After 5 months in Finland, being an Erasmus student, now i'm back in my hometown Ankara. Seems like Finland still looks beautiful in the mirror of our old car, VFC-286 ( its code name and traffic plate)

I unpacked my bags which were full of memories, and now trying to get used to my life again. The first difference is naturally the climate, as it's sooo hot for me now. I can't even walk outside now but i like it anyway.. This is what i've been wanting to see for a long time.

It's great to be home with my family, my friends, my streets even my car which can speed, not like VFC-286 eheh ..

I have plans for my summer, i want to work somewhere in the computer business and would like a holiday in the south (Alanya,Marmaris,Antalya etc..) Well, i have to admit, working hard and not being lazy, this is something i learned from Finnish people. If there's one thing i need to respect about them, that is their hard-workingness.

This has been a very sloppy text but forgive me this time, next time i want to write about my nephew Ilknur who is only 6 months old and loves to laugh 24 hours.. Masallah..

Ben bir Haziran akşamı,
Sen ise soğuk bir Şubat sabahı..

Senle ben yanyana gelmeyecek iki zaman birimi..
Alt alta durmayacak iki mısra, karşılaşmayacak iki eski dost,
Ve belki de duyulamayacak bir çığlık gibiyiz..

Oysa sen fa olsan ben de mi,
Belki bir şarkıda olsun yanyana gelirdik..
O zaman bizi dinleyenler anlardı,
Ayrılığın suçu sende mi bende mi ?

Gökhan Doğan
Forssa, Finlandiya, 2006

Moikka Suomi !

Tomorrow will be a different day for me ... Because i'll be gone ..

Kids in Feeniks will still play, buses in the bus station will still take people to different cities, Helsingitie will still let the cars the way to Helsinki, Bar54 will still be crowded by people, students will still study at HAMK University... But i'll be gone ..

The weather will be still hot for a period of time, then it'll be "cold" again.. Foreigners will freeze and Finnish people will smile at them.. Forssa will be still Forssa but i'll be gone..

But when it comes to the roads to Turku, Tampere or even Pori, they'll miss me .. They'll miss the craziest driver ever drove on them.. But i'll be gone..

Am i leaving Finland or am i going back home ? Time will show me the place where i feel home ..

But one thing that i'm sure is that, i couldn't still find, which city i belong to, and i've to try hard to find it..

So, as a summary, tomorrow i'll be leaving Forssa and going back home to Ankara, Turkey.. I'm sure this is not the last goodbye to a city and a bunch of people, but it still hurts me a little bit..

Thanks a lot to every single person i've met in Finland ! Moi Moi !

Link: My first blog from Forssa

Trip to the east

Hameenlinna is a city which is ~56 kms far away from Forssa. I can say it's the nearest civilization around :) So sometimes it's good to visit there and see people, shopping centers, some interesting places around. All in all last week we were there, so i want to talk about Hameelinna. There will be plenty of photos here, so i'll put them in small size but when you click on them, you can see the bigger sizes.

First of all, the first difference with my previous trips to there was the " Spring ". As far as i know, my mates are living the summer in Turkey but here it's so called warm spring. There are flowers coming to life all around, and you can find all the tones of green in the streets, gardens, balconies...

Everywhere looks pretty fine and getting ready for the summer which hasn't been able to visit Finland yet. I hope it's not a myth or an old story that, summer will ever be possible in Finland :) Because in Ankara, Turkey, it's like 35 degrees now and they are burning, ehe..

First we visited the place called " Joutsenlampi ", which is a really big garden ( with a small lake included) that has been presented to a princess as a present in 1883. As you can predict, there are many species of flowers, trees and nature there.

There were even some ducks in the small lake of the garden. But here in Finland, there are so many lakes that even people have their own lakes :D So seeing a lake is never something strange, even for me now..

Then we met a small castle in that garden. There is another huge castle in Hameenlinna, but this small one was also used by the Finnish people to protect their land, it's so high that you can even see Turkey from there :P

As you can see, there's also another big lake over there, thousands of millions of trees. Well, i have tried to count them but after 6.747.456 something, i quitted :D

So, you the reader, never ever try to count the number of trees in Finland, it's simply uncountable !

On the top of the castle, we spent like half an hour to see the whole area, the limitless sky and the tones of green was dazzling my eyes. That was the time i realized that i was at least 60 metres high from the ground, so it was better to take care of myself. Because if i'd fall down, there wouldn't be so many things left from me.

One thing i have discovered about myself is that, i love nature.. Of course i don't want to live in a forest or near the lake forever but sometimes it's good to go to countryside and see the nature. I'd like to finish this post with a very meaningful and lovely photo of me and nature.

A Turkish guy in Finland

Here is the article i've written for the lecture " Finnish Culture and Language " which we had here at HAMK - University of Applied Sciences. It's not a very detailed and deep look at Finnish people and Finland, but i hope it gives you an idea about here.

The first thing you can realize in Finland is the silence.. The silence of the people, streets,traffic and even the pets here are silent.. But it doesn't last forever, the silence replaces itself with the happiness and screams with the first drop of alcohol.

When Finnish people are drunk, now it's the time to have fun ! They suddenly, turn into a very friendly and noise making people. It's not something, i'm complaining about, actually it's something i'm used to live like.. Because we, Turkish people, like to make noise, have fun and chat a lot..

After solving this silence problem by talking too much, now i can come to some important similarities between us and them. We also take off our shoes when we enter a house ! But we don't take off our underpants, when we are in sauna :) So, sometimes it's difficult what to take off when you enter some places :) I don't want to take off my underpants, instead of my shoes when i visit some friends, hehe.. Apart from joking, i find Finnish houses, really well-designed and at good quality. They like to use small decorations all around the flat, and it doesn't matter how big your house is.

One thing, i have to mention is the quality of the jobs they do. The excellence of the workmanship can be realized almost everywhere, the windows of the flats, the cleanness of the buses, well-cared streets, well-designed gardens, everywhere shows that there are rules in this country and every citizen obeys them.

I'd like to finish my article by a funny story of me and my mates:

It was the first day in Forssa and we were looking around. It was so cold that, our eyebrows were even frozen. Then we realized the automated traffic lights, which manages the traffic. We don't have that kind of traffic lights in Turkey. So it was amazing to see how it automatically lights green, when the road is empty so that you don't wait when there are no other cars. Then as computer engineers, we wanted to research the algorithm of this system. How does it recognize the cars and decide about the situation of the roaD ? So, as 4 Turkish guys in Finland, we pretented to be a car, 2 people in the back and 2 people in front and made sound like a car :) One of us was the horn and the other was sounding like the engine, ehe. But we couldn't cheat the traffic light, because the road was empty but it didn't light green for us. All in all, ofcourse we didn't believe that we were going to cheat it, because it was a Finnish-made traffic light. We had fun that day, as the other 5 months we spent here..

To sum up, i can say, there are strange things about Finnish people which are beyond the subject of this article but all in all i'm really happy to know them and live in Finland.

PS: The image on the right is from the yahoo group which i and my mates moderate, and i'm aware of the fact that the word Finish should be Finnish. But again i'm too lazy to edit it :D Sorry..