Today I’m going to do my first blog post in English. Let’s see if I stick with that or if I will switch back to German at some point.
Yesterday, we went outside to play „kyykkä“. Kyykkä is a popular century-old outdoor game in Finland. The game involves two teams of 4 people each who throw a bat called „karttu“ to a row of beercan-sized wooden cylinders called „kyykkä“. The goal is to knock as many of the „kyykkä“ out of the opponents field as possible. The material and the field can be seen in the following pictures. Unfortunately, it was too dark to take photos during the game.
There are videos on YouTube showing kyykkä gameplay, for example:
The annual world championship in „Academic Kyykkä“ takes place at TUT in Hervanta, this year it will be on February 14th (That’s how engineers spend their Valentine’s Day! :D). There is an English-speaking league for which I registered with a team of other international students. My first participation in a world championship 😉
After the game we went to a place which has 70cm pizzas (see in the picture) and then we watched the movie „A Million Ways to Die in the West“ at the university. It is really interesting that you can just walk into one of the lecture rooms, start a projector and watch a movie from your laptop. I’m not sure if that would be possible at my home university In Germany!
When I came back to my apartment, I met my third roommate. His name is Miguel and he is from Portugal (Lisbon) which is quite funny because my cousin is currently living there. We just arrived because he still had exams at home.
Today we went to a public sauna called „Rauhaniemi“ in Tampere. It is situated at one of the Tampere lakes called Näsijärvi. After sauna there is a possibility to go ice swimming which I did. I guess that qualifies as having taken the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, even though I was never nominated 😉 The following picture has been taken by a friend of mine.
Ice swimming at Rauhaniemi