Euro-Tour- 86 Exchange Students, 19 Days, 9 Countries (Days 1 to 5)

Day One;

I had an early start to the Euro-tour, waking up at 4 am so I could arrive in Joensuu on time of my 6:40am train to get to Turku which is in the South West corner of Finland.

It was a long train trip, but I met up with more and more of the exchangers as I got closer to Turku, so the time past without boredom.

We arrived in Turku at 2pm and took a taxi to the port where met up with all the 86 exchange students who we would be spending the next 19 days with.

We would first be taking an overnight ferry to Stockholm; it didn’t leave until 7pm so I spend the afternoon catching up with my friends on the grass at the bottom of Turku’s castle.

It felt so strange that Euro-tour was actually starting. I remember on Karkku Euro-Tour seemed like forever away. Some of the Oldies who were not coming on the Trip had also come to the harbour to say their final goodbyes, before they headed home ending their exchange.  The start trip also meant that when we returned to Finland most of the Oldies had only a few days or weeks before it was time for them to return to their home countries.

Leaving Turku

The ship we were on was HUGE and really fancy. The food was also really good, which is always nice.

After dinner we headed off to the Karaoke Disco for the night. Almost all the exchange students were there. Two groups of Australians sang some karaoke numbers as well as several Finns, while however many exchange students sang loudly alone and danced up a storm.

At one point a bald heavy metal type man came to the stage. His song choice began slowly and he began with his back to the audience. One exchange student who is a fan of this kind of music went into some kind of trance when the song started. As the song continued it picked up and our French Canadian friend began head banging, while we just looked on in amazement.

It was such a good way to begin the tour.

Day 2.

 We woke up, ate another delicious boat meal. (Overall this was probably the best food we got on Euro-tour) And headed out from our cabins, and onto the buses our home for the next 19 days. There were 2 buses and I was on bus 1. Affectionately known as the non-Latin bus.

We drove through Sweden making a quick stop, at Franssons Polkagristillverkning- a boiled sweets factory.

Our next stop on Swedish shores was at the harbour, so we could take the ferry to Denmark. We spend the trip on the top deck stretching our arms our so it looked like we were touching both Sweden and Denmark at the same time.

Copenhagen was hands down my favourite city of the whole tour. As soon as it came into sight it was amazing. The buildings are beautiful. The port that we came into was right in the middle of a group of really nice old buildings and wasn’t one of those large industrial ports.

The Statue of Hans Christian Anderson

That evening after a quick exploratory trip around the city with one of my friends, we headed to Tivoli the original amusement park for the evening. Going into the Tivoli was like walking into the past, it looks just like the movies set in the late 19^th Century. Even the modern rides had been made to look vintage.

A Clown in the Silent Pantamime in Tivoli

Day 3.

The hotel was so hot. I had forgotten what it is like to be in actual warm weather and I could not cope. But the rooms looked really cool because the metal of the bunk beds had been painted an ocean blue, so I liked this hotel.

We had a bus tour of the city. The highlight of this trip was seeing the Little Mermaid, the statue in Copenhagen of the character from the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. I also like seeing the rest of the city. Copenhagen is perhaps (Equal with Dresden) the most beautiful European City I have visited. And what I liked about it most was that there was art everywhere you looked. Every corner of Copenhagen there is something beautiful to find. I remember being told at my art school interview that Copenhagen is the art hotspot at the moment. And I believe it. It is now high on my places to live list.

Danish Guards

The Little Mermaid

We had a few hours of free time and a group of us decided to visit Christiania a free state in the middle of Copenhagen. This was a really interesting place to visit. The residents of Christiania make all their own houses so they are all unique and quirky. Like in the rest of Copenhagen there is art everywhere. In Christiania it is the murals and the houses. Photography is forbidden in Christiania, which kind of adds to the whole experience because the only thing you can take are your memories of the place. I really want to visit again and spend a day sketching, because really there is nowhere else in the world quite like Christiania.

That night we boarded our 3^rd ferry and headed off to Germany. It was comforting to be in a foreign language and be able to understand everything and communicate in it. It felt nice to be in Germany as well

We were staying the night in Bremen home to the Bremen musician. The Statue where there is a chicken, on a cat, on a dog, on a donkey. It was on the front cover of my year 8 German book so it was weird to see it in front of me in person. When we drove into the Hotel Car park our eyes were treated to the sight of thousands of German people rollerblading. It was a never-ending chain of people in fluorescent clothing wearing 4-wheeled shoes.

Day 4.

After departing Bremen at 8am we headed to the Netherlands. We stopped off at this type of dam. The road ran over it and on one side there was the ocean and on the other there was a lake.  

The Ocean

Our first tourism destination for the day was a clog and cheese factory. There were every type of wooden shoe you could imagine, high healed clogs and clogs painted like popular sports shoes. We frequented the gift shop where I was re-acquainted with Strumf-waffles which are probably one of the tastiest items of food available world wide, for many of my fellow exchange students it was their first meeting with the tasty devils, made out of 2 crispy waffle biscuits stuck together with luscious caramel.

But this location was filled with delightful flavours as the cheese factory next door contained the best cheese I have ever eaten in my life. And too take advantage of that I ate the greatest amount of cheese at once in my life. It was just so good.

Cheese!

The Cheese Shop and one of the Sampling Stations

And there was Green Cheese, that also tasted AMAZING!

We had lunch in a small Dutch village just outside of Amsterdam where we went souvenir shopping. I am now the proud owner of an Amsterdam tracksuit. What Style!

After that we (and our happy tummies) headed off for an afternoon in Amsterdam. This was the only city on our schedule that I had visited before and I was excited to go back after 3 years.

We visited the Anne Frank Museum, which is in the house that her family hid from the Nazi’s in. Otto Frank, Anne’s father had decided to keep the rooms empty rather then furnish them as they were during their time in the house. It was a really interesting museum, but I think I would have got more out of it if I had read her diary before visiting.

We had a boat tour of Amsterdam’s canals. Amsterdam is still beautiful but it has lost some of the excitement it held when I saw it as a 15 year old. I am still definitely going back there.

Our hotel was outside of Amsterdam and looked like a large stately home. But more importantly it was home to an EMU! I am a few of the other Australian girls were so excited to see it. One of the bad things about being away from home is that you get so excited when you see something from your home country. Over the tour we would talk to everyone we walked past with an Australian accent and take photos of everything that had something to do with Australia. You would think it would be the other way round, but no.

Day 5.

After almost missing the hotel breakfast because I woke up too late, I made it to the bus in time and we drove for Paris via Brussels, Belgium.

I really liked Brussels. It is a beautiful city that reminds me of something carefully scap-booked. The buildings are carefully decorated with tiny details, and all are really light making the city really beautiful.

In Brussels we had free time, during which I found some people with a basket of puppies and a hamburger phone which I am now the owner of. We drove past many important buildings and had lunch.

After that we drove onto Paris. During the trip we would always drive into the cities, entering them slowly and loosing the wow factor of being dropped into somewhere amazing. I had never been one of those people who desperately wanted to go to Paris, but by the time it was coming I was excited to see the famed city. I decided to blindfold myself and take it off once we were in the middle of the city. Which would not be until the next day.

We had French Macdonald’s before going to sleep. 

Having now eaten Maccas in 4 countries (not including Singapore when I was 11) I can now give you an educated ranking on how good they all are in comparison to each other. I would have to say Finnish is the best (Because the Maccas in Joensuu is really good, it is bad however in Helsinki so without the quality of the Joensuu Maccas the second place would be in first position), followed (surprisingly by) Russian, then by French and finally Australian Macdonald-which is definitely the worst.  

The Six Month Mark!

As of last Friday, I am half way through my exchange year.

It feels really strange and I can't believe I have been away from home for 6 months already. The time has gone so quickly but I have learned a lot and had a lot of fun.  I am living my Finnish life and I think I have gotten into the swing of everything. 

But I will be back in Perth before I know it.

Finnish Graduation Day

 Although Liikunta paiva was the last full day of school, the year officially ended on Saturday with the graduation ceremony. 

There are 3 years of high school in Finland and the Abi's (featured in the Penkkarit article back in April) had finished there exams and it was time for them to receive their hats. In Finland it is traditional for all school leavers (who have passed their exams) to receive a special hat. Although they have to buy it themselves the graduation ceremony means that they have the right to wear it. 

It is a big deal and the whole school attends the ceremony as well as all of the Abi's families, godparents and close friends. There are speeches, musical items and every Abi receives their hats and gives a bow or curtsy to the audience. The graduation is held in the local church, designed by the Finnish architect who also designed the Sydney Opera house. It is a really large building that seats a huge amount of people and that morning every inch of space was take by someone, there were that many people there.

On my third day in Lieksa I auditioned for the local choir. Choir has become one of my favourite things to go to during the week. I always look forward to Wednesday afternoon. It was a really good idea to join the choir because I have made friends with the other girls in choir and also learnt some useful Finnish phrases like ‘do you still play the banjo’ from the songs we have learnt. Being in the choir also meant that I got to take part in the graduation ceremony. So it was kind of special for me too, and it was nice to be a part of the school community rather then sit in the audience with no idea what was going on. 

 

After the ceremony we headed back to school for ice-cream and to collect our marks. I received a perfect score in English.

Liikunta paiva-Sports Day

School finished on the 3rd of May and to cap off the school year, Lieksan Lukio held a sports day. I was really excited for it, sport is become probably my favourite thing to do in Finland. It brings everyone together, everyone talks to me and its fun.

In the morning of sports day I went kayaking. It was really nice but I ended up really wet because every time I went to paddle I would accidently dip my hand into the coldish water.

After paddling we had a tournament between the different classes. There were 4 games in total, the first tug of war.

The second was a piggy back race.

Milk is perhaps the most universally popular drink in Finland, everyone drinks it and at most meals. At school everyone drinks it with lunch. So the third game involved milk. Milk throwing specifically.

And the third was some kind of obstacle  course.

I finished to day playing Pesäpallo (Finnish Baseball).


And what made this day extra good is that we got hamburgers for lunch with the best lettuce I have ever seen in Finland.

 

So it was quite possibly the best school day ever.

District Conference

On the 27^th of May at 1 pm I set off with the president of the Rotary Club of Lieksa for the Rotary district conference. Lieksa is part of Rotary District 1430, and this year the conference was to be held in Lappeenranta a few hours (about 4) south of Lieksa.

It was going to be a long drive and we needed to be in Lappeenranta between 8:30 and 9:30 on the Saturday morning. Going the day before meant we didn’t have to wake up early and we could do some sight seeing on the way there.

The first stop was the Valamon Luostari, an Orthadox Monestry. In English it is called New Valamo. Established in 1940 after 190 monks from the Valaan Monestry in Karalia (Russian Karalia) were evacuated to Eastern Finland. The decided to stay in Heinävesi about 2 hours south west of Lieksa.

Valamo was such a lovely place. It is a tourist attraction but it is run by the people who live there. The women are dressed in traditional Russian orthodox clothes and the monks were dressed in their costumes. (Although I did see one younger monk with a really fancy sports bag).

The paintings in the church were fantastic, (I know I am only 18 and I havn’t seen much of the world but) they were some of the best religious artwork I have ever seen. There was a perfect attention to detail and I wish I had taken my camera with me (although the photos would not have given them justice). And yes I forgot my camera, which was a huge shame because the place was so beautiful.

It was a lovely day the sun was shining and the air was pleasantly cool.

I also saw an art exhibition from a contemporary artist who works in crystal and metal. I hadn’t seen artwork like that which made it really interesting. And we met a friendly old monk who is always waiting for interesting foregners to visit the monestry. He is really hoping for a French or Greek visitor but he had some questions about Australia.

We stayed overnight in Mikkeli and arrived in Lappeenranta at 9am. I was straitaway met by Maddi (also from Perth) and Ana (from N.S.W) when I arrived and all the other exchange students pretty soon after. There are 20 in district 1430 and we are all scattered around the area-most of us living very far from the nearest exchange student. It was so nice too see them again, I had not seen Julia (from Adelaide for 4 months) and the others for 2 months (since Russia tour) and there were a few I had not met yet.

We had our own program for the weekend, and would participate in the conference as well.

On Saturday we visited a paper mill, which makes magazine paper for 80% of the world’s magazines. Next time you are reading one just think it came from Lappeeenranta.

The Exchange Students of District 1430 decked out to visit the paper factory.

From there the Rotarians had planned for us to go rowing on Lake Saimaa, however as it was raining there was a quick change of plans and we ended up going shopping. And Lappeenranta is a good place to shop, but not to buy. It is close to the Russian boarder so there are many many Russians in the city (more then every second person we walked past was Russian) and that pushes prices higher. But in chain stores to prices are the same as in all over Finland and I managed to buy 2 new dresses.

We were going on a cruise with the Rotarians in the lake and before we went we hiked up a moderately large hill to an old fortress to look over the harbour. Lappeenranta is such a beautiful city, I hope to visit again.

Lappeenranta Harbour

In some ways it reminds my a bit of the older parts of Sydney, because it is very urban but the nature is interspersed throughout the city. It was however cleaner then Sydney.

On the cruise we were given raffle tickets to sell to the Rotarians. And this is where I saw the true talents and passion of the Brazilians. They were so excited to sell the tickets and they sold them fast, it became a competition between the different raffle ticket selling groups, ending in the Brazilians selling all their tickets and the remaining tickets from the other two groups.

After this we all went up onto the top deck of the boat and ended up singing the national anthems from all our respective countries. This was maybe one of the highlights of the exchange, not only do you get to know one country and its local people, but being an exchange student mean you also learn a bit about the home countries of all the other exchange students. And make really good friends from all over the world.

The District Ball was that night. There was only one shower available and a 30 minute time frame for 15 girls to get through it but we managed and were on time. Dressed in our blazers, decorated in pins from our friends from all over the world, we took our place at the exchange student table. 

After dinner, the exchange students introduced themselves to the Rotarians. We had been asked to give a short reflection on our year. There are two groups of Exchange Students, oldies and newbies. The oldies are nearing the end of their exchange and arrived in Finland almost a year ago. The are all from the northern hemisphere. The newbies, at this point in time include me and the 22 others who arrived together in January. There are 4 in my district, all from Australia. We felt we couldn't reflect on our time well because at the time of the conference we had only been in Finland for 4 months. So Maddi had the idea that we would follow the oldies, introduce ourselves and then give the Rotarians a small taste of Australia, because we had only really had a taste of Finland. 

 We played Australian Charades (I had to jump around like a Kangaroo) and sung 'Give me a Home Among the Gum Trees' together. 

The exchange students finished with a performance of the 'Banana Dance' a dance popular amongst Exchange students in Finland. 

The next day, we went on a bus tour of Lappeenranta with the spouses of the Rotarians, and had a final lunch together before saying our goodbyes. It felt a bit strange because Euro-tour was the next week so we would only be separated for 5 days and then it was the actual goodbye for some people who would not be going on Euro-tour. But it was the last time the district would be together as a big group.

I had to leave first because I had the longest drive home. 

We stopped off at Patsaspuisto, a sculpture garden. It was amazing, there were thousands of life sized sculptures of cartoon-like people complete with human teeth. It was slightly creepy but probably one of the coolest places in Finland, and I think I will have too make some similar sculptures for my backyard.

There was even a Kangaroo!

Presentation on Australia, to the Rotary Club of Lieksa

When you are an exchange student, your main responsibility is to be an ambassador for your home country. You may be the first person from your home that people have met, so how you behave will influence how they view everyone from your country.

Part of your job as an ambassador is tell people about where you come from.

So every Rotery Exchange Student makes a speech about their home to their host Rotary Club. Mine was on the 27th of May.

I made a pact with myself at the start of my year that I would do it in Finnish. The only problem was there was no way I would be able to write an hour long speech about Australia in Finnish.

So I wrote the whole thing in English.

And it was translated by my friends at Leiksan Lukio, and my Youth Exchange Officer.

So I did it, 1 hour in Finnish. It was not the best performance, but it was understandable and in Finnish and that's whats most important.

And I just want to thank everyone who helped me, because it would have been impossible without them.

Kiitoksia paljon.