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First things first, introducing myself...

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First things first, introducing myself...

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Hi, my name is Caris and I´m from Estonia, but last six years my life has been across the Baltic Sea in Finland.

I´m studying in Mikkeli under the degree programme in Tourism and Hospitality management. These last three years have been so exciting for me and I think it´s never too late to develop your knowledge and skills.

Why I joined Padlet? Actually, it´s an assignment from one of our courses called Focus on Finland.
Why I chose my Padlet´s name to be called " Lost in Passions"? Because I want to share with you things what I like the most and these are my passions. I like to travel, to discover Finland and the whole world. I also cook and like to try different cultures foods. I cycle and try to improve my skills in photography.

Thank you for reading and you are welcome to leave a comment.

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For a foreigner, Lapland has always been my dream place to visit. It has so unique Sámi culture and also incredible nature. Did you know there are 8 different seasons in Lapland? Have you ever heard of "midnight sun" and "polar night"? And mindblowing Northern lights. These were on my "bucket list" for such a long time and finally, in 2017 I had an opportunity to travel Lapland areas called Levi and Ylläs.

As a student whose studies major is tourism, it is important to recognize and experience main and one of most fastly crowing tourism areas of Finland. My first visit lasted 6 weeks because I decided to develop my skills as a professional and accomplish my internship in Lapland.

My wishlist contained a few dreams: first thing was to learn downhill skiing, to see Auroras and polar night, to see and touch snow called tykkylumi (look picture below). So I was quite excited to start a new journey in my life.

What´s a difference of midnight sun and polar night? The midnight sun is called YÖTÖN YÖ in finnish language. It´s a natural phenomenon in the summertime during which the sun does not fall below the horizon. The opposite phenomenon in winter time is polar night called KAAMOS, while the sun does not rise above the horizon.

What are the 8 seasons in Lapland:
1. FROSTY WINTER (16.1 - 28.2): Late winter, while the days are dark and the temperature is cold, an opportunity to see Northern light dancing across the sky.
2. CRUSTY SNOW (1.3 - 14.4):  From the beginning of March to mid-April, the air is full of light, but nights remain dark and cold.
3. DEPARTURE OF ICE (15.4 - 15.5):  There is still snow on the ground, first plants begin to appear, reindeer give birth to their calves.
4. MIDNIGHT SUN (16.5 - 15.7): the light green summer, the midnight sun begins.
5. HARVEST SEASON (16.7 - 9.9): the willowherb starts to bloom, the berries are ripened, the days of summer, filled with light, begin to get shorter and grow dimmer.
6. COLOURFUL AUTUMN (10.9 - 14.10): Autumn colours are nature’s last feat before winter arrives, popular hiking season in Lapland, colourful nature called RUSKA.
7. FIRST SNOW (15.10 - 15.11): the first snow arrives, “black snow” will freeze the ground, days get much shorter.
8. CHRISTMAS SEASON (16.11 - 15.1): The last season, the end of the yearly cycle, the polar night while days are dark.

And last but not least....YES, I learned how to downhill ski and it became my new hobby during the winter time :D

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What was surprising to learn about Finland?

I knew that Finns are drinking a lot of coffee, but it was surprising to know they are leaders of the world with that habit. Actually, I need to confess that I have also learnt to drink much more coffee, after I moved to Finland.

It was surprising to know that Swedish-speaking Finns are drinking schnapps and sing songs with their meal. It looks like very ethnical and historical tradition to me.

The third surprising fact for me was that Finnish women want to pay their share of the bill in a restaurant while on a date with a man. It seems very unusual to me, but it´s their way to show financial independence.

2.       What didn´t you know before?

I didn´t know that Finns are one of the leaders in reading books and newspapers. One fact that I have noticed though, is that our university´s library has a very good selection of books and I have found every textbook I needed so far from there.

I had never heard of Failure Day. I found one article from Yle News related to this subject because I was very interested to know what´s the date of Failure Day? Actually, it is called International Failure Day and it´s 13th of October. Yeah, lucky number 13! The idea is to encourage people to cast off their inhibitions and lose their fear of messing up.

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What is TYKKYLUMI? Lapland has an amazing nature, but I was really interested to explain for myself what is tykkylumi and how it forms. I really wanted to see and touch this snow what has so strange name in Finnish.

When I asked my friends, they all know what this is, but had difficulties to explain me, how it emerges. It can be seen/touched in Northern Finland areas from Kainuu to all around the Lapland. In English, this type of snow is called “crown snow-load”.

So, when we started to drive to Ruka to our skiing trip, I was excited to see and touch something new to me. When I visit and travel to new places, I always want to have an adventure with new twists. To eat some new flavour, learn some new tricks and so on. This time I wanted to feel this hard snow.

Let me explain how “crown snow-load” appears: The structure of this snow is very hard because that accumulates on trees in a cold climate time while subcooled droplets of fog or low-level clouds are freezing. Air temperature between -2 to -8 degrees and wind velocity of 3 to 6 m/s are perfect conditions for tykkylumi. I keep repeating this unique word! :D Unbelievable is the fact that one spruce can collect 3-4 tonnes of snow. That´s a massive carriage!

When we arrived at our destination point, it was already night, so I needed to wait until the next morning. Next day was a bit windy, but it felt like real winter to enjoy. I made an amazing video of landscape and crown snow-load trees.

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We had a wonderful Ice Festival at Mikkeli this winter in February of 14th. There were amazing sculptures made from ice and I also noticed a variety of the themes.

The event had a final point in the evening and every sculpture was decorated with light. Lights were changing their colours from different shades. It was a great idea to use them because it brought shapes of sculptures better noticeable. As an entertainment, there was a salsa dancing group performing and fireworks show in the end.

It´s hard work to make such beautiful and detailed artwork from just a brick of ice. Their lifetime is depending on the temperature of the weather. Luckily we have a cold and frosty winter at the moment in Mikkeli.

I wanted to share the winning sculpture with you. It´s impressive and memorable for its detailed looks and both sides of the piece are different artworks. Below the photo shows the behind side and the top show front side.

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Tomorrow I´ll visit the town called Kotka for the first time. I knew where it´s situated in Finland, east coast and by the sea but not much more. Kotka reminds me always boats. Because most of the famous sea festivals and museums are situated there.

For example, last year´s Tall Ship Race took place in Kotka and Turku cities. I had an opportunity to visit the Festival in Turku. Before I explain more about this exhibition, I wanna tell you: if you ever have a chance to visit it, GO SEE IT, I RECOMMEND :D

It was the most incredible event I´ve ever visited. Last year there were 96 ships from 21different countries. The biggest vessel was 122,3 meters long and 52,05 meters high. It was built in 1920 in Murmansk, Russia. Can you imagine the view when almost 100 sailboats come to town? To Turku´s river? In 2017 there was a record number of visitors, more than 544 000.

Most of the sailboats are welcoming visitors and you can go and look inside. I visited this Festival two different days because there was too much to see and do for one day.

If I need to pick TOP 3 most memorable sailboats:
1. Shtandart: it looked like a real pirate sailboat and all the crew wore themed clothes. This was a unique vessel and they took new crew members to sail to the next festival´s city (to Klaipeda in Lithuania).

2. Shabab Oman II: This vessel was from Oman and owned by the king himself. It was built in 2014 and was one of newest sailboats performing in Tall Ship Race. It was memorable of its materials and details they used to decorate their sailboat. Some of the parts shine so brightly you could see yourself as from the mirror.

3. Sedov: from Russia, Murmansk. It was a very massive sailboat and because it was parked next to our balcony, I could see their daily routines. Their sails were huge, the same size as 21 tennis courts. In history, this vessel was used to transport carbon from Wales, woods from Finland and flour from Australia.

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I wanted to share some of my summer photos because it´s the best time to take photos. The nature is rich and colourful :D

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As I have mentioned before, I want to learn new skills always if possible. My dream was to learn downhill skiing and when I had a chance I took the opportunity.

In Lapland, I noticed that even a city girl as I can enjoy the adventure. Every day I went to mountains to fulfil my dream and have a lot of fun. While being a student, homework can´t be forgotten, so I filmed some videos in my holiday time.

My main subject was management and leadership. So my exercise was to answer questions like how to lead a company, what are the skills for good leader, what workers expect from the good leader and so on.

This vlog shows the fun time, things what went wrong while filming :D

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Finnish culture and history are quite well known for me because before moving to Finland, I was studying at Tartu University and my major was Finno-Ugric language sciences. We had many courses about Finland´s history, literature and language. Also in personal life, I have been contacted with Finns almost 15 years so I have heard stories from family members how wars have affected this country. It´s hard to hear how their loved ones (grandmas/grandpas) left their homes in southeastern Finland after The Winter War.

To get a piece of history of Finland, I recommend watching the movie called “The Unknown Soldier” (Tuntematon sotilas). This movie was an amazing piece of art, which shows the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union during 1941-1944 from the viewpoint of ordinary Finnish soldiers.

I didn´t know that Finnish women were the first in Europe to gain the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Neither I didn´t know about Finnish Expatriate Parliament. It has so many members all around the world and how abroad living Finns want to participate in the work of the parliament. Outside of Finland are living approximately 300000 Finnish citizens and they want to influence what happens in the home country.

Finland's population at the end of 2017 was 5,513,130. Finland is one of the least populated countries in Europe. The population is geographically very unevenly distributed - most Finns live near the coast, south and south of the country. More than one million live in the metropolitan area. There are only two people living in Lapland per square kilometer. In 2015, there were 229,765 people living in Finland who had the citizenship of some other country than Finland. More than one-fifth of them were Estonians and 13% Russians.

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Something to cheer you up between the exams :D

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Something to cheer you up between the exams :D

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Every time I mention Lapland to my Estonian friends the first subject in our conversation is PORO. What is poro in Finnish? Reindeer of course :D

This unique animal is living in Northern Scandinavian areas. Reindeers are very big tourist´s attraction in Lapland, there are many farms, which offer you different kind of service. You can touch them, you can feed them, you can go sledge-riding, take photos and so on.

In my vlog, I want to introduce you reindeer called TAIKA. Taika in Finnish means MAGIC and this is a perfect name for him. Why so? Because he has a magic secret, which will be released in my video.

He is one of the most famous reindeer in Finland because he was an actor in Santa Claus Story movie.

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Verla was known as groundwood and board mill in Southeast Finland. In the 1870s this area was developing to a leading center of Finnish forest industry.
Verla was very known and had a good market reputation in 81- years of producing time. It produced about 150000 tonnes of the board and they were handmade. For comparison nowadays a medium-sized mill produces the same amount of wood-containing board in eighteen months.

Verla´s main product was white board. It was sold not only in homeland markets but also exported to Russia, Central Europe and even to South America. The main partners were different box factories and bookbinders, who used it to make biscuit cartons, book covers, cake plates, cardboard and cheese boxes, cigarette packets, frames and for many more.

The factory was closed in 1964 when the last of the old workers retired or moved elsewhere. After that, all the machines were switched off.

Nowadays this place is under the protection of UNESCO´s World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The main reason is to protect unique concrete objects, built environments, cultural landscapes and unique natural locations. Verla is open for the visitors as a museum because of the uniqueness of the 20th centuries machines they used to work with. All the equipment is still at the same place as on the last working day of the mill.

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In this vlog, I want to speak about new trends. New hit product in nutrition field is GRASSHOPPER. I was presenting our university in Gastro exhibition. Luckily, I had an opportunity to look around also and I noticed there were many firms presenting this grasshopper insect as a food product. The selection was wide and grasshopper was offered in smoothies, in chocolate, in rice cakes, frosted with spices and many more.

This was a big challenge for many people to overcome the fears of eating the insect. Grasshoppers were in two different sizes but in this video, I want to show you how I tasted the biggest ones. The main question after eating this insect was: how it tasted? Yes, it was a bit strange for me, because this flavour is new for me. The taste reminded me of grass and some parts felt too sharp and stiff in the mouth.

But in the end: it was surprisingly good (Y)

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Trends and innovations are the heart of Gastro!

I had a chance to visit Gastro. What is called Gastro? It´s Finland´s leading trade fair for the hotel, restaurant and catering industry, presents the sector´s latest products, trends and innovations.

My next video is about innovation because all sectors are developing. Most memorable innovation was a robot, who was presented as a helper in the service area. It knew every company´s location in fair and answered your questions or helped to find a direction. Unfortunately, this video is in Finnish because it was the language the robot was communicating with.

As an entertainment, it knew some jokes also :D oh course, I needed to test it and asked about what jokes it knew.
Here is one example: what robots do when they are on holiday???....they charge batteries :D

After meeting this robot, I and one of my classmate were wondering how quickly everything is developing and how fast humans are replaced with robots? Is it good or bad? Leave your comment down below, if you want to share your opinion with us.

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I started my educational journey when Estonia was a part of Soviet Union. The school system was very different than nowadays. At the elementary school, we needed to stand up, when the teacher came into the classroom. She gave us a permission when we students can be sited. Everybody was called respectfully with surnames and if a student wanted to talk, you needed to raise a hand and with a permission, you talked.

Mostly our classes had 20-30 students, we all had the same timetable with different lessons. Schooldays started at 8 o´clock and were 6-8 hours long. It was very surprising fact to hear, that Finnish children don´t have homework nowadays. We had always homework, in many different lessons. Also, teachers randomly checked them and gave grades about that.

To check our knowledge about homework and what we have learned at lessons, sometimes teachers had a surprise examination. It was always scary because you didn't know when to expect that. To get the confidence and to avoid bad grades: always listen and learn with care at lessons and study homework.

When I came to study in Finland, the first thing I noticed how friendly and helpful are teachers. The hardest thing for me was to approach teachers with their first names. I like how large selection of courses we have in Finland and how teachers use different styles in teaching.

Tourism is my main major and we have so many opportunities to cooperate with different companies while performing our tasks. For example, I have visited numerous hotels, paddled with canoe, rafted by bout, been rock climbing, been several times hiking in forests, been in fairs and so on. It´s not only reading the books and writing different reports, we have an opportunity to try in practice also. For me, studies in Finland have been very interesting and exciting times.

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I participated to Resto-kisa in March. What is it? It´s a competition to measure student´s knowledge and skills in tourism and catering areas. It´s only for students who study Hospitality Management in Universities of Applied Sciences in all around Finland.

This year it was held Helsinki. Every team had four persons and there were 12 different schools represented. The main idea of this event is to promote our studying field and to network with each other and with presented companies.

We had five different exercises and competition lasted two days. Some of the exercises were easy and some more difficult. The main was to be calm, communicate as a group, search as much information as you can get in limited time and to create a good result.

The event was finished with formal Gaala-night. The video will show you, how beautiful and glamorous it was this year.

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This vlog is related to my last vlog. While participating in Resto-competition, we had some fun evening programs. It was nice to relax and to introduce to other students. The main talking subject was how far are every person´s studies and what differences we have in some courses.

To separate people of same groups, we had games in several teams. It was a very good idea because this way you meet and communicate with more different people.

The video shows you one of our game. The idea was as Tv-show “Amazing race”, but ours was called “Urban Race”. Each group got an envelope with directions and with the task. We travel through Helsinki city with the bus, local train and metro.

I apologize that video is in Finnish, but you´ll see the feeling, how much fun we had.

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My last vlog is about my daily work. I`m working in a restaurant as a waitress. This video shows our delicious selection of salads. Every day we offer different food, every chef can make with their own choice of tastes.

This day we had so many positive comments about our salads from customers. It makes us smile more and assures us that we are doing our work well and with passion.

The cheese in last salad is called LEIPÄJUUSTO in Finnish or BREAD CHEESE in English. It´s from Northern Finland areas and Lapland, made by cream cheese, which is fried. Most famous dessert dish is served with cloudberries.

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Finnish nature and everyman’s right allow people to roam, use natural areas, nature-based tourism and collect natural products from forests. It is advisable for all persons exercising everyman’s right, as well as landowners, to be aware of the responsibilities and opportunities that come with this right.

In Estonia, we don´t have such law. You need to be observed to be sure, that you allowed going certain places. While living in Finland, I have been feeling free when I go to cycling or picking blueberries in autumn from forests. Also, the law of EMR gives you secure feeling to search new places while travelling in Finland.

Photo: from Repovesi National Park