Introduction

Oops, I just realised I haven't introduced myself or explained what on earth it is I'm doing in Berlin. So let's get that sorted out.

I'm Sophy, 26 years old, from Helsinki, Finland. I study political history as main subject at the University of Helsinki and social policy and gender studies as additional subjects.

I always seem to book my calendar completely full with school and/or work, but in my theoretical spare time I enjoy the usual palette: cycling, cooking, reading, films, music in all sorts of genres. I don't mean "all sorts of genres" as in "I like ALL sorts of music, like, from Rihanna to Amy Winehouse", but really many sorts of things make me tick. In music, from lazy ambient to violent d&b, with the exceptions of reggae and rap. Meta exceptions: dub and (some) Swedish rap and reggae. Right now the hottest thing on earth for me (at least on the party front) is disco, but I'll settle for pretty much anything as long as the vibes are good.

In literature I must state that surrealism > everything else. Gabriel García Márquez, Mikhail Bulgakov, Daniil Kharms... ah <3 I also like John Irving, Milan Kundera, George Orwell, Dostoevsky, Väinö Linna, and Peter Høeg, among others. I guess my list of favourite films/directors could be quite easily deducted from the presentation above :) The list includes Jan Svankmajer, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, the Coen bros, Monty Python, Lars von Trier, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Roy Anderson etc. etc.

So now to the part "what on earth am I doing in Berlin?".

I first visited Berlin in 2003 when I was interrailing in Central Europe. Naturally I didn't know the city very well (= at all), but nevertheless it conquered my heart. Since then I've been to Berlin several times, for 2–4 weeks at a time, and visit by visit it became clearer to me that I wanted to live in Berlin. If not forever, at least for a period long enough to really call living somewhere. The most practical way would of course be through an exchange programme or internship, and so I applied for various programmes and to my bitter disappointment wasn't admitted to any of them.

Until in 2010! I applied for East Central European, Balkan and Baltic Studies's (ECEBB) (a programme at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki) one-year exchange programme at the Freie Universität Berlin, and was chosen as their exchange student! As you might expect, I accepted with fierce enthusiasm (I must have set a new world record in exlamation mark usage when I announced my admittance on Facebook), and here I am now! Here at the FU, I'll be studying at the Osteuropa-Institut, although I guess time will tell what – and how much – I really will be studying :) "Life", "in excess"...? Grade: A+?