The major reason why this month is unforgettable, is the fact that for the very first time I went on a real holiday with my boyfriend (read: nothing concerning music and longer than a weekend). After almost ten years of wanting to go there, I finally went to Finland. We rented a studio in Helsinki for seven days. I can safely say that this was, together with two other occasions, the best time of my life. I always had a thing for Scandinavia, especially Finland and I thought I would love it after reading about it a lot and seeing pictures.Love is just a very mild word to express my feelings for Finland right now. Helsinki is an amazing city and I really feel at home there. Fins are shy, humble introverts which are three words that you could use to describe me as well, I suppose. My BF fell in love with the country/city as well and the topic of moving to Finland in the future has come up several times already. I know I probably should try to see more of the country, perhaps try to stay there for an extended period and go there in winter seeing that winter can be very tough and depressing before taking a 'rash' decision. We'll have to save up and learn at least some basic Finnish anyway. What I miss the most is the sea, nature, the clean air and the lack of traffic and hurried people.
I'm not going to bore you with a long report about my holiday, instead I'm going to pick out a couple of highlights:
- Seurasaari: this a beautiful island with an open air museum featuring old buildings. The nature is amazing, the squirrels are everything but shy (they come to sniffle at your shoes if you stand still and are quiet) and you have amazing places to sit at the sea-side and look at Helsinki.
- Academic bookshop: Since I'm a bookworm, I'm always in search of bookshops. This bookshop, designed by Alvar Aalto, is very beautiful and has a great collection of English books, both Ficton and Non-fiction. I loved it.
- Evening walks: the evening walks around the city and seeing the sunset! Very simple but breathtaking.
Beside an amazing holiday, September has also expanded my book-collection with 29 books. A couple I bought in Finland and the others I bought yesterday in Hasselt at the Boekenfestijn. This is an event that travels through The Netherlands and Flanders were you can buy very cheap books. If you pay €5 for a fiction book, it's a lot. I think I have about 65-70 unread books on my shelves now. Time to start reading!
And finally, University has started again. This term I have about 13 and a half hour of classes that I will attend. I have to retake a couple of courses which means they are easily to skip so I do not have to go to class. Generally I will be in class for about 7 to 9 and a half hour a week, it depends a bit if I feel like going to the evening course. I have two 'full' days (read: classes are spread over the whole day) and one day of tow hours and a four day weekend, hooray! Downside: second term is probably going to be incredible busy.Tomorrow my first 'full' week will start. I'm excited! I love going to school and learning things!
