Helsinki: Day 1

    As a part of the scholarship, we were to spend our last few days in Helsinki, the capital, for special meetings and events planned for us. For this part, we met with six German scholarship students who were staying for a full year because they had the same opportunity for these three days from their scholarship. They stayed with us at the same youth hostel, so we all became very close and our group just got even larger and even more international!

Now here's a back story. Helsinki is the World Design Capital of 2012, which means it was chosen to be the showcase city of design of the world this year. There are tons of events and exhibitions going on in Helsinki, and we got to take part of a bit of it.

So on the first morning we went to Demos Helsinki. Demos Helsinki is a small group of researchers that the city consults for ideas to solve urban design problems. The solutions they come up with make life better for the residents of the city. At there office, we partook in a presentation about the problems facing the world's population and then split into two groups for a workshop where we could discuss solutions to being eco-friendly.

At around noon we took a break and walked from Demos Helsinki to the Helsinki 2012 pavilion, which was also thought of by the Demos team. It was a roofed structure that could be used for just about anything from a meeting place, restaurant, to a presentation place and classroom. Our lunch was not completely Finnish, but it was pretty good. It was beet soup and toast with goat cheese and a nut puree something or other on top. 

Crazy design was everywhere around Helsinki!

Our next workshop was brainstorming ideas to make a neighborhood of Helsinki more enjoyable for the residents, because in this particular neighborhood, there wasn't much except for housing. It was another awesome activity to do, but since I had had little sleep the few nights before (which would last the rest of the week), I was getting drowsy and as soon as it was announced that we could take a break, I was up on my feet heading to the caffeine... 
Pretty soon, we were off to downtown where we would find a meeting point, and then would go off on our own for free time. We split up into groups and eventually I broke off a larger group to walk around with my friends Emma and Tristan. We went around the main areas of Helsinki and Basically just took in the bustling city life while walking around. We ended up at places including Helsinki Senate Square and the main harbor.

From these places we somehow made our way to one of the main shopping streets where we went into Finland's main Stockmann departments store: the department store of Finland. (We totally didn't only go into Stockmann to follow a guy we had seen three separate times in the city that day...)

Fazer is the famous Finnish chocolate brand.

There was an awesome hanging chair in Stockmann!

Pretty soon we had to meet back near Helsinki Railway station where we went to Vapiano Restaurant for dinner, which was an Italian watch-them-make-your-pasta-in-front-of-you type of place. It was very good. 

Ateneum Art Museum where I went earlier this summer with my host mom and brothers

And thus my first day of the Helsinki program came to a close. And of course we stayed up late hanging out back at the hostel, just as we exchange students do best.