FUNKSTATION (Tampere, Finland)

Please donate for our great champion. We still need equipment for a whole car. (I'll go to bed now and check tomorrow morning, if any money arrived. Thanks in advance!)

I just came home from a concert. Of course, I didn't forget to bring you some fresh music. Listen! (This was recorded with my cell phone and passed to my notebook through the internal mic.) My room mate Jarno was there as well. I was quite happy that he gave me a lot of valuable background information about Finnish reggae music.

Happy Brithday, Katja! -- Everybody who's reading this is invited to the party tonight! Well, maybe better not...

Here are two pictures, so you can get a slight idea of what living in Tampere is like. The room has brand new white walls and wonderfully fresh laminate. As you can see, the room is very light.
When days will get shorter the Playstation 2 will get us through the bitter times.
Besides the two couches with the nice orange dots, we have another two mattresses to relaxe. Work will be done on the little table in the corner (that's where I'm sitting at this very moment). Actually work can be done everywhere since we are now the proud provider of a public WiFi-Hotspot. I'm still looking for good directories where we could be listed. Please contact me if you find any.

Richard will be famous! Besites blogging for FUNKSTATIONfunksturm he's working for ActionContents.com. Congrats!

Besides that, Simeon just mentioned Mr. Wongs Virtual Building. I think we should apply for a big loft there.

Speaking of lofts: My room mate Ollie arrived yesterday and we moved into the big(!) room of our apartment. Now I don't have to share the room with a noisy freezer any more.

We drove all night taking turns driving the car and keeping each other awake. At 0930 hrs we arrived in Rovaniemi. Nobody of us had slept more than 3 hours, except Adam (in the second picture), who can't do any other than falling asleep as soon as he sits in a car -- when he was little his parents used to drive him around to put him asleep; or they put him on the running laundry machine.
Due to the lack of sleep we did what the tourist office told us to do: We visited the Arktikum, we took a look at some houses built by Alma Alto and we also went to see the Arctic Circle which is right at the Santa Clause Office. This combination of a line (the "66th parallel"), that is just a construct to understand how this planet works and and the old man, who is an invention for little kids, was pretty strange. -- What are you supposed to do at a place that doesn't really exist? We just stood around and took some pictures.
The next day we proceeded with our journey up North. We made a couple of stops to take a look around and to hunt some reindeer with the cameras.
In Ivalo we did what we were supposed to do: We got the key for our cottage (acturally Joan did, since he took care of the reservation -- Thanks!). "The keys can be picked [...] from Esso gas station, Ivalo, [...] Located in the middle of Ivalo, on the right hand side when coming from the south." You definitely can't miss it! There's not many people living that far North.
The third picture (Tanja in the mirror) was taken by "Little Man Who Sleeps In Any Car" Adam. I promised him to present it. Respect, dude.
Everybody was very excited when we arrived. Actually we had to arrive twice. The second time we taped it on video camera... The first duty was to heat up the sauna, of course.The next day we got up very early to surprise the fish. It didn't work. We had to return; we repaired the net and set it up again. Meanwhile Hagen and I went for a little boat trip and a very nice hike on the other side of the lake.
On our way back we stopped at our fishing grounds. This time we were lucky. We also picked some mushrooms. While we got a new battery for the red van the ladies preparde a wonderful dinner.
Later we had sauna, of course.
On monday morning at 0730 hrs, after cleaning the place, we took off to get back in time. All together we traveled 2317 km.

Watch out: Blogger.com's links are broken. If I'd pay for this service they'd have a severe problem... Of course: I still like it a lot!

Today, night and day have the exact same length.

From Ivalo (dep. tm. 0749 hrs) back to Tampere (arr. tm. 2340 hrs), more alive than ever, great trip, more information will follow asap.
While you're waiting for me to get the pictures processed and the text written you can take a look at Simeon's great report on Rancho Almecameca.

Lapland is waiting! We'll meet at 2230hrs at the central square of Tampere and appr. we'll be leaving at 2300hrs.
First stop will be Rovaniemi. Saturday and Sunday we'll be staying in a little cottage w/out electricity, but w/a boat -- or maybe two!
Let's hit the road, Jack! -- I just deceided to name my car Jack (at least for the period of this trip).

After class we went to the sauna with Petri. He is teaching sound stuff (e.g. Sound Design) at the TTVO. We walked through the wonderful Kauppinojan forests until we reached the nicest public sauna in Tampere, Kauppi sauna.
In the winter people like it a lot, because it has an avanto (ice-hole). "[...] you can get there easily by cross-country skiing through Kauppi or by ice-skating on Nasijärvi. If you want to be less sporty take Bus number 3 starting from Keskustori westwards. (http://www.itampere.info/info/tampere/best.html).
Oh yeah, I forgot. On the third picture you can see Petri who is about to enter the sauna -- and he's wearing a woolen cap! To understand what he is doing, you have to know that we are not talking about saunas -- we are talking about saunas with a real wood stove in it and a whole bunch of Finnish sauna junkies who keep on throwing water on the stones, smiling contentedly. The result is a temperature of 122°C. The caps are necessary to protect your hair and your ears.
Petri always sat on the highest level next to all those other guys with caps on. Most of us tried to sit up there, but nobody managed to do it longer than about 5 minutes, smiling wasn't an option. After that, the lake with its 14°C was a great relief.
Pertri said, that it takes about two years to be able to sit in the top row smiling.

Yesterday, all the exchange students got a free city tour by bus. I'm not going to write much about it. The three pictures should be enough. On the second one you can see our official guide. She was half an hour late. Besides that, she did a good job.
The third one requires your interaction: Try to pronouce the words in the picture and send me the audio file. The one that gets the closest will win a pack of Salmiakki.

After the bus tour there was a quiz in the city. We had to walk quite a lot, we had to produce a quick music video, and we had to play humiliating games. But we endured everything since we knew there will be a big sauna party in the end. When everybody was done with sweating and dancing, we went to Café Europa. While I was on the phone talking to Carolin, Jacqueline took a great photo of Heesoo with my camera and Jari drew a great picture on my PDA. Jussi was there as well. He probably was bored since I didn't have any toys left.

I am wondering if Mike survived the last earthquake in San Francisco. He didn't blog for quite a while.
Besides that, I think Herr Schmidt is right. Thank you for the nice pictures.

"Sobald Sie merken, dass Ihr Fallschirm nicht funktioniert, signalisieren Sie dies einem anderen Fallschirmspringer, dessen Schirm sich noch nicht geöffnet hat. Wedeln Sie mit den Armen, und zeigen Sie auf Ihren Schirm. Wenn Ihr Gefährte Sie erreicht, schlingen Sie die Arme um ihn. Stecken Sie die Arme in seinen Schultergurt bis zu den Ellbogen, und halten Sie sich an Ihrem eigenen Gurt fest. Öffnen Sie den Fallschirm. Die Wucht wird gewaltig sein, wahrscheinlich so stark, dass Sie sich die Arme ausrenken oder sogar brechen. Ist die Schirmkappe des Fallschirms gross und geht langsam zu Boden, werden Sie vielleicht sachte genug auf die Erde prallen und sich nur ein Bein brechen. Ihre überlebenschancen sind hoch. Vermeiden Sie aber Stromleitungen und andere Hindernisse. Steuern Sie auf ein Gewässer in der Nähe zu. Wahrscheinlich werden Sie nur mit den Beinen schwimmen können und hoffen, dass Ihr Gefährte in der Lage ist, Sie herauszuziehen, bevor sich sein Schirm mit Wasser voll saugt..." (http://www.nachlese.at/survivalbuch.htm)

Sorry my non-German friends. You'll have to babelfish this by clicking on one of the flags below.


Get well soon, Carolin!

Today, I spent 1,85 € on street musicians just to show you what this city has to offer. Turn your speakers on, click on the image, and enjoy!

Every Friday between 4 and 6 pm we have reservations for the sauna.
It's quite hazardous to get there. First you have to take an elevator which already kill a woman -- Well, she probably didn't read all the notes! When the elevator is moving you can actually touch the doors to every floor which you're passing.
Once you're in the basement you have to go through the maze until you find a door with a big "A" written on it.
Behind that door you'll find a restroom, two little cells where you can leave your cloths (and where you can rest as well, but in a different way than in the restroom, of course!), a room with showers and -- surprise: the sauna.
I couldn't make more pictures in the sauna, since my camera got all blury. For more pictures of the Sauna, please donate money for better equipment...

I'll have to be careful and should not overdo it, since I am still recovering from that stupid flu. Gotta go now, it's my turn to sweat!

I am very glad that Dr. Rich an his fellows are taking care of the problem of Hedonism, finally. It has been around for too long now and should be solved as soon as possible. If you need further objects on which you could do your studies at (e.g. the Finnish), don't hesitate to ask. I got plenty of them.

Today I had a class on Non-linear Script Writing & Interactive Design*. It was very interesting and inciting.
Just to get an idea of what we were talking about you should have a look at Nathan Shedroff's World - he should come and visit one of the classes on usability...

If you have some time left, let the idiot dance a little.

* Nobody here would come up with the idea of having a class like Simeon did!

Today I don't feel very well. I caught a flu. Until now, I was at school. Instead of going to my Finnish class, I'll take a healthy nap.

Imagine a place where you feel comfortable. Imagine a place where you could work hard. Now combine those places. As soon as you start adding a nice cafeteria, very friendly staff and teachers, and huge pack of high-tech equipment to it, you're getting closer to the place of the TTVO.
Still, to reach this level you needed someone from Finland who would do some light design to it, both convenient and relaxing. (The blue light in this class room stays on while you watch e.g. a movie. There's still enough light to take notes. That way they are still readable after a couple of weeks.)
Yesterday and today, I did something very Finnish, I guess: Go to a bar and either play cards or compete at a music quiz (btw: We made third place. Actually another group did, too. We had to share the price and ended up with two beers for five persons).
I'm still hesitating to show this to you because this is the kind of picture you supposably expected. I don't want to bore you.

I gotta get some stuff done, so I just wanted to make sure that everybody is checking out Simeon's Monday Posting.
Besides that, I want Herr Schmidt to know, that my Siemens celly pisses me off. Everybody who wants me to get a new phone, please donate! - Internet is such a great place to make money!

"Prosperous journey" (says Mike) - and I'm definitely having a rich trip through the world wide web, too. The brilliant thing is called HomePNA - "HomePNA is the high-speed, reliable networking (LAN) technology that uses the existing phone wires in your home to share a single Internet connection with several PCs in your home. " (says homepna.org).

Just got a little converter-box. Plugged my RJ45 cable in there, plugged in the phone cord, that's it. I never had such a short setup-time for a network device.



It's about time to introduce some Finnish music: http://mctb.eskolaah.org/download/
My room mate Jarno gave me the link. It's an open mic session.

Rock on, folks!

Since Mike keeps on bragging about the movie theaters in San Francisco I deceided to stay no longer quiet: Right across the street there is the biggest theater in Tampere, Finnkino. When I look out of my window I can see the wonderful yellow sign.
A little further down the street, behind that building, is my school.

Yesterday I did the dishes (the Finnish language has an extra word for 'dirty dishes': Tiskit). The Finnish have many smart inventions, besides their nifty cell phones. It's almost a pleasure to do the tiskit with the great drying cupboard. The cool drawer where you cut your bread is also a great helper. You never have to care about the breadcrumbs.
I really enjoy the bread. It's a very thin and tasty rye bread. It's quite comfy to prepare little snaks with it.
P.S.: I saw a moose now. It is in our freezer.

This is what I stored in my 2 metal boxes and in my bag pack. The laptop is in an extra bag (waterproof), although it would easily fit in one of the boxes.

Cloths:
2 good shirts
6 t-shirts
2 thermo shirts
1 hooded sweater
1 sweat shirt
1 good cotton pullover
2 pairs of jeans
2 pairs of trousers
1 pair of hiking boots
1 pair jogging shoes
1 pair of sneakers
1 pair of snow shoes & poles
8 under wear
4 hikinq sox
4 sox
1 hat
1 gloves, light
1 qloves, heavy duty
1 swimming shorts
1 swimming pants
1 fleece jacket
1 fleece vest
1 biker's jacket
1 GoreTex jacket
3 towels (different sizes)

Tech:
1 cellphone
1 iBook
1 external harddrive (80 MB)
1 switch (5 ports)
2 ethernet cabels
1 handheld
1 digital still camera
2 memory sticks
1 optical mouse
1 pair of headphones
1 box of various cabels and adapters
1 lamp

Kitchen:
1 pan
2 good knives
1 sharpener
1 espresso machine
1 metal plate
2 metal cup
1 cutlery
1 thermo cup
1 insulated bottle
2 kitchentowels

And various little things like screw drivers, important documents, soap, tooth brush etc.

From Gomadingen to Rostock's "Überseehafen" (both is in Germany), including a little roundtrip through Berlin, it is 942 km. I had an average fuel consumtion of 6.6 l/100km.

Everybody who has the chance to take a ferry to another country should definitely do that! It is a great experience. I took the superfast VIII, built in 2001. It has room for 626 passengers, 900 cars, a sauna, a whirlpool, sleeping cabines, a casino, a bar, a Havana Club Card Lounge, conference rooms, two duty free shops and several dining rooms. All together it's 203.3 meters long and it has 10 decks.
Looking out of the window from inside the sauna(!) I saw us passing many other ships. We were going super fast: 30.4 kn.
The boat trip from Rostock, Germany, to Hanko, Finland, took 21 hours.

Driving a car in Finland differs a lot from driving a car in Germany. The roads are twice as wide. It's just like in the states where you go steady and smooth, 80-100 km/h. It is pure defensive driving. Three hours after arriving in Hanko, I moved into my room in Tampere. My room mate Katja had already prepared everything.

P.S.: I haven't seen an moose yet.

Berlin was great. Big city - good city! You can get great apartemnts for little money. All important persons seem to have lived here for some time. I guess I'll have to move there for a while.
Rebekka and Jule gave me a sight seeing tour by car.

I was very happy to meet the two girls and Mat since I haven't seen them for a long time. I also got to meet Flo, who's working at amnesty international at the moment.
Leaving Berlin in 45 minutes.
Hitting the ferry at 1800. Arriving in Finland at 1800 the next day. Pictures will follow.

From Gomadingen (Southern Germany) to Berlin (Capital City).
I took off in Gomadingen at 12:30 pm. My dad wanted to take a picture of me and my luggage. So I figured it is better to shoot back.
This is what I took with me. The piece of crap in perfect shape (the shiny green this on the right of the picture) is a car. It's a FIAT UNO, 51kW, with a weight of 810 kg, 165km/h max. speed, for those who care -- I don't.
It took about 40 minutes until I left the country road. As soon as you hit the Autobahn you are suppresed by the power of the bigger cars. Men just seem to transform into race car drivers. They even wear the Michael Schumacher's cap (I've seen at least 5 of those!).
Short and heavy rain is not supposed to be a problem for good drivers. At least the real Schumacher can handle that. The fake ones sometimes can't. If this happens, the normal driver's that have been humiliated earlier by the race car drivers line up for the parade of pride singing "We are the champions!" The parade took about 2 hours. For our patience we were rewarded by a wonderful double rainbow.
I was supposed to drive into Berlin from the West. Rebekka gave me a very detailed description how to get there from the Autobahn. Somehow I ended up driving into the city from the South-East. Luckily I had a map of the town with me -- it was published in 1992. I decided to make a little tourist tour through the city titled "Berlin at night with a little rain". Marvellous!
The bad part about it was that I got there 2.75 hours late (2 hours for the lovely parade, 45 minutes for sight seeing).