Johannes H. Glitsch — Mon, 23 May 2011 19:00:44 +0000

Today we said goodbye to our Finnish Friendship Family. For our last meeting we got some Turkish-Finnish kebab. Double meat, i.e. about 1.7kg each of the two kebab rolls … It’s been nice to get to know the four of them and to spend some time discovering Finland aside from all the exchange student stuff. Even though we didn’t make it to the cottage while we were here, we are looking forward to the next meeting, e.g. in Germany?

Greetings and thanks to our friendship family – and take good care of my cactus

Verena Hausmann — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:00:06 +0000

Today was a really nice and sunny day. After ice hockey we took the bus to the home of our Finish friendship family. Once there they already have been waiting for us outside. We walked to the side of the houses and found a small but nice hill to sledge on. Not only the kids had fun, but we also!

Afterwards we backed Flammkuchen and ate the Marmorkuchen we had prepared the day before. It was a really nice Sunday afternoon and we enjoyed it a lot.

Johannes H. Glitsch — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:00:19 +0000

Today we visited Aboa Vetus, the museum of history and contemporary art (even though skipped most of the art part). As the owner of the museum had his name day the entrance was for free. We met with our friendship family and spent about an hour in the museum. It is about Turku in its old days when it was mainly the cathedral and the castle. Houses of richer owners were then built using stone, others only used wood. The museum is built on top of what is left of some of these stone houses and the street that ran along the river. You get to know a lot about Turku’s history as an important market place in Finland. You can also find out that the Germans had a very important role here in trade for some time …

Afterwards we all went to have some pizza at Rax’ pizza place with all-you-can-eat buffet (pizza, salad, lasagne, …).

Verena Hausmann — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:00:38 +0000

Today we had our second meeting with our Finish friendship family. We first decided to go sledding and then cook some finish food together. But as it was -18°C it was too cold for Leo and Lotta, the two children of the family. So we just skipped the sledding part and just did the cooking. But it was quite nice. We had Makaronilaatikko (noodle casserole) with is a traditional Finish meal. After that we had Piimäpiirakka (bluebarry pie) with vanilla ice cream and Joulutorttu (mince pie). Joulutorttu actually is a Christmas dish, but we decided that it is still cold, there is snow outside and we wanted to taste it :). Together with that we drunk Glögi. You drink it hot together with nuts and raisins. Everything was really delicious and we will get the recipes. So, when we are back in Germany and anybody wants to taste some Finish food just tell us!

Buy the way, this is us togehter with Mari and Tanel our Finish friends as well as Dimitry, a Russian guy who has the same friendship family.

Johannes H. Glitsch — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:43:49 +0000

This evening we had our first meeting of the Friendship Programme. This is about exchange students meeting Finns. What you make out of it is up to yourself. Even though we had both applied separately we now have the same Finnish family together with a Russian exchange student. They’ve got two little kids and are still pretty young. That’s nice.

After the Lapland trip we’ll probably meet for some kind of dinner. We thought about cooking something German at their place. But the details will be decided on next week when we are back from the Lapland adventure.