Eating, sleeping and getting around in Fréjus

Living in another country makes you accustom yourself to different kinds of things not existing in your homeland. Pretty obvious, right, but it's interesting how distinctively people react to these cultural differences. I thought - although I "lived" in France for only three weeks - that I'd tell about the main ones I came across during the time. Oh, by the way, tomorrow at nine o'clock I'll be starting my final exam in English, and I hope it will go alright. If only the essay subjects were interesting! Anyway, back to the differences:

The food & eating 
This one deserves its number one place without having to think that much! After all, both the food and the eating situation differed a lot from what I was used to in Finland. A traditional breakfast would include a croissant or pain au chocolat with a coffee, whereas we Finns like to eat bread, porridge and other stuff heavier (generally speaking) Luckily, we had cereals for breakfast, which was a good way to start the day.

Another matter of eating was the dinner. Here we have it usually around 4 o'clock or 5, but the French like to eat late. I guess the dinner was adjusted to fit better in our timetable, so we usually dined at 7 o'clock, which was early for them, but still pretty late for me. And it wasn't only about filling yourself up with food, but it was also a social event. Dinner time was of significant importance to the French, since we all kind of showed respect to each other and gathered around the table at the same time. I think dinner time was one of the only moments when we all sat down and talked in French. It was good for our language skills, as my room mates and I tended to switch into English outside the house.

My last confession would be the food itself. I just loved it and I was so happy to have a host mum who cooked so well! We had different food every day, and from what I can remember we had at least: ratatouille, pancakes filled with ham and cheese, paella, spaghetti bolognese and pizza. On our last evening, we had a huge variety of seafood tapas, such as caviar, tuna fish, prawns, crayfish and salmon with bread. Too bad I didn't take a photo of it; it was exotic!

The public transport
I was fairly satisfied with the transportation on the whole, but some things made me question the functionality. As French people are far lazier with timekeeping than us Finns, we sometimes had to wait for the bus reasonably long, which wasn't ever so agreeable. That happens here quite a lot as well, so I don't think it was much of a cultural difference, though.

But what really annoyed us were the bee buses, in other words, small ecological buses emitting the absolute minimum amount of exhaust fumes. Don't get me wrong, it's particularly important to conserve the nature, but it wasn't exactly an ideal start for the day when some of us didn't fit into this ecological wagon and had to wait for the next bus, thus going late to school. And since I was quite bad at navigating in Fréjus, (thanks to all the roundabouts and winding roads) I always had to be accompanied by a good friend of mine who would know when to get off. Also, it didn't really help that there were several lines which would all leave us on different bus stops.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this text, but what I meant is that getting around was quite hard. Fortunately, there was always someone near me and when there wasn't, one could just ask for help from the strangers. I won't even go into detail how my room mate and I got lost in the middle of the night walking 4 kilometres back home from the beach, or how I was forced to believe a random Norwegian girl, when I didn't know how to get home from the main bus station. She thought we might possibly live in the same block. I was a bit scared, but luckily she was right and we both got home!

The houses & rooms
In the photo above, you can see a very typical French boulevard with all its rainbow-coloured houses and cute balconies. Truth is that only a fraction of the French live in these houses and even though I also stayed in a flat, it looked completely different from these ones.

I was surprised by the fact that toilets didn't have a sink in which to wash your hands. At least where I stayed, the sink was in the bathroom next to the toilet. Not really that far away, but I just can't help thinking how unhygienic it could be. And sometimes when you simply wanted to wash your hands and realised someone was taking a shower, with the door locked of course, it wasn't very funny.

It also felt weird that there were no glasses in the windows. Instead, there were two 'doors' to keep the window shut and some stretchable blinds on the inside. It was practical, as the heat temperature would rise way above +30°C and the apartment seriously needed ventilation. But coming from Finland where our windows have two thick glasses on top of each other, and opening them happens with the help of a little tool, I think it's alright to feel like this.

Just for comparison, this photo below is the view from my room. Pretty different from the cute streets, right? This housing company must have been pretty big, as the yard was so huge I actually got lost there a couple of times. Naturally, we then had to ask some kids if they knew where our block E was. Well, apparently we mixed up the pronunciation of the letters 'E' and 'I', so instead of getting to know where our home was, we got to know where I was.

10 memorable photos from Gran Canaria

 1  This cute cat came sitting on our terrace; the terrace where I loved to have breakfast and little breaks from the sun. The whole resort area was really well-kept as one morning, besides the cat,  there was also a man trimming a palm tree in our garden. Meow.

 2  This is the professional way to dry your jacket abroad. Tuck the sleeve in and insure that it won't fall off five times like mine did. To be used at your own risk! No seriously, I wouldn't recommend this to anybody. I was just really desperate before a dinner.

 3  We went dining in a quiet Chinese restaurant in Playa del Ingles which seemed a bit peculiar, truth be told. When my friend's food appeared, it occurred that we would be cooking it ourselves in the table. I might have been able to understand that with steaks, but this was chicken. Goodness gracious!

 4  Oh no, wait a second. On second thought, I need my sunglasses as it's way too sunny out here and I don't want my eyes to be closed. Go on, take it! No, not yet! #holidayphotoproblems

 5   Yeah, we had a good time reading the menus in Finnish. It's hard to translate the mistakes in English because of the complex grammar, but let's just say every other one is written incorrectly. But it was cute.

 6  The sexy sipping face. Or less sexy. Do I really look like that? This isn't even the only one, I think I have about three of these in my archives!

 7  This was one dried out river in Puerto de Mogan! This bridge itself was beautiful, but this truth lay beneath it.

 8  Absolutely no one at Burger King in Las Palmas! Then we saw a family of three: a mother, a father and a small child probably around 3 years old. And they happened to be.... Finnish! Wow, I just feel sooo much abroad right now. I decided to use Spanish and order an ice cream, which was great, but I couldn't catch what the cashier said. So much for that. Switching to English immediately...

 9  Trying on shoes at Primark. Primark is a shoe and bag paradise. I just love it. But apparently I didn't approve of this moment for photographing. However, I happily left the shop with new sandals, and a few more purchases. Ahem, ahem. I've got to praise the Argan Oil I bought for my hair; if it hadn't been for Primark's cheap little bottles, I wouldn't have ever bought this amazing oil at all. My hair sends love to you, whoever invented the oil!

 10  Last but not least, when taking a "unique" holiday photo like this, make sure your horrid plasters aren't ruining it. The pool looks nice... Oh well. It was the first day at the pool so we were all excited!

How to make studying easier

I've been starting to question the accuracy of some longer words in Finnish - my native language! - such as harvinainen (=rare) and näyteikkuna (=display window) 

I guess that is what long summer holidays and a sudden start of school do to you.

Or the fact that you haven't been writing long texts in any other languages than English. Or maybe you've just got too much on your mind. Whoops. At the moment, my timetable is just about full of languages which means that I actually have over 10 hours of English every week and some hours of Spanish and French. But what about the subject that is not a language?

Well, the odd one out is psychology. Which I truly, immensely adore, but for some reason, there has now been a slight decrease in my motivation towards the whole subject. And actually, I wouldn't necessarily talk of a slight decrease... All the famous psychologists and their theories, and especially putting their theories into practice by writing long essays with clarifying examples, which are full of scientific vocabulary, make me feel tired and hopeless. Blurgh. I'm just fed up with it.

Trip to Tallinn Day 3

We still had time to do lots on the last day after checking out of our hostel at noon. Our plan was to roam markets and then visit either Patarei prison or the Bastion tunnels near Kiek in de Kök which we had visited the day before. But first, on our way to a Russian market, we came across this offbeat shop which had the most peculiar old items from the Second World War. Because photographing inside the shop was only allowed after paying one euro, I just settled for a photo taken from outside. And I think this was just foretaste of what we were going to see at the Russian market.

Trip to Tallinn Day 2

Our first destination on the second day was Pirita. It's a neighbourhood 10 kilometres away from the centre of Tallinn so we had to take a bus to get to Pirita beach. The heat was unbearable, once again, so we bought some nice icecream, which, of course, started to melt straight away. It was awesome to walk around in the shallow sea since even after walking metres away from the shore, it was only up to my knees.

After that we walked through a nice little forest well, an area full of trees towards the toilets and shower. We then had to go to the TV tower, which is pretty near to the beach, but it said on our map that it's closed on Tuesdays. I still don't know whether that was true or not, but we decided to go back to the centre.When I rummaged in my wallet for bus money, I realized these 20 cent coins from six different countries. So cool, I just had to capture them! By the way, one student ticket cost 80 cents in Tallinn, which is one quarter of the ticket price in Kuopio. Wow. My Estonian friend told me that the bus is even free for the residents of Tallinn. How awesome is that?

Next we did a bit of shopping at the Rotermann, which has a nice mixture of modern and old buildings. It has to be my favourite shopping area in Tallinn! This time I left empty-handed but at least my wallet wasn't complaining. Haha. We had to check out this renowned pancake house called Kompressor in the Old Town. And I have to admit, those pancakes were delicious! I myself had the feta pancake with smoked chicken and it was such massive a portion I couldn't even finish it! I would've wanted to try the sweet pancakes, but they had to wait as my - just like no one else's - stomach is unbounded. It would be so cool if that weren't the case. I mean, at least when abroad it would be great to taste as many dishes as possible! Did I mention these babies only cost about four euros? Almost too good to be true.

After eating our pancakes, we headed full and satisfied to a tower museum Kiek in de Kök. It basically tells about the Second World War including bombing, plague, weapons and digging the secret tunnels under Tallinn, which still partly remain a mystery. We visited the tunnels on day three, so more of them in the next post.

This five-storey tower didn't have the easiest stairs to climb up.

Museums like this make you think of life today and how much of an impact history has on it. It's weird to think that only thirty years ago Estonia was part of Soviet Union with all the strict regulations... But never mind the past, after the museum it was time to eat (again) so we dined in a pizzeria called Pizza Grande situated in Old Town.

The pizza was the usual, but it was weird how this restaurant had run out of salads and pastas. They had absolutely none of the salads or pasta dishes, even though they had them written on the menu. Doesn't sound very professional... But the pizza was alright. Mine had ham, blue cheese, peach and pineapple in it. Anything with blue cheese is just a 'yes, please' for me! And this last photo is a weird car we came across walking around Old Town. This day was full of seeing new places, walking, eating and just a bit more walking. I had just realised my comfortable flats had officially turned into the shoes from hell. Oh wow. And still one more day to go...

Trip to Tallinn Day 1

The hostel was sweet and its staff was really helpful and friendly; they seemed to be enjoying themselves rather than just working. The rooms were decorated in different colours, house rules were something you shouldn't be taking too seriously and our room's number - I mean name - was Porn. Yep, Porn. Perhaps that tells something about the hostel's atmosphere... Relaxed and full of young people, just how it should be.

After having a small bite at the hostel, I quickly met one of my old friends from Lady Gaga's concert, which was two years ago in Tallinn. Yet again, it was fun to realize how similar languages Estonian and Finnish are. I would really love to learn Estonian, because it's like Finnish with a cute touch. This time I only sticked to occasional Estonian words like 'Tere' and 'Aitäh' (=hello, thank you)

Then it was time to wake up my sleepy friends and see the Old Town's cute streets and viewing platforms. On our way to the platforms, we found a lane telling about Estonia's history and future on a time line. There was also a big rotating globe with all of Estonia's cities. I'm not sure what this place was, but it looked cool. Definitely hadn't seen it before.

Walking, walking, stairs, walking... finally there! We visited two of the three viewing platforms and the view was amazing. I'm happy we had a good map so we could navigate easily without bigger problems.

Walking around and heat aren't that much of a great combination, so we decided to sit down and find a place to have some icecream. The first place we came across was a café called Koogel Moogel, which turned out to be a cosy café&theatre. It was okay, at least it made a nice difference to the usual restaurants and cafés. Oh, and a little note to self: if the waitress asks you two or three times 'Is everything alright?,' you might want to get up and pay. I thought we were to pay from our table as the waitress had brought our receipts there, but apparently we had to pay near the entrance. It was funny, since we we're just sitting there waiting for her to come and take our money.

After seeing Old Town, it was time for some shopping in a mall further away from the centre: Kristiine. Despite our aching legs, we walked  there. We did come back to the centre by bus, whose bus stop was nowhere near the mall, which I think was pretty weird. Anyway, we were happy to get back to the hostel and then go out eating to St. Patrick's after this long day. The food there was ordinary, but its low price and huge portion size compensated it. Below are some portions: salmon pasta and cheese balls. Having been awake for over nearly two days, sleeping felt just priceless. We would still have two days to go, so catching some z's was very important!