Finnland: Dezember 2009

Freitag, 25. Dezember 2009

Music

I played the viola in 2 orchestras and 1 string quartet and listened to some concerts. In this respect my life does not differ significantly from Germany ;-)

VIVO: In October I heard that the Finnish national youth orchestra needed still violas, got the notes only 3 days in advance and then there were 3 days of rehearsals and one big concert with the flying dutchman (fliegender Holländer/ lentävä hollantilainen), a Tschaikowsky symphony and songs by Mahler, thus a quite demanding program with few practices. The time was also too short to get to know the people well.

YLIOPISKUNNAN SOITTAJAT: The academic orchestra means more to me than the weekly rehearsals. Also nice free-time activities belong to it and it is my best opportunity to speak Finnish and get to know the Finnish life. The people are very nice and I felt welcome in the "altto" (viola) section. We played "Mathis der Maler" by Hindemith, ouverture and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde (Wagner) and a song by the Finnish composer Merikanto.

In contrast to the AOV (academic orchestra in Göttingen) we often just played through the pieces during the weakly rehearsals, but the rehearsal weekend was much more efficient. Then we also had lunch together and went to a bar in the evening.

The first concert took place in the big festive hall of the university, the second in a church in Tampere, so we made a day trip to another city. Unfortunately, both concerts were a bit unclean in the intonation, but all in all ok (AOV is better, though, I would say). However, a dinner or the bus trip after the concerts were both nice.

The orchestra is elaborately organized with lots of tasks for the members so that it works well. During the "syyskokous" (autumn assembly) all the functions were elected. The whole long meeting was of course in Finnish and I could not understand everything. We were supposed to write 2 names on a paper. There was only 1 paper with 1 name, I had written it, and everybody was laughing. Later somebody suggested me for "huivitoimikunta" and "kalustonhoitaja". I had no clue what that means and I did not even understand the explanation. Much later I found out that I am supposed to help with others to construct and prepare the concerts and tidy up afterwards. The other task is to prepare food on special orchestra events (highlight: christmas dinner).
It is nice to be integrated with some little task, but not as much to do as in the FSR in Göttingen!

STRING QUARTETT: Together with three others from YS we played as a string quartet "light music" while elegant people were eating from a buffet. We did not get any food :-( I had already missed playing some chamber music. But this one gig was not comparable to my string quartet in Hannover. I would like to find a chamber music ensemble in the spring term.

LISTENING: Living in the capital offers good opportunities to listen to good concerts. Outstanding was the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra with Schubert and Brahms in the tempeliaukiokirkko (church in the rocks). I was extremely lucky to get the very last ticket in the outsold concert :-) Once I also listened to my cousin Emil's concert in the music academy.

University

The fall term is already over in Finland because we started in September. I attended really interesting courses:

Introduction to Quantum Field Theory: basics for particle physics. The lecture was extremely good because Anca explained every detail.
Theoretical Particle Physics: this lecture does not exist in Göttingen so I am really happy that I could hear it in Helsinki. Masud did not show every step but gave a lot of motivation for the principles.
FYMM 3: advanced mathematical methods in physics. Very useful course where the applications of mathematical concepts were more important than their proofs, thus optimized for physics students.
Cosmology 1: I listened just for fun, but didn't follow this lecture seriously.
Suomi Jatkokurssi 2: Finnish continuation course where we didn't only study grammar like conditional passive and sentence equivalent participle and infinitive constructions, but also practiced speaking and learned a lot about Finland.

All courses included weekly homework as in Germany, but here the homework points contribute to 20-25% to the final grade. Some courses had midterm exams. The correction of the homework was not as strict as in Germany and another difference is that always the teaching assistant/ "Hiwi" (PhD student) presents the solution.

Most of the time the courses had a remarkably good didactical structure. I had been wondering if it becomes apparent also at university that Finland won the PISA test, but it seems indeed to be a country of education. Only in the beginning of the semester the courses started a bit slowly.

After 7 weeks there was a so called "period break", but I had 2 lectures and an exam and afterwards some free days. The second period also lasted 7 weeks. I appreciated this period break because in Göttingen I usually felt quite exhausted in the middle of the semester. While in Göttingen the exams were after Christmas, now all of them before.

disadvantage: 4 big exams within 9 days don't leave enough time to study everything thoroughly and prevent a bit the pre-Christmas atmosphere.
advantage: now 4 fully free weeks around Christmas are a very welcome time to relax and to travel :-)

Although a "Sie" exists in the Finnish language, it is hardly ever used (only very respectfully for elderly people). So it was rather strange in the beginning to address also profs by their first name and "du". A typical beginning of an email is then just "Hei," without any name.

Big update

So, now it's really time for the next big update. I won't list all events chronologically, but I will summarize the topics university, music, travelling, about Finland, pre-Christmas period, international life, Finnish, Germany.