Suomi a.k.a. Finland

It was a Thursday morning. I can tell, all my adventures start on Thursdays. August 2004, at Charles-De-Gaulle Airport in Paris. Jim Morrison sang "This is the End". That was the beginning.Back in April of the same year, Manu, a classmate of mine came over to enjoy a last resort doobie. During the conversation, he mentioned his plan to go to Finland as an exchange student, instead of a 3-month work experience that is normally mandatory to graduate from our college. I didn't know much about Finland at this point, except the capital city and the taste of their vodka. That night, probably still under influence, I spent hours looking at pictures of Helsinki, Lapland, Norway, amongst others, starring at these unbelievable landscapes, lost right in the middle of the fifth biggest country in Europe.

Back in August. All the paperwork has been processed. I'm leaving. Three classmates are also going, we will share the first feelings about this Terra Incognita together. The very first thing that occured to me was the flatness of Finland. Flat. And green. Tampere is about 200 km North from Helsinki. The city, about 200,000 inhabitants, is the third biggest city in Finland, and the biggest inland city in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland).

I was going to study IT & Industrial Management at the Tampere University of Technology (Tampereen Teknillinen Ylipisto in Finnish, I love this language so much), located in a southern suburb of Tampere, called Hervanta. That was going to be the home of approximately 350 international students coming from all over the world (Mexico, USA, Canada, China, Japan, India, Hungary, Lithuania, Spain, Italy, UK, but mostly Germany and France).

The first days were part of the Orientation Week, where previous international students who decided to stay (a.k.a. tutors) organize activities for new comers. Therefore, we participated to :

• the traditional City Rally : the idea is to travel across the whole city, and do or ask a lot of different things ... From eating national dishes (trust me, I know why Finland is not known for its cuisine) to box-based races at 1 am... Of course, this really started by drinking vodka at 4pm and ended by going to a club (Kiva ...) after everything.

• the international barbecue : what can I say ? Nearly 300 hundred people having a sausage and a beer, next to a lake and confronted to a landscape that is way too awesome to be used as a postcard...

• the first night in Tampere ... Ok, that was not "part of the Orientation Week", but it was somehow supervised by the tutors ... Going to a club (Kiva again ? Maybe ..), filling up the bus for the very first (but not the last) time ...
  

The first contact with Finland was great. Not only for the country (not really actually, I fell in love with it a bit later), but for this international experience, this panel of different cultures, this mix of languages, accents, faces and so on.
At this moment, I had no idea how much these 6 months were about to matter in my life.