So, it was an early May morning, when we took a mini-bus for a time travel to our neighbors in Carelia. The trip to the Finnish border was quiet, yet the best part was still to come! But first, the Russian customs! Värtsilä is a small post, which usually serves the locals, so already my Italian and Sini's Swedish passport caused some panic .. could we pass through? The lady officer seemed more nervous than we were. After have called some colleague and clarified the issue, she returned our passports, apologizing and smiling. A completely different and more friendly attitude from the most trafficked Välimaa border: it was a good start!
Immediately when we entered the border roads become more and more challenging ... bumps and hole everywhere. But our driver was a indeed a professional on such forest roads, driving 130km/h and then suddenly breaks, apparently for no reason, pass over a certain bump and then accelerate at the same haste as before! For all of us, if not the first time in Russia, it was the first time in the "provincial" Russia, and so a continuous discover! The border area was anyway a jump 50 or 100 years in the past: old factories and wooden houses in endless forests and marshes ... we had some discussion on how beautiful the nature was, the possible reasons why the Russians do not build their "dachas" here instead of buying them beyond the border and how different could have been Finland and Finnish identity if Carelia remained part of the country.
Only reaching the road S.Petersburg-Murmansk we finally headed more comfortably towards Petrozavodsk, arriving at the dormitory when the sun was already set, after over 12h travel. The area wasn't of the most appealing at first sight: old wooden houses with stray dogs, but we got used to it very quickly and came to like it! The dormitory was nice and well furnished and from there we had 40min walking to the university, faculty of Social Science, every morning, that wasn't a problem, thanks to the coming sunny weather.
The first week of courses were more international and cooperative than expected! In cooperation with a Finnish university network it was organized the "Karelian International Summer School" which focused on the trans-regional cooperation in North Europe and North-western Russia, with some hint on the Arctic areas. We had a lot of other international students from Iceland, Norway, Estonia and the UK, and the days were divided into morning lectures and workshops in the afternoons. Tough schedule once again, but extremely inspiring!
We had also time to experience some "city-life": Finnish-Russian play in the national theater, and folk rock evening in "Porshen'" with the group Sattuma, awesome white nights :) We got to know the city at its best!
beautiful!
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