i seriously just spent over two hours typing up a huge amazing detailed thing and sicne i took so long it kicked me out when i published it. LAME. not a happy camper right now. perhaps tomorrow when i am not so sick of typing i will try it again. LAME LAME LAMELAMELAME :(

We decided to go -all the family- to Helsinki. Bought tickets for the train on the net and headed to the station. Here we noticed that the tickets were ... for the next day, and at the desk they made some problems with it blah,blah.. we had to buy new ones. Ola and Chris had to wait for cash few days till they accept the wrong dates and send money back:/

But the weather was great, the train ride not long and so we got to the capital.
We had nice walk to the main place - with the white church - then we headed to the port where we ate some snacks and rest a bit and stayed a while at the promenade.  There was some kind of openair concerts and street artists making some tricks.
As we had women with us - shopping was in our shcedule as well. Fortunately it was sunday and not every place was open :)))

We rode back to Karis/Karjaa in the evening. The little Viki was sleepey - but we not that much that we could miss our night-beer;) (going from the station we made in time to buy some % before they closed- u know alko-curfew here at 21.00;)

Short flight over the Baltic Sea and off i go from the airport to the city. Hm... there is a train every hour leaving for Karis/Karjaa so if i come in the afternoon or in the evening it doesn't change a lot since i want stay at my friends place for a week, right?
So now - guess what i did?
Hindi ka tama! hahaha! I went first for a short walk around the city center and then - not before - i came to visit the 'kingdom of the darkness' :))
Sure i rode the Helsinki metro and took tonns of pics, i asked even one girl to take a picture of me inside the metro train - (Lili: it was not the usual wtf-look it was something much hard-core! haha) so this is what she did: she opened her eyes (i was almost afraid they will jump out of her head!), opened her mouth (that i could see her tonsils) and looked at me like i would have asked her to piss on my chest haahha - but she did finally (i mean the picture, not the piss) hahahaha ;)

A comienzos de primavera del 2008 (parte norte del mundo) estube en Helsinki. Una ciudad relativamente chica y nueva (1800), con construcciones que me hicieron acordar a cuando viví en Alemania. Es la primera vez que pude aprovechar unos días en un viaje de trabajo al exterior, y la primer vez que hago un viaje solo.
At the beginnings of spring 2008 I was in Helsinki. A small and new city (1800) with buildings that remaind me of the time that I lived in Germany. It was the first time that I can enjoy some days in a working travel. Also, was the first time that I traveled alone.

La mayor parte del timpo me la pasé caminando por el centro y alrededores, y sacando cuantas fotos pude.
The greate part of the time I spent it walking in the center and the surroundings, and taking as much photos as I could.

La catedral, es un edificio no muy grande, pero que tiene unas escaleras gigantes para llegar a ella. En esos días, estaban organizados en Helsinki un montón de conciertos de música eclesiástica, en varias de las iglesias de la zona, y pude disfrutar de uno de los ensayos en el órgano de la catedral.
The catedral is not so big, but it has this huge grades to get to it. In those days there were a lot of eclesiastic oncerts organiced in Helsinki, and I could enjoy one of the practices in the catedral.

Los días estaban muy agradables, pero de noche se puso bien frío. Para mi suerte, no llovió mas que el último día, cuando ya tenía que salir en tren para Tampere.
The days where template, but cold at nights. For my luck, it just rained the last day, when I took the train to Tampere.

La gente del lugar es muy amable, y según ellos mismos, se devía a que los días estaban mas soleados y no hacía ya tanto frío.
The people was very nice, and according to themselves, it was because the days where sunny and not so cold anymore.

Hay un pequeño mercado pegado a donde sale el ferry para Suomelinna, que es muy agradable a la vista y muy acogedor. El único problema es que cerraban temprano y no pude entrar cuando volví de la isla.
There is a small market near the port where the ferry to Suomelinna arrives, that is vere beatiful. The only problem is that it was closed early, and I couldn't visit it when I was back from Suomelinna.

Un punto negativo para destacar de Finlandia, es que es muy caro. Cualquiera que vaya de paseo, tiene que tener en cuenta que los precios son casi el doble del resto de Europa (Alemania, España, Francia...)
A black point for Finland is it's prices. It was everything almost twice as in Europe.

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Suomelinna es una isla en la entrada a Helsinki, que fue prisión primero y fuerte de defensa de la ciudad y Finlandia en la segunda gerra mundial.
Suomelinna is an island in the entrance to Helsinki. It was first a prision and then a fort, and defense of Finland in the second world war.

Es un lindo paseo, donde se pueden ver aún los cañones y bunkers de la guerra.
It is a very nice walk were the cannons and bunkers from the war can be seen.

Turku castle is a very nice castle, it is close to the harbor about 15/20 min walking from the center. But it is also possible to get there with busline 1. You can get a guided tour in the museum, they have tours in at least finnish and english, i don't know if the tours are good because we walked around on our own. This is also very good because at certain point they have papers explaining things. There is a route through the castle with black arrows so you won't miss anything. After the tour to the castle the route continues through the museum. It took us the whole morning to see the whole castle and museum and our feet were tired afterwards so we went to sit and eat something at the castle cafe :) We had a goulash soup that was very good with a nice salad.

Today we visited Moominworld, we had fun, but its not very big.

For a dutch version of what we did you can already look at: inkie1010.waarbenjij.nu

English will come, at this place, but probably not before I'm home.
So now it's time for the english version!

We took the bus from the market place in Turku, luckily we had already seen were the bus would leave when we where trying to find our bus yesterday. Naantali is about 30 min by bus from Turku. It is a very nice village with an older part that has very nice wooden houses. From the busstation we walked to Moominworld, when we knew in what direction to go it was easy to find since there were good signs. Moominworld is located on an island and is only reachable by foot over the bridge.

Moominworld is nice, but not very big (see review). We first walked around the island and saw all the houses. There were also people dressed in Moominsuits and the other characters, as last we visited one of the plays: Moominpappas memoires in Swedish. We also visited the moominshop and bought some souvenirs for the children at home. After three hours we had seen everything and we had some coffee before we took the bus back to Turku.

Back in Turku we did some shopping, I found some cd's I didn't have yet from my favourite Swedish band Kent :) And we also had dinner at Stockmann (Finnish department store) before we went back to the hostel.

Today we travelled from Helsinki to Turku by train. And we finally saw the sun again :)

More to come later ....

And here is the journal entry :)

In the morning we got up "late" (around 9) and went to eat some breakfast and after that packed our bags. Today we were going to leave Helsinki (Vantaa) and travel by train to Turku. We first took the train to Helsinki and in Helsinki we bought our tickets to Turku. Since we had some time we drank a coffee/tea at the station and Inge was very happy with her first rooibos tea since arriving in Finland.

From the train we could see some more from Finland: trees, farmland, trees, wooden houses, trees, some lakes and trees :) Today was a cloudy day but luckily there was no rain.

When we arrived in Turku we first had to get a bus to the market place and from there we could get a bus to the hostel. We first had the wrong busstop at the station, but we didn't have to wait long before the bus, going in the right direction came. In the bus we bought a tourist-ticket, this ticket is valid for 24 hours. When we arrived at the marketplace we first visited our best friend Otto (finnish ATM). And the search for the right busstop started :/ The hostel had given us a few different busses we could take, but most numbers went in two directions from the marketplace and busses going in the same direction didn't stop at the same busstop.... But finally we found a bus that was going in the right direction and 15 minutes later we were at the hostel.

After bringing our bags to the room. We went to the supermarket to get some food, this was a 10 min walk from the hostel. Later in the afternoon the sun came out and we enjoyed the sun when we went for a walk in the forest next to the hostel.
 

On the HI website we saw hostel Linnasmäkki, it is a bit away from the center. But there are different bus lines (14,15,55,..) going toward the hostel, about 15 minutes from the center, but take care that you take the bus going in the right direction :) The hostel is a Christian Institute that is a hostel from may to september. They have an indoor swimming pool and sauna, that are available in the evenings, separate times for woman and man. They also have a tv room and computers with internet acces, but when we were there one of them wasn't working. The hostel is located next to the forest, wich is very nice. The view from our room was of the forest. One thing that was not as good is the kitchen, it is clean but there was only one pan and even that one disappeared.

If you go to Finland, you can't avoid the Moomins. Because we like Moomins we wanted to visit Moominworld. The park isn't very big, but there is enough to see and do if you have children with you. But for grown ups there is not so much to do. We just looked around and went to one of the plays. They had a few plays, but they are only in Finnish or Swedish. We went to one in Swedish abour Moominpappa's adventures :) When you want to go there I would recommend to take some children with you i think that will make it nicer, otherwise you will have seen everything in about 2 hours, what is not long for the 19 euro entrance fee. In the two hours I didn't count the time we spent looking at the play (30 min). If you get hungry there are a lot of different places were you can eat, they also have a post office with special moominstamps and postmark. They also have a souvenirshop, but if you want moomin souvenirs you can better buy them somewhere else because its more expensive at the park.

When we tried to book a hostel for our first nights in Helsinki all the places were full. On a website we then found a good offer for this hotel. The hotel is in Vantaa a 15 min trainride away from the center of Helsinki. The hotel is just next to trainstation Tikkurila as you can see in the view from our room. And when you arrive by plane it is a 15 min busride (bus 61) to the hotel. The staff was very friendly and they have a nice system in wich they can give you messages on your tv, this came in handy when one of our bags didn't arrive at the airport. You get a good buffet breakfast in the morning, lots of choices to make :) And there are a gym and a sauna that you can use at certain times. The sauna was really good, we didn't try the gym since we were on holiday ;) There also was a free internet computer so we could keep our blog up to date.

Inge has had a pen-pall in Finland for 13 years now and they have never met before. I have heard some stories about her over the years so I was quite curious too :)
We first spend the morning in the hostel, it was raining, so we watched some Olympics on tv. We took the bus to the center and bought some postcards. After writing the postcards in a cafe we took the bus to were Inge's pen-pall is living. We were also a bit curious about how Finnish people are living.
Eveliina and her husband were very nice and we spend some nice time there talking, drinking tea and they made us a very nice diner with real finnish dessert, although we had to leave quite early to catch the train to Kuopio. They also have a very sweet daughter Venla, who didn't like our dutch childrens song, or maybe it was our singing ;)
We just made our train, and when we had to change trains we had our first delay with trains in Finland, it was arriving 20 minutes to late. To get to the reception of our hostel we didn't even have to leave the station :) Our room was in a building just across the street from the trainstation, so that was very easy. We walked a little bit through the town, but is was clouded and grey so we decided to go back and see if there was any olympics on tv :D

Time surely flies, won't it? The sad thing is that now that I'm really looking for to Christmas and almost counting the days for take-off it seems to just slow it down twice as much.. Luckily I got so many things on my mind concerning the visa, vaccinations and all the other paperwork that I can only hope it'll keep me busy enough till the actual departure.

I've already decided that I shall start inquiring my teachers about finishing with school about a week earlier than anyone else as soon as the autumn season begins (this should - allegedly - be on the 25th?) Hopefully they'll understand my situation and grand me the last 5 days off. I can't see why they would make too big a fuss about it. But let's not forget that they indeed are teachers, so you never know..

Especially now that this year's internationals just ended I've noticed myself returning to my albums many times a week (sometimes even a day) and looking at all the photos from last year's IKA seminar. Good days, even greater memories. I can't even begin to imagine what it's gonna be like next summer in MA when I get to see all those people again! People I met for the first time ever last summer. I can only hope they haven't completely forgotten about me yet. ;)

For me the seminar last year was in many ways exceptionally educational. I learned two new katas I had never done before (at all), I got to do techniques and drills equally unknown to me and - best of all - to experience the international kokondo family! It was also the first time for me to meet Shihan Arel -- not to mention visit his home! The BBQ on Sunday right after the seminar was so much fun. Now that I've read Julie's and the Cohen brother's comments (to name but a few) on facebook about this years post-seminar party it seriously hurts me to the bone to admit that I missed it all! As far as your commentaries goes, it sounds like the party was awesome this year around too. :)

I can only hope the training sessions as well as the celebrations afterwards merely keep on getting better and better each year. For this I don't have too many doubts - most likely the situation has always been like this. :)

So let's begin, today's the 10th of August so that means it's only 125 days till I arrive..........

Sara :)

I haven't tried this Journal ever before, so here goes my first entry.. I've had the whole wknd off from work (and will have tomorrow as well, whippii!) so I've had time to (FINALLY) upload some pics from our Greece trip to travbuddy. I still haven't seen even a glimpse of Chris', Adonis', Femke's, Trav's, Soile's or Jari's pictures, so the ones that are currently in the Greece '08 folder are merely from my own cam.. and a few from Linda's too as a matter of fact, but those are the same that can be found on facebook.

We should definitely try to organize a gettogether sometime soon where we could gather up everybody's photos and reminisce about the good old days together. :)

The thing I miss most about our wonderful trip are DEFINITELY all the new people I got to know! Amaryllis, Ritsa, Dimitri, Maria, Femke, George..... we met so many awesome people, most of whose names I can't remember - but that's not the most important thing is it. :) It was so cool how welcoming everyone was and how they truly treated us like we had known each other for years!

The little tan I managed to acquire myself is slowly but surely vanishing.. damn you Finnish summer! Today it's been a bit more sunny but for the last week or so the weather's just been horrible! I miss the Greek sun soo much.

I really hope that I'll be able to see my new friends some day again. :) I know some of them have tentative plans about coming to Finland this Christmas but should that happpen I would unfortunately miss the whole event.. (as I'll be in US that time). But maybe next year you guys? Who knows. Maybe you'll come to visit me in the states -- I remember having some conversations about this already with Ritsa at least.. :) Only the sky's the limit!

Sara

Today started cloudy, but during the day the sun came out :D

We went to the Moominvalley museum, the cathedral and a park with a view of one of the big lakes. We even saw a few weddingcouples at the cathedral.