My thoughts on exchange studies: Final blog post

Hello all you lovely readers. This is going to be my final post to this blog, so a big thank you to all readers; it’s been lots of fun posting our adventures. 

I wanted to talk about my thoughts and experiences on going abroad for exchange studies. Our spring in Graz was my second time abroad thanks to my studies and I feel both of the times have been some of the most memorable and giving times of my life. Given these experiences I don’t understand why so many students don’t do exchange studies. This is mainly directed at Finnish students and especially on my experiences with Finnish students. None of my close friends have even spoken or thought about doing an exchange period and I feel like they are missing out. Universities in Finland have huge networks with other universities that should offer an interesting possibility for anyone who is interested in going abroad. I understand that it is easier and safer for some to just stay home, but still. Simplest selling point I have is that the exchange student grants are good like real good compared to what you make while just studying in Finland. I know it sounds empty, but I don’t think everyone understands that, and it is an important worry for people considering exchange studies.

Besides the financial extra support, exchange studies are just the best. Getting to know different cities, schools and people is such a world opening experience and I wish everyone could have that. I have always enjoyed travelling and seeing new places and cities and exchange studies give a perfect avenue to do that. We had a lot of great experiences during our stay in Graz, as you know if you have been reading the blog. 

One final thing I want to talk to my international brethren is the possibility of coming to study in Finland and especially my home town of Oulu. Finland is a great and easy country to come to. We are part of the EU and for European students that means the possibility of doing an ERASMUS exchange like I did in Graz. Finland is also a well educated country where you will do fine with English. Finnish education system is one of the most revered in the world so a piece of that might look good on the good ol CV. I don’t feel good about saying this next one, but Finland is also a safe country and that might be a big factor to some in the modern world, with its modern problems. My home city Oulu is in the northern part of Finland and close to the Arctic Circle if that interests you. If anyone is interested in the possibilities of an exchange period in Oulu here is my home Universities website for exchange information. I do hope people will give it a look.  https://www.oulu.fi/forstudents/node/34930

Don't have too many pictures from Oulu, but here's some fountains near the city centre and right by my place.

During the day

That’s all I think. Time for final goodbyes and ending this blog. I want to thank you all for reading, it has been fun to write and share all my thoughts and our adventures. Big thanks to the city of Graz for serving as a home away from home and all the University people for helping my exchange to be a possibility. I want to give a big thanks to Anne who has taken almost all of the pictures that I used in the blog and she helped proof reading my ramblings as the first drafts contain chunks of typos. I hope all of you had a pleasant summer and spring reading this blog and I hope all the best in the future. Thank you all. Keep on rocking my peeps.

Enjoy the rest of the summer all my good people

My favourite five pictures from the exchange

Hello friends. Back home in Oulu and feeling back to my old self again and finally got time to settle down a bit. I am going to do a bigger final post later this week, but I wanted to make small post remembering the spring that has been. The way I thought to do that was to choose five of my favourite pictures from our catalogue of few thousand pictures we took during the five months of travelling. We had so many trips large and small so I wanted to focus solely on my personal favourite pictures instead of what were the top experiences.

First picture is my favourite one from Graz. At least it summarizes as much as possible about our time in the wonderful city. Our evening at the Rathaus attending the Mayor’s evening for exchange students was a great experience and an inspiration to hear from the Mayor how much he appreciates the internationality we exchange students bring to the city. From the balcony of the Rathaus we got this great picture with a nice backdrop of old town and Uhrturm.

I’ve said it a few times that Arnold was the reason for me coming to Graz. When we visited the museum in his childhood home I felt inspired on both of our visits there. The village of Thal was quiet on both of the occasions and a nice break from the rush of the city. I don’t usually flex my muscles but on this cold winter day it felt appropriate and I like how the image came out.

Hallstatt was great, I cannot overly state that. There were tons of great pictures that I looked at and thought about, but this one was the first I wanted to look at. Swan is the national bird of Finland and finding a few spending their winter at the lakes in the Alps felt like such a perfect metaphor. It also captures the feeling of calmness that surrounds the alpine village. 

This one is probably the one that I have looked at the most. Our two weeks in Italy were great and there were lots of contenders from Turin and La Spezia, but none of them were just right. This just a fun picture of me seeing my niece for the first time since leaving Finland. She seemed confused to be in her uncle’s arms, but finally I found a joke that got her laughing and she is just so precious. Many times I’ve been scrolling our pictures and this is probably the only one I have to look at every time.

Last image is from one our trips with the gang of ESN. This time we visited the Zotter chocolate factory and Riegersburg castle. The picture is from the yards of the castle and it’s my favourite picture of Anne and me, just a sunny day in the rolling green hills of Styria and a medieval castle as a backdrop, good times.

Journey home

Hello people. It has been a while, but we have made it back to Finland. We left Graz at the end of June and travelled through Salzburg, Stuttgart and Berlin before we flied back to Helsinki. I am not going to write too detailed description of our journey so I will mainly just add notes to pictures. 

Only thing I wanted to mention is that the trip did not go fully well. When we were in Stuttgart I had a medical scare and ended up staying in a hospital for a couple of nights and it changed the rest of our trip so I had to take it really easy. Unfortunately, I had some complications with the medical situation once we got back home to Finland and I ended up staying at a hospital for a couple more days. I am feeling a lot better now and we are heading to our summer homes in the countryside for some pure relaxation, but these complications caused this post to be delayed by some days. 

They took really good care of me in Stuttgart and luckily the hospital staff spoke good English, so everything went smoothly. By also being an EU citizen, the health care will cost me the same as I would have in Finland so I will be fine on that front as well. Again, a big bonus for ERASMUS exchange studies in Europe. Now let’s get to the pictures of the trip.

Salzburg

 

We visited Salzburg in February but we always wanted to come back

Garden's were a lot greener now compared to winter

We visited the Augustiner brewery beer garden again

Balanced meal served with nice Augustiner beer

We made a day trip from Salzburg to the Eagle's Nest house, which was a house in the German Alps where Hitler and his closest advisors and political allies gathered for important meetings. Today it is a restaurant, but the views were great.

There was a small walk path along the mountain to take in the views. Don't know the purpose of this cross

Very German and Austrian meals were served there. Good stuff.

Weather got little wild towards the end

Before taking a train to Stuttgart we went on a horse carriage ride around the Old town in Salzburg

Bye bye Salzburg, you've been a great city and hope to visit you again

 

Stuttgart

 

Main reason for our visit in Stuttgart was a concert to see Mark Knopfler. He was the lead guitarrist and singer in the band Dire Straits and i had been wanting to see him live for years. My favorite part was when the song "Money for Nothing" kicks in. The music was calm rock, but this was the part where it hits hard as rock n roll should. I put a video of it below

Unfortunately we ended up having to call some aid for my pains

We don't have too many pictures from Stuttgart, but here is some pretty sights from the hospital yard

Train station was also impressive

 

Berlin 

In Berlin we had only one day and I was still quite tired, but we made one small trip to the Brandenburg gate and a small walk around town near it. Besides that it was just resting before flying back home to Finland

Keep living my friends. I'll talk to you in a week or so again

Graz: Home away from home

Hi everyone. I guess its all starting to come to an end, on Sunday we will leave Graz. We will send our larger luggage to Finland by mail and travel through Germany over a week before we fly back home from Berlin. I will probably make a short post with mostly pictures about that trip, but I don’t think I will put too much time into it. Now before we leave, I wanted to make a post about our home for the past five months: Graz. This will be a bit longer post so I will mark themes by subheaders so its easier to navigate. I want to include some thoughts from myself on the city as well as my tips for incoming exchange students or people who want to visit Graz. Ok? That sound good? Of course it sounds good it’s my idea after all. Ok, let’s go.

I’ll add a few pictures from around the city I haven’t used in my previous posts so its not too boring to scroll through. 

The city of Graz

Graz had been a great home for the last five months. It has served as our headquarter for our trips and as our rest haven when we have needed to relax. Graz feels like a relaxed town, being small enough that you can understand the public transport and you don’t feel annoyed by using the busses or the trams, some of the big big cities got that frustrating commute feeling. Graz is just the good size - we feel like we have experienced most of what the city has to offer. There were some very little things we didn’t have time for, but they were mostly on the level of trying different coffee shops etc. 

Experiencing Graz is also fairly easy. Pretty much all the notable sights and pretty places are right in the city centre. Highlight of the city of course is the Schlossberg and the symbol of the city, the Uhrturm clock tower on the mountain. I don’t think I have mentioned Uhrturm since some of my first posts, but it has grown a loving symbol for the city for us too, and I always feel happy when I get a glimpse of it from a new angle anywhere in town. The old town is great fun as well and it is very compact and snuggling against the Schlossberg, keeping the centre feeling really nice and tight. The river Mur is also very close to the mountain and the old town and by the river you have the modern art museum or “friendly alien” as the locals call it (or “the nipple building” as I call it) and the interesting bridge café Murinsel. All this centre of Graz is fairly easy to go through in two days if you are planning a visit.

Other points in Graz I recommend is the Eggenberg castle, which is on the edge of the city only 15-minute tram ride from the centre. Other recommendable place might be little biased and that is our neighbour church the Herz Jesu Kirche. I think it is the prettiest church in Graz both in and out. 

Few weeks ago, after going to the movies we went up the mountain for some drinks

Uhrturm was looking good in the night lights, as did the city

After looking at our neighbor church for months we finally visited inside

We also visited this large church in southern Graz. We've seen it many times from tram and bus windows, but wanted to visit.

Impressive, but inside was closed due to a local holiday

There was this impressive memorial for the Second World War

"Defend freedom and peace, we have died for them"

Cinema in Graz

I don’t remember if I’ve talked much about movies in this blog, but we have gone to many while we’ve been here. In Europe it is rarely a guarantee that you can see the bigger Hollywood movies in English. Luckily Graz being a student town has a few movie theatres that show movies in their original language. When we were in Italy, I really wanted to go see the new Avengers movie, but in none of the cities we were did they show the movie in English. Good thing I managed to navigate the internet without being spoiled and managed to see it here in Graz, once we got back. 

In Graz, Cineplex is the largest theatre chain around, and they show movies in English in some of their theatres, but not all. On top of this some of the theatres don’t properly show the spoken language of each movie so earlier in the year we went to a showing that turned out to be in German even with it being marked otherwise online. Turned out that the theatre only shows movies in German and it was just mistake online, luckily we got out money back for that movie. The best Cineplex in town for English movies is in Annenhof near the train station. They have plenty of showings every day and we went there many times over the spring. Second Cineplexx theatre we used is in Puntigam, where they have a massive theatre complex with modern Imax screens. Only problem is that they show movies in English maybe one day a week, but it still was great when we went to see one movie. Second theatre is the KIZ RoyalKino, where they show most of the movies in English, but they don’t get every movie into their catalogue - still, most of the big new releases. They also sponsor a movie night with ESN every month at the University, where they show an older movie for students for free and they raffle some free tickets to KIZ. We managed to win some and used them a couple weeks ago when we went to see the Rocketman. Last theatre we used was a really small independent theatre near our apartment called Film Center, where we visited more in the winter to see the Oscar type smaller movies. They don’t get any of the larger movies, so it is a quiet place to go see the more artsy movies.

Nom of the city

There has been plenty of good eatin in Graz, even thou we haven’t eaten out extremely often, but I think we still got a good sample size. Our favourite restaurant has been Der Steirer, which specializes in Austrian and especially Styrian cooking and is located near the modern art museum. We have been there three times total and every time has been really good. Another great, but a bit more expensive place is El Pescador, which is a great seafood restaurant. We’ve been there twice first with my parents when we could eat a little over our price range, but it was so good that we went back for some of the cheaper dishes just because it was so good. 

One special place is Gelateria Italiana by Luis, and I really want to recommend it to all the people visiting Graz. It is a good ice cream or gelato place, but the thing that we have been loving is its milkshakes. You get to pick the ice cream that they use in the milkshake and you can mix flavours if you choose. Anne has had many variations of chocolate and different nuts and my absolute favourite has been strawberry cheesecake. So flippin good especially in these heat levels.

Couple of honourable mentions are: a cafeteria called Cosimo in old town. They sell great bread rolls with a good variety of fillings, our favourite has been salmon-wasabi. Near the main University there is a great Thai restaurant called Pad Thai. We went there maybe too often earlier in the year when we had our German course at the University. 

In general, the food has been good in here and all the grocery stores have been good too. There is one slight disappointment we’ve had in Graz and that is the pizzas. I don’t think we’ve had a satisfying pizza in Graz and at some point, we kinda gave up on them. Finland, I think, has one of the highest amount of pizza places per capita in the world and our pizza culture is little different from the ones in here. Back home in Oulu, my hometown, the speciality is to put mayo or some other sauce on the pizza. It doesn’t work with every pizza, but its great. Pizzas in Italy were great, but the ones in Graz just feel like very pale clones of the classic Italian styles pizzas. It could be that we only tried the crappier ones and were unlucky, but that was still a small disappointment with the city’s otherwise fine culinary scene.

Beer halls of the mountain king

Beer is a big thing in Austria and also in Graz. Even with the large vineyards towards the southern Styria, people do love their beer here. People mostly drink their lagers and the three by far most popular brands are lagers. I visited the Puntigamer brewery earlier in the year and I think that one is still the best one out of the locals. The other two are Gösser and Muraurer. To my taste Gösser is the second best and Muraurer is just not good. On top of this I am a big fan of wheat beer that is highly popular in Germany. There is an Austrian wheat beer that I grew attached to and it is called Edelweiss and it turned into my go-to beer when we are going out. 

Last thoughts

Graz truly has felt like a home for these past months. It is little funny to think that I picked Graz as my exchange target solely based on the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is from the neighbourhood. The city truly has grown into a lot more special than just the hometown of my muscle-bound action hero. Speaking of Arnold, we visited his home village of Thal for the second time and I will add some pics from that day to the end. As I mentioned in the beginning: its going to be a break before I post again from back home and close this exchange chapter of my life. So, until those posts, enjoy the summer and keep safe my peeps.

We revisited Thal just outside Graz. Last time the Thalersee lake was still frozen

There was this Arnold monument at the shore

We went to the Arnold Schwarzenegger museum again

My man

In this weather it was much nicer to spend time around the Transformer statues

This local found my shoes interesting

Friday evening, our last visit to the top of the Schlossberg

Stübing - Our last day trip from Graz

Hello people. As our time is coming to an end, here´s how I plan the rest of the blog to go. This will be my final blog about our little adventures in Graz. Over the weekend I will post a larger post about Graz and overall thoughts of the city. I think I will make one post about our trip back through Germany, but probably that will be short on text and mostly just pictures. After that I will probably make one or two posts about the general experience of exchange student life after I get a few days to reflect on. That’s what I’m currently planning on, but let’s get to today’s post.

During our last week in Graz we have mostly been around the city visiting our favourite spots and just relaxing. The weather has been absolutely blasting these past few days with heat in around 35c during the day. This is nice and feels like summer, but damn it does take a lot out of you and need to be really careful with having enough water at hand. Still the other day we made our last little trip outside Graz to another one of the suggested places from our “things to do near Graz” guide. This time we travelled to an open-air museum in Stübing. The museum was about the lifestyle and housing in Austria in the olden times. The museum is large spread in a valley with a hundred old houses from log houses to saw and water mills. The museum’s size was impressive as the valley was something like two kilometres long from the entrance and it took a good two to three hours to walk around with a stop for drinks. The museum was well done with plenty of modern restroom around the route and an interesting gift shop with all the ye olden gifts and trinkets. There have been some museums that have been lacklustre in these essentials, but it was great to see a well-run place.

Idyllic landscapes started quickly

Water wheel was satisfying to watch

Not so massive bell tower

Some saw equipment

Old time general store was not open for business

Great view from inside the house

Some kind of celebration pole in the middle

Hmm... yeh... i don't know

With a super-hot day, it was great to walk around the valley, where you could find plenty of shadow from the trees or step into one of the houses where it was cool. The houses reminded me a lot of Eastern Finland where my family spends most of our summers and there you see plenty of hundred-year-old houses and they all share a similar vibe. Pleasure it still was to see these new houses and to spend a summer day strolling in these idyllic sights. Think that’s enough for this time, see you over the weekend with my massive Graz post.