Lazy bastards...

If, for some reason, somebody's actually following our blog - sorry guys! we've been totally and utterly lazy with it lately... so a little up-date is in place!

We spent a lovely, but black, Christmas back home in Finland - the time literally flew by! Trying to see as many friends as possible and manage to relax and reload for the next semester... It was a fun couple of weeks, but it's good to be back in Dundee :)

Coming back to Dundee for New Year's Eve we weren't alone. A few friends decided to join the Dundonian New Year's - ate some good food, drank something typically Finnish and just had a jolly time! ;)

On Jan. 3rd we all left with the night bus to London, where we explored the city and met the nicest bar tender ever! Slept at a hostel for the night - and that was interesting... don't think we'll be going back to that hostel anytime soon... ;)
The next day we took the bus to Cardiff! Typical Brittish weather followed us, but still we had a great time! Cardiff seemed like a really nice city, in the summer it's probably packed with people, at least Cardiff Bay... Guess we have to return there later on ;)
Anyway, all in all, the trip was a big success - we managed to get what we came for, a load of fun!

So now the second semester has started, and for us it means four boring subjects... How does Managerial Economics, Planning & Managing Supply Chains and Tourism Project Appraisal sound to you? ...but somehow we've managed so far, and keeping our thumbs up and fingers crossed that we'll pass 'em all :)

Dublin has been explored! At least by one of us. Annina went to see some crazy Irish friends in the end of January and had sooo much fun! A great city with great people, and a beautiful countryside... Newgrange was amazing and Powerscourt Gardens Waterfall even more so, A. absolutely loved it in Ireland, and will be back... A BIG thanx to Jenny & Keith, Emer, Steveo and Eoghan - wouldn't have been the same without u guys!!

Oh yeh, we've moved! No more untidy Scottish girls - it's just me and Jess ( & Jaakko) now, at least for a couple of weeks more... the 23rd a French girl is supposed to move in...
We're still in the Hub, but instead of the ground floor, we're now on the penthouse floor :) Leather couches and all ;) Quite a luxury for students eh? We're not planning on moving out anytime soon, so feel free to visit us ;)

Progressing!

This really deserves a post of its own:

"We got the heater working!!!!!" Whooptidoo! Go team haha!

Roadtripping!

Sooo, we actually managed to jump on the right bus back to Dundee (thanx to Jess' previous experience) and arrived safe and sound back home, very tired though. Two suddenly became three. Hmm...

Thursday and Friday were brainless days, did exactely what we wanted, when we wanted, didn't worry about anything except getting out of bed (haha) in time to pick up our precious...
...on Saturday we hired a car (Vauxhall Astra, "blue", yeah right. In their eyes at least, seems Scots aren't that bright regarding colours either... ), seated Jess in front of the wheel and started what would turn out to be the best road trip ever! The first leg of the race wasn't that challenging - we made it all the way to the Tesco, about 500m from Arnold Clark's :) Bought something salty and sweet for our exciting adventure - and then we were off. "Up-up-and-awaaaay!" (naaah, back to earth people, we went by car, du-uh.)

First real pit-stop was at Dunnottar Castle in Stonehaven. Gorgeous settings, very picturesque, and supeeeerb weathaaaa (yupp, we've become Sco'ish - or at least Jess seems to think so...) - simply breath-taking!
Continued through Stonehaven, had a cup o' coffee in a cute little place, and headed North. Driving through Aberdeen was pretty interesting, but we found our way out of there and continued up through Peterhead (worth mentioning due to its funny name haha.). Jaakko dozed off for a moment, and suddenly we were off the map! ...but still on the road. That little "back road" was really worth seeing and was probably a short cut...hmm...aaaanyway, arrived in Fraserburgh. Heaaa we had a gourmet dinner at Wimpy's - an experience in itself, Ronan Keating will never be the same again!

Drove through some very creepy sceneries, thank God it was dark...and thank God Jaakko was driving by now, as Jess' imagination got carried away..."what's down there..?" Would be fun to drive that road again in broad daylight though, we were going up-up-up and down-down-down on serpentine roads, and it felt as if we were surrounded by nothing. At this time we started to think about where to stay that night - which turned out to be quite an adventure.

We found our next dare during the darkness. You don't wanna know... completely and utterly creepy.

Aberlour was our host for the night. A small B&B in a even smaller town (haha - doesn't make much sense does it, but hey, you know us). Got cozy in a local pub, tried out some whiskeys (believe it or not, good whiskeys) and really enjoyed a relaxed, well-deserved evening.
Scottish breakfast is by the way Jess' new favourite! not. Bacon (ish) and sausages (ish) together with runny eggs actually drove Jess to sacrifice herself and try cereals with milk. Blääh. Got some really good tips from the "sweet, very sneaky" owner of the B&B and had a spectacular way back home through the Grampian Mountains. The colours were amazing, and the drive intoxicating - unbelievable! Probably the best stops of the road trip was during this leg of the race...Cairn o' Mount, Cock Bridge (we have pics ;) ), Ballater...
Sooner than we knew, we were back (we were actually on time) in Dundee.

As mentioned, this was probably the best road trip ever! We all got something out of it; Jess' got to drive on the wrong side of the road (she was really in her element...), Annina got to take pics, lots and lots of 'em, and Jaakko - well, he was probably the luckiest one, he got to do both! The adventure came to an end, and everything went great. Go team!

Sumimasen, it's been a while, many whiles...

Oh wow... almost embarassed to write here now, after a whole month! Bad of us, we know, but life doesn't always turn out the way we want it, right? :)

Hmm... what's really happened here though? First thing that comes to mind is the party weekend ;) On Friday 26th of October Alfonso and Renata threw a awesome party on two floors...and not only in the apartments, most of the party took place in the staircase :P Really crowded, lots of people - really weird people as well ;) but we had a blast! Met some new German friends - wow, there's actually other nationalities here as well, not only Frenchies ;)

The following day, after having enjoyed our almost daily, very needed "coffee moment", it was time for party no. 2. This took place in Victoria Chambers (not chambers chambers, but a stuent dorm haha.), where Laura (FIN) celebrated her Bday... We were really surprised by the amount of people living together in one apartment (about 16 peeps, 2 kitchens and ONLY 4-5 bathrooms...guess we're quite lucky here after all) - and even more people on this occation... Again lots of new and old faces (haha, not old old, but old u'know haha.)! After some wine and some Spanish Sangría, us silly girlz came up with wall-squeezing ("it's not only a hobby, it's a profession") - seems we're not the only crazy ones here, Patrick (oh sorry, Josh) was eager to join us :) A very fun night indeed! Ramon's phrase is continuously haunting us ;)

...after a crazy weekend in Dundee, followed a even crazier day in London! Left on Tuesday with the night bus, arriving in London the next morning... Just picture this: Jess & Ninnu let lose in the metropolitan London accompanied by our dear cameras and no map :P Don't worry, it all went perfectly fine. Well equipped with all the necessities, we knew just how to act = don't smile at strangers, preferably look a bit crazy, always have your back against the wall, carry pepper spray, handcuffs and a bat, know all the exits...and if someone appears strange, just walk in the other direction (Thank Jess' dad, we now know this by heart :P) - So guess who drew the attention in London ;)

"Sushi, onegaishimasu" - while waiting for Jaakko's bus to arrive (which was the actual reason us crazy Finns went to London), we had a really fun time watching all the different sushi dishes go round and round and round, screaming at us to "pick me, pick me!" - really yummy sushi and yummy prices as well - cost for the hour we sat there: 15000 pounds - at least that's what they tried to get us to pay... but you can't fool us that easily :) ...spotted our first celeb too, so all in all it was a great experience!

Another week has gone by...

Here we are, it's Oktober 15th, and it's all ready been 1,5 months...! Seen a lot and done a lot, but there's so much more waiting to be explored! :) We're all ready planning ahead, all the way into January and an up-coming road trip...

The last week has gone sooo fast! Don't really know what we've been up to, but the time's just flown by...! Monday was a pretty chill-day, Tuesday was Perth-day - in the rain! A really beautiful town just 30 mins from Dundee by bus - it's also situated on the banks of River Tay, which gives it a pretty setting. It's not a real big town with about 43,000 inhabitants, but it's quite known up here for the Scone Palace, where the Scone Stone used to stand. Many kings were crowned here in the past - nowadays that's taken care of in Edinburgh. A very pretty former city, def. worth visiting - all though I think it might be even better in the spring/summer :)
In the evening on Tuesday Nathan invited us up to his place to meet some friends of his that were visiting. Fun bunch! :) Hope their Scottish road trip is going well ;)
Wednesday and Thursday, and parts of Friday, we pretty much spent in Uni on different lectures and tutorials - not really the most fun way to spend our days, but unfortunately a must even here in Scotland ;)

We've decided that Saturdays are going to be our "outing" day of the week. Some weeks ago it was St. Andrew's, last week Aberdeen... this week we went for a walk to Broughty Ferry, which is a cute little village about 5 miles East of Dundee. Didn't have any map to go by, so we just walked in the direction we thought it was, and fortunately after about 1,5hrs found our way all the way to Broughty Castle! Picturesque settings, and probably a tourist trap in the spring/summer, even now there were some other tourists than us ;) Really a lovely place, but reallt windy!! Anyway, we got a good walk at least :P
Sunday was pretty much about resting and studying for the upcoming weeks lectures...blaah.

Now another week has begun; fortunately for us we have no lectures on Mondays, so it's kinda a soft landing for us :) Time to start planning the rest of the week, and of course the Saturday outing ;) ...perhaps Glasgow?

Weekend up-date

Another weekend filled with stuff to do and places to see!

Friday:
Our longest day at Uni with 4 whole lectures/tutorials...! Tutorial in Managing Service Ops. was pretty interesting once more - the lecturer really has the gift for teaching. Discussed how important it is to know what customers want and deliver it - and Annina had to be one of the chair(wo)men... blaaah! But it went pretty good :) Then after Barry's boring marketing lectures it was time for food and then Friends maraton in our apartment - skööönt :)

Saturday:
After a pretty early wake-up, jumped on the Megabus to Aberdeen for a days adventure! Seemed to be a really great city, and as it's Scotland's third biggest city, it was surprisingly bigger than Dundee ;) lots of shopping malls and stores, and old buildings such as Castlegate, which dates back to the 13th century. Marischal [marshall] College was pretty amazing as a building - it's supposed to be the World's second largest granite building, which pretty much says it all :)
Surprise surprise even found a couple of Starbuck's over there, so didn't walk around thirsty ;) The Union Terrace Gardens was though a bit of a disappointment...had expected more like Princess Street Gardens in Edinburgh, but it didn't even come close!

Sunday:
Slept in, and then went with Flora (NED) and Nathan (FRA) to Dundee Law, which is the highest point in Dundee. Such great views over the city from there, totally loved it! Absolutely a must-see when in Dundee ;) It was a prefect day weatherwise, the sun was shining and it was real warm, almost like in spring time...(probably one of the best autumn days so far) And no problem if we got hungry on the way up (the roads up the hillside are quite steep, workout for a day ;)), along the streets at the top we found lots of wild blackberries...! Yumm :P
Back down in the city centre afterwards we tried the typical Dundonian way and sat down in the "park" outside St. Mary's Cathedral, but figured we're not supposed to become that Dundonian and left pretty quickly...:) ...mostly because the sun had pretty much set and it was becoming chilly!

Monday will probably be a chill-day, but on Tuesday it's time for adventure nr. ? - Perth! Unfortunately not Perth in Aussieland, but the city of Perth about 30 mins from Dundee to the West :) Once the capital of Scotland, it's supposed to be a neat town with lots of interesting shops, cafés and parks...Can't wait! :)

In the footsteps of Prince William...

On Friday night we came up with this idea that we wanted to go somewhere on Saturday to see something else than Dundee...the problem was we didn't have any bus tickets. To get cheaper bus tickets in Scotland/UK, we have to buy them online at least 48 hrs before the take-off - so we better know in time what our plans are... difficult, we know ;)

All right, around 11 am on Saturday we set off towards Seagate bus station, and saw on the billboard that the first bus went to St. Andrew's - sounded fun, so we jumped on :)
We didn't have a clue on how long it was going to take to get there - if you check it up on the map it doesn't seem too far away, but still, it's no walking distance... For the first time we actually crossed the Tay Bridge and saw Dundee as a city from further away - it's actually not that small in the end, only the centre is.

The bus drove through smallsmall towns and villages, one smaller than the other. Through fields of hay and cows (with the countryside smell!) stopping along the way to pick up oldish people. About half an hour later we arrived in St. Andrew's - immediately we liked the town! As it was Saturday, the town was filled with people - students and senior citizens mostly - which was a bit surprising, it's supposed to be a small town/village... Anyway, we checked out the major sights - St. Andrew's Castle, the "harbor", St. Andrew's Cathedral, the Haunted Tower, St. Rule's Tower, The Church of St. Mary etc etc. We tried to spot Prince William, but unfortunately without any success (probably 'cause he's all ready graduated :D) - the university we saw though...everything seems to belong to the oldest University of Scotland...

We had a great time strolling around the city without any concern of what time it was. But we still have to get back there sometime, 'cause we didn't get to see the famous golf course!! Saving it for Jess' brother I s'pose ;)
Back in Dundee we decided to have a chill-evening - yupp, on a Saturday evening we stayed in!! What's happened to us?? :) Today is a new day though, who knows where we'll end up ;)

(you can see pics from St. Andrew's on our facebook-sites ;))

Discovering Edinburgh!

Our first Edinburgh trip is now behind us - first of many we're sure, 'cause there seems to be loads to see in the capital of Scotland! Our friend Jessi, first of many visitors, arrived in Edinburgh Turnhouse just after 10 a.m. on Sunday the 23rd and we were of course there to meet her :)

Left Dundee in the rain at 8 a.m. and arrived after about 1h45min later at the St. Andrew's Sq Bus Stn. Edinburgh bathed in sun when we arrived, and the town was packed with people - Rugby Fans is more like it, don't know if they can be called people ;) hihi! Edinburgh hosted the Rugby World Championships that weekend, and there were lots of nationalities all around - mostly Kiwis and Scots though... Scotland - New Zealand was Sunday's game :) Princes street, which in a way could be called the main street/shopping street in Eburgh, was full of Scots dressed in kilts and wearing wigs in lively colours, and bagpipe music was played in all corners! (mind you, bagpipe music can become really annoying in the long run...! something everybody should experience ;))

Before Jessi arrived we had enough time to start with a cup of Starbuck's latte and a walk in the Princes Street Gardens, which was really green and beautiful, and the view of Edinburgh Castle added so much to the experience. After browsing some stores on Princes Street we met up with Jessi - great to see her, even though it's been only about a month since we last saw her... ;) Together with Jessi and her big rugsack we then made our way towards Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile that runs down from the castle - "Don't miss the street life on the Royal Mile" A:s Scottish guide book says, and we definitely didn't! What an experience with the mixture of rugby fans and tourists! Still, we just saw a small part of the Royal Mile, so def. have to get back there! ...especially as we found a Starbuck's up there :P

After being enough touristy for a day, we ended up at an Italian restaurant called Bella Italia, which we found thanx to the Freshers' Fayre @ UAD :) The garlic bread was amazing, so if you ever go there, you just have to try it! Nothing to complain about the pizzas either ;)

The Megabus back to Dundee left St. Andrew's Sq 3.40 p.m., and Jessi saw the first of Dundee at about 6 p.m. Later on Sunday we had some people over; a bunch of French peeps and some Polish - really a fun night! ...and Salmari was really popular, thanx Jessi for that ;) Seems the black look of it didn't at least scare people off, quite the opposite :)

Coming home...for Xmas :)

Haha, we can't stop laughing!! :D We did it again...! We just proved that we shouldn't be let on our own, especially in a foreign country ;)

Riiight. We booked our flights home for Xmas, that's the good news. The return part is a bit fuzzy, but we have the tickets for that as well... ;) We fly together to Helsinki on Dec. 15th, but Annina will return to Dundee just in time for New Year's (Yiiihaaa!) on Dec. 30th, while Jess returns a bit earlier, on Dec. 27th, with Jaakko, a friend of ours. The interesting part is that Jess and Jaakko will take seperate flights (haha!), leaving the same-ish time from Helsinki, arriving in Edinburgh about the same time. Jess will fly via Frankfurt, Jaakko thru Manchester (been there done that, not fun. haha - but Jaakko, u'll be fine ;))... This wasn't how we planned it, but hey, look on the bright side, Jess & Jaakko will still arrive on the same day, to the same airport ;)

Btw, guess how we payed for the flights (all three of 'em)? Jupp, with Jess' VISA (as Annina has all ready reached her limit on her Mastercard...haha) Mums & Dads, do not worry - all details later ;) ...haha, we've become real Dumbdonians :D

Oh lazy day...

Today we decided to just relax and take it easy, no alarm clocks going off in the morning and no special schedules to follow... With a late start to the day, we headed down town and beyond. So far we've only walked about the city centre and the campus - today we went further :) We walked past the Seagate Bus Stn (very fancy...not.) and towards the Tay Bridge, but ended up in a "shopping centre", some really huge stores, which included another Starbuck's - whoooa, that was a nice surprise! The one in the Overgate shopping centre has become like a second home for us (how can coffee taste so good??), the staff nearly recognize us all ready :) so now we found a new one, with more staff to harass ;)

In between the window shopping, we came across the JJB Fitness Centre, and we totally fell in love! So from now on, if you're looking for us and we're nowhere to be seen on campus or at the Hub, check JJB! ...or Starbuck's ;) A huge gym, swimming pool, two jacuzzis, a steam bath and all the classes you can imagine, for a student friendly price! Too good to be true...?

--- EDIT 17.04
...so much for our relaxed and take it easy-day - the fire alarm just went off in our rooms... Noup, it wasn't us, probably somebody burning their toast, again. Aaargh, that annoying sound!
Let's hope the rest of the night goes smoothly...