Eurotour - Day 6

Something I fell in love with on Eurotour was those pastries with chocolate in them (name anyone?) they had them in almost everywhere we went at the breakfast buffets and the ones at our hotel in Paris were particularly delicious! We were going on a bit of a sightseeing tour today and first stop was the Palace of Versailles. In my journal it says VERSAILLES!!! It really was incredible, I wandered around with Ana and there was a lot of people but not as many as I expected. You get a free audio guide at the door and they are really informative and it was actually really fun to learn all about how the French royal family used to live back in the day. When we went back to the bus there was all these people trying to sell us stuff and they do not let up. Even if you give them no attention whatsoever they keep pestering you. A few times we would see a huge group of them sprinting in one direction and then you would see some police officers walking towards where they are running from. This happened a bit in Venice too.


The next stop was a photo stop for the Eiffel tower! I never had the big Paris dream like a lot of girls my age do but it was still so incredible to be seeing such a famous landmark! We took lots of pictures and then it started to pour with rain so the rest of the tour was in the bus. I admit I was drifting to sleep by then and can't really remember where we drove. Our group had a booking to go up the tower and when we got there we had to go through security gates and have our bags checked. Bit of back story now, it was freezing. It was rainy and cold and I had shorts and a light cardigan on, I'd decided I would bring my big Australian flag to keep me warm but then I forgot to take it out of the bus and had to buy a poncho at the gift shop. Back to the security, anyone who were carrying any country flags; had them confiscated. In a group of 80 or so exchange students from a handful of different countries, collectively we were carrying quite a few flags. All of them had to be thrown away, I was so glad I had forgotten my flag because that would have made me furious!


We headed up in the lift and then we had to wait a while to catch the 2nd lift that would take us the the very top. The view was incredible, even form the 2nd floor you could see the whole city sprawled out in  front of you. We could see people riding their bikes and playing soccer and they were like ants! We finally got to the top and admired the view and took some photos before waiting forever in line to get back down. It is a lot of waiting and I think from when we started and to when we got back to ground it was about 3 hours but so worth it! The rest of the evening was spent trying to find some food. You would think this would be easy in a city as big as Paris but we had a hard time finding anything. Eventually we found a nice little Chinese place and then I finally got to sleep!

Yay! Versailles! 

Typical jumping Eiffel tower photo! 

D1430 Newbies!

Thanks for crashing my lovely photo Ana!

From level 2

Waiting to go up

From the very top! 

At the top

Chinese in France! 

Catching the Metro home

Eurotour - Day 5

Somehow even though I woke at 6.45 I still managed to be late for breakfast and had to throw some rolls into a serviette and dash back to the bus. We were driving to Belgium and the traffic was crazy! Crazy traffic to me is Melbourne at rush hour and that has NOTHING on the crazy traffic I saw while on Eurotour! We finally arrived in Brussels and it was a lovely warm day. We had free time to wander the streets and try chocolate, waffles and French fries. I didn't get any French fries but I can report that the waffles and chocolate are as good as their reputation! Brussels is the capital of the European Union and all the main EU meetings and stuff happen there. This meant that a lot stores had stuff from all the EU counties and I found a Finnish flag, badge and sticker. Very weird buying touristy things in the wrong country. One problem that arose quite often in a lot of place we were at was that most stores had a limit for what you could use your card for and also ATM's seemed to be a dying breed. I think I spent about 50 euro's less than what I was going to in Brussels just because I couldn't find a damn ATM to get any cash. We had a delicious lunch and then had to start driving again, this time to Paris! We arrived in Paris just before sunset so we could see the tip of the Eiffel tower in the distance, so exciting!

European Parliament

There were puppies on the side walk!

I had a ridiculous messy and delicious waffle

Missä olemme?

The view from our hotel room

Eurotour - Day 4

The morning was spent driving to the Netherlands! When I think of the Netherlands, I think canals and windmills and cows everywhere but no country can be as cool as it is in the movie's can it? IT WAS! We stopped at a little cheese and clog factory and watched a guy who was wearing converse clogs give a short demonstration on how to make clogs. We then got to attack the souvenir store before spending some time taking pictures in the giant clog. We had a short talk on how they make cheese too and we got to have a bit of a taste of all the nice cheeses. There was one covered in garlic and olive oil and it was so good. We went down to the beach next where we were having lunch but we got to run through all the little stores first. So many cool things and I have no idea how I didn't buy everything! We had lunch and then drove to Amsterdam, really cool city! Definitely one of my favourites that we visited.


First we went on a boat tour through the canals and the guide told us all about why they built the houses they way they did and a bit of the history of the city. There is a big sort of hook thing that extends from the top of most of the houses and that was so that when people moved they could put their furniture in the higher levels because the staircases were much too thin. There was also two sets of doors into most of the houses, one for the owners of the house and one, which was normally lower than the other, for the servants to enter the house. There were lots of house boats tied to the sides of the canals and people live in their house boats all year round! They were very different to Australian houseboats! 


Then we swapped groups and I got to spend some time in the Anne Frank museum which was chilling but a really good experience. Our hotel was quite a way out of the city and it was dark and freezing when we got there so we were not happy to hear that they hadn't gotten our key-cards ready and we had to wait ages to finally get inside! I went to take a shower and had a brief moment of "whoa how the heck do I work this thing" before I realised that it was just like an Australian shower and I had grown so used to Finnish showers which are so much easier to regulate. 

Converse clogs! 

My roomie and I in a giant clog!

One of my favourite photos from the whole eurotour.

Just posing with a cute house

Public urinals :/

Houseboat!

Actual houses

Being a bit silly with Ana in Amsterdam.

Ana also has a really good blog that is really worth reading! 

Eurotour - Day 3

In the morning we had a tour around Copenhagen, we stopped at the canals and the Little Mermaid statue and we went to the Royal Palace and got to see the changing of the guards. The guards were kinda scary, if you got too close to them they would stamp their gun on the ground and look straight at you. We had a really good tour guide and she told us heaps of really interesting thing but I can't really remember them. When we got back to the hotel I got to meet my friend Andrea for the first time! We'd been facebook friends since the beginning of her exchange and it was so nice to finally meet her, she came with a big group of us to Christiana which is Denmark's "free city." It really was something else all together, I couldn't work out if I was amazed or appalled by this little city. You weren't allowed to take any pictures because technically all the drugs are still illegal. Denmark's government is always trying to eradicate the open drug selling but has tried unsuccessfully many times although their is a "no hard drug" rule within Christiana as of 1979 and they take this seriously. The smell of cannabis gets to you after a while so we left and caught the bus back to our hotel and tried to find food. I had to say goodbye to Andrea then and I really didn't want to, I'd just got to meet her and then I had to leave and I had no clue when I would see her again. One thing I've learnt is that exchange is so chock full of goodbyes :( You should all read Andrea's blog, she is a really really good writer and I especially recommend it to outbounds! Ashleigh and I had to sprint back to the bus then and luckily we made it on time and the bus continued its journey till we reached a ferry that took us to Germany. We were staying overnight in Bremen and while we were waiting for to get our key cards hundreds of people on roller-skates went by!

A golden girl on her bike

The canals of Denmark, they call it "little Amsterdam"

Sophie and I with a guard

The guards changing, it kind of looks like they are laughing when they change.

Here they are marching around

Andrea and I!

Christiana 

I stole these pictures of google because I wanted to show you what it was like in there.

There is about 850 people that live there permanently (including 150 children) and they all live in houses that are mostly made by themselves. 

There was so many bikes! 

I swear it is not me who makes the noises at the start!  

Eurotour - Day 2

First on the agenda is Happy Birthday Nanna!
We had a early start this morning as we all had to be packed up and down at brekkie by 6! When we got off the boat it was straight into the bus. Stockholm was really beautiful, I wish we could have spent some more time there. Rotex ordered silence until 9 but I didn't do much! We stopped at a little lolly shop where you can see the lollies being made, like that store in Chadstone that I forget the name of, Sugar maybe? I bought some lollies and made a fool of myself by telling the lady kiitos when she was finished. Kiitos is thank you in Finnish and its such a habit now that my brain didn't say hang on a sec, you're in Sweden not Finland!!! Whoops! I did it again at lunch when I got my meal, what an idiot! 


We caught a ferry over into Denmark and soon we were in Copenhagen surrounded by bikes! There was so many bikes! We settled in to out hotel rooms and the whole group walked to Tivoli which is the 2nd oldest amusement park in the world! I bought a pass for all the rides because those that know me, know that I love a good theme park! The first ride we went on was the tallest carousel in the world. It took us up 80 metres and you could see the entire city, it was so incredible! I knew Denmark was an old city but when you see it all laid out in front of you like that you can really appreciate its colourful history. We went on lots of other rides including a freaky ride that spins you around in ways I didn't know possible! Once we'd had enough of the rides we went to find some food and got stuck in the rain so we took shelter in the first bar we could find. While we were there the TV was showing the highlights of a game of AFL. Yes you read that correctly, I watched the highlights of an Australian Football game in Denmark! That was very weird!

The lolly store

TIVOLI! 

The swinging chair ride.

Mathaus and I on the drop ride

This ride was freaking scary, I'm on the left.

We survived! 

Set loose in Copenhagen

Eurotour - Day 1

The Eurotour blogging begins! I am going to be updating one day at a time as fast as I can write them and I hope you enjoy reading them! To view only the Eurotour posts click here. I have added in a lot of wikipedia links to the countries and cities that we visited so if you want to learn more about them then you can do so that way. You can see all the photos from the trip on my Facebook so head on over and check them out. 


The first day was mostly spent on the train to Turku. I had to wake up early and Jarmo drove me to Iisalmi where the adventure begun! It was a long trip to Turku but I had a few of my favourite exchange students on the train and we all kept each other company. We got some free time in Turku wen we arrived so we wandered around the city and bought food, because what else would exchange students do besides buy food? Lewis made friends with a homeless guy who wanted money, Lewis pretended to understand what he was saying and this guy even joined us on the bus back to the port! Finally at about 8 we got to get on the boat! The Eurotour begins! After a delicious buffet dinner we gathered a huge group and went to the karaoke bar. There were other people singing too, Finnish songs, Swedish songs and English songs. No matter what language, we sung the words and danced around. It was so much fun and a really great way to start of Eurotour! I wasn't on the Russian trip so I had only met the Oldies from my district so it was nice to put faces to Facebook profiles!

Chilling by the river

Making friends

Singing Down Under

Moving families

The 1st of June was my last full day with my first family, I spent most of it with Eeva we were on women's duties and cleaned up the house and made some food. I had to pack all my things up too and that was very hard. Walking through the house removing all my things that showed I lived there and thinking about everything i'd been through in this house that I call home had me choked up most of the day. In the evening we rode to Eeva's sisters place to see her and her daughter who is so utterly adorable. We left early because there was a storm coming and we didn't want to get stuck in it. But guess what, we did. We got stuck in the most terrible storm I have ever seen! It was the first day of summer too so I had just shorts and t-shirt on! It was hilarious, we couldn't see and we were being attacked by hail! At the end of it all though it was such a funny experience and it made me realise how memories on exchange no matter how awfully uncomfortable or horrible they were at the time, you can always look back on them and smile. I got stuck in a very bad storm on a bike with very little clothes on but it was in Finland and that's what counts!  


The next day was moving day but it was also the first day that the little cows get taken in to the fields. The young cows have never been in the fields before, the cow house is all they know, so when they get to leave they are SO EXCITED, they around all YAY WE'RE FREE!!! It was hilarious to watch but then as the "little cows" got progressively bigger, quite frightening! We then had to wait for them to wear themselves out and then we coaxed them into the yard. That was bloody hard work, they are the most stubborn things! It took a long time but finally they were all out in the yard and we had to watch them for a while to make sure that they all learnt that the electric fence is actually electric and they shouldn't go near it. We had Pavlova that Liisa had made the day before and it was delicious! Then it was time to leave. I hugged everyone and then got in the car, waving goodbye to what was an incredible chapter of my exchange. I don't want to get too soppy because it just feels strange to write this to the internet but its so much harder leaving a place that you won't be coming back too. When I left Australia, I knew exactly when I was coming back, but when I left my first house I knew I would be back, but it would never be my house again. I got to my next house and I had a tour and settled in to my room but I didn't really unpack, I was too exhausted, too overwhelmed. I will introduce my new family in a later post! 

Shoving the cows out of the cow house

This is pretty much all they did and occasionally they would start fighting each other. You can hear me at the start saying ei to the cow which means no.

They were a little scared of me

Going in for a kiss. It was so sweet how much all the cows loved my host dad! 

Just waiting...

Liisa's Pavlova

The 4th was graduation day and I dressed up and went to the school to watch them all get their hats and then everyone shakes hands with them all and they get flowers and money and its so full of tradition! We watched on the live stream in one of the classrooms because we couldn't all fit in the theater. Because all the Seniors weren't really at school when I arrived, I didn't really know any of them but it was so great to see it all. I had to say goodbye to Julie after that, I was leaving for Euro-tour and she would be back in France when I got back. It was so terrible, I'd spent almost every single school day with Julie and my god I knew damn well that I was going to miss her like hell. The first few months of your exchange can be tough and confusing and I had Julie to help me the whole time, she made everything so much better and I love her so much for being there for me. If you are reading this Julie, I miss you and KIITOKSIA PALJON! To any outbounds reading this, be nice to your oldies! They will become so important to you! 

Our last photo with each other :( 

The next day I headed off for my incredibly amazing Eurotour so stay tuned for more posts!