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2012 12/06
At 9:08 | By Maria Pietilä | Posted in Uncategorized |

Back home

It’s a bit over one week since we came back to Finland.

Our last days in Buenos Aires were really busy with the packing. Last days we spent shopping for souvenirs and went to the movies to see Men in Black 3 in 3D.

On the last night before the departure we had an evening walk on the streets of Baires and had a dinner in the center of Palermo.

Feels like Finland is still the same, even after we’ve been gone for 6months. However after the exchange period we see Finland in a totally different way:
1) Life in Finland is so safe and secure. You don’t need to be afraid of everyday strikes and riots. It’s so easy too! You can go to a post office and take care of your things in 5minutes; not like in Correo, where you first wait 2hours on line and then it takes 20minutes to buy stamps from the counter….

2) Finland is so amazingly beautiful. Before my trip to Baires I have never really looked the scenery and enjoyed the views. Especially the clouds look so amazing, they are like from the paintings! The nature is also so green and the traffic is not even traffic compared to what it was in Buenos Aires: Here you can even hear how the birds are singing and walk on clean streets.

3) Finnish customer service is unique; The cashiers smile and are so helpful! This is the thing that I had never even noticed before.

4) You can pay by card in everywhere! First days I still had the Argentinean way of thinking in my mind when I said to Julius that I can’t by a cup of coffee from the school cafeteria because I don’t have cash. It took me a while to realize that I don’t need to have cash, because I can pay by using my card and there is no minimo para pagar con tarjeta :D

Our exchange period in Argentina really opened our eyes: Everything is not always easy but even if something is difficult it is possible to find a way through the difficulties. In some situations you just need to adapt and not to give up: If the metro is on strike there are other possibilities: Take the bus or walk.

Finnish people are a bit perfectionists: everything needs to be perfect. We noticed this when we moved into a new apartment and we heard our neighbor complaining how the street lamp was not straight: In the end, does it really need to be straight? Even if the lamp is a bit out of the line it still drives it purpose and lights up the streets :)

One of the hardest thing to adapt back into the Finnish culture is the time. If something starts at 12.30 it really starts at 12.30, not 12.38 or 12.52… Finnish people are really punctual with the time.

Anyway it’s nice to be back home. Even though there were days that were harder than the others,  I could do the same again! We got new friends, traveled in Latin-America, learned a new language and culture. We also learned new skills like patience and a way to think alternative options and possibilities. Things that we will  miss from Argentina is the effective public transport, small bakeries around the corner, where you can buy your Sunday facturas and the small nearby Chinese stores, from where you can buy anything at anytime.

JAMK Addthis
2012 30/05
At 14:46 | By Julius Halme | Posted in Uncategorized |

Last goodbye

Here we are, waiting for the guy from the rental apartment agency.

Time went so fast, we don’t have much time to tell our stories now, but

we can tell you that we are coming home, now!

JAMK Addthis
2012 22/05
At 2:26 | By Julius Halme | Posted in Places to see, School, Uncategorized |

Presidential ending

We have been quite busy the last few weeks with all of the deadlines at school, but now everything is finished. We used our only free day to visit one more place in Buenos Aires we hadn’t visited before, Casa Rosada. It’s one of the most iconic buildings in Buenos Aires. Until 2 weeks ago we didn’t know you could visit it.

Casa Rosada is the presidential house. The president of Argentina flies from her home in Olivos on weekdays with a helicopter and on weekends its open for locals and tourists. The entry is completely free. It was one of the most beautiful buildings I have seen in my life. I would recommend it for anyone visiting Buenos Aires. Its open only on Sundays, so pick a Sunday and go for it!

Like I said, we are now finished with our studies in UADE. We got our diplomas from our professors. We still have more shopping to do, but soon we have to get ready for our flight back. Overall we have had a great time here. We are feeling a bit down, because we have to leave this place. You will hear from us again before we leave.

 

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2012 04/05
At 5:00 | By Maria Pietilä | Posted in Places to see, Uncategorized |

One month left

Time has gone really fast here! It’s hard to believe that its already May. At the moment I feel like I could stay here for longer, a month or two.

The past last two weeks we’ve done nothing special: School, projects and a couple of museums. The two that I could recommend would be Tranvia historico and Zanjon de Granados.

Tranvia historico is an old tram from the beginning of 20th century. It’s still operating in the Barrio of Caballito. The departures are on weekend evenings, every 20minutes and the starting point is Emilio Mitre al 500 (In the corner of Emilio Mitre and José Bonifacio). The admission is free of charge. The guided ride was in Spanish but luckily the guide talked really clearly so we could understand almost everything :) We had fun and I recommend this half an hour -ride to everyone who is interested in history.

The other museum that we visited was located in San Telmo -neighborhood. El Zanjón de Granados is an old, restored building. The oldest parts of the building are from the 16th century: From the time when the first colonialists arrived, first settlements are from the year 1536!  Under the building there is a labyrinth and the visitors can walk in the tunnels. We visited this place on Sunday and on Sundays there are half an hour guided tours, but during the week it’s possible to have an one hour tour. Half an hour tour felt maybe a bit too short for us, so in the next visit I would take the one hour tour. The price for English guided 30minute tours were 40pesos and 30 pesos for a  guided tour in Spanish. We didn’t have enough cash with us so we chose the Spanish tour and we understood surprisingly much so it wasn’t a bad choice at all!

We also spent one Sunday in Tigre with two of our friends. Tigre is a city located in Buenos Aires province, around 30kilometers North from Buenos Aires. We took a boat and sailed through the canals and stopped by on one of the islands to have a picnic. The delta area is really beautiful but the rivers’ water is really dirty: We even saw people littering the water and it was a bit shocking to us.

One thing we’ve clearly noticed here is the improvement in our Spanish skills: Nowadays we can go into the stores or lavaderos and take care of everything in Spanish. We can have a small talk with shop clerks and ask questions about things. This wasn’t possible at all during the first month when we arrived :D

One of the biggest cultural difference here is the kissing: People kiss each others on cheek to say hello or goodbye. If you go to work, party or other meeting it’s common to kiss everyone who is in the same room. At first, for a Finnish person, this felt a bit awkward but after couple of months we’re getting used to it. There is no personal space and on the rush hour you can find yourself squeezing in into a metro that is already packed with people: People just push in as long as the doors can close.

Before we arrived here we thought that Buenos Aires would be a city full of traffic and pollution. The streets aren’t as clean and in good condition as in Finland but we were surprised how green this city is: There are a lot of trees and parks. Parks in Palermo are a perfect place to go jogging of for a picnic.

We’ll try to enjoy our last month as much as possible and keep you posted.

JAMK Addthis
2012 19/04
At 23:01 | By Julius Halme | Posted in Uncategorized, Vacation |

Easter at Easter Island

We have been a bit busy with school as its nearing the end of the semester, but finally here is our holiday post:

Our vacation started off with a flight from Buenos Aires to Cuzco, Peru through Lima, Peru. We arrived to Cuzco with nothing but our backpacks on our backs and a mood set for adventure. The moment we stepped out of the terminal we were overwhelmed by the amount of people offering different kind of treks and packages to Machu Picchu. Once we got out of the airport dozens men started offering taxis for ridiculous prices (20 soles (almost 6 euros) and more) what is known to be the cheapest country in Latin America. We decided to walk for 1km to our hostel. The guy at the hostel was incredibly nice. He offered us some coca tea, it helps with altitude sickness, since it was our first time so high. Cuzco is elevated about 3.5 km. He advised us about where we should shop for souvenirs and where to eat for cheap.  We spent a few days getting used to the altitude in Cuzco and enjoyed the scenery until the hard part…

One morning we jumped on a bus and met 24 people, of which 10 were tourists. This was the beginning of our Inca trail. We took a bus to Ollantaytambo for a last moment of civilization for 4 days. We continued to road marker 82 to start the hike. The Inca trail is a legendary trail that originally starts at Cuzco (the ancient capital of the Inca empire)  and leads to Machu Picchu, unfortunately the start of the trail is not restored to its former glory. The trail we took was roughly the last 40 kilometers. Over the days we walked in the valleys, on the same stone steps the Incas used. We visited several ancient archaeological sites along the trail, most of them are thought to be some kind of resting places along the way.

The path that took us 4 days, the Incas did in 1-2 days, including the alpacas or llamas they had with them carrying fresh food or offerings to Machu Picchu. On the second day we reached “Dead Woman’s Pass” – the highest point of our trail, over 4200 meters high! After reaching this, it became much easier as the rest of the trail was mostly downhill or very slight uphill. During our trail we had a team of local people trekking with us. On top of our 2 guides, we had a team of porters carrying all the food for 4 days and the tents for the whole group (mattresses and sleeping bags we had to carry ourselves). One guy was the cook and he was very good. The cook made us a breakfast, lunch, “teatime” and dinner every day. Lunch and dinner had a starter, main course and a dessert. On the last day he even made a huge chocolate cake!

Our Inca trail ended on the last day hiking up to Inti Punku, The Sun gate. We woke up on the last day before 4 and reached Machu Picchu upon sunrise. The sight was simply breathtaking. We could see the city light up along the edges, It was so early that there were no tourists and you could really see the glory of the city it once had. We really recommend anyone to do the Inca trail and enter the city in this way, because it was really great and it gives you the perspective of the Incas. We walked down to get the famous postcard photo took a little bathroom break before starting the tour inside the city. We walked through the city and after the tour spent a little spare time there to enjoy after the hard task we had done. The weather was perfect, but we knew our train left back to Cuzco at 2pm, so we decided to grab something to eat at the nearby tourist city, Aguas Calientes. Finally after 4 days we were back to civilization, but we would have wanted the trail to continue endlessly. It was time to relax for a day in Cuzco before our next adventure.

Stretching our legs for a day in Cuzco was good for our sore muscles, but then it was time to jump on a plane again and head to Chile. Our first stop was in Santiago where we were supposed to just change planes and get going. We sat on our connecting flight when the captain announced “Dear passengers, we have to change the plane due to a technical difficulty”. Everyone had to get off the plane and back to the terminal only to be told that they are investigating and we would get more information in 2 hours. They offered us lunch in a terminal cafeteria. After 2 hours we headed back through security and waited for an announcement at the gate. Shortly few flight attendants, accompanied with 3 security guards, walked to the desk. One of them started the announcement saying that our flight would leave in 6 hours and as soon as he said that the local people started to yell and shout.

No one heard what he had to say after that. At the end they told us that we will take you to a hotel, where you will have a room to sleep & shower for the time you wait. We thought “Oh wow, any hotel they take us is probably better than the forest we called home for 4 days”. They took us away from the airport, deep in the center of Santiago de Chile to a hotel called Crowne Plaza. We felt a bit out of place with our backpacks and hiking shoes :)

This was one of the fanciest hotels we had ever seen. After serving us a three-course dinner we went to a hotel room to take a warm shower and relax. Crowne Plaza was nice, but it was also very nice to finally get on board the plane. We were in total 9 hours late but the destination was worth the wait: the Easter Island!

We arrived to the Easter Island, an island of 3000-4000 inhabitants and 1 plane arriving every day, almost at midnight. Our airport pickup from the hostel was waiting for us at the airport and soon we were on our way to the hostel. The next day we were both very tired from walking and traveling so we decided to just walk around the city of Hanga Roa for awhile and look for opportunities to rent a car, scooter, bicycle or even a horse for the following day to go around the island. We decided on a scooter, because it was simply the easiest, fastest and the most comfortable way to travel. On top of that it also was twice as cheap as a car.

It was time to see the Island. Isla de Pascua is not too big so you can definitely go around it in a day, but we would recommend to take 2 days for seeing the Moai, maybe 1 day to see the city of Hanga Roa and another 1-2 days to relax on the magnificent Anakena Beach. We started off on our trip to see the Moai and had lunch at Anakena Beach. We went to try the waves and try the silky sand beneath our feet, it was one of the coolest beaches we have seen. We finished the day by stopping at few more Moai platforms called Ahu and as the sun was setting we reached the final Ahu next to Hanga Roa. We were very pleased. The weather was once again perfect for us and the day was simply one of the best during our entire Latin American trip.

Flight home was just around the corner, but first we had to stop at the Santiago Airport – again. Good news first: Our connecting flight wasn’t late. Bad news: Our connecting flight was in 18 hours. We found kind of an “abandoned” place, it was in the international side of the terminal, we put 2 airport benches together and we had a double bed :)

The flight took us back to Buenos Aires, which felt like home after a long trip.

JAMK Addthis
2012 29/03
At 1:53 | By Julius Halme | Posted in Uncategorized |

Vacation time!

Just a quick post letting everyone know that we will be away for 2 weeks and won’t be posting anything.

 

You will hear from us again between 9th and 15th of April, then we will let you know where we went and what we did on our vacation.

 

Happy Easter to everyone :)

JAMK Addthis
2012 17/02
At 16:21 | By Julius Halme | Posted in Places to see, Uncategorized |

The world without internet: Full of trees…

Oh yes, there is life beyond internet after all. The weekend was very active, more active than we had planned for.

We decided to check out a few parks while we were disconnected from the world, first up was the Jardín Botánico de Buenos Aires (The botanical garden of Buenos Aires). It was a place we had seen several times while waiting for the bus that takes us to school. The garden was divided into sections, each with a trees and flowers from different parts of the world. We really enjoyed the roman garden with very beautiful statues and fountains. It’s one of the prettiest places to stroll around in Buenos Aires and we would definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a moment of peace under the palm trees.

On Sunday it was a very pretty day, the sun was shining from a blue sky. We started walking towards the big parks in Palermo (roughly 1 kilometer from our flat). For the past 2 weeks we have lived in Palermo, we have wanted to see the renowned Jardín Japonés (The Japanese garden). It was recommended by several people as a very beautiful Japanese theme garden. It didn’t really live up to its hype. Sure, it did have beautiful landscape. Sure, it had few waterfalls. Sure, it had Japanese buildings. Where it failed was the atmosphere. The main point of a Japanese garden is to have peace and quiet, a place to rest your mind from everything. There were kiosks within the garden, tons of Japanese and western tourists taking pictures and hundreds of children screaming and jumping around. All of this in a 1000 square meter area.  In the garden, they happened to have some kind of bonsai convention during the day, where they instructed people how to grow their own bonsai. We wanted to sit down for awhile and went to listen to these people talking about Bonsai trees, in Spanish. We could understand them surprisingly well and it wasn’t too long until the session was over and it was time to raffle a new bonsai tree owner. We didn’t’ win :(

Doing laundry in Buenos Aires is very strange if you don’t have a machine at your house or apartment building. Moving to a new apartment meant finding a new laundry place nearby. We found one just 1 block from our place, the Asian lady there is very kind and for just 14 pesos (2,5 Eur) you can get a load washed, dried and folded. This is a kind of service you can never get for that price in Finland. On top of that, its so easy: Just drop off your clothes there in the morning or during the day and pick them up either before they close (20:30) or in the morning.

I wrote the above on Tuesday while we still didn’t have internet, but now we do have internet again! I have to admit, I had my suspicions on this “technician” that was coming on Wednesday. I already had reset the routers about 10 times. The guy came in, took this machine the size of a cat from his toolbox, plugged it in and left to check the cables from the roof. 10 minutes later, he was already back at our apartment, having fixed the connection.

JAMK Addthis
2012 14/02
At 2:14 | By Maria Pietilä | Posted in Places to see, School, Uncategorized |

New haircut and Shopping in Buenos Aires!

I am writing this post from a Locutorio. I had to pay for the use of the Internet: 1peso for 15minutes.

The reason why I am here is because we have no Internet in our apartment: It just stopped working last Friday. Like the locals say: Internet no functionada. We managed to inform the agency and if everything goes well there will be a technician coming over this Wednesday. Let’s hope the guy can fix our Internet!

Anyway, let me tell about our last week:

On  Monday we started in the school the schedule that we are going to have until May. Our schedule is following:

Monday: Strategy                          Tuesday: Entrepreneurship & Spanish

Wednesday: Micro-Macro Economics                   Thursday: Law & Spanish

During this week we’ve learned how to use buses here!  There are hundreds and hundreds of different bus lines and Quia-T (The book, which shows all the bus schedules) seemed at first glance really confusing but after some studying we finally started to understand it. We got our Quia-T from a stand where was a girl selling newspapers, but we’ve also seen people selling Quia-T’s on metro stations too. We paid 10 pesos (1,75e) for it. +Julius found a website, which shows the routes of all bus lines: This makes you feel more comfortable when you see exactly where you are going.

After the Argentinean government decided to increase the metro fare in Mid-January from 1.10pesos to 2.50pesos, the buses are still 1.10 . From this new apartment we take bus to school and it takes about 40minutes, but if there is a traffic jam (that we had to face one day) it took us 1hour and 15minutes.We heard that the traffic will be worse in the end of February when people come back from their summer holidays.

Julius’ hair had overgrown so we went to meet a local hairdresser. I also decided to get a haircut at the same time.  We learned in school that in Latin-American countries there is a bigger inequality between man and women that inFinland. This is not true when it comes to hairdressers! A lot of hairdressers are unisex, which means that they offer their services to both men and women: for the SAME price! InFinlandwomen still have to pay more than men do. Corte (haircut) was 40 pesos per person (around 7euros!). The most surprising thing was that they did not just cut my hair but they cut it with layers. For this same inFinlandthey would charge me 30euros or more. Other beauty services are also affordable here inArgentina: For example you can get a manicure for 30pesos (~5.21e) I will definitely have to try that one later.

One thing what we haven’t really talked about earlier is shopping. Supermarket’s (For example like  inFinlandthere are Prisma and K-Citymarket) , where you can buy everything are not that popular here inArgentina. Of course there are ones like Disco and Jumbo but people tend to buy fromsmall “specialized” stores. There are a lot of fruit stores,Ferreterias sell electronics, Meat stores, Coffee stores and bakeries.  We tried the bakery that is just one block away and we totally surprised! We bought 5 big pieces of fresh bread for 6pesos (1.05e). We also wanted to try their cookies, which were delicious. These cookies and 2 breads was 8.50pesos (1.50e):

On Friday we took a bus to Unicenter, which is the place where locals usually go shopping: Price level in downtown is always higher compared to the other areas. Unicenter is a big shopping mall outsideBuenos Airesand the one-way bus fare was 1.75pesos (0.30e) per person. We had a perfect timing because most of the stores had summer sales. Julius bought a sports bag and then I found a heaven: Calvin Klein –store had everything -60% on sale so I bought two bras for 179pesos (~31euros) Nothing makes a woman happier than a successful shopping trip.

JAMK Addthis
2012 05/02
At 23:50 | By Julius Halme | Posted in Uncategorized |

New home & Runeberg’s torte

How about a quick recap of the week?

To start of with good news, we finally moved to the new apartment! Comparing to the one we had for a month: this one is much bigger (22 sq m compared to 45), much brighter and a very important aspect that we didn’t have in the previous apartment: an oven. The area is very nice with lots of trees and parks. We have a big Disco (a supermarket similar to S-Markets in Finland) 1 block away. Going 2 blocks to one direction you can find a good gym that is expanding and in March they will have a Sauna! 2 blocks to the other direction and you will find a big street called “Avenida Santa Fe”, there you will find the green subway line that goes directly to the center and the buses that go 2 blocks from UADE. Some might say we found a perfect place to live. Here its common to see people walking alone on the streets at night, unlike at the centro.

We really like the place. Now we have more chances to cook and the prices are a bit less than in the center. We made a fresh mozzarella salad with ranch dressing. The materials were around 25 pesos (4,4 euros) for a 2 person salad. The other day we made pizza, total for this pizza was 45 pesos (7,9 eur). The pizza included minced meat, pineapple, mozzarella cheese, tomato puree and shredded cheese. Very tasty!

In Finland, 5th of February is Runeberg’s Day, a famous finnish writer known for The Tales of Ensign Stål. We went to the bigger hypermarket Jumbo (bigger than most finnish Prismas) nearby and bought cupcakes to celebrate this day. Not quite the traditional Runeberg’s torte, but it was so goooooood :)

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2012 04/02
At 15:51 | By Maria Pietilä | Posted in School, Uncategorized |

School fever

It’s almost two weeks since the last post, sorry!

But we really have a good reason, because we simply haven’t had any time:

Monday 23.1 we started our lectures. The whole week from Monday to Thursday we had school from 8am until 4pm. At this point you probably think that hey, you still have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. But on Friday I got fever that went up to +38°C and it continued through the whole weekend. I learned, that it isn’t so comfortable to have fever when it’s over +30°C outside: You can’t use the air conditioner because the cold air that comes from it makes you freeze, but if you don’t use it, it gets terribly hot and humid inside :P

Luckily the weekend went by and Julius was so sweet taking care of me the whole time :) On Monday we survived to school and the same fast-pace continued until Thursday. During these two intensive weeks we had lectures on Spanish 8-9.30am, Culture&Inflation 10am-12pm and Marketing&Sales 12.30-4pm. I really enjoyed Spanish lectures! There are 3levels of Spanish: basic, intermediate and advanced. Julius and I are on different groups. He has basic Spanish lectures and I am on the intermediate. The teacher on intermediate is so nice and energetic, but she speaks only Spanish. First lectures were a bit challenging to follow but later on it got easier to understand her.

Culture&Inflation classes were full of group discussions and we also watched an Argentinean  movie. Inflation part was interesting because we really learned a lot of new things about the inflation in Argentina that happened between 1975-1991 and the recession in the beginning of 2000. These all are things that we should learn of and take into account when looking at the current situation in Greece.

Marketing&Sales lectures took place in the afternoon: 3,5hour lectures felt quite long but luckily our teacher Natalia was great! She made the lectures alive and not-so boring :) We learned a bunch of cultural things in her lectures too! Now we know, why in Argentinean grocery stores there is always a shop assistant who will weight the vegetables for you, the story about red ribbons on the cars and many other things. Now we have one month time to work with our group work projects. Marketing presentation will take place on March.

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