I’m going to Tallinn, Estonia…You’re going to where!?

By Jessica Bohince

After I posted on Facebook that I would be visiting Tallinn, Estonia, most of my friend’s responses were, “Where is that?” To be honest with you, I really didn’t know where it was either before the trip.  I knew it was south of Finland and that was pretty much it. Most Americans don’t think of Estonia when planning a vacation in Europe, but after two days of exploring the “Old Town”, I can now say I know where it’s located and that I would definitely recommend putting it on your places to travel list!

Tallinn is the capital of Estonia and is located along the Gulf of Finland and is roughly 50 miles south of Helsinki.  A small group of students (some from George Mason University and San Jose State University) embarked on a whirlwind weekend trip to this forgotten city! We left campus by bus and headed over to the City Center, which is the main shopping area in Jyväskylä, for a quick bite to eat.  Most of us ate at McDonalds; I know! I know! Out of all the places to choose, we chose McDonalds, but it tasted just like home!  After lunch, we headed to the train station and departed to Helsinki.  The train ride was about 3-4 hours.  We kept ourselves occupied with laptops, iPods, iPads, and a hilarious game of “Finish the sentence.”  Once we arrived in Helsinki, we headed to the ferry that would take us to Tallinn.  Ok, when I heard “ferry” I thought of a medium size boat with maybe a snack bar, but the boat we took was no ferry, it was a cruise ship! There were multiple levels, shops, cafes, and even a dance floor.  I was so excited! I had never been on a cruise ship before.  We settled into our cabins and then headed to the deck to take photos of the beautiful scenery.  The view we had was absolutely stunning! After we had taken about 100 pictures each, we went down to the lounge area to hang out.  The group ended up sitting right next to the karaoke area and of course some of the group decided to participate.  Daniel performed “Macho Man” and for not knowing most of the lyrics, he was pretty good! His dance moves really put the performance over the edge! 3 other girls and I performed “Tearin’ Up My Heart” by N'SYNC and we killed it! Way to go Brenda, Shell and Jessica! After we finished the song, it was getting pretty late and we decided to head to our cabins because we had an early morning ahead of us.

On Saturday, May 28^th we left the ship, which was named the Viking Xprs, at 7am.  The group headed to the Radisson Blu Hotel Olümpia via bus.  We arrived at the hotel and ate breakfast and I must say it was so good!  There were many different choices and I didn’t eat anything I didn’t like.  After breakfast the group had a scheduled bus tour.  We loaded on the bus and were off the explore Tallinn! Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable about the history of Tallinn and also where to take great photos.  We visited a Russian Orthodox Church, a palace, the venue of Tallinn Song Festival, plus many more.  Once the tour concluded we explored the Old Town on our own.  Our tour guide recommended Peppersack for lunch so that’s where we went.  It was a medieval restaurant and the food was amazing! It was a little bit pricey, but worth every cent.  For the rest of the afternoon the group toured the city.  We did some shopping and watched a few street performances. While we were in Tallinn, there was a Festival going on so we were able to experience the shows and see the handmade crafts. 

The group decided to head back to the hotel after all of our feet started to hurt, plus the Champions League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United would be coming on at 9:45pm. This football match is like the Super Bowl and the Europeans take their football very serious as I learned that at the Aston Villa Match. We deiced to watch the match in hotel Pub.  There was a mixture of fans from both teams, but the Barcelona fans were more vocal. During the match, I realized once again that football is more technical than I thought.  There is more to it than just trying to kick a ball into a net. Barcelona won the match which made most of group and bar extremely happy.  After the match I headed upstairs to get some sleep because we had a long day of travel ahead of us.

On May 29^th we left Tallinn, Estonia.  We toured the city a little more and stopped at a local donut shop one our tutors recommended. I’m so glad we stopped there! It was a great way to end our trip. We headed to the Viking Xprs around 3pm and landed in Helsinki around 7pm then left on the train for Jyväskylä around 8pm.  We arrived back to our dorms at 11:30pm.  The weekend flew by and the Old Town is something I will always remember.  The history of the city is very much alive and you experience it when you are there.  So the next time you are thinking of planning a European adventure, do not forget about Tallinn!     

The Importance of Being...

By Dr. Nauright

We are in Finland learning about sport and event marketing and the students had a great trip to Estonia that you will be hearing about shortly. While learning about how to promote sport and sporting events, we are learning more and more about the operation of sports organizations.

Right now, the news is full of the “crisis” in FIFA, the governing body for international soccer. Only a day after the splendid performance of Barcelona in dominating Manchester United in the Champions League Final at Wembley in England, FIFA’s press conference reporting on its internal investigation of bribery and corruption was covered live around the world. The current state of play is that the head of the Asian Football Confederation and Vice President Jack Warner of Trinidad have been temporarily suspended and we are told they have a case to answer. Warner has claimed he has many revelations to make.

All of this has left the current FIFA President Sepp Blatter running unopposed for another term as President of what is arguably now the most significant sporting organization in the world and certainly the largest for a single sport. We have learned, however, that whatever the issues it will be resolved within the FIFA “family.” Stay tuned if you haven’t been until now.

Good or bad, soccer is news around the world. I think we are beginning to see glimpses of this in the USA. Large countries with excellent infrastructure such as the USA, UK and Australia lost their bids to host the World Cups in 2018 and 2022 in favor of Russia (where the upcoming Winter Olympics are said to be six times over budget) and Qatar, a small oil-wealthy Arab state. Allegations of corruption surround Qatar winning the 2022 bid are rife, though nothing has been proven for certain at this stage. Whether you are pro or anti FIFA, there is no denying that its presence is felt from small communities in Africa to large arenas in Japan and everywhere in between.

That sport makes the news time and again for scandals: of corruption (the International Olympic Committee in the 1990s and now FIFA); doping (The Tour de France at least since 1998); or for bad behavior of players. Surely those who hold the reigns of power cannot remain convinced for much longer that any of us exist with our eyes closed to the wider world of sport. This is not to say that we can or will “overthrow” the current power structures in world sport, but, even while appreciating the positive impacts that sport makes in society, we should continue to pressure sports organizations and officials to work for the good of sport more than for the good of themselves and to create a more positive sporting environment for all. Thankfully the following story was a feature on Lorna Thorpe, the teacher in Jamaica who inspired Usain Bolt and many others to enjoy running. Bolt has used his success to give back to the school and to support its athletic and other programs.

Watching hundreds of Finns out walking and playing sport this evening on a beautiful blue sky summer’s evening as well as the inspiring story from Jamaica reminds me that we as humans love to move, to play, and to enjoy the physical universe. Suddenly those scandals seemed further away, and there is a lake around every corner to see… 

Jyväskylä: The grain village of Finland!

By Ahad Rashid

We landed at Helsinki Monday at mid-day to begin our journey through northern Europe. From the airport we took a bus to the train station and took a train to Jyväskylä (yi-vas-kula), where we will spend most of our trip in Europe. Jyvaskyla means grain village, it is also the capital of central Finland and the second largest city on the Finnish Lakeland.  When we arrived to Jyväskylä we were met by our student tutors who are taking care of us while we are here and help us with what we have to do while we are here and coordinate our afternoon and evening activities. The tutors are awesome! They speak English very well and are extremely helpful as well as very knowledgeable about the city. We had the full travelers experience on our journey by taking a plane train and multiple automobiles to get to Jyvaskyla. The first thing we did in Jyvaskyla after our 8 hour journey was to eat at Hesburger in the Jyväskylä train station, this is the Finnish version of McDonalds, but tastes better.  After that we took the city bus to our KOAS student apartments, there our tutors helped us get situated in our rooms and taught us everything we need to know about where we are living including the sauna. (Which is a big thing to do here!) After that we went to the local grocery store to buy our essentials while we are living here, everywhere you go here you are surrounded by nature. To put it another way, I heard one professor say that Finland is a place “where there is a lake around every corner.” The Landscape is absolutely stunning and very green. However, I think the coolest part about Jyväskylä is that there is about 19 hours of daylight here each and every day in the summer! It is truly amazing to be able to see the sun at 10:45 at night and for it to still not be dark at midnight. This is also one of the most efficient and punctual cities I’ve ever been too. The buses are never late and energy is saved because their lights have sensors and so do their escalators so when nobody is using them you are not wasting any power.

The following day after our arrival we had our orientation and the first day of our classes, the great thing about the classes are that they are in the morning and this gives us the rest of the day to explore and do activities in Jyväskylä. After our first day of classes we had lunch and went to the city center to visit the church in the middle of Jyvaskyla’s downtown area. After that we went to the museum of central Finland and saw all of this area’s history from Jyväskylä’s founding date in 1837. After that we went to the museum of Alvar Aalto who was a very famous and talented Finnish architect from Jyvaskyla who designed many buildings in this area. After the two museums we met up with the other students from California who are here and went to Alan’s Pizzeria and had reindeer and moose meat pizza, which was an awesome and surprisingly yummy experience!  The next day after class our amazing tutors set up a bus tour for us and Thursday after class they have set up a boat trip around the gorgeous lakes of Jyväskylä, which will make for excellent photos.  I love Jyväskylä so far it’s a beautiful place with great people; I’m looking forward to the next two and a half weeks we will spend here in Jyväskylä. As Dr. Nauright said, at least so far, Suomi Rokka!  

“We’re Up, You’re Down”: An Unusual and Awesome Day at Aston Villa Football Club

By Dr. Nauright

There’s much more to the Premier League than Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal who seem to dominate the headlines, and of course win the championships of recent years. There are several teams with historic success that have huge local, regional, national, and even global following. We were lucky to see two of those teams in action on Sunday, May 22.

That day the AIS was hosted by Aston Villa Football Club for the last Premier League match of the season at Villa Park. As Daniel mentioned I am rather partial to The Villa having followed them since 1980. It has been a few years since I was able to get to Villa Park for a match so naturally I was excited to be there. Villa exceeded themselves, however.

For those of you who don’t know, Aston Villa Football Club is in Birmingham, England. It was founded as a program of the local Methodist church in 1874. It’s leader, William Macgregor founded the English Football League in 1888. Villa was the dominant club of the next 15 years and continued to be successful periodically after that. Villa won the Football League championship in 1980-81 and followed that up with victory in the European Cup (now Champions League) in the 1981-82 season, becoming only one of four English clubs to win the title along with Manchester United, Liverpool and I’ll bet some of you didn’t know the fourth – Nottingham Forest.

Villa finished second in the first season of the Premier League and was sixth the past three seasons before this one. The club is owned by Randy Lerner who also owns the Cleveland Browns. This season was a bit of a struggle, but with an away victory over Arsenal the week before, Villa was assured of avoiding relegation. Villa’s two biggest rivals, however, were fighting for their life on the last day, most notably the hated Birmingham City.

We had a behind the scenes tour, sat on the players’ bench, and learned how a Premier League match operates. Then we were invited into the season ticket holders pub/restaurant in the old Holte Hotel next to the ground (stadium). The Holte End is the stand where the hard-core fans – the ones who sing and chant the most – sit. We then found our seats with perfect sight lines of the whole field and opposite the Liverpool fans. There were some 3,000 there for Liverpool and they certainly made themselves heard, singing constantly during the match. Indeed, Liverpool, I must confess, probably have the most vocal support.

What was really strange was that the Villa supporters were rather quieter than usual and largely ignored the Merseysiders’ singing. Why? Because, for the first half of the match and then some, Birmingham City was ahead in the battle to avoid relegation. Villa scored during the first half and this was greeted with delight. The stadium erupted, however, when Tottenham scored against City pushing them into the bottom three and into a relegation position. The 40,000 Villa fans all stood up chanting “We’re Up, You’re Down” and other shall we say less savory chants. Then Birmingham equalized and the mood changed again. All the sudden we heard “C’mon you Spurs” as the Villa crowd urged on Tottenham, just in case the sound carried the 90 miles or so down to London. In other words, the majority of effort by the home fans had nothing to do with either team playing at Villa Park on the day! Not sure that would ever happen in the States. After a dramatic end in which the battle was unclear, Wolverhampton Wanderers (Wolves) narrowly escaped, while Birmingham, to the delight of the Villa fans, was relegated to a lower league along with Blackpool and West Ham.

For its part, Villa, 1-0 winners, finished the season a respectable 9^th in the League while Liverpool ended up 6^th. Not a bad to end the season for Villa with wins against Arsenal and Liverpool. I am excited to have helped create several new Villa supporters, but the real thanks goes to the Aston Villa staff, fans, and players. Our students were well looked after by a club that prides itself on local engagement and community. I confess that to see Villa defeat Liverpool for the first time since 1998 was also pretty special.

And while the world is a huge place, it can be a small world too! On the way home, I ran into one of our former American Model of Sport students from Denmark, Jacob Madsen, who was also at the match (though he was supporting Liverpool as do many people in Scandinavia).

This weekend the students will get a new global soccer experience watching the Champions League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United from Estonia. Meanwhile, we have arrived in Finland greeted this morning with beautiful sunshine and we have twenty hours of daylight! It is hard to beat Europe in the summertime especially at the beginning and end of summer when there is good soccer to be found as well!

London Calling

By Daniel Zimmet

A motley crew of Mason students departed on the latest AIS sponsored study abroad course last Thursday night. After a sleepless flight (at least for me) over "the pond" we arrived at London Heathrow airport.  Even though we were tired, we had to take advantage of being in London!  After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, we headed to The Chandos, a pub in Leicester Square, where I had the famous fish and chips.  For the 3 days that we were there I had fish and chips for 3 different meals.  After lunch we went on a Double Decker bus tour. The weather was awesome and people came out of the woodworks to enjoy it. There is so much history in London, which made every second of the tour enjoyable.  The following day we went to see the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace, up close.  This was definitely my favorite thing we saw while in London.  For such a big ceremony and tradition to take place each and everyday is remarkable. (Talk about event management skills!) On our final full day in England we went to see Aston Villa play Liverpool in the Premier League. It was the last round of matches for the season.  Villa won 1-0 which obviously made Dr. Nauright very excited, as well as Villa's new fans among us.  The singing and commitment to various clubs is nothing like the commitment we have to teams in the states. "We're up, and you're down, we're going up, you're going down" was frequently sung throughout the stadium as Villa's arch-enemy Birmingham City were relegated to a lower league for next season. Liverpool's 3,000 fans could be heard singing throughout the match whether ahead or behind. I definitely did not grasp how much soccer means to Europeans until I saw it first hand.  We are off to Jyväskylä, Finland now, where we will be studying.  Can't wait for the next chapter on this trip!