Turku, or Åbo (the name in swedish language, pronounced "obu"), is one of the bilingual cities of Finland. It is also the fourth largest with a population of 170,000 following Helsinki, Tampere and Espoo. (See more)
I arrived to Turku city on the 24th of August of 2008. Immediately I felt that the weird impression that I got before was beginning to change. The road to Turku was a beautiful countryside as you can see in this image:
The Aura river crosses through making a great walk during good days, and in the evenings the lights make it a specially beautiful:
The small city center is covered with stone streets and beautiful structures.
An old cathedral that can be seen from long distances is usually used as the reference point.
I did quite a bit of walking around just to get the feeling of this new place, the commerce areas, the people, etc. A good thing was that when I arrived the weather was great, it was still possible to walk around with a T-shirt and jeans. I really didn't know what to expect from this new home, I was a somewhat worried that I would have a hard time adapting and that everything would be so different. Later in the same week there were a few things that I saw that made me feel that maybe this wasn't going to be so different after all, e.g. grafiti paintings on a wall:
Of course the transition from my hometown (Guayaquil, the biggest city of Ecuador) to Turku is a bit difficult, however I think I'm going to like it.
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