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.