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REPORTAGE, PART 4
23rd September
We have arranged an accommodation at my girlfriend Jana, which studies by luck in Oulu for half a year, and she is willing to accommodate twelve men in her room in the dormitories together with another roommate. We arranged a meeting with her at eleven o'clock, but we forgot to account for the 80 km/h speed limit on the superhighway and for the time shift. Finland is too far east so they are shifted plus one hour compared to Sweden.
We set at 9:30 of our time, or as we find out later at 10:30, and I try to reach Jana to tell her not to rely on our
punctuality, so she doesn't freeze waiting. The pink car gets lost right in Oulu, and we are looking for a sign to YLIOPISTO, which in
Finnish means university. Finnish is a language related to Hungarian, and we as
Czechs can get totally confused with this. When you listen their radio for a while, you cannot be sure whether the news is on or they just pray. The second explanation sounded more probable, always.
We have a rendezvous at the rock ball on the university campus. We arrive 45 minutes late and we look for the Yliopistokatu (University street). We ask two workers, but they don't speak
English; however, they know rock ball. They their hands two show us. Then we ask a professor (I guess), he speaks
English, but he doesn't know rock ball. Finally he remembers and lead us through the maze of parking lots directly to it. It is a grooved granite sphere with a diameter of about three meters. Jana finds in a while us as well as the rest of the lost people. We move quickly to get to her place, which eventually turns over to a competition who gets first to the hot shower.
 All of us go to see Oulu. Oulu is a fairly nice city, but it is about six kilometers away from the university. We buy tickets for the ferry from Turku to Stockholm in Oulu. We met another two
Czech students at the university. We visit local pub, but Finns aren't very
sociably.
24th September
We visit professor Toumo Nigrén in the geophysics department of the
Oulu university. After his lecture of the aim of his department we visit
also the department of astronomy.
We gave good-bye to Jana and head for Tampere. Jirka,
member of our group, have studied and worked there for over a year. We
arrive very late and accommodate in his apartment. Jirka's Finnish
roommate arrives after us. He overlooks the situation and disappears
without words in his room. We again visit a Finnish pub, this time 3.5 km
by foot.
25th September
We spend two nights by Jirka. We visit Tampere's university,
city. We even
test local student's canteen. The word sauna comes from Finnish, so we
visited genuine Finnish sauna. We cool ourselves in a local lake right
outside the sauna.
26th September
Our next stop is Helsinki. Professor Toumo Nigrén has
arranged for us a visit of the university observatory. But we have time
before the meeting so see a bit of the city.
The observatory was build originally 170 years ago to
measure precise time. The telescopes in the main building can be rotated
around just one axis to measure transit of start through the local
meridian. Furthermore, they show us more historical telescopes in both
towers, and we learn that Argelanderin who invented them, and after whom
are named estimate level grades of variable stars, worked here with a
wooden tube telescope, which can be reached through a wooden corridor:
Today the place houses the theoretical division of the
department of physics of the Helsinki University. Their main interest is
RTG sources, and in near future they will collaborate on data analyses
from the INTEGRAL satellite. We make a
group photo with the observatory
members.
After the visit of the observatory we take a round trip
of Helsinki in a Tram. We say good-bye to Jirka (he returns to Tampere).
Then we head for Turku where we board a very long ferry to Stockholm.
27th September
We woke up in the morning when the ship's siren sounded. We departed from
the ferry and drove fast to Trelleborg. From Trelleborg we took a shorter
ferry to German Sassnitz. We had the opportunity to see a beautiful
sunset
over the Baltic Sea, which was captured by many of our photographers.
After the touchdown in Germany we hurried to the Czech Republic. We
arrived home at about 7 AM of the 28th of September.
MI think that the whole expedition was successful.
We have put onto these pages a selection of what we have seen. From a
scientific standpoint this expedition was a demonstrative example of near
earth plasma. Personally, I think that the expedition created many
unforgettable experiences. If you ever find yourself on the deep north and
have a calm night, I recommend you to sacrifice few moments, and see the
northern lights--it is worth it.
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