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