This week could quite easily be entited 'the week after the one before'. The week started fairly slowly as I think we all had a constant hang over from the past four days. I can't remember the last time I felt so hungover for a period of several days solid. In the evenings we resorted to watching films and introduced Europe to the world of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost with Shaun of the Dead followed up with Hot Fuzz. However, we've established that you have to be very familiar with British culture to a) understand the language and b) actually have any idea why its funny. I enjoyed watching them but I feel the Italian-Austrian-Swiss members of the party were more than a little confused. We also watched the US elections on Tuesday night. There was a huge Obama support in our building so it was really cool to watch it with everyone, including the Americans. When it came out he had won we all went crazy. I think the fact that a bunch of Erasmus students stayed up to watch the election results live shows how much of an impact this election has had on the world, not just America. The results came in at 6.15am Finnish time as we're 2 hours ahead of the UK, let alone of the USA. Yet everyone was equally as scared and excited as they would be in their own national elections. More so actually, as some people have had national elections whilst they've been here and we certainly didn't pay as much attention to what happened in Austria as we did to the USA.

However as the week wore on the alcohol came out again for Thursday night and we all set out for the legendary KY Klubi evenings. Legendary is possibly the wrong word given that this club is a mix between Stereo, Espionage and Sligo with a bit of Massa thrown in, so in short, not really anyones cup of tea! However, this is where the Erasmus Student Network have their club night every Thursday and we live about 100m from its door. So we end up there every single week even though we loathe the place as the drinks are 2 euro, so generally cheaper than if you bought a decent beer or cider from the supermarket to drink at home. After battling with the 'tunes' of KY for an hour or so we wandered home as the night of the weekend was again, on Friday.

For the entire week everyone had been talking about a certain flat party which was happening on Friday night at some of the non city centre flats. Over 150 people had been invited on facebook and as there wasn't much else happening that evening, pretty much everyone was coming and bringing their friends. We arrived at about 11pm and the place was already really packed. By midnight there must have been approaching 200 people in the flat, their balcony, the corridor, stairwell and flooded into a flat downstairs which was equally as full. Then the police arrived, complete with 2 police vans and 10 police officers kitted out in with fancy equipment. This is a clear reflection on the fact that there is actually no crime in Finland and we were clearly keeping an entire police force in their jobs for the evening. If this were in Edinburgh I doubt the police would have arrived, and if they did it would have been 2 or 3 officers max plus a little car. But anyway, as we're in crime free Finland the police arrived and asked everyone to leave. Which we didn't. Everyone left the building then wandered around the back or into other flats to wait for the police to leave. The police left, and the party continued for another couple of hours until the police came for a second time (with even more riot protection) and cleared everyone off. We decided we may as well leave then as the last trains to the city centre were leaving soon. It was interesting to see the reactions of the people from different countries- apparently in France the police would only come if you were doing hard drugs at the party, whereas in Germany it is very frequent that they come and close down parties with only a few people. I highly doubt the police would have come in the UK- we were in a completely student area and the party wasn't out of hand by any stetch of the imagination. Most people weren't drunk and we were all just happily chatting. I think it was more the sheer amount of students who had arrived for the party- as I said there were easily approaching 200 people there given that at one point we counted 30 people in one bedroom.

Anyway- that was Friday night! Thus Saturday was a rather subdued affair with a lot of people nursing hangovers and such like, but we decided to head out into the city and go to an Irish pub. Easier said than done. First of all they decided that they weren't going to let Rahul in because he is only 19 and they wanted everyone to be 20. Then they decided that Gregor couldn't come in as he only had his student ID (with photo and date of birth) as we've sent our passports off to to go Russia this Thursday. So the few of us who were allowed in entered, and drank water for the evening.

One of the most interesting things which happened on Saturday night was that I learnt that in Germany they don't commemerate 11th Novemeber. Here, 11 o'clock stands for the start of the carnival and party season, not for a 2 minute silence to remember the dead soliders from the past wars. We were all talking about 11/11 and then suddenly one of the German girls was like we can all meet up and bring party hats and blowers, as we need to do something fun at 11 o'clock... then started saying how cool it was that we had it in France and the UK too. Then we stopped when I suddenly caught on- party hats and blowers?! Thats not what we do! So I explained what happens in the UK on Armistice Sunday and 11th Novemember and they were really shocked. The French said they do the same as in the UK, but they don't in Germany. Its interesting as I presume that the carnival and party season also starting at 11am can't just be a strange coincidence. Presumably this is also related to the end of the war in some way, but that aspect of the tradition has died out over the 90 years.

Then, finally it came to Sunday. In the evening we decided to check out the Helsinki Ice Bar as we asummed it would be really cool. However you pay 10 euros to stand in a walk in freezer. Yep, it was actually a tiny walk in freezer the size of a bathroom with a little bar in the back to provide you with your free drink. One of the Italian guys Giacomo thought it was hilarious and spent the entire time saying "my father has worked for 1 hour to pay for this freezer" and that if we come to Italy we too can to go the freezer- in the butchers shop in his village where they keep all of the dead animals. Doesn't sound that amausing now, but read it in a very thick Italian accent and imagine a ridiculous scene of us all wrapped up in the 'Ice Bar' aka freezer in big blue jackets. We were trying to work out the praticalities of the toilet before we arrived... we didn't need to as this place didn't even have seats!