients and energy, not pointless deliciousity' Finnish approach, but was pleasantly surprised on all occasions. We even got to go to nice places and pay barely anything to eat there, everything in the city was gloriously cheap. Of course, we felt obligated to check out the grotty places too. My main problem with cyrillic is that it looks enough like our alphabet that my brain thinks I can understand it when clearly I have no idea. Although I must admit, I do enjoy feeling like I'm living in the Sims.

A rather worthless wad of cash!

Tee

One taxi driver told us that if you want to drive in St Petersburg, you have to be born there. It's absolute madness, on the scale of horrible cinematic car chase sequences with swerving and dodging and brushes with death (passengers and pedestrians). It makes driving on the autobahns in Germany seem like a relaxing Sunday jaunt in the countryside. Did I mention there usually aren't working seatbelts? My strategy was not to look out the window too much and squeeze Simon's hand a lot. After a slightly terrifying taxi ride where our two taxi drivers decided to do some drag racing, it was nice to see some wonderful ballet. Simon was lucky enough to escort myself and four other beauteous ladies to the ballet Giselle at the famous Mariinsky Theatre.Our seats were quite good, but we got opera glasses anyway to feel fancy and sophisticated. The dancers, sets, music, everything was beautiful.

We struggled out of bed the last morning (some more than others) and headed off to Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and got to see some of a Russian Orthodox church service. There was lots of singing, lots of priests, and lots of decoration. They like it fancy! Next door is the graveyard where Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky and other important Russians are buried. They do a good spooky graveyard, with lots of twisty trees, crows, fogginess and crumbly mossy graves.

This lion was my favourite.

The boat ride back to Helsinki made everyone miserable, partly because of the vomitalicious rocking and partly because we all knew that it was the start of the sad goodbyes. Elena left us at the train station, followed by Jamie, and then I had to put lovely Simon back on the plane, and today Nadine, Floor and I had to leave Adele in Helsinki, where she will shortly be taking off for home!

The snow has finally settled in at Rovaniemi, but everything is feeling a bit dark and miserable in my little empty apartment. The 810 page textbook I have to read in the next week doesn't really help, nor does little things of Simon's lying around! I have two weeks to do my final exam and get my life together before I head for home. Eep!

Taking over the kiddie play area

Kuusamo and Himmeli

It's getting quite cold here in Rovaniemi, -10 during the day and -15 in the evening. All anyone ever wants to do is eat and sleep, so there's been a good amount of both on the agenda. We went to Bull Bar and Simon tried to eat himself to death by ordering the 800g ribs, which he started at dinner and polished off for breakfast the next day. They even had a 3 kilo option! Delicious, delicious madness.

For a point of reference, compare the slab of meat with the size of Simon's leg under the table.

Adele photobombing my gigantic burger and mega fries.

I was determined to take Si to Nili, the most amazing Lappish food restuarant in town. They have a creamy wild mushroom soup that would seriously be included in my last meal request. It was immensely fun seeing his mind being blown by the delicious perfectly cooked reindeer!

About to head out into the freezing cold for some pre-dinner frozen puddle smashing.

All the interior design is done by the talented Irene, including these cute little bathroom signs!

We also continued our journey into Christmas spirit land by having a baking and Christmas movie night. We decorated delicious gingerbread cookies and drank hot punch and watched Love Actually while Simon fell asleep.

The weekend just past we went with an excellent bunch of people to Kuusamo for the Ruka Nordic ski jumping world cup. We took a giant van and stayed in a really cute wooden cabin with a fireplace, sauna, good kitchen and not nearly enough beds for seven people! Simon had his first ever sauna, his comment on the subject is "it hurt." I think it's just something you get used to!

This is our snowman, note his excellent hair and appreciation for Koff beer.

Us non-Europeans didn't really know what we were doing at the world cup, but luckily our resident ski jump expert Nadine was around to stop us accidentally walking up the competition skiing track and explain the appropriate words to yell at the competitors. It was really fun seeing how high and far they can fly through the air!

All rugged up and ready to watch, with the help of some mint liquor spiked hot chocolate.

For some insight into how freaking huge the jump was, the tiny speck you see is a person!

It would have been nice to stay for longer in our little cabin and have snowball fights and build snowmen every night, but we had to get back to Rovaniemi for our himmeli making lesson with Irene the next day. Himmeli is a traditional Finnish craft based on geometric diamond shapes made out of barley straw threaded together in amazing designs. The possibilities are basically endless, but it's pretty tricky to thread all the shapes together! I'll upload a picture of mine when it's finished, but here is one with the same kind of design that I didn't prepare earlier, just to assist my bad explanation.

http://andibelle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/himmeli.jpg

Irene also made us delicious things to eat, we got to try bear sausage and it was amazing, so rich and smoky. I want more, but I couldn't find it at the supermarket today dammit. Simon gorged himself on blueberries to the amusement of all, lucky Irene has a whole giant freezer full of all the berries she picked earlier in the year. It'd be nice to come back here one year in the middle of summer and do berry and mushroom picking! Yum.

Me drinking beer out of my very own kuksa, expertly made by Irene's husband Ari.

I have to include a link to Irene and Ari's website, http://www.hornwork.fi/index.php/english because they are just the most talented craftspeople and the loveliest people you could imagine. I'd like to stay here and learn Lappish crafts until the end of time!

The Northern lights are getting a lot stronger, so hopefully we'll head out tonight and try to spot some good ones. It's almost St Petersburg time, so another blog shouldn't be far off, provided everything goes okay and no-one (Adele) creates an international incident!

Simon & Gabfunkel Time

The Hon. Simon Longworth will be writing a blog today, for some direct insight and hardhitting analysis while I finish my shitty essay.

Hello, my name is Simon. Today, I will be writing a guest blog. Whilst the official title of the blog is 'Simon and Gabfunkel Time', I believe that a more appropriate name is 'boy from hot place goes to cold place, makes snowball, gets cold nose, enjoys greatly'. I will be documenting the adventures I have been on with lovely Gab over the last few days in Rovaniemi.

I'm sure all of you readers of this blog are interested in the quality of the Gab and Simon reunion at the airport! The terminal was too small for an overly theatrical performance, but rest assured it was still reported in the local news media as the feel good story after the weather!

Since I've never written a blog before, I will follow the formula  of a nice picture and then some words. The first day of my adventure was rather noneventful. It was cold and icy and I was beyond tired and there was no snow. I ate Brie on bread and went to bed. Then it snowed! I've never seen snow come out of the sky before, so Gab and I went trotting in it around town! We did cheesy things, such as writing in it and stomping on puddles.

The following week has been a mix of staying inside looking out the window at the snow and watching squirrels play in the trees, and excellent walking adventures into the city over frightening old creaky bridges or to the top of cute lookout towers out of town and in the forest.

I'd particularly like to focus on the lookout tower! I'd discussed it with Gab, and she had been there before when the view was incredible, so we walked a couple of kilometres on some frisbee-golf paths and along a rocky track to the tower. Once at the top, we were greeted with this amazing panorama of Rovaniemi and it's surrounds:

Disclaimer: it was very foggy and in no way Gab's fault that we could not see anything  (the previous was typed under fear of death)

Something else that definitely deserves mention is the quality of the drinking establishments I have been to. I can forgive them for not opening until 3, not serving food, not filling my pint all the way to the top, playing bizarre Finnish covers of 'I shot the sheriff', and serving Fosters, because one of them has a giant fish and fake fireplace and wonderful chairs for sitting on:

And this sticker in the men's bathroom (which you need to navigate a spiral staircase to get to [perfect for drunk people!]):

Also, everybody here rides bikes in the snow.

A prime example of a 'bike'

None of the bikes are particularly designed for the snow or ice, and I think there must be a lot of falling going on around here. I also experienced my first freezing cold day here! I decided to go for a walk when it was -14, and found this bear:

 
I should also mention exactly how pretty all this snow is! It turns regular weeds into snow flowers:

 
Normal trees into Christmas trees:
 

Normal lakes and rivers into amazing frozen bodies of water:
 

This is the river.

It looks like the river is fighting with the shore - there was smashed ice everywhere!

And substations into frightening soviet-era spy installations!

 
As for food, I've eaten reindeer bagels, giant pizza, crap Chinese, eggnog, deeeelicious Austrian rummy fruit punch, waffles, and fun little round Finnish potato breads!

This pizza-based ecosystem was quite difficult to conquer

 
I also took the opportunity to learn a little about Laplandic (?) [editor's note: Lappish] culture by visiting Arktikum. It was scarily refreshing to go somewhere that was basically saying 'humans are buggering the environment and the climate. The glaciers are stuffed, the toxins in the soil are ruining our waterways, and we desperately need to manage this. Climate change is real.'

There was also an exhibit on Rovaniemi during the second world war. It sounds to me like Finland was in a very nasty position in the middle of a Nazi/Stalinist sandwich, resulting in Rovaniemi being levelled by the Nazis when they left Finland.



I must also mention the Saami exhibit. Arktikum had the most fantastic array of artifacts, and many of them were the cutest little clothings I have ever seen! I don't know how they wore them without freezing to death, but I'm sure some added dead bears draped around them would have made all the difference!

The Finnish also make some freakin' incredible knives. We went to the Martiini factory outlet, and I decided to spend heaps of money on some rather fancy kitchen knives when I get to Helsinki. Finally, I feel the need to talk about something more serious i.e. Christmas decorations. We decorated Gab's cute little house! I don't have any pictures yet, but here is a picture of me being decorated instead!

I must thank Gab for the opportunity to write this blog. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed lying in bed putting off writing it!

The en

d

co-authoring conspirators!

 

Marraskuussa

Don't worry, my lack of posting lately isn't because I've been off conquering the world secretly, but because I've been spending most days hunched over my desk in terrible lighting, reading until my eyes bleed.

It sounds excessive, because I only need to pass my subjects in order to get credit for them at home. But I promise, I'm not being a mega-nerd, assessment in Finland is just CRAZY. It's not difficult, just crazy. Here is an example:

I'm studying International Criminal Law, and assessment is one 100% exam. The only study material is the 600 page textbook, so you'd think as long as I focused on a few major topics and knew them pretty well I'd be fine to get through the exam. But in exams here, they don't want you to show your knowledge or give analysis, they're just checking that you've read the book. So they can pick out any obscure little idea from any page of the textbook and make you write an essay on it. So I have no choice but to read the whole book cover to cover (and take copious notes because I don't have a photographic memory) and regurgitate stuff for the exam. It's a boringgg way to learn. Makes me appreciate how it's done back home, learning to solve problems instead of learning to memorise stuff.

Anyway, that's all quite dull. There are more exciting things on the horizon such as fire sculptures tonight and Simon visiting in 11 days and a future trip to Russia!

Rovaniemi has this annual event called Jokivalkeat or RiverLights, where students from the local unis and schools make big sculptures out of wood and hay and flammable things, set them up next to the river and set fire to them. It's a pyromaniacs dream come true. It was pretty cool to watch, and I requisitioned Adele's camera to take some photos.

This one toppled over section by section at the end!

As well as things on fire, there were lanterns

We're in the process of organising a cruise to St Petersburg in December, it's the most convenient way to have a short visit without going through the hoohaa of getting visas. It should be pretty awesome, I don't really know what to except! There's 8 of us going including my beloved, and we'll have to recreate some Titanic-esque lower class citizen fun for the boat trip. We even have the necessary Irishman.

It STILL hasn't snowed in Rovaniemi, the most irritating thing is that if you look on the extended weather forecast they guarantee it, but by the time it gets to that day the forecast has changed from -5 and snowing to +5 and raining. I don't understand how meteorology is so imprecise, I swear back in the day it was more accurate than it tends to be now. Maybe I'm imagining it...

Snuggly warm but no snow to play in!

Return to Finland

The rest of our time in Berlin was really good. Although I'd been feeling unsure about going to the concentration camp, I'm really glad that I went. In typical gab and dad style we walked too far on the way there and missed our turn off, getting lost and then ending up on the opposite side of the camp to the entrance. We were going to have to walk all the way back round, which would've taken ages, but luckily a German couple (the woman was holding a knife) emerged from the forest and offered to give us a lift. They were super dooper lovely and so friendly as we tried to talk to each other in different languages. It was a strong comparison between those local Germans and the horrible stories we heard about the evil people who worked in the concentration camp.

Only one moment of hideous insensitivty occured while we were visiting the camp, when we were in the hospital and morgue building. The place still has that awful antiseptic hospital smell after all this time, and even if you didn't know anything about it you just get that feeling that bad things have happened here as soon as you walk in. A group of Spanish tourists decided they needed a big cheesy group photo huddled around one of the autopsy beds. I glared at them with all the glares that I possess.

Another of my favourite Berlin things is the Neues Museum, I think their Egyptian section is better than the one in the British Museum. Less enormous statutes but a lot more smaller and amazingly detailed artefacts, including the crazy famous Nefertiti's head statue and lots of others of Akenhaten and his family. The sad part of this story is that my camera did an unfortunate disappearing act so I can't show you pretty pictures. I left it in the downstairs lounge of our hostel, and it got handed in to lost property there. JOY! No, then it did a disappearing act. I plagued them for two days regarding its whereabouts, and the last I heard is that they'll mail it to me. Not feeling very optimistic at this point, but we'll see. I have the memory card though, cause it was in my computer. So that's something. But yes, these plain old words are all I can give you at this point. I apologise.

Our final activity on the last afternoon was to walk along the East Side Gallery in the pouring rain. Our flight the next morning was at 8am, so we had to get up at 5am in order to be there on time. We went through security and were trapped in this tiny little gate area of the airport whose only facilities were a toilet and a pretzel stand. And THEN they told us that our flight had been delayed for an hour and a half. Blurgh.

We eventually got to Helsinki, which didn't overly impress me. Granted we were only in the city centre for a limited amount of time, but I just felt like it was a bit bland, with nothing but fancy designer clothes stores on every street. Killing time waiting for my train to arrive was very uneventful! I was worried about dad finding his way back to the aiport on the bus and getting his flight back to Aus safely without me, but he was fine. I was a big cry-ey mess when I had to leave on the overnight train to Rovaniemi, we had such a great holiday and it's so rare that I get to spend large amounts of time with my daddy. I had a very bumpy and rattly sleep back to Rovaniemi, but I had my little sleeping cabin to myself so that was a plus. This continent's tolerance of dogs always amazes me, I'd say 30% of the people on the train had their puppy with them. Much easier and less stressful than putting him on a plane I guess! I can just imagine the response of Countrylink back in Australia if I proposed bringing my non-seeing eye dog with me on a 12 hour overnight train ride.. not bloody likely.

Since being back I'm trying to study and living in constant terror of failing everything and not being able to track down the textbooks I need and not understanding what exam days I need to apply for. It's all very confusing to me, but as my course convenors need a good week or so to get back to my emails, there's not much I can do except keep reading and taking notes on anything with pages.

Giorgia and I went to see some Finnish theatre last night, it was a very surreal experience watching plays mostly in Finnish, and also hearing Finnish people laugh and giggle! As soon as dad and I had arrived back in Finland the change in people's behaviour was instantaneous. No more jolly customer service for us! Just blank solemn faces and slight nods to indicate yes. Lucky not all Finns are like that or I'd lose my mind. I try to smile at particularly stern people I come across to convince them that maybe they wont die if they try it.

 And that's where I'm up to!

Here are a few older pictures just for some colour and interest, and to reward you for reading this far.

Dad and Avoc sharing a moment in Copenhagen

That's me, at the Pergamon museum.

Berlin

Firstly, Berlin is amazing. I'm really glad we decided to stay 5 nights here because everything is so interesting and fun and cheap and wonderful. We're staying at the Heart of Gold Hostel. Based o'course on Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I'm writing this from the comfort of my very own big red chesterfield sofa, looking at a big mural of the whale that materialised in outer space and had seconds to come to terms with its existence before it splatted on the ground.

Here's one I prepared earlier!

One thing I can't get over is how delicious and cheap the food is here. Usually in big cities I expect food to be good but pricey. Here, we can spend about €5 each and get a delicious meal any moment of the day. Same with the beer! We went on a walking tour yesterday and afterwards the guide, us and some others went to the pub. It was so beautifully Germanishly organised, every table has its own keg and taps and touchscreen, you choose a number and press it before you pour your own beers, and the computer keeps track of how much you've drunk and splits the bill exactly between everyone at the end. Magic!! Even better, you can compete with other tables, the number of pints drunk by each table in the pub  is shown on a big screen, and you can even compete with other pubs across Germany! And at €2.30 a litre, there's no excuse not to go overboard.

I was pretty excited to eat my first currywurst, but it turned out to be a big sausage drowned in 95% tomato sauce and 5% curryishness served with some bread. Sorry guys, but that's called a sausage sammich and we've kind of got it covered in Australia. I give it a solid 5.5/10.

At the pub! Unfortunately you can't see the magic of the computer screen at work tallying up everyone's drinks.

Currywurst. Good drinking food, I'll give it that.

We found our way home quite tipsily at the end of the night, stopping to buy apple pastries from the station. There had been a lot of knowledge and beer stuffed into my head over the course of the day! Our tour guide was great, so enthusiastic about everything to do with German history. As much as I enjoy looking at impressive buildings, getting the stories and finding out the little coincidences that made history happen is what makes it amazing. I felt really emotional hearing about how the Berlin Wall, which everyone considered to be a totally permanent feature, was basically brought down by the complete stuff up of a press conference by an incompetent politician. It's stupid little things like that that get things done in this world.

We visited the Pergamonmuseum today, it always blows my mind that the German's managed to carry  basically a whole town of artefacts back home with them. Tomorrow we're going to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Going to Anne Frank's House in Amsterdam last year made me so upset, I'm usually not that interested in being touristy at places where terrible things have happened. However, I think the attrocities committed here are one of those things you can't really get your head around until you've seen the place where it happened, where it isn't just a number or a statistic. But if there's dumb tourists taking a million photos of themselves like it's Disneyland I'm going to be pissed. We'll see.

Dad can't decide whether to be fierce or smiley.