I cannot decide which topic to write about, so I write about everything I have wandering in my head. So, this post is very likely to be disorganized, apologies.
Dutch Queen’s Day
The Dutch celebrated their Queen’s Day last Friday. The biggest celebration is probably in Amsterdam, but because it didn’t seem worth of traveling to Amsterdam only for a party, I traveled to Maastricht with some exchange students and their German friends to see what is the birthday party like. The celebration was actually slightly similar to Finnish Vappu. People gathered in a park, which also had live music, flea market and stalls in which you could be something to eat and drink. A big difference to Vappu was that people weren’t (very) drunk but rather celebrating with their family. So, there were also many children, most of which were really cute and funny. They wanted to play with us all the time even though we didn’t have a common language to communicate with. In addition to my good mood and sunny weather, stupidly funny was that we found a shopping trolley. I was happy to ride a shopping trolley for the first time in my life before I’m 25…. how can I have been that boring and sophisticated before?!
Xisela and me with our megalecker chocolate bread.
Wappu
Some other Finnish exchange students and I organized a Wappu (not Vappu :>) picnic in Aachen last Saturday, because we didn’t want to miss Wappu entirely this year. Our picnic was good: the weather was better than we had expected (it rained only for 1o minutes and we saw also the sun), quite many other, not Finnish, people joined us and seemed to have fun. One drawback was that we forgot that shops were closed last Saturday and, thus, couldn’t buy beer for our beer relay :( Good food and sparkling wine we had enough though. On Sunday it rained and I could stay home, which did actually extremely good for me, I guess :)
“Teekkarit”
Wappu picnic people
Life after Erasmus
I have also give some thought to my life after Erasmus, although I have still 4 months left in Aachen. My first thoughts are that I don’t want to go back to Finland for good. Cold winters, horrible prices and I guess the same life that I had there already for 24 years don’t sound very tempting. Of course I miss my Finnish friends and some other things, like milk, but I can quite easily imagine my life outside Finland now. However, finding a master’s thesis place in Germany (or in another country in Central Europe), in which I get paid, and doing one or two courses to my home university while being abroad don’t sound really simple, but not impossible either. I guess I should just start to organize things now that I still have time. Yeh, I have also a plan B, but I rather would not use it. I somehow feel myself boring when resorting to easier and safer plan B’s. They’re not for me, although I rather often have three of them…..
Other stuff
I finally bought Spotify premium. I <3 new Spotify and great music without annoying commercials. I also found some cool sounding gigs in Cologne. Electronic Beats on the 20th of May sounds really cool, as well as c/o Pop Festival in June, but I’m then in London… looking forward to it though. Kate Nash plays also in Cologne in May, but the concert is sold out :( Stupid that I realize most cool things too late.
