China Fest Köln

Hallo!

Last Saturday we went to Neumarkt to see the annual China Fest arranged in Köln. They had built a nice area to Neumarkt, which was full of tents. Food, culture all things China :D:D We on purpose did not cook lunch at our place so we would be hungry when going there!

The entrance

At first we found a tent where you could get a paper with your name written on it in Chinese. The woman had little bit problems with our not-so-traditional German or Chinese names, but she managed to do it :D

Jenna and Maiju, suprise XD

After that we just walked around the area, tasted some traditional Chinese tea (tasted like lawn, not very good:D) and enjoyed the atmosphere. Feeling in that event was warm and nice :)

That woman was soooo talented! See the picture above? The lady used somekind of rock to put lots of dots to the canvas (or something) and that is how the picture was created :D haha hard to explain but so cool

Then we sat down to eat a cup of noodles :) All the people there were eating chinese food, but the drinks were not that chinese (=Kölsch)..

After a while we left for shopping couple of new make-ups :)

And in the evening we went to party, of course.... :D:D This time we did not go to Diamonds! Instead we tried a new club called Reineke Fuchs :) It was a small house music club. Sooo refreshing to listen something else than mainstream top hits for a change. Such a good place, minus that it was really small and the entrance fee was 10 € :S

And let our tradition continue: the beauty picture of us, there you go:

Next post is about our baking day and International Food Fair! :)

Maiju&Jenna

Party and a little bit of school!

Hallo!

Like the heading already tells, our week has been umm.. partying and also a little bit of school :D

Monday was the day that contained school :D so just a normal day, going to school and hanging out. On Tuesday we had the regular day-off. We had our first assignment from school, which we wrote on Tuesday, it was about visiting the Dmexco. We had to write a short report of the event, not that difficult :D After finishing the reports we decided to go for a run! Earlier we have always just gone to the city center to run and we have noticed that people were always looking us like we are crazy or something..:D well now we finally realized why, we found this really beautiful park right next to our apartment. It was full on people just hanging out, drinking beer and enjoying the day. In addition there were all the other joggers..:D We will definitely go back there the next time we are going for a run!

In the evening we bought flights back to Finland! We decided to buy the ticket early so that we don't need to pay that much:) So if you are interested we are going back to Finland on the 20th of December, just in time for Christmas :) We found straight flights from Düsseldorf to Helsinki. Düsseldorf is the "capital" city of Nordrhein-Westfalen (state),so it is in the same state than Köln. Which means we can go there for free by train. The flight cost 179 €.But since we already have so much stuff with us (actually Jenna's luggage was too heavy already when coming to Köln!:D), we were smart and decided to pay for the extra luggage in advance! But....there was some small print :I if the flight is operated by another company then you need to pay for the extra luggage at the airport. Our flight is Finnair's, but of course operated by Flybe...which we did not notice btw! 25 € bye bye...

On Wednesday we had the German lesson until 19.45 and after that we talked with Stephanie and convinced her to go for drinks with us. We agreed to meet at the outdoor bar next to our place. We went there before 10 pm and had nice drinks:) Irina joined us a little bit later and then we headed for Flamingo! This time we didn't need to queue at all! Flamingo was really nice, like a better version of Tivoli in Finland:D In the beginning it was really nice, but after midnight there was soooo many people that it wasn't nice anymore. We tried to go to the dance floor but we couldn't move! We have never seen that many people in one place. So we decided to go home quite early and also because we had to go to school early in the morning. 

Drinks: two for one! :D

Jenna, Irina and Stephanie

On Thursday we registered for a trip to Berlin! The trip is organized by CBS and it takes place on 10.-12. of October. The whole trip including bus transport and accommodation in a hostel was 120€. In the evening (surprise surprise) there was a party :D typical Thursday.. We went to Yvonne, Christina and Pablo's place for pre-party. For the first time we were the first ones to arrive! :D We wanted to go to a new place for a change and we had heard that Nachtflug is a good place. We tried to go there first but it wasn't open:( Then we walked to the other side of the street to Diamonds, again :D 

Ready for the party! :D

but first let me take a selfie! :D

On Friday we had another day-off! :) We went to the Hauptbahnhof to buy train ticket for Juho and Jaakko. They are coming for our birthdays in October. Their flights arrive to Frankfurt so they needed ticket to Köln. We tried to buy them online from the bahn.de but the system was stupid and we couldn't do it. We spent rest of the day just chilling and watching some tv shows :)

That was our week:) next post about our weekend here, and here is something we are working on at the moment...:D:D Can you guess what it is?

Bis bald!

Jenna&Maiju

Last week

Hallo!

Last week was full the normal day-to-day stuff. Going to school, hanging out with friends and of course a little party :D On Monday we had just a normal school day. Only thing special was that Jenna had to go to the post office. As an Erasmus exchange student we needed to fill out several forms about the exchange period. One of them is a Learning Agreement, where is listed all the courses we are taking here in Germany as well as the courses that are going to be credited for us in Finland. My Learning Agreement was of bad quality (bad ink quality..:D) so I needed to send the original version back to my school in Finland. After asking from few German students and Google maps, I found out that there is a post office at Zülpicher Platz. I found the office eventually..:D and there was a nice lady behind the desk who helped me in German. The cost of a letter to Finland was 4,05€ which included three post stamps and an envelope. Hopefully the letter made it to Finland! :)

Tuesday is our day-off!! So what a better way to spend it that go shopping!:)) The plan was to check out the popular shopping streets Schildergasse and Hohe Strasse after a quick visit in Primark.Well we went to Primark and after spending there something like two hours, we were too tired to go anywhere else....:D At least we did some good findings and cheap!

Jenna tried on FEW clothes....:D

So Maiju got bored.....

The outcome of a quick visit in Primark.....

After all the hard work we got hungry and decided to go to Subway to see if it's the same as Finland. Well first of all the choices of fillings were mostly the same with few exceptions: salami, BBQ rib and tuna-ham-bacon melt. We still decided to stick with the usual choice Spicy Italian. The sub itself was good, but in our opinion they baked it too long so the bread was kinda dry. The price was lower  than in Finland, about 3,50 €.

After enjoying our subs we wanted to try out one of the many beautiful cafes in Heumarkt (area near the Dom and Rhein). We found a place and ordered pieces of cheese cake and Daim cake with hot chocolate and tea. Here it is much cheaper to go to cafes than in Finland. We got those two pieces of cake, hot chocolate and tea with 10€, in Finland you need to pay 5€ just for one piece of cake.

Looks better than it actually tasted..:D

The cakes were delicious!

...I am sweet! (sugar)

In the evening we were just about to go for a run when somebody told us that there is a party at Pablo, Yvonne and Christina's place. So we made a tough decision and skipped the run......:D:D We had a lot of fun:) Nothing that special happened...except a trash can almost set to fire, let's just leave it there:D

Rares and Maiju at the party

On Wednesday we had a normal school day and finally the German course started! Luckily we are both in the same group, especially since the classes are held in the evening from 18.15-19.45. Our group is B1+, which means that we should already know some German! :DD In the same group are 5 Dutch guys, us two and three other girls. The teacher is really nice which makes learning more fun and the classes aren't boring. Even though the classes are in the evening, time goes really fast. We think we have already learnt a lot! Funny thing is that the teacher doesn't actually speak very good English, but it doesn't really matter because she can explain all the words in a simple way in German. We noticed this when she was trying to translate a word to English and couldn't. Actually it is better when she explains it in German, so we learn more.

On Thursday we needed to go to an exhibition to Koelnmesse (exhibition center). The exhibition is called Dmexco, it is a digital marketing exhibition and conference. We got an assignment from International Marketing and Applied Social Media Marketing -courses to visit Dmexco and write a short report about it. We needed to take part in a seminar and also just to look around. The Koelnmesse  was a huge place! Dmexco was held in the northern part of the Koelnmesse. We needed to take a bus from the south entrance to the northern one. Dmexco was held in three of the exhibition halls and actually there are 11 halls altogether. Basically every company from the digital marketing industry was there..:D just to mention couple of them: Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Amazon, Spotify, Youtube, Google...Even though it was a B2B-event it was really interesting to take part in it. We heard that Dmexco is the most important event in the digital marketing industry and people all over the world take part in it. 

Before going to the Dmexco we grabbed some lunch! Yummy. Stephanie is really happy about her soup :)

Free drinks, food, candy and everything! :D

In the evening we went to the dorms, again:D There some people just hanging out and we spent a nice relaxed evening together. At some point we got tired and wanted to go home, but the last bus had already gone. So just call a cab! Sounds easy, but wasn't...At first we couldn't find the number anywhere, but after searching for an hour Maiju managed to find the number and call a taxi for us. We made it home!

Friday was a cozy home day for us. We finally made it to the run and in the evening we watched a movie and searched information about Amsterdam. We went to bed early because in the morning we left for Amsterdam :)

That was our week! At the end a nice, beautiful picture of us...
And btw this is going to be a new tradition in our posts: a nice beauty picture!

Bis bald!
Jenna&Maiju

Amsterdam

Hallo!

On Saturday morning we woke up at 6.a.m because we needed to catch a bus to Amsterdam!
We had registered to a student trip to Amsterdam by Studifahrten. Studifahrten is an organization which organizes trips to students all over Europe. It is cheap and the traveling is made by bus.
The bus left at 8. The journey took 5 hours because we needed to drive to Aachen first to get some travelers from there.

There were 4 full buses but we knew only each other and Martyna.
We arrived to Amsterdam around 1 and left right away to explore the city! We had no arranged program for the day so we were on our own 12 hours :) We had still checked some web pages so that we know where you need to go and what to see there.
At first we went to shop some souvenirs!

After souvenir shopping, we just walked around the city and checked some most popular sightseeings.

Bikes EVERYWHERE

And also Coffeeshops.. Which means shops where you can buy weed. There those guys were just making their joints in front of everyone, in the middle of the day..No problem.

Magic mushrooms and below weed lollipops!

Flowers in Nieuwmarkt

Koninklijk Paleis = The Royal palace and next to it Nieuwe Kerk, the most important church in the Netherlands

#SELFIE

Bike parking lot :D

Then we took a tram to Museumplein to take the mandatory tourist pictures! There are those huge I AMsterdam letters. It was really crowded so we did not get that good pictures, but what can you do..

Then it was dinner time! We walked to the Dam Straat (=street) and picked randomly a restaurant. Jenna and Martyna ordered pizza, Maiju ate chicken. Prices were reasonable and the food too. Not that special but ok.

After eating we decided to go to Anne Frank's museum. When we got there, we realized that the line was really long.. Still we wanted to get in and decided to wait. Luckily there was free wi-fi so waiting was not that bad :D And we got in quite quickly.

Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who wrote a diary of her and her family hiding in a house in Amsterdam during the holocaust. Unfortunately they were found after two years of hiding and were taken to the concentration camp. Only family member who survived was Anne's father, who decided to publish the girl's diaries.

The museum was worth visiting! It was built in the house where they hid and all the information was stated clearly and made impressive. And the price was not that bad, 9 € per person.

We grabbed couple drinks from a store and headed to the red light district! Btw Maiju was so happy finding Strongbow :D

The red light district was something you cannot believe until you see it. There they were, girls wearing only underwear and standing in the windows trying to get men go inside. There were lots of tourists just to go and watch what's happening, just like us :D But yeah, also actual customers.. When a man went inside just the curtain closed and then he came out after 15 minutes like nothing had happened :D it was so weird.. No pictures because naturally photoshooting was strictly forbidden.

Waffles before going back home

 1 a.m. we started our journey back home. The day was unbelievably great, but tough. We were so tired in the bus.. And the journey took more than 5 hours.. We were home at 7 in the morning. The feeling was awesome when we went to bed :D

Next post is about our week here, just the usual.
Byeee :)
Maiju&Jenna