I am in Tampere, but where do I go now?!
We were given student accommodations in the student housing apartments called TOAS. The problem was that it is open only for a specific time – the office hours and that is the only time when you can collect your keys. I knew of this before hand, so I asked the ‘friend’ who was also on a similar internship under the same professor to collect my keys, who promptly refused (it was only much later I knew the real reason of refusal!) so I asked the secretary of my professor to collect it and give it to him, which she did. Now I reached Tampere a bit late – may be a hour or two after the office closed. As told by the ‘friend’ I came to the office only to know that the address he had given was completely incomplete! And I did ask a few people around and no one seemed to know. I then asked a person sitting inside a car, who googled this place up in his cell phone (if you are not aware, Nokia is a Finnish company!) and told me that the place was 6.4km from the place that I was in! (I do not wish to elaborate more, for the respect of my word that I gave him that I would not disclose the truth in the blog :P)
One important thing that I missed was carrying luggage without wheels! Now I had two bags of luggage and one laptop bag, which in all weighed about 35kg. And it was really difficult to get moving with 3 bags! I think it was by far the worst levels of unpreparedness from my side!
Anyway, I took a bus to a hotel that I had booked earlier (somehow sensing things would not be as smooth as I would like to be – another reason justifying my nick as clairvoyance :P ). I was clueless about which stop to get off, and the bus driver couldn’t understand what I was saying! It is wise to remember that most bus drivers, at least in Tampere, do not understand English! So I was clueless, with 3 huge bags inside the bus, which itself felt awkward and looking out of the window for some unknown clues! An old lady (probably 65-70 years old) was staring at me, which made me feel even more awkward, but then she came to me herself and asked me where I wanted to go. I think it was perhaps easy to catch that I was completely lost! Anyway, she told me, in a very broken English combined with Finnish that it was ahead and that she would tell me where to get down. When the stop came, she said that the route was a bit complicated and hence she would guide me! She got down at that stop too (she had to go further down!) and then helped me with the route.
People here are quite reserved, however, when asked for help, they are very prompt and go out of their way to help you, especially if you are completely lost!
Some things to keep in mind
I believe that my 3 month stay taught me many things. These are some of the things that one should keep in mind:
· If you are unsure of your destination or need to travel by busses or if your professor doesn’t come to pick you up from the airport, I think you should have a suitcase with wheels!! (I carried 3 bags, which were really very inconvenient and perhaps the worst thing in my trip!)
· One thing that I missed carrying was the nailcutter!! I did try to find it in a few shops, but they never seemed to understand what I was asking for! For those who are in the same situation, there is one shop ‘Vaapa Valinta’ (spelling may be wrong :P) at Duo. You get all the household items, including nailcutters there.
· For the phone connection, I took the prepaid cell connection, which was very convenient. There is a shop at Duo again, where they sell the connections. DNA and Kolumbus are quite popular there. I took the Kolumbus connection – for 5 euros you get a new connection and also 10 euros worth of talktime! (don’t ask me how!)
· Calling home: there are calling cards that are available there, to call up home. The cost to call up India through them was almost the same as a call from India. For 10 euros you get about 1 hour 40 min of talktime to India. These are available at the oriental shop that is behind Duo – it is run by a Pakistani lady.
· I later switched to VoIP service, which turned out to be quite cheap. I chose the chatlife service, which was good in that the pulse – the rate for which you are charged, was 1 second. So even if there seemed to be a few other services that appeared cheaper, I found this to be the cheapest option there. Also, the setting and installation were quite straightforward and well explained in the site. The owner, Daniel, is also a personal friend of mine through the internet forums. So this was quite ideal for me.
· For a bank account, Nordea is supposed to be friendly for foreigners. Opening a bank account is really very straightforward – just go to the counter (there is always a token system here; you press a button and you get a slip with your number, wait for the number to flash at the counter!) and give them your passport (you need to have your passport to open a new account and even later for some modifications etc to your account) and they do all the work! No form filling! After some 5 minutes of typing at the computer, they give you a couple of pages to sign. Also ask for a visa electron (which is useful – all grocery shops etc have this facility, also this is the ATM card) and internet banking facility (it costs 2 euros per month but certainly worth the effort. Transactions done via internet banking are free, but those done at the bank by the staff will cost you!) The lady at the counter showed me how to use internet banking by paying the rent of my first month. Nordea branch is also located at Duo.
· Generally the TOAS apartments have the required utensils if there are people already living there or if the previous tenants have left theirs. I had almost everything in my kitchen, right from pan to 14 forks and 8 knives and 6 chopsticks! I used to cook too, mostly, since I wasn’t really interested to try out beef and pork :P
· For shopping, LIDL is the cheapest store. There are no MRPs written on the packs – each supermarket seems to have their own pricing! A carton of full cream milk costed 99 cents at SIWA – a supermarket near my apartment and 79 cents at LIDL! Now most Finns don’t actually like LIDL (I think coz it’s a German chain!) but the prices are really cheaper and you can actually make that out!
· Since I am a vegetarian, it was initially difficult for me, since all the food labels and all information on the covers is only in Finnish. Full cream milk, which is quite good, is in red coloured cartons. Among frozen pizzas, cheese mozzarella is purely vegetarian. There are many snacks and small chocolates etc available too. You also have noodles – both ordinary and chow meen. The ordinary ones are again vegetable and chicken. I also liked the cornflakes and equivalent stuff. Chocos was available, which tasted much better! And there are many such equivalent stuff, which I tried out. Most are quite good. A wide variety of juices are also available.
