Finnish friendship programme

During my semester in Finland I was given the opportunity to take part in the Finnish friendship programme. The main aim of the programme is to learn more about finnish culture and living and to get into contact with Finnish people.

The Finnish friendship programme is offered by the Turku university of applied sciences and therefore the first meeting took place at the ICT building. The university provided some pastries as well as tea or coffee. Even though my finnish friend was not able to come, I had a great evening talking to another Finn who is acutally from Åland. Åland is a little island that is situated between Sweden and Finland and the population on the island is mostly only able to speak swedish event though it is part of Finland. That's the reason why Linnea is just talking swedish and studies at the Swedish university called Åbo academy in Turku. Nevertheless, we could communicate in English and her German was also really good.

Having told about the first meeting I now want to introduce my finnish friend. She is called Essi and is also studying in Turku. Essi studies economies at the Turku university and is in her last year at the moment.

Before she came to Turku she was living in Salo which is a city near Turku. Sometimes Essi goes to Salo on weekends to see her family and some of her friends.

Essi and I first met in a lovely café down the riverside of Turku which is called 'Art café'. During a short coffee break we talked about where we are from, our hobbies, families and lots of other things.

I had to laugh when she was telling me that she actually has visited Austria before because she was doing an exchange there and I even realised that she was pretty good at talking German and could tell me some words in the lower Austrians dialect. We had a great time at the café and decided to meet another time after about those two hours of talking to each other. :)

Taking part in the Finnish friendship programme was a great decision. Unfortunately, Essi and I just met a couple of times as we had both been quite bussy with studying and travelling but I really like to spend time with Essi.