Verena Hausmann — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:00:19 +0000

Hi all,
we had an exam this morning, but beside this the day was really nice :).
Blue sky, sunshine and nearly 20°C and that in Finland, isn’t it great? We had our first lunch outside in the sun today and we didn’t freeze at all!

But I have to say the spring here is different than in Germany. While my mum was telling me that she has already eaten strawberries from our backyard, the trees here in Turku are just starting to get green. But anyway, it is nice to also experience a little bit of the spring here in Finland.

Verena Hausmann — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:13:16 +0000

Our Finish friendship family told us that spring in Finland has arrived when the first flowers called “leskenlehti” can be seen. So here also this evidence that the spring is there:

Verena Hausmann — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:03:26 +0000

As people from Germany are telling us since a few weeks how nice the weather is, how often they barbecued already and how nice it is to be outside we were really looking forward to the spring in Finland. Even though that in a few areas you still can find a little bit of snow today was the first spring day in Turku. Not only that we had 14°C (!), but it was a totally different day in all areas. It felt like there was a change in people’s minds and behavior today. It might sound funny, but we now really understand what people were talking about when saying in summer everything is different.

Because of the nice weather we started our day with a little bike tour through Turku. We drove to the open air pavilion and the mill they have here. When coming back to the river we saw that there was a market along it. Walking over the pedestrians’ bridge you could see a lot of nice planted jonquils (Osterglocken) and there were plenty of people on the street. The market was really nice and nearly half of the booths sold fish, pastries or honey. So we had lunch there, sitting outside and enjoying the day. In the afternoon we saw a lot of kids playing football, families collecting “Weidenkätzchen” and people running along the river…

It was so nice to experience this day. Finland seems to be a totally different country again.

Verena Hausmann — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:00:35 +0000

We can hardly believe it, but as it was warm the last week (everyday over 2 degrees and one day up to 9!), the snow is melting. Not that there is no snow anymore, but at least we start to imagine how the ground looks beneath it. We actually saw grass today and we couldn’t believe it, but it partly was green! Does that mean the spring is slowly reaching Finland? We will observe this phenomenon and report more as soon as we see changes.