Travel journal, part ten: Normandie 2/2

The next morning we were still in Fécamp and after enjoying a fancy breakfast we had prepared with fruits, raspberries and mini croissants, pain au chocolats and pain au raisins we headed out to explore the city.

This too was a small fishing-town but slightly bigger than Dieppe had been. Like most of the towns by the sea, this too had a lot of boats, especially sailing boats anchored by the promenade. And since it was mother's day here in France on sunday, there was actually quite a lot of people on the streets. Usually even Paris is really dead on a sunday morning, but not this time.

The main sight in Fécamp, apart from the sea and the port, was the Benedictine Palace where they make the liqueur Benedictine. This liqueur is made out of 24 different plants and spices from all around the world according to an old recipe dating from the Renaissance. The building itself has actually never been used by benedictine monks, but was especially built for the museum and the destillery in the 19th century. But it's still magnificent! In the museum they had, among other things, these really old books and documents and it was really amazing (at least for an historian) how they were so well preserved! They almost looked like new ones!

In the end of the tour we also got to taste the liqueur but even though it actually was quite good, I decided not to buy a bottle :)

After Fécamp we continued along the coast to our next destination. What makes the coast of Normandie so special is the high cliffs throughout the coastline. Aren't they beautiful? They look a lot like the cliffs in Ireland but I guess it's because they once were part of the same piece of land :) Unfortunately the road actually didn't follow the coatline, so we saw the cliffs only when we came to a town or a city. I guess if you'd really like to see them, you'd have to go hiking.

Our next destination was a small place called Étretat and famous for its' very special cliffs painted by several artists, including Claude Monet. There were at least three cliffs that had a natural arch like the one you can see in the picture. This one is perhaps the most panited one, but the others were really beautiful too. You were also able to climb up each cliff and the view from up there was splendid! Then, another thrilling thing was that in this area they have the tide-phenomenon. You see that the cliff also has a small cave and when we came to Étretat, the cave was partly under water, but a few hours later, after climbing around on the cliffs, the water had receded so much that you were able to walk to the cave and also enter it.

It was really cool, because you were practically walking on the bottom of the sea :) Then, in the cave, there was this small tunnel that led to the other side of the cliff where there was another beach and the third arched cliff that looked just like an elephant with its' trunk reached in the water. Really amazing! But you had to be sure to get back before the water started rising again, otherwise you would have been stuck on the other side for the next six hours :)

Our last stop before heading back to Paris was the city Le Havre. This city was heavily bombed during the Second World War and therefor lost almost all the old buildings. In stead everything is made out of concrete, espacially built in the 50's, and believe it or not, this concrete city is nowadays listed as a UNESCO world heritage for "an innovative utilization of concrete's potential" and "an exceptional example of architecture and town planning of the post-war era". But it wasn't actually as bad as we had thought after reading that the whole city is just concrete. It was a nice surprise to see how nice they've managed to make it after all! Unfortunately the rain just kept pouring down, so after taking a few pictures of the city center, we decided to drive back to Paris as it already was pretty late. And it was a good thing we started our trip back because there had been a small accident on the highway so we were actually stuck in queues for almost an hour.

But, summa sumarum, Normandie is a beautiful part of France for those who like nature and especially the sea. Go there if you ever have the chance!

Travel journal, part ten: Normandie 1/2

Now I've back from my last trip during my stay here in France. This time I spent the weekend in Normandie together with Sophie and her finnish friend who also went to Chartres with us earlier this spring. As Normandie is in the north of France and by the sea, it was actually pretty cold. But even though some metheorologists had said it would rain the whole weekend, it actually started only on sunday afternoon, so we were still quite happy about the weather. This was probably also the closest I'll ever get to Obama! On saturday it was the 65th D-day anniversary, so to honnour that Barack Obama visited the beaches in Normandy where the battles of the Second World War was fought. We didn't visit the same place as he did, but we were still not that far away ;)

We started our journey by driving to Rouen, a small city famous for it's old town and gothic cathedral. And I understand why it was famous! The whole old town was nothing but half-timbered houses everywhere! In many different sizes and colours facing everythig from big boulevards to tiny small lanes. And the cathedral had so many small details it was impossible to look at all of them.

In Rouen we also found a very interesting and a bit different museum: Musée Le Secq des Tournelles that displayed different old iron-works. Some of them were really beautiful! And had such tiny details, I don't understand how anyone has ever been able to make them. I was really amazed. A good thing with the museums in Rouen was also that even though they had a lot of nice stuff to look at, they weren't too big like the museums here in Paris. You could actually enjoy your visit without getting really tired or stressing about seeing everything you want.

After seeing enough of Rouen we headed to our main destination: the coast. Our first stop was a small fishing-town called Dieppe. Really idyllic with cute houses, loads of boats and a beautiful promenade by the beach. And the beach itself consisted of thousands of small, round rocks in different grey and white shades. It was only further away the beach changed into sand.

And even though it wasn't at all warm outside, me and Sophie just couldn't resist going wading in the sea. We were actually surprised because yes, the water was still cold, but not as cold as we thought it would be. And our feet felt so warm afterwards. I still wouldn't have gone swimming in it even though we saw some people do that...

In the evening we drove to our final destination for that day: Fécamp, which is another town by the sea. Here we bravely ate our dinner-picknick by the sea while the sun was slowly thinking about setting. Since Normandie also is famous for a special kind of cow they have for making cheese we, among others, tried a Normandy cheese that actually was really good! We had also bought a french cider, but that one we ended up drinking in our much warmer hotel room. And it wasn't good. I miss finnish cider...

Travel journal, part nine: Dublin

Tadaa! And I am back from yet another trip :) But this time, in stead of taking the train somewhere close I flew all the way to Ireland with Liss! A new city and a whole new country for me :) Yay!

Dublin is a very small city compared to Paris but that was again a very welcome break. And it was very nice and cosy for an industrial city too! Lots of colourful houses and small parks here and there. And then of course the river Liffey also added something to the city panorama. As I've said before, it's usually the river that makes the city. It's very often the area around the water that's the best part of the town, and even though Dublin didn't have any wonderful riverside promenades like for example Paris, the blocks just around it were my favourites. It was here you found that certain athmosphere.

Here's what the river looked like in the evening. The big buildning is called the Four Courts and actually reminded me a bit of Pantheon here in Paris. And we were really lucky with the weather while we were there. It didn't rain one single time. In stead it was actuallt really warm and you were able to walk around with a t-shirt very late in the evening.

This is a bridge I liked very much. It was actually quite far away from the real city center and not at all famous, but sometimes I guess the most famous things aren't the best ones :)

And it's not a joke that Ireland is green! EVERYTHING was green in Dublin! The trains, the souvenirs, the poles for the streetlights and even the eveninglights underneath the bridges were green! It almost got a bit surreal in the end. Wonder if the irish people really love green or have they perhaps grown sick of it already? I think I would...

The most common architectural style in Dublin was georgian, that means there were a lot of brick-houses with this very special shape. Actually quite angular. At first I thought they were quite boring, but when I had spent those three days there, I actually started liking them. They were romantic and sweet in their own way. They all had a personality. And the doors were all painted in different colours, as you can see on the picture above. Those doors happened to be green and red, but I also saw blue, yellow, pink and violet doors :)

In Dublin I of course also went to the Guinness Storehouse. It was an expensive but very well-made museum telling the history of the company and also explaining how Guinness is made. And in the end of the tour everyone got a free pint of Guinness. I almost finished the whole glass. But only almost. It was still too much like beer for me...

But oh, I also finally drank real cider!! It's so hard to find cider here in France, so once in Ireland, I took advantage of the situation and ordered a Bulmers. And it was sooooo good :) Not at all like the finnish cider, but still real cider! Mmm...

Then we also went to see Trinity College and the old Book of Kells in the library and that was really nice too. I really liked the college. We actually had a small guided tour with a student who told us a lot of funny stories about the university and its' buildings and I have to say that I woulnd't mind at all studying there. It seemed really nice and friendly! Who knows, maybe I'll go for another exchange someday? ;)

But even though Dublin was the main target for our trip, it however wasn't my favourite. My favourite part of the trip was this:

The headland of Howth. Howth is a small village by the sea in the north-eastern suburbs of Dublin. It took about half an hour to get there by the local (green) train called DART. After briefly looking at the village itself, we then climed up on the headland that you can walk around following different small paths. We decided the follow the coastline as much as possible, which meant the longes loop. It took us more than three hours to get around the whole headland and even though the sun was broiling hot and we got very, very tired of climbing up and down the cliffs all the time, it was totally worth it. The views were aboslutely magnificent! Totally splendid! I took a lot of pictures but as always, the photos only give a small hint of what it was like in reality. This was also the first time I saw the sea (or actually any area of water bigger than a river) since I left Finland and I hadn't quite realized how much I've missed it. The lovely smell of the saltwater of the sea, mixed with the smell of seaweed... Hearing the seagulls scream and feeling the refreshing sea breeze on your skin... It was simply lovely. That's all I can say.

Travel journal, part eight: Lyon

Before coming back to Paris after my week in Bourgogne I actually went to visit a friend who's in Lyon this spring as an exchange student. And that was the southest I've been so far during my stay here in Paris.

This too was a beautiful city with two rivers, Rhône and Saône, floathing through it and a cosy, small old town. On the picture you can also see the top of the fake Eiffel tower of Lyon. Don't know why they have one :) In the old town there were actually these very cool hidden passages going through the houses from one quartier to another. They were for example used as escaping routes during the world wars. Now it was really cool to walk through them, but I guess it most have been quite scary during the war when there actually was a real danger outside.

The thing that perhaps impressed me the most, though, was the Basilic Notre-Dame de Fourvière. The interior was really splendid! Filled with beautiful, golden details and not at all like most of the other churches I've seen. I think this was more like an orthodox church than a catholic.

In the evening we actually had a party with some of Ulrika's friends over there in her residence and that was fun. I talked to a lot of people and then we went out dancing, which I haven't done for a very long time. Even though the club got so crouwded in the end that people (including us) danced on the tables and benches too :)

Travel journal, part seven: Bourgogne

Last week I spent in the french countryside, more preciesly in the southern part of the region of Bourgogne. And it was LOVELY! I hadn't realized before how sick of this big city with the traffic, the crowded streets and the metro I am. It felt so damn good to get away to a place that looked like this:

Vineyards wherever you looked, mountains in the horizon (I even saw Mont Blanc!), small, cosy villages here and there. And the best of all was that I went there to meet my penpal so I lived with her and her family. I got to sleep in a soft bed with a real blanket and a real pillow! Oh, heavanly! And they took me to a lot of placed in the nearby region and I experiensed so many amazing things. It was just so relaxing. I felt like a totally new person when I got back. And actually, I didn't at all want to get back to Paris. I could have stayed in the countryside for much longer!

...lovely family, by the way. They all called me Moomin since Malin apparently was too hard to pronounce. Isn't that sweet? :P

Over there, I stayed at this cute, small village called Clessé in the middle of the vineyards and some mountains. From there we took the car or the train to the cities of Dijon, Mâcon et Louhans, among others, but this would however be a very long post if I told you about every single little city or town I visited, because I visited quite many. Everyone interested can in stead come and visit me in Helsinki once I get back to Finland and I'll show you all the pictures I took ;)

But among the thing's I did was this:


I ate frogs! :D And it tasted good! Really! Like a mix between fish and chicken, actually. And the persley-butter was delicious! I was in fact very french and used my bread to get it all up from my plate :P

Then I also visited a prehistoric cave and climbed up a small mountain. The view was magnificent from up there, eventhough it was mostly vineyards and small towns there too :)

But now I'm back in Paris. The first afternoon here was still ok, but yesterday it rained the whole day and today when I walked to Sorbonne, there were so many people on the streets that I almost went crazy! Gaaaah!!! I like to keep my privacy, thank you!

Travel journal, part six: Chartres

And the traveling continues! But this time by car, actually! One of Sophies friends works here in Paris for a few months and she's got a car, so the three of us went on a small road-trip to Chartres, about 80km to the southwest from Paris. It actually felt a bit weird to sit in a car... Haven't been in one since... january! :D That makes me a bit worried about my driving skills too. It's going to feel so weird to drive a car again once I get back home. Jaiks!

Chartres is most famous for its cathedral. It is said to be the finest gothic cathedral in France, built (or finished) in 1220. And even though the rest of the city has been pretty badly damaged especially during the second world war, the cathedral has amazingly enough survived. It had even some glass windows left dating back to the 12th century! That's just amazing! And the glass windows were so pretty too! Those are the things I like the most in old churches, especially when the sun is shining and all the different, bright colours are reflected on the walls and the floor :)

The city of Chartres was, like almost every other town I've visited outside Paris, very sweet :) The old town had a lot of half-timbered houses and small, curving streets and the river Eure floathed through it. It's amazing how water always can give such a nice little touch to a town. Everything looks greener, cleaner and more calmful. And I seriously think people are happier around water :) Haven't you noticed? And people always gather around the water too whenever it's possible. It's like everyone wants to get away from the dull, grey houses in the city... Back to nature! ;)

In Chartres I also tried "macarones" for the first time, which are, despite the name, not pasta but a sweet patisserie. They are these small, round things, looking like hamburgers in different colours, stuffed with some kind of jam in different flavours. But I actually didn't like them too much. They tasted like marzipan. And unfortunately we were too eager to taste them, so I forgot to take a picture. But I'll show you another time :)

Fontainebleau

Wow, I don't think I've ever updated my blog this fast after I've done something! But this morning I went to Fontainebleau with Sophie and Liss and her sisiter+husband who are here in Paris at the moment. It was fun but I had to speak englisg the whole day which was a bit different! But I think it would have been much harder like last week, because now I've mostly talked swedish with my friends and parents for a week, so the french wasn't (or isn't) as strongly in my head as it used to be.

Anyway, Fontainebleau is a palace just outside Paris with a small, very cute village around it. Seriously, I think this was the cutes town I've been to here so far! The houses were so lovely and most of them had small, lovely gardens too! I somehow reminded me of the town in Disney's Beauty and the Beast...

This is one of the streets in the town... although it looked much cuter in reality... :)

The palace was nice too but I guess it in the same time was quite normal and unspecial. Not that we have anything like that in Finland! :D But over here, there's small palaces everywhere!

This is the main entrance of the palace. I especially liked the stairs! Inside, there was all these differents rooms with different meanings I don't even remember. But I noticed there was a huge library! Or not big for our times, but really huge for back then when books were still quite rare and expensive. Then Fontainebleau also has the only royal throne left in it's original place. Maybe because this palace had it's glory as late as during the regime of Napoleon.

Around the palace there was also a big park, but unfortunately the biggest part, the english park, of it was closed today :( So we just had to be satisfied with the smaller french parc with it's fountain in the middle. But at least there were two swans swimming in the fountain! :P Although, I thought there would have been more flowers in the park. It was actually just grass, some bushes and trees. And that one big fountain. But hey, the sun was shining and it was warm, so I'm not complaining! It was really nice to sit down by the canal leading out from the park and eat some lunch, enjoying the calm nature before heading back to noicy Paris again :) I guess I'm still very finnish. Nature and a calm environement are importants things for me. I could never live in Paris for the rest of my life. Too big, too noicy, too unfriendly. And even though there's a lot fo parks all around the city, that's just not the same :)

Travel journal, part five: Lille

Yesterday me and my parents went to discover the city of Lille in the north of France, near the border with Belgium. This too was a very sweet little city and very different to Paris. It was actually in a way very German. Or perhaps belgium. Don't know, since I've never been to Belgium! :D

The thing that I perhaps liked the most was the colours! As I already told you, the houses in Paris all have this very similar brown-greyish colour that makes the city look very dull when the weather is grey too. But when the sun is shining, it's ok! But Lille! The houses there were so colourful! And therefor the city looked very nice even though the weather wasn't that good! The sun actually broke through the clouds only in the efternoon, before we were about to leave Lille.

Colourful like for example these three houses in the old town:

The whole old town had these typical small streets and old houses. And lots of expensive shops :) But I was actually surprised of the alltogether modern look of the old town! I had perhaps expected the houses to look... well, older! But perhaps they really were very old. Perhaps the bright colours just fooled me to think they were newer.

We also visited the modern part of Lille where I found this piece of art just next to the second railway station:

The house behind the flowers was actually shaped as the letter L. Very strange... :)

Some other surprises in this city was the churches. The old cathedral had a whole new fasade while the rest of the building was still old and inside the church, we found a lot of modern art. But the explanation for that must be the war. The main entrance of the church must have collapsed after a bombing or something and then they decided to build a whole new, modern entrance in stead of copying the old one. Quite an interesting move... Then in this other church, called Sainte Marie Madeleaine, the altar area looked like this:

This church was also filled with modern art, and probably didn't serve as a church anymore. But it was fun looking at the art! There were for example three scenes of war and in one of them there was this forrest in the background and some soldiers in the front. And my mum said "That forest looks just like the forests back home!" and when we read the text beside it, we found out that it actually was symbolizing Karelia druing the second world war! Pretty awesome to find a piece of Finland here in modern art of France :P

Before heading back to Paris with the train, we still had time for a little walk around the old fortress of Lille, built sometime during the 17th century.

Around it were today an amusement park so it was perhaps a bit hard to catch a glimps of the history. And the very heart of the fortress was actually still today property of the military, so people were not allowed to enter.

But in all, Lille was a very nice and cosy city! And I think this was like the first time everything went as planned with the trains etc! Amazing! Perhaps the SNCF works after all! ;)

Disneyland!

Ok, so I don't update my blog in something like a week and immediately there's someone complaining! :P But ok then, here we go again!

I've gotten a lot to do lately since there's been people here visiting me. My parents are here at the moment and two friends from the university also spent a few days here in Paris. So practically, I've been running around to all the major tourist attractions :P But I can't tell you about that right now, becasue now I just have to talk about Disneyland!! Yay!!

I went there on wednesday with Hena and Sophie and even though we spent there whole nine hours, I wasn't bored a single minute! And oh no, I am NOT too old for Disneyland! No no no! In fact, we came to the conclusion that the best age to go to Disneyland is actually between 20 and 30 years old and before you have kids of your own. Because then you can really appreciate all the splendour around you and you don't have to listen to your grumpy kids when they're tired after a long day and hyperactive after consuming too much sugar. I've actually been there once before, but I was equally excited this time too, and even though it's very expensive, I don't think I would say no to a third time either :P

The whole Disneyland is really like a whole another world! It must have cost a fortune to build it! Everything is so perfect into the tiniest little detail. There's nothing they haven't thought through. I know pictures aren't even close to reality, but here still a few to give you a hint of what it looks like:


This is the main entrance to the park of Disneyland. There's actually another park too, called Disney studios, but it's impossible to have time for both of then in just one day, so we only went to the older, traditional one.


Yo ho! Pirates ahead! Bevare! Who knows what Captain Hook can do?

And here was a big roller coaster in the wild west-part of the park. Disneyland is divided in five different worlds, each with it's own theme.


The most classical or famous view of Disneyland :) And the girliest part of the park too. Very different to e.g. the pirate/adventureland.

But, as I said, you have to experience it yourself. Just to walk around and recognize all the stuff from your favourite movies. And then have fun in the different amusement machines too! Although, there's always so much people there that the queues are horrible! There's no way you have time to see and experience even half of the parc during one day, because you have to spend so much time waiting and waiting and waiting... But at least they've made the waiting interetsing too with splendid side-scenes all around you.

This time, I didn't see any of the caracters though :( So I wasn't able to shake hands with Mickey Mouse. The only time I saw them was during the daily parade, but that's not the same thing as seeing them walking around in the streets. But the parade too was so great! This year, the theme was the classic movies. Here's a video of the Lion King section:



Aren't they adorable? :)

But well, perhaps I've talked enough about Diseyland now because I could really talk about this for ages. Better stop before some of you get bored. I can in stead show the interested ones all my photos from the park once I get back home to Finland :P Then we can have a Disney-evening together and watch Disney-movies! Jookos? :D

Travel journal, part 4: Orléans

Yesterday I once again went to discover a new place! Me and Liss (Sophie is enjoying the sunshine in the south of France...) took the train to Orléans, about 130km to the south of Paris. This was really a very beautiful city with the river Loire floathing trough it. I actually thought it was almost like being somewhere i the south! Especially when a lot of the houses by the river where white.

We walked a lot by the river because it was just so beautiful and calm, not at all like in Paris where there's always the traffic wherever you go. The athmosohere in Orléans was also very different to the athmosphere in Paris. People seemed... I don't know... perhaps happier? Every time we entered a shop, someone said "Bonjour" in a very lively way. And everyone was so nice and friendly! I don't think I met anyone who was as grumpy as some people in Paris! There was even some strangers in the street that came and talked to us when they noticed we were foreigners.

I've heard several times that all the rest of France thinks the parisians are snobby and unpolite and perhaps that's true. I just haven't noticed it before since the parisians still are much more talkative than finns :) But I guess Orléans is more like the "real France".



What do you think of this? Isn't it lovely! :) An old man singin in the street with that thing I don't know the name of and a young father dancing with his daughter. Idyllic, isn't it? Even the locals gathered around him to listen! I shot this video in the old town, just after we had eaten a Quiche Lorraine (a very traditional pie with ham and cheese) in a nice little café.

In Orléans I also went to have an extempore haircut. It was a bit cheaper than in Paris so I thought why not? My hair doesn't look much different, though... Still long but at least now it doesn't look like I haven't cut it for a very long time.

Orléans is also famous for Jeanne d'Arc who saved the city from being taken over by the englishmen in 1429. Therefor there were statues of her everywhere!


Here's kind of the city center of Orléans with Jeanne d'Arc sitting on a horse in the middle of the square. Not far from here there was also the house of Jeanne d'Arc, i.e. a house where she lived when she visited this city. But the house was actually nothing special. It was reconstructed in 1965 and the museum inside was quite boring. But apart from that museum, I liked Orléans very much! I'm glad I went there :)

Travel journal, part three: Metz

Hahaa! You didn't see this coming, did you? ;)

Well, if everything had gone as we planned, we would have been back in Paris on tuesday evening. But, as always over here, something went wrong. We went to the trainstation in Luxembourg in time, just to see that almost every train was delayed by at least 30-40 minutes. Including our train to Paris. Someone had decided to commit suicide and jumped in front of a train between Luxembourg and Bettembourg, causing major delays on that route. When we had been waiting for an half an hour or so, they announced that due to an accident the train to Paris wouldn't leave at all from Luxembourg and that in stead, they would arrange a bus to take us to another town pass Bettembourg where the train to Paris would wait for us. Ok. Fine. We went outside to wait for the bus. When it finally came (after about an hour) the driver wasn't familiar with the road and got lost a couple of times. So when we finally arrived in Thionville, they told us that the train had already left! Apparently there had also been another bus and a train from Luxembourg that had been there in time, but nobody knew that we were coming too, so they didn't wait. I guess there were bad communication between Luxembourg and Thionville...

Well ok, so when does the next train leave then? Tomorrow morning! Great... So due to a slow driver, we had missed the last train to Paris for that evening. But I have to say that SNCF (like VR in France) organised the follow-up very well and everyone was so nice. They put us (we were three people that wanted to go to Paris) on a train to another town, Metz, and booked rooms in a hotel for the night. Then the next morning, we changed our old tickets to new ones to whichever train to Paris we wanted to take and we even got seats in first class!

But in stead of taking the first train to Paris, me and Sophie decided to stay a few more hours in Metz. Once there, why not take the advantage of exploring a new town? :) Metz is also a pretty old town with a long history. I especially liked the trainstation. It was built by the Germans in 1908 during an occupation, just to show off! :D


Then there were also a very impressive cathedral with enormous glass windows! Really! They were huge! Imagine a big, gothic cathedral with windows covering almost every wall!

This glass window was actually one of the smaller ones, but it's painted by Marc Chagall so I thought it could be interesting for you :)

In Metz we also visited the oldest church in France, build between 380 and 395, an old abbey, a city gate and of course the whole old town with it's numerous buildnings and streets.

But, after four days of monuments, churches and museums, we then decided to just have a relaxing walk by the river and in the different calm, green parks before heading back to Paris.

...but well, still one more problem crossed our path: when we went back to the hotel to get our luggage, the door was locked, eventhough the reception should have been open 24/7! We knocked and knocked and knocked, but nobody opened. And there were not a single telephone number anywhere. Then we just had to leave it and run to the railway station in stead. As we noticed that our train was 5 minutes late, we went to talk to the SNCF again to see if would be possible to send our luggage to Paris later. They were very surprised about the hotel and decided to call the reception. And now there was someone there! So we ran back, grabbed our luggage while listening to the receptionist's appologies (apparently he has just had a small break...) and then ran back to the railway station and jumbed on the train just before it left. Phew! It took a while before we had calmed down after that.

Loppu hyvin, kaikki hyvin! :)


Oh, almost forgot. The third person who wanted to go to Paris was a french guy and as we talked for a while with him in the hotel, he said he had immediately noticed that we possibly could not be french because we stayed so calm and quiet during the whole time! :D He, on the other hand, had been very distressed and argued with the staff etc. So even though we've been here for almost a month already, I can now announce that we haven't changed at all! We're still finns! ;)

Travel journal, part two: Luxembourg

Me and Sophie arrived in Luxembourg on sunday afternoon. I've wanted to travel to Luxembourg ever since I went to primary school. I remember I even gave a small talk about this country during a class in geography. I think the size of this country is what fascinates me the most. Why is it even a country of it's own?

Anyway, it was certainly bigger than Trier but I have to say that the old town of Luxembourg didn't exactly meet my expectations. I mean, the whole old town with its' fortress is a World Heritage of UNESCO so I thought it would be very special. The fortress was very impressive, but the old town itself wasn't at all uniformed. In fact, sometimes I wasn't even sure if I were in the actual old town or not! Spoiled by tourism... But those parts of the town that weren't only tourist areas were very nice. Like for example this part:


This picture is taken from one of the ancient walls surrounding the city. The differences in altitudes in Luxembourg were huge so we had to walk a lot up and down, escpecially when the city centre was in the upper town and our hostel in the lower town :) But it also felt very good to walk again in stead of always taking the metro everywhere! Some fresh air is only good for you!

The city was also much greener than Trier and I think it would look lovely in the summer! February isn't perhaps the best time to travel in this part of Europe. Everything is grey and dull and it's mostly raning all the time. I hope I someday get a chance to have a road trip in Europe during a summer. Then I'll definately visit Luxembourg (and Trier too!) again!

Even here we visited a museum of history and art. It made us realise how much behind Finland is when it comes to history. I mean, there were loads of findings ever since the stone age! You should have seen the different collections! They were incredible! For example the prehistoric section about the Gauls! When I compared that to the medieval exhibition at the Espoo City Museum, I just couldn't help laughing. They are like from two totally different worlds... or even planets! Unfortunatley photos weren't allowed in the museum.

This, again, is an interesting house... especially the colour of it :D And believe me, this is not the only pink house in Luxembourg! Another interesting thing about the house is the two white signs on the wall. There's a river floathing through the city and once in a while, the river floods. The higher sign indicated the hight of the water surface in 1756 and the lower one in 1806. Poor people who lived in that house back then... :)

One of the best experiences during this trip was nevertheless perhaps when we went to see an old movie. It was called "To kill a mockingbird" and produced in 1962. The movie theater itself was also pretty old with traditinal red seats and old movie posters on the walls. And the film was black and white with these dots and stripes all over and with a crackeling sound throughout the whole movie. Therefor the athmosphere was totally different to that in modern movie theaters today! Couldn't resist taking a photo even though I know it doesn't capture the moment very well... :)


The funniest thing is that I actually thought the movie was scary :D The shadows were much deeper since the picture was already in black and white and I jumped every time something sudden happened. After this I'm even more convinced that I'll never going to watch a real horror film... That's just not for me.

Travel journal, part one: Trier

Last friday morning me and Sophie started our trip towards Trier in Germany. This is a small but very old town by the Moselle river. Its' glorious days actually took place during the antiquity and I guess it today mostly lives on tourism. But it was a very nice city with a beautiful old town!

In Trier we had a reunion with Tobias and Mikael. Tobias has been studying in Germany this autumn and was now heading back to Finland by train through the eastern Europe. And Mikael came here to accompany him back home. It felt so nice to meet friends from Finland again and being able to talk and laugh without being forced to explain a lot of details all the time. I think the atmosphere was actually very relaxed... and joyful too! Especially for us who's been abroad. There were hundreds of things to discuss and compare. We were wandering about in the city, visiting all the compulsory sights and just had a good time together. Unfortunately the weather was lousy during the whole trip so most of the pictures I'm going to post here will look very grey and boring, but you can try to imagine a blue sky and sunshine in stead :) You should know that I took almost 200 pictures during this week, so it's only a fraction of them you see here on my blog!

Here's a view from the old town square. I liked these colouful houses. Some of the houses were even decorated with coloured bricks forming a nice pattern.

And here's one of the compulsory sight: a Roman bath! If I remember correctly, it's one of the largest in northern Europe. There were also an amphitheatre, a bridge and a city gate dating to the same period. We were also able to enter underneath the amphiteather and that was so cool! The atmosphere there was very mysterious!

Since the Easter is approaching, the fast is soon to begin (or has perhaps already begun?) here in the catholic part of Europe. And that means carnival times! We didn't see any carnivals during our trip, but all the shops, restaurants and cafés were decorated with streamers and balloons. And guess what happened to me? I got a really strong "Vappen-fiilis"! It was just like the 1st of May in Finland... And I'm so going to miss the 1st of May when I'm over here... Especially the part with the herring-breakfast (Geez, what a stupid word for sillis in english!) in the park of Kajsaniemi listening to the spring songs sung by Akademen *sigh* But Sophie promised she'll celebrate the 1st of May with me here. We're going to sit in a parc with our student's caps and streamers around our necks, having a picknick and drinking champagne. So maybe I'll survive without my favourite celebration in Finland... If someone wants to join us, please come! It would make it all even better! :)

Then I also found a CD with Chopin in Trier. It contains among others five of his nocturnes and also one impromptu. The sound isn't the best, though, but I should have guessed it since it's Arthur Rubinstein playing and therefor an old recordning. But I still like it :)

But back to Trier. Before the guys arrived, me and Sophie amused ourselves in the city museum of Trier. It was huge! (It seem like all the museum over here are huge... at least compared to the museums in Finland!) But although the history-part was interesting my favourites were the two fashion exhibitions.

Here's, once again, one of my beloved tournure-dresses! I'm seriously considering having an historical wedding once I get married, just to be able to at least once in my life wear such a beautiful dress! :D


Then there was also this Barbie-exhibition! It was so funny! Along with the Barbies from differents decades, there were also real dresses from that same time! Here's a showcase with Barbies from the 70s. Look at the clothes! Especially the silver coat that Ken is wearing! Splendid, isn't it? :D And the funniest thing was that both me and Sophie have also been playing with our mothers' old Barbie-dolls when we were little! So we were feeling very nostalgic over those old dolls. We stood by the showcases and gasped things like "Ooh, look, look!! That's the doll I played with! And that's the same dress! And hey, I had one of those too!!". I think the staff at the museum were very amused seeing two young girls so excited about old dolls... :P

And well, since I was in Germany, I had to try a beer even though I usually don't like it. I tasted a beer from Trier (Trierer Löwebrau) and that wasn't all that bad. I was even able to finish my glass! ;) But then I changed back to wine again.


The last thing we saw before we left the town was the Trier Cathedral. This cathedral is the host of the Holy Tunic, i.e. the robe that accordning to the tradition was worn by Jesus when he died.It doesn't look even half as good in the picture than in reality, but behind the altar there was a locked room where the robe was kept. And above the door, there was this huge, decorated hole in the wall and through that hole you were able to see a part of the room filled with golden things. And the gold made the whole room glow! And that is the first thing you see when you enter the church. Very impressing!

But well, perhaps it's enough about Trier now, let's move on to Luxembourg! :)