Greetings from Prague!

Day 1. This place is great! :) It’s a very beautiful and warm spring day (the first this year) and I have been walking around the whole day... and now I’m starting to feel a bit tired... :)

 Say hello to my new hometown! :)

This morning a really nice guy, Miko, was really helpful, practically taking me to the center and letting me leave my (huge) backpack to his place for the day. Thank you!

As I said, after that I’ve just been walking around the town getting to know the place.

It is beautiful! :) I’m in the heart of Europe! Yeah, yeah, I know what you Austrians are thinking, but check the map again, clearly Prague is in the center ;)

I’m feeling like I did a year ago when I went to Seoul: excited about everything. Only the skyscrapers and tiny houses and steaming dumplings have changed into castles and medieval churches. It’s like a fairytale! :D Hahaha, I love to swell in this euphoria, better enjoy it as long as it lasts. Because soon I will get used to everything that right now feels so great here.

I have been taking pictures about everything… I look like a tourist, walking around with a camera hanging around my neck (how lame is that) (but I do have a cool strap though…), but… there is a fundamental difference between me and the tourists. I am not a tourist, I’m just new. Seriously, it’s February and the tourists are already roaming the streets and bridges in the center. If I survive the spring and the summer (that is when the invasion is supposed to be the biggest) here, I will survive anything.

Here are some pics I took:

 

Vltava.

  

 Tram.

  

 The entrance to Charle's Bridge.

  

 Old Town Square.

I was walking in the Old Town, and it was so magical! It’s like a maze! Even though I knew approximately to which direction I was heading, there is no way that I would ever happen to walk the exact route again. There are small alleys and narrow streets all curving to their own direction. I would have wanted to take pictures there, but at first I was too hungry to take pictures and after eating I was too lazy… so the pictures from the Old Town you’re gonna have to wait for a bit longer.

I checked out apartments. I love the old architecture here! The apartments were all nice, and I actually already made a decision where to move. And I’m actually already here. This place is in the center, I mean, the location is just perfect. The flat itself is pretty old, not one of the fancy renovated ones, but other things here make up for it. :)

Day 2. When I came here I didn’t have a place to live, nor a place to stay for the night. Adventurous… But everything worked out so well! I came to see this apartment, and when we talked, it turned out that I didn’t have a place to stay and they have a couch,,, so why not stay here for the night. :)

So I got a mattress in the living room floor, got a good night sleep after a long day and woke up when the roommate’s cat came to roll around on my pillow, next to my head, and fell asleep there. :) His name is Mini-Me and he’s super cuddly and cute!

Now I’m waiting for my flatmate Vinny to come back from work and we’ll have lunch together.

I’m so happy and glad that everything worked out so well! Hmm, well, I’m getting a little nervous about my first day at work… but other than that everything’s been so nice!

Day 2 night. The reason why I'm writing this post in parts like this, is that I haven't had a chance to post it to the internet. So I keep adding stuff to it... But now I don't really have anything to add to it :)... just a couple of photos.

 

  

  

Good night!

Going, going, going!

It was bye bye Helsinki before, but now I’m leaving Finland. Snowy, snowy Finland...

On a walk with Donna.

A bit of snow on the rooftop. (A view ”out” of the corridor window.)

Enough about Finland though. I’m excited about going to Prague. It was actually pretty good that I had this extra time to get everything prepared. If I had left already last week, I would have been in a really big hurry. But now it’s pretty much all good!

- Flight ticket: check.

- Travel insurance: check.

- All the paperwork with my university, Kela and and other institutes: check.

- 25 kg of clothes, shoes and other things stuffed into my backpack and my handbag: check baby! (it was a mission almost impossible once again)

- Good travel spirit: check :)

- Apartment: I have agreed on several meetings on Thursday where I go to see rooms for rent. It seems pretty good. :)

So my plan in Prague is this: find an apartment, get to know the city, get to know nice people, start working on Monday at 8.45. Wohoo, exciting! :D

P.S. Until here I wrote already yesterday, but now I’m at the airport and really getting that I’m going, going, going! :D Oh yeah, wish me luck!

We keep on fading...

We made a song with my friend :)

It's called We Keep On Fading.

Music by Hannu Niemi, words by Greete Kriik.

Change in plans

My initial plans for how I was going to Prague have changed. We we're supposed to go skiing in Austria with my family and on the drive back I was supposed to get off in Prague. But due to an obstacle we had to cancel our trip :(

Now, since everything has changed, I'm starting to feel a little bit nervous, especially when I still don't have a place to live in Prague! Wiipdidii... butterflies in my stomach...

I keep telling myself that everything's gonna work out and stuff, but you know, it's still a bit exciting when you're moving abroad and you don't have a place to go to... Well they do have hostels in Prague, but I wouldn't like to live in a dorm sleeping in a bunk bed with ten random people for the whole spring.

Anyway my friend told me an adress to a website (expats.cz - flat share) where people look for roommates, and I thought that it would be kinda cool to share a flat (I'm a social person :) ) but the thing with the flatmates is that they all want to see me in person before making their decision. And who could blame them, of course you want to meet the person before you make the decision wether you want to live with the person or not. So basically I need to go there to search for a place to live.

Hope I will find something nice. G'night!

Vanhojen Tanssit

Vanhojen Tanssit is a traditional Finnish high school ball in which the high school second graders celebrate becoming the oldest in the school (after the oldest class withdraws to study for the final exam). In practice it means that they practice traditional ball dances and perform them to other students, parents and families.

My little brother is graduating this year (they grow so fast!), but his girlfriend had the ball this year. So he actually skipped his own to dance with his girlfriend now. They were a handsome couple :)

I watched the ball with my cute little sister.

My little brother and his girlfriend on the dance floor.

My little brother and his girlfriend on the dance floor.

Ball dancers.

 

 Smile.

 

Ball dancers.

Couple.

My little brother and his girlfriend dancing.

In the end the dancers could ask their relatives or friends to dance Waltz with them, so I got to dance with the most handsome guy there. ;)

Goodbye Helsinki

Helsinki is my favorite city in Finland. I love the parks, trams, and the atmosphere, but most of all I love all my friends there and the way my life is in there. Actually I was just getting used to living back there, just when I’m leaving again! I’m of course very happy and excited about the fact that I’m going to move to Prague for the spring and the summer :) but it was a little bit sad moment (well, just a little bit) when I left my apartment to which I’m not going to return anymore.

There it is, in a student building. Probably the right time to leave.

And the neighborhood... well, I’m happy I had an excuse to leave that! :) This is one example of the place: I lived right next to the train station, and one night in the early 2008 someone had thrown up quite a big load of vomit in the station. Well, it took them (I don’t know who’s responsible for keeping the stations clean. VR, the train company probably) a while to arrive to the scene and clean up the mess, but they didn’t really do a good work that day nor on any other day after that.

Ladies and gentlemen. It is fucking 2010, and the dried up vomit is still in the Pohjois-Haaga train station! Seriously, whatta hell??

Yes honey, puke. When I go back to Helsinki, I will find a better place!

Farewells

Happy Valentine's day!

This weekend has been full of farewells, laughter and being together with friends.

Thank you for being there for me and putting a smile on my face. We will see each other again soon!

Love,

Greete

I've got an internship!

Alright, so I'm always annoyed when I go read someone's blog and it starts like this: "I know, I know, I haven't written this in a while... but I've had so much other stuff going on... blaa, blaa...". Look, I came to your blog to read about how you're doing, not to read all the excuses why you're not writing your blog. So I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to go straight to the point.

As the heading might reveal, my days as the 'hunchback CV typer' are over. I GOT AN INTERNSHIP! :D Yaay! I'm gonna be a headhunter!* (*headhunting = executive search)

And where is this brutality* going to take place? (*headhunting = executive search)

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you the next chapter of the adventure: Prague.

Uhhuh, that's where I'm going! :D Yaay!

:)