The main event of Wappu was the Wappu Day, 1st of May, and the evening before. 1st of May is the day of workers and students and is a huge event, especially in Tampere. On Wappu Eve at midnight, the statue of the Finnish Maiden is „capped“ with the traditional cap of engineering students. At the same time, the 1st year students are allowed to wear their caps for the first time. These caps are almost sacred for Finnish students. As exchange students, we can’t get them, but they are quite expensive (>100€) so it does not make much sense for us anyway. More information about the Teekkari cap (Teekkarilakki) can be found on the website of the student union http://www.ttyy.fi/en/teekkari-culture/teekkari-cap
Directly after the capping, everyone is opening bottles of sparkling wine. I have no pictures of this because I was afraid of getting sparkling wine on my camera. Right after the capping, we went back to the university to make sure our Härweli is being loaded and brought to the city. Härwelis are big statues that are being carried around the city as part of the parade on Wappu Day. They usually have some political or social background. Our Härweli was a raindeer peeing into a can of Lapin Kulta beer. A lot of us think, that Lapin Kulta just tastes like raindeer piss 😉
On Wappu Day there is a big parade of all 1st year students in their overalls. There is a video on Youtube of this year’s parade. Our group of international students can be seen around 3:00. Usually the colour of the overall represents the guild of the student. Most of us have the green overall of the international club, however some got overalls from a guild which are in another colour.
After the parade are the dippings. All 1st year students who collected enough points during the year are being dipped in the water of the Tammerkoski. And we international students were a part of this! Here is a video of what the dippings look like. The video was filmed by a friend of mine using a GoPro, unfortunately there is no video of my basket 🙁
The parade and the dipping were really amazing experiences! There was a lot of people on the street taking pictures and cheering. It was also great to see some people in their 50s and 60s wearing their Teekkari caps!
The order in which the guilds go in the parade and are being dipped depends on the rating of their Jäynä. Jäynä is a clever but harmless student prank. Ours is on Youtube. We only got 9th place out of 13, because our Jäynä was more of a flashmob and not a real prank.
Background info: The Rasputin is the traditional songbook of the engineering students. Many of the students (including me) have one.