Mastering Russian

I had no interest in learning Russian untill my visit to the Finnish-Baltic conference in summer of 2008, untill then I though it was a stupid language spoken by stupid people and my Russian was limited to a few words. But at the conference i met Регина, Олесия and Катя who made me change my mind. They were, to my great suprise, very nice people, and it didn't take long untill I wanted to know some words (I'm a succer for languages, but that's another story). I soon had a list of words, but the alphabeth was very hard to learn (Now finally I have gotten that down, but it's still but a start).

I have since done a great deal of work to be able to learn this language that can be of great help, especially when living in Finland. I have since been on a visit to Russia (but that's a different story also). I want to share some facts that perhaps might help others as well.

I have some experience of learning new languages, I speak fluent Swedish, Finnish and English. But I also learned Greek on my 2-year mission, this was a crash-course greek learning that I have tried to take into consideration when studying Russian.

I have a couple of pocket books (a dictionary and a phrasebook), I have a childrens book, an ilustrated new testament stories for childrene, a bunch of newspapers. But dispite all this, me greatest help is my computer. I have downloaded the free and very helpfull (though, sometimes nerve-wrecking) byki language learner. (www.byki.com) and also use online dicctionaries and web pages, the list will be uppdated. I have written many lists containing verbs (with conjugations), pronouns, short aid words such as и, ре, из, от, к, с, а, бы... I watch russian tv sometimes, my favourite program is милитцеиская академия, a comedy show with simple language and obvious meanings and jokes.

List of usefull web pages: To be updated:
http://masterrussian.com - a massive web site that has everything you need.
http://mirtv.ru/ - you can watch 300 kbit/s stream of the tv channel for free. Quality isn't always the best but you still get the deal.

My litterature in russian, the illustrated new testament for children not included, not are my written lists.

3rd time I visit Riga.

And going there again, Riga and via Tallinn on the way back.

Facts
There was a small gathering of single young single adults in Riga. The young adult term refers to people aged 18-30, but in the Baltic district, the age restrictions aren't very restrictive and several over aged people are let in, I believe there were perhaps around 40 people in total present.

Why I could not go
From the start, I was not able to attend. I had plans to be at the physical test for a summer job at the fire brigade in Jakobstad (Pietarsaari), but I had been sick the other week and was not quite in shape for that. But I still had another problem: I had math on friday morning from 8:00 till 9:30, there was no good connection that would get me to Riga any earlier than around 22:00, and that had a hefty price on ut, if I would leave after math. I had abandoned my plans.

Why I decided to go, and how I went
But as time grew on, my desire to attend grew, on Thursday evening. I discovered that I could leave early from math and take a train at 9:22 and go with airplane from Helsinki and get there in the afternoon (I got there, on site, at around 18:30).
And so I did, all the cheap air tickets were gone, I noticed Air Baltic had the cheapest initial tickets, but it adds taxes and airport fees, so Finnair turned out to be the cheapest. But hot cheap, the whole package cost me over 300€! I stayed only for one day, I had to rush away to leave with the buss at 18:00. That was way to short time to spend in a fantastic city such as Riga. And with all the nice people that were there.

I took the cheap Ecoline buss to Tallinn and could sleep over at a members home. Went to the Russian meetings in Tallinn, stayed for two meetings in church and then took the Trolley to the center and hitched Tallink back to Finland to board the train to get back in time for my math on Monday morning. Ironically, my visit was bordered by math on both sides.

Summary
It was a totally crazy idea and it cost me a lot of money, but hey, it's better than a lot of other crazy things that people do. No one was hurt and no serious sins were committed. I have some kind of love for Riga, I can't quite explain it myself (but I bet other people love Thailand, and other vacation resorts for many reasons), but it's within reach and easy, fast and generally cheap to get to.

This picture was taken in Tallinn, before I got on the boat back.