Finally in Paris..

Hello pumpkins!

So today at 14.25 I arrived to Paris. I had a lot of problems with my trains. I forgot to take a seat reservation with my InterRail ticket to the train from Antwerp to Paris: so they kicked me out in Brussels. I reserved a place from Brussels to Lille and from Lille to Paris-Nord. My phone wasn't working for the entire time and I had a friend wating in Paris for me. Note to self: be more carefull!!

It's really good that I have a friend here. First of all because of the incident with the trains I was late for getting my key for my dorm. Luckily my friend is a nice guy so I can spent the night here at his familys place. He helped me with shopping for pillows and such. He also helped me to open my own French phone number! Everyone I asked suggested prepaid so I'm having one with the company called Orange. It costed 15e to open the telephone subscriber connection and then I loaded speaking time to it with 35e. When you buy calling time with 35e you get 10 euros for free.

Tomorrow he or his mom is going to help me with buying the ImagineR card for trains and also with getting the key for my apartment. I also have to start checking how to get CAF (local housing allowance if I wrote it correctly).

But well. Now I have people around me who can help me with my prononciation so I'm off to study some French. I have my first day at the Uni tomorrow.. I'm so nervous! Like first day at school!

Sleep well

Belgium

So so so..

Tomorrow morning I'm saying goodbye to Antwerp and going to Paris! It takes only 2 hours to get from here to Paris. I'm so excited that I think I can't sleep. I just finished packing. It's really nice how I almost couldn't close my suitcases in Finland and I've gotten new stuff to them from every country. At least the other suitcase closed and we'll see about the other one in the morning.

Antwerp (or Antwerpen) is such a great city! It's so big that it feels like it never ends. My friend here was also really nice and at least I had fun (I don't know about him of course). The railwaystation is the biggest one I've ever seen. It's in 4 or 5 floors and had almost 30 platforms. When I came here I realized that my phone operator doesn't work here.. It was a nice surprise when I tried to call my friend when I didn't find him from the railwaystation. Well I hope no one tried to reach me while I was here.

Saturday we went to see the city of Antwerp. This city is so huge! He took me under the Schelde river that goes through the city. The tunnel is a 500m of white walls. The other side of the river was almost another world compeared to the city on the other side: it was a park and seemed more like an own smaller city than a part of Antwerp. He also took me to eat Belgian waffles. It was to die for :P I also ate Bitterballen (some kind of Belgian fried meatballs).

The funniest thing ever happened in the city! There was some campain about shoes and beer so they took a picture of my friend and me and made it a label! I really love the bottles we got from them with out pictures on them.

I send a message to the University where I'm going to study about my keys. I'm going to arrive to Paris on Monday, my courses start on Tuesday but I was about to get my flat on Thursday. I send the message in French and I was endlessly happy because there were only 2 mistakes.  They answered that I can have to key tomorrow so I'm really happy that I have a place to go.

But I have to wake up kinda early tomorrow so I should propably go to sleep. I have to look at my best for Paris! I have a friend coming to pick me up from the railwaystation and he is going to help me to pick the keys and such. Tomorrow I should also buy my ImagineR card and start to think about which operator I want for my phone.

I hope my French is ok for going there.. Sleep tight!

Germany

Bisous!

Now I've visited Bremerhaven and Bremen in Germany. It was really good to see my friend again.. I really liked her when she was in exchange in Finland. It has been months since I've seen her last time so it was about time to catch up :)

I came to Bremerhaven after sitting 14 hours in a train. I don't recomment it to anyone. It was really hard to try to sleep when a nun sitting next to me was complaining about all I did and she didn't want to sit next to me. Of course I was prepered not to sleep for these 14 hours because I didn't want to leave my luggage unprotected. But I still find it funny that this nun was mad because she had to sit next to me. Do I really look that bad?

In Germany I was happy to understand something after Italy. German resembels Swedish more than Italy and Swedish is compulsory for us Finns in school. I find the city of Bremerhaven really nice and lively though my friend told me that it's a small city in German scale. In Bremerhaven we visited the Climate house (Klimahaus) and Zoo am Meer (Zoo in see). I found the Climate house really interesting. The idea of the place was that one guy traveled around the world following the latitude 8,0° after starting from Germany. He visited Cameron, Niger, Samoa, Sardinia etc. etc. Of cours he visited the Arctic too and so on. On every country there was a family introduced to us and we learned how they lived in this area. Also the rooms were made to look like the real country so there were rooms that had -8°C in them and rooms with +34°C in them. We learned a lot about different cultures and people during this 6 hour trip.

Zoom am Meer was really a good zoo. It wasn't that big but you could see that the animals were enjoying themselves. And all the animals were so cute! They had many guinea pigs and rabbits and that made me miss mine.. In the end I managed to get a couple of good shots from a polar bear and penguins. I wanted a take a good pictured of a walrus also but he didn't want to co-operate with my camera. Also I managed to get many pictures of bottoms of different animals - I guess they didn't like me that much. We went to the zoo 1,5 hours before closing time so it was really good and there weren't many screaming kind there to annoy me.

I didn't try any special German food. We went to eat sushi the first day I was there and I really liked it! It was so cheap compared to Finland. My friend also tought me a couple of important senteces such as "Es ist nicht meine Schuld".

I left Germany with happy feelings and found myself from Belgium 6 hours and  3 train changes later. This is my last stop before Paris.. On Monday I'm saying bye to Antwerp and moving to Paris! See you all when I give my report from Belgium ;)


Pitäkää huolta toisistanne

Italy

Hello and sweet feelings!

Now I've experienced Bologna and Venice. I came to Bologna on Saturday. The weather is awfull for a Finn: from +35 to +40C every day. Today was the hottest day with +45C. Even during the night the temperature doesn't drop under +25C. It's really hard for me to sleep.. When I left Finland it was +10C!

Bologna is a really nice city with a lot of places to see. All the places in the city are so old. Of course air conditioning would be a big plus.. I'm visiting my Italian friend here. She has a Czech and Slovakian visiting here too. Welcome to the international house of my friend! :) I knew all these people before this so it's nice. My friend has introduces us to two of her Italian friends too.

We visited Venice last Sunday. We left kinda early in the morning and we were in Venice around one. We walked the whole day! We saw all the main attractions. I especially loved the statues that you see in one picture. And plague doctor stuff that you see on the first picture. That's the exact outfit that plague doctors used in Middle Ages. The main canal was also really beautifull.

We had a little adventure when we tried to get back to Bologna. All the trains were booked! So we were in Venice with no transport back to Bologna. We went to the next railwaystation and booked a ticket without seats to a train that would have left the next morning. When a train to Bologna came in midnight my Slovakian friend girl kinda seduced the conductor so that we could get in. So always have a Slovakian girl with you so that you can make sure to get to a train.

I've eaten so good Italian food. It's really different from Finnish food.  Italians eat especially much of cheese called squacquerone. It's a bit bitter compeared to a Finnish cheese. They also eat pasta a lot. And the best pizza ever was in Venice! But one thing I don't like about Italian food: the sweet breakfast. I'm never going to get used to it.. In Finland we have salty breakfast so all these cakes and nutella in the morning make me almost sick. But at least they don't have chocolate bread here like in France. That's one of the most discusting thing I've even eaten.

Today I'm leaving for Bremen, Garmany at 11pm. I just can't wait for 13 hours in a train.. My suitcases are so heavy that I can't even carry them :D Next report comes after Bremen.

Freaked out

I have 3 days before leaving Finland! I'm so nervous I feel like I'm paralyzed. I should be cleaning and packing but yet here I am on my computer writing a blog (heh).

I put my insurance stuff in order. Now I only have to get an housing insurance from France. I'm really nervous about getting a cell phone there also: I have no idea how that stuff works. And I hope we have internet straight away when I move in because I think in the beginning it would be nice to be able to contact my friends in Finland.

Because I'm a student the best option for me in Paris is ImagineR card that allows me to use any public transport I wish inside the city. The university is not downtown so I have to go there with a train.

I've booked my flights to Italy! I'm leaving for Italy this Saturday. Then I go from Italy to Germany and finally I visit my friend in Belgium and then head for Paris. I can't wait! It has been so long since I've seen these people I'm visiting.. Thank you good exchange network for letting me get to know there wonderfull people! :)

I guess I should go packing then..After all I have to think that really hardly about all the stuff I take.