Category Archives: Learning Diaries

Easter Holiday

Lots of beautiful stones!

At the end of the week we were able to borrow Per wife’s car. Emma and I drove up north to Skagen which  is the northernmost point of Denmark. Skagen is the town where two seas meet and endless beaches are beautiful with white sand and beautiful stones. On the beach you can also see the German wartime bunkers – not so beautiful in my opinion.

We also visited the Skagen Museum which is charming building with its magnificent paintings. The town’s galleries exhibit a wide range of genres and art forms, such as paintings, sculptures, glass art and jewellery.  Of course, we also visited the flower shops and specialty stores in the city.

On Friday we went to see the church of St.Laurentii. It was covered by sand and eventually had to be abandoned, today only tower remains visible.

On the way back we drove along the beautiful east coast down to Hals and the rest of the way along the motorway.

On Saturday, it was raining all day. I rested and kept in touch with family and friends in Finland.

On Sunday was a beautiful day and time to visit Moesgaard Museum, which is located near the dorm. The exhibition building designed by Henning Larsen Architects A/S and the practice of landscape architect Kirstine Jensen. The unique building is set on the landscape and inside is very modern. Upper level has a view to the sea.

I spent the whole day in museum and also enjoyed the museum café’s brunch buffet. It was a wonderful day!


On Monday, I went to Aarhus. I just wandered along the streets because almost all the places were closed because of the Easter.
I have spent Easter in differently this year and enjoyed of it.

The first week full of experiences

It’s a wonderful spring here in Denmark already! Dorm courtyard is beautiful, fruit trees in bloom, grass is green and tulips and daffodils start blooming soon. Looks similar to Finland at the end of May.

Tuesday was my first day Violen. Owner Per Kaspersen and his staff seem to be nice and I enjoy being there for sure. Violen a pretty big flower shop in the center of Odder. The building is old and it has served at one time as a hotel. The shop is built space, which has previously worked as a horse stable. It is really nicely renovated and decorated.

Violen has a rich selection of flowers, gifts, goodies, coffee, tea and different brands of liquor. In Denmark, flower shops commonly sold products other than flowers.
Upstairs is a large hall space, which is sometimes served as the hotel’s dance hall. It is rented for the artists and craftsmen for the holding of exhibitions.

Some photos of willow artist’s works in the exhibition.
On Tuesday, we worked all day with fresh cut flowers and I visited a Nickies red flower car with Per.  Wednesday was a busy day and everyone had a lot of work. In shop visited lot of customers and the flowers were ordered through the internet. We did a lot of bouquets and arrangements for Easter.

Birthday bouquet for 75 years old lady made by me.

My last week in Ibiza

Finally.. Im home, i have never felt this kind of pleasure of being home, seeing my own room, hugging my own bed and seeing my whole family and friends. Coffee here tastes amazing and the weather is cold and i absolutely love it.

My last week at work went really well, i also did my skills demonstration which also went really well.

Even though i am happy that i am home, its also really sad that i had to leave the island. I am really going to miss everyone back there, i had a really great time with everyone and i even made a few promises to go back there for vacation.

Thank you, Ibiza

 

Last week in Denmark

This was my last week in Denmark. I had such a good time and I think that working abroad is good experience and you learn a lot new things. On my last days I got to do a big bouquets with branches and easter planting and decorating.

At the end of week I spent two days at Skagen with other finnish trainee Ulla. We walked by the beach to grenen which is long sandbar north of Skagen and where two seas collide. We also went to skagen museum and to see sand-covered church.  

Only tower is left from church. Rest is covered in moving sand

Now I’m back in Finland and I think I got so much from this experience and I hope that I will get these kind of opportunities also in future. I recomend working abroad because it’s good way to get knowledge and different view of things.

– Emma

Quick visit to Valletta

Howdy from sunny Malta!

Today we visited Valletta. Using the public transportation has turned out to be pretty easy. On every bus stop there are timetables so it’s easy to make sure you’re in the right place. Pretty much every bus from Kullegg (our ”own” bus stop) goes to Valletta. Kullegg is one of the main stops in every route.

Visiting Valletta was great. The architecture of the buildings is beautiful and very decorative. I made a quick video to combine the best pictures of Valletta that we took.

That’s all for today. Wish you all a nice Saturday!

♥: Remu

First days at Malta!

Hi everyone!

We saw the Alps from the plain!

Its Susanna writing here. So we arrived to Malta at Monday and our journey to here went surprisingly well and we both got our luggage. I have visited Malt once before so the shock at first when we arrived to our accommodation was still pretty big. The loft wasn’t quit what we expected and at first we felt like now one here wanted to do nothing about it, but now things has started to clear up.

 

We all so got an email at Tuesday from our mentor from our workplace that unlike we thought we will stars working at next week not this week. So we have tried to use this free week as effective as we can.

First two days we just walked around and checked out where are the nearest shops, bus stops and learned how to use local public transporting. We all so went to Sliema were I was two years ago as language trip whit EF and saw some more this beautiful island.

Sliema promenade and beach cliffs
Capital city Vallletta pictured from Sliema
Sliema beach cliffs

 

 

 

 

 

San Blas Beach in Gozo

Third day we decided to go to Gozo which is one of the three populated island of Malta (Malta is the main island of these). At Gozo we went to San Blas beach which was really beautiful place. After that we have get to now our neighborhood better and because now is an Easter week and today is good Friday and Malta is Catholic country there is only couple shops and places open.

So  I think there was almost everything for this week so we keep spending our free days and see you next week!

Susanna

Artistic pic from Sliema beach cilff 😀

 

Week 9 in Ibiza, last day

Today is my last day in Ibiza and tomorrow morning we have flight. This week went working normally.  I made my skills demonstration at tuesday and it went good. Today i will back my stuffs, and take last minute tan.

Photos from Platja den bossa.

 

Photos from Platja de Ses Selines beach.

Finally arriving to Malta

Hello everyone! It’s Remu writing here from sunny Malta. It’s 18°C.

Our flight from Helsinki – Vantaa airport left at 6am. We had to change the plane in München to get to Malta. München’s airport was really great, large windows brought the warm sun inside. We were really tired when we got to München, so we mostly just lied on the chairs and browsed Facebook with the free Wi-Fi. Finally our flight took off and two hours later we arrived to our destination: Malta.

It was such a beautiful sight to look out of the window in the airplane and see all the clouds and the sunrise. It’s moments like these that are hard to forget.

At the airport we waited for our luggage to arrive for a half an hour. Then we walked into the lobby to search for our very own taxi driver. He turned out to be a real gem: he showed us the nearest grocery stores on our way here and helped us unlock the front door to our accommodation. The locks around here are very fragile, so you have to be careful when opening them. Also on our way here I was amazed by the traffic: everyone drives on the left and the driver sits on the ”wrong” side of the car, compared to Finland of course. That’s just something we have to get used to!

Soon after getting settling down in our apartment we met our flatmates, they’re very nice. After that we hurried to buy some groceries because we hadn’t eaten in a very long time (if you don’t count the strange things they tried to feed us on the airplane).

This is what they gave us on the München – Malta flight. It was alright but didn’t fill all the hunger in our tummies.
Malta’s street view

 

Now we’re just chilling together in our flat. The clock here is one hour less than in Finland.  Not so bad to get used to 🙂

 

Sincerely,

Remu & Kirppu

Weeks 6, 7 and 8 here in Ibiza

Okay, so our last week is starting tomorrow and these last three weeks in here have been busiest so far. Now that the season is changing and all the tourists start roaming the streets in here, all the shops that have been closed for the winter are again opening their doors for the public, and as an electrician it has been busy as hell.

The work i´ve done this past week has been has been fun and at the same time a bit stressing  because of all the rush, im so tired after running from place to place and the heat is also quite overwhelming. Luckily theres always the weekends when you get to relax a little bit

We have been in many places and the local fire department was one of them, we had to install a  lot of LED-string inside the fire-equipment doors, it took nearly a week to install the LED´s to nearly all of the firetrucks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also have had quite a few aircondition installing jobs, which are always a huge pain in the ass because you have to work on the roof and theres always so hot.  And the consumption of water has been absolutely enormous, you HAVE to drink like 3 liters of water during working hours or things are gonna go south really quickly, especially if the work you´re doing is something that requires a lot of physical strenght.

I still cant stop admiring the views everyday at work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have visited a lot of places during our free time and on weekends, the tourism students took us on a bus trip through the island and showed us some great little towns and we had a really nice time. This is a scenery from one of the towns (i dont remember which one)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also they took us to visit a small church in one of the villages. This one is called Sant Ines (all of the churches are named after a saint).

 

 

 

Springtime in Denmark

Work has been going great this week and I feel like I’ve learned a lot. I’ve seen and heard about different customs of danish floristry culture, got some more challenging works to do and I feel like I’ve also  gotten to be a little faster at my work (because sometimes I can be a bit slow). My weakness in bouquets has been tall and big bouquets, but this week I got some training for that. My boss told me that in Denmark many customer like tall bouquets and with his instructions I made few tall bouquets. I think th results were quite good and I also got good tips how to make showy bouquets

People in Denmark take also these kind of decorations to graves

I went to Aarhus to shop and eat on Saturday because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Today on Sunday the weather has been great so


I went for a walk to a walking routes in forest nearby my place. There are no leaves yet in trees but the ground is full with a little white and yellow flowers, almost like a carpet. I love Denmarks nature, the light forests and vast fields that go on and on. It’s nice change to Finlands nature which is also beautiful in different kind of way.