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STUDY TRIPLots of adventures in 7 days:By Deniss KiselovsThere are four brave students amongus who dared to join the Swedish languageexchange program in Finland,two of whom knew virtually no Swedish,where as the other two (who spokewell) just wanted to see Finland. Thesefour characters pledged to stay anonymous,so, for convenience only, let’s justcall them Kristina, Jevgenijs, Deniss andVytautas.The trip was organized so that theleavers would miss as less of school aspossible, so they ended up missing onlyone of the major models in Macro, allthe HRM lectures, Peak Time, a greatparty and at least one of the students’birthdays. This, of course, they did notknow until they came back from the landof Finnish chocolate, bread andMcDonalds-everywhere.For the male part of the group, thejourney began in Latvia. They met atseven o’clock in the morning in the station,loaded with a huge traveling bagper capita and passports, two of whichhad a green visa saying that the alienswere allowed to enter Finland. Vytautaswas brave enough not to buy the ticketsfor the bus at all, hoping that hewould be able to get some on it. In casethere were no tickets, his back up planconsisted of… Na-a-gh, he did not havea back up plan; he must have prayedhard the night before.The five hour bus trip was not fun –the team was either reading Macro orHRM. By the first stop, Deniss almostfell out of the bus – Vytautas must havetried to kill him by choosing the seatsin the back of the bus: to Deniss, the kilometercounter seemed like measuringhis sickness level rather than the distance.It was not that bad though, since(luckily) Deniss had chosen not to havebreakfast in the morning.The bus dropped the crew off at theferry terminal. Only here did the teamrealize that there is more than one ferryterminal in Tallinn and until they sawKristina (with her girl friend) floatinginto the terminal gates, none was surethey arrived at the right site. As theyall waited for the fare, Deniss’ lack ofbreakfast persuaded everyone to seeksome food in the adjacent Hesburger.The Insider #3 (64), May 2004; Page 6A Break Just in TimeThere they saw the power of hunger:Deniss must have added some 10% toEstonia’s GDP level.It took the fellowship of SSER threehours to get to Helsinki by the ferry.During the journey Kristina was completelyenchanted by the sound of thecasino’s gaming machines. A click here,a click there – and stuff’s spinning everywhere!She won some EUR 8 the firstround and happily returned to her seatto the group. Five minutes later she decidedthat her luck surplus has yet notbeen depleted, so she took one euro outof the pile and saying: “Just gonna tryone more time!” left the guys to countthe number of waves on the water. Shewas back in 30 seconds, disappointedat the machine. Here, the inevitable“gambling multiplier’s” chain effecttook place…Jevgenijs, who wanted to cheer herup, took out some money and they bothleft to play. Deniss was too lazy to careand Vytautas was joyfully playingsome childish racing game on one of hisphones. Two minutes later Jevgenijspuffed back into his seat, mumblingsomething like: “Never again!”, whileKristina gracefully sat back into herchair and concentrated on the pile ofcoins left, philosophizing on the topicof gambling:“You know,” she said, “that’s the lasttime I will play this game. I mean, it isso unethical – taking money away fromhard working people. What is worse, itsucks people in worse than alcoholand…”“Alcohol?” Deniss woke up from hisafter-late-breakfast sleep. “Where is alcohol?”“Go back to sleep, malish,” hushedJevgenijs at him, still disappointed. “Itseems that these machines are programmedto let you win the first fewrounds and only then strip you clear ofthe rest of your money.”“That’s most probably what happens,”said Kristina, still gazing downon the few coins shining on the table.“And that is why I will not go and playanymore…”Next thing you know, she grabbed onemore coin and left playing. Since then,she returned all the time misplaced anduncomfortable, still reminding themales explicitly of her disgust to thegame, but after five minutes she wasback at it again. The rest of the groupalso gambled, but not in the casino; theydid it right there, at the table. Theygambled on how much time will elapsebetween Kristina coming back to thetable and her next rendez-vous with thecoin consuming machine.“She will be a one expensive wife tosomeone someday,” Deniss joked, whilstthe rest of the males laughed hystericallyat Kristina’s inability to stopthrowing her money away.And so they came to Helsinki. Thetroops were met by the coordinator ofthe project – a lovely lady who spokeboth Swedish and English and whokindly helped the travelers to the hostel.The hostel, despite its name, lookedmore like a three star Latvian hotel andthe hospitality of the receptionist couldonly be put up against the friendlinessof a five star hotel manager to a VIP. Inshort, the wonderers were impressed.Room key-cards were given to everymember of the team. For the first tenminutes no one could work out wholived where, especially with Kristinatrying to take charge of the distributionprocess. First she exclaimed that thenumbers said she had to live withJevgenijs (though she hinted she wouldrather live with Vytautas); then sheturned the card upside down and itlooked as if she had to live with Deniss,which made her quickly accept changingrooms so that she lived with bothVytautas and Jevgenijs, whilst Denissgets a room all for himself. The resolutionwas that she was assigned to twoPolish girls (who were on the same exchangeprogram) and the guys had tolive together in a separate room.As the boys unpacked their toothbrushes,many clean socks and evenmore books, they quickly exchangedideas on the evening program. Theweights of the voters were equally distributed;however, alcohol seemed togain most of the votes. Surely, the maleswould not miss a chance to try out someforeign beer! But prior to the eveningfun……the four had to attend the lecturesfor the first half of the day. Though veryvalue adding, the lectures proved per-
fect humiliators to Deniss. His Swedishseemed like a mix of English, Germanand Russian, which made him soundlike a shy boy trying to pay the girl ofhis life a compliment whilst swallowingall most all the words and stoppingto find the next appropriate adjectiveevery five seconds. He was good withnumbers though: he scored top at writingdown complex numbers; that’sprobably the only thing he could doright…After the lectures the team went onto explore the city. The team consisted,though, only of Deniss, Jevgenijs andVytautas, as Kristina was desperatelytrying to make new friends among themale part of the Polish gang. Somehow,the Baltic people did not gag for theprivilege, and the Polish fellows seemednot to bother either (although towardsthe end we did have one grand fiesta together).So, with females out of the way,the trio took its time to go sightseeing…into the nearby supermarket. Therethey got themselves some frozen chickenfor supper, a random sample of weaknative öl and retreated towards thehostel.The cooking process was a completedisaster. Although the guys were hungryenough not to notice the bits of icein the half-cooked food, the smell couldhave brought down an elephant.Kristina was eating a yogurt (one perevening), which she thought wouldhelp her retain control over unnecessarycalories. Whom was she trying tofool? She was just saving money togamble her way back to Riga. The restof the evenings theguys spent studyingSwedish,watching mov-iesonJevgenijs’laptop, goingto the sauna,m a k i n gfriends withthe Polish femalecrew, etc;Kristina was nowhereto be seen(as was the Polish malecrew); she afterwards toldstories of watching beautifulsunrises and dawns on the beachesin the company of gorgeous Polishmales. Ehhh, seems like Latvians andLithuanians are out of fashion again…DennissKristinaJevgenisSTUDY TRIPOne evening Deniss and Jevgenijs decidedto go to the cinema to once againexperience Tarantino’s genuine love forsamurai swords. The one difference thatthey found (except for the huge size ofthe cinema) was that all the seats weretaken for most of the films – film-showingseemed like a profitable business inFinlandOn Thursday (two days prior to leaving),there was a trip to Borgo, an oldcity just outside of Helsinki. Imaginethree guys running like the wind, withtheir tongues out, at 20 degrees Celsiusoutside, sweating, through the centreof the most peaceful culture in Europewhere running is like dancing butt nakedin the street. Well, that was theLatvian team with the Lithuanian incharge. They managed to misunderstandevery instruction possible andwere desperately trying to catch thewrong bus to Borgo. It did bring themto Borgo, but for a “small” fee of EUR8.40 (instead of the free ride the rest ofthe group got). The trio was met withsarcastic “you rule, guys” and gigglingbehind their backs. Well, at least theywere different…As the lectures passed by (and evenDeniss learned to more or less distinguishbetween “him” and “her”) theexam approached. Although (supposedly)not really difficult, the tensionwas there. Deniss left the examinationroom with relief – he had most probablyjust saved Hanken Universitysome few cents for not printing an extraA level certificate. The good newswas that he did feel he had learned agreat deal from the trip; and Swedishlanguage was one of the biggest fieldsthat Deniss had made a progress in (notenough time to practice it, unfortunately).The way back to Tallinn was evenmore fun, considering that this timeKristina lost all her money, Jevgenijsborrowed two euros from Deniss togamble beyond his budget constraintand Vytautas struggled hard not to losethe money he had saved for the ticketback to Riga. He did borrow somemoney from Deniss to have a quick mealat Hesburger, though. By the way, haveyou ever seen the Tom & Jerry cartoonwhere the dog swore to protect themouse? You must have! Now, in it, thereis an episode where Tom puts a juicybeefsteak on a string and lures the dogaway from protecting Jerry. The waythe dog reacted to that beefsteak– outof-controleyes, mouth full of slobber,sniffing in the scent of meat violently,crushing everything in its path – wasthe way Vytautas reacted to sensing hotwaffles with condensed milk (he sensedthem before he – or anyone else – sawthem). That was another two euros outof Deniss’ pocket…On the way back to Riga, Deniss andJevgenijs watched Crime Spree moviewhich made them laugh just loudenough not to let Vytautas sleep in theback. As they got back to Riga the triofinally realized what awaited them intwo days timeand the perspectiveof som u c hh a r dwork didnot seemappealingat all.However,w h e nthey didcome back toSSER, they sawthat what Finlandgave them (above theSwedish lessons, andabove the chance to see aVytautasfar more superior culture)was a break just long enoughto replenish energy for this lastpush towards completing the first yearat SSER. Hurray to Finland!!!The Insider #3 (64), May 2004; Page 7
Page 1 and 2: #3 (64), May 2004 Graduation Specia
Page 4 and 5: PEAK TIMEPeak Time from theOrganize
Page 8 and 9: EXCELLENCEEvita LuneBy Arnas Lauryn
Page 10 and 11: GRADUATION SPECIALTO THE CLASS OF 2
Page 12 and 13: STUDY TRIPI Want it and I Want it N
Page 14 and 15: ADThe Insider #3 (64), May 2004; Pa
Page 16 and 17: OPINIONFollow-up of the re-exam top
Page 18 and 19: ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○
Page 20: GOSSIPSGossip of the monthThey say

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