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!
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