On 4th and
5th May we had planned a spring trip to Tampere. I actually met with Mayu and
Rika also on 14th April, since I really wanted to bake cinnamon
rolls, and I asked if the girls wanted to join me. It’s not really an
EOTO-meeting so I’m not going to write about it.
But on 4th and 5th May we had planned a similar trip to Tampere as we had done
on autumn. I asked the girls what they would like to do in Tampere, and tried
to plan some kind of schedule for us. Sadly earlier the week Tiia said to us
that she couldn’t come, since she had to attend her cousin’s birthday party that
weekend in Helsinki. Jonas was also unsure whether he could come or not. And on
3rd he told us that he’s not able to go with us. So in the end it
was only the three of us.
Actually I
also had some other plans for Sunday, but Mayu and Rika still wanted to come to
Tampere. I went there already on 3rd and the girls arrived early in
the next morning. I went to get them from the train station and we went to supermarket, and bought some foods for the weekend.
After we
finished shopping we headed to the center of the city. We decided to go to
Kauppahalli at first, just see how it looks like there.
In Finland these kind of places are quite often more expensive than supermarkets, so I was really surprised to hear that in Japan these kind of market places are usually cheaper than supermarkets! I had no idea about that.
After going
around Kauppahalli we went to take a look if the old church in the center of
Tampere was open.
And it was!
Lucky us.
After
visiting the church we headed to Alexander’s church.
There was
one another church where I wanted to take the girls, but in the end we didn’t
have time to go there. We also took a peak at Tampere's library Metso and visited the Moomin museum again.
We walked
along the Hämeenpuisto for a bit, and then went to take a look of Kehräsaari.
Mayu and Rika both liked the place a lot. Too bad that the weather wasn't as good
as they had promised earlier the week..
We were
getting pretty hungry so we visited the café in Amuri, Amurin Helmi, but of
course they didn’t serve lunch during weekends. We were wondering where to go,
and in the end we decided to go and buy some tortilla ingredients and go to my
sister’s place. We also visited the market place really fast, and bought some
black sausage.
Mayu and
Rika had both also said that they really want to try making some karelian pies.
I myself had never made any so I was feeling little bit hesitant. But in the end
we decided to make some. And they turned out quite nice. Maybe the taste was
little bit more like cocktail pies, but they were good!
Sampo was
also interested in what we were doing.
Delicious!
We decided
to watch some movie, and ate the same time. We also tried playing the game
called Africa’s star.
Later on
the evening we decided to go to Pyynikki’s Näkötorni. The girls visited the
tower, and we also took a little walk on the woods. We saw some signs of spring.
On 5th I left pretty early with my sister to go to the flea market, which would be on
the center of Tampere. Mayu and Rika stayed at my sister’s place, and I met
them later on, when they visited the flea market. We made a plan to meet at the café
in the center at 4pm. I took the girls to this waffle café there is in Tampere.
We sat there about 40minutes, and after that it was time for the girls to catch
their train.
This was
our last EOTO-meeting, but we have some plans to keep some kind of small party
before Mayu and Rika are going back to Japan.
This whole
EOTO-course has been really fun, and I’ve learned to cook many Japanese foods,
learned new vocaburaly, and a lot about Japanese culture. I hope to see the girls
again in Japan, when I have the chance to go there. Hopefully on my 3rd year I could go to Japan as an exchange student, and then I Mayu and Rika could
show me little bit about their hometown too. And of course I hope to keep in
contact with the girls from on too!
