global village and the following disaster

global village on friday (20.4.) in fontana.

in global village the outgoing exchange students had the opportunity to hear about their home university-to-be from former exchange students and incoming exchange students. in the austrian corner there were christian, two girls going to klagenfurt, two exchange students from vienna and me. it was a nice evening. these are some of the differences the austrians told us about:

• it's important to be polite, to say sorry, please and thank you
• the bureaucracy is awful
• eating out is more common
• alcohol and vegetables are much cheaper
• there are lots of rules - but they don't have to be obeyed
• everything is negotiable
• the buddy system of the university doesn't really work - exchange students mostly have to survive on their own

I was back at home at about half past one. the next morning my dad called me to tell that he and santtu will move my stuff already on sunday (the following day) instead of monday as promised. I had no choice but to start to pack my things immediately. I packed the whole day - 12 hours to be exact. finally, just around midnight I went to sleep. I had to wake up at 4.30 to go to work and after work I returned to finish my packing. when dad and santtu came we had lunch before loading the van. of course, the car was too small and decided to finish the moving on monday. so I joined them and we drove to tampere. we were supposed to bring everything to the cellar of my mum's new working place but she had forgotten to leave me the keys before going to cuba. there we were, tired in the van with most of my fortune, unable to get in. luckily, on monday morning I got the keys from my mum's associate, although she suspected that we couldn't bring anything to the new working place due to some renovation work. after some phone calls we found out that there's one small room where we could leave my belongings. then dad and me headed up back to vaasa. monday was a far better day and we were able to load the van without any further problems.

for some reason I don't think I'll move again very soon... ;-)