3 Million Saunas - Choose yours!

Kilian J., International Management Studies in the Baltic Sea Region (BMS), 5. Semester, South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK), August 2020 - Dezember 2020

Hey there guys! 

I am Kilian and currently studying in my third year at the HOST Stralsund, Germany. As this study course is giving us the opportunity to spend a semester abroad, I have decided to spend four months in Finland, participating in the double degree programme the HOST offers. The partner university XAMK has four different locations which are Mikkeli, Kotka, Savonlinna and Kouvola, where I spent my four months abroad.

Of course, the Covid situation caused significantly more planning effort. Originally I planned to reach Finland after a weeklong trip through Poland to visit Warsaw and then on to Vilnius/Latvia, Riga/Lithuania and Tallinn/Estonia, taking a ferry from there to Helsinki. Covid forced me to change these plans and take the 29-hour ferry trip from Travemünde/Germany to Helsinki. However, taking the ship allowed me to take the car and by doing so helped me enormously to discover Finland from a very individual and spontaneous perspective.

Basically, it is possible to reach cities like Porvoo, Turku, Tampere or Lappeenranta relative cheaply by bus or train, but various nature parks such as Repovesi are clearly better reached by car.

Settling in Kouvola was very pleasant for me personally. When I arrived I was welcomed warmly by the international coordinator who showed me around and handed out the accommodation contract. The fact that I had a German-speaking roommate and the possibility to explore the area around Kouvola with sunshine and pleasant temperatures at the end of August made it very easy for me to get used to the country. Overshadowed by Corona,  my semester took place exclusively online and there was unfortunately hardly any contact with Finnish students, we made the very best of it and quickly got together as internationals within the house, which in retrospect was very good! Through this I got to know many game design, architecture and business  students, and that in the end caused a very  special atmosphere with different characters. Several trips together, two of them to Lapland, Turku and Porvoo welded us together as a group very quickly, also supported by many sauna-sessions. I strongly recommend visiting as many locations you are able to, the time there is over way too quickly!

The best trip we did was in my opinion the Skiing trip to Saariselka, Lapland, which is the northernmost Ski & Sports resort of Finland!

The XAMK as an University with a yearly budget of 70 million Euro is a very well organised and nicely designed University. Unlike at home I was very impressed to find some quiet-rooms, sport equipment and even a Playstation 4 in the business building, free for usage for everyone. Sadly I didn’t visit the campus that often, but the times I was there I was quite amazed. I had the chance to go to the mensa, the food there is delicious, fresh and you can take a lot for comparably little money, and I was able to use the laboratories of the other faculties in order to try out the laser,- and the 3D printer.

Concerning the lectures I can say that they were held in a good way and the professors were able to teach us something. Still, the way of teaching was very different from the German way of lecturing, starting by the fact that we did a lot of group work, even more because of Covid and distance learning. While we are used to writing homework very independently, in Finland we were taken by the hand and guided through the topics, which took a lot of getting used to. In addition, the professors see themselves less as authority figures, so that a completely different working atmosphere could arise, in which a more personal communication could develop. Nevertheless, I really hope that the next semesters will be held in presence, as nothing replaces face-to-face teaching.

All in all I definitely look back with an absolute positive attitude regarding my Finland adventure in Kouvola. I have learned a lot about the way of life in other European countries through this experience abroad, be it the open hospitality of the Italians, Spaniards and Czechs, the fast-paced and humorous way of the Maltese and on the other hand parallels to German and Austrians, who come from further south than me.

I  can also highly recommend the stay abroad as part of the double degree, as the planning effort is very low due to the structure it gives, at least as far as the course selection is concerned. Even if the idea of doing a semester abroad in the first or second semester of your studies seems either strange or far away, plan it in time and register your interest. It is worth it!