IB staff participating Nordplus meeting in Denmark

Two staff members of the IB programme participated to a Nordplus meeting at the University of Southern Denmark in Slagelse. During their stay in Denmark, Dawn Aarnio and Sven Rassl discussed with colleagues from other Nordic and Baltic universities.

Staff members of four universities participated the meeting.

• HAMK University of Applied Sciences - Valkeakoski/Finland
• University of Southern Denmark - Slagelse/Denmark
• Gotland University - Visby/Sweden
• SSE Riga - Riga/Latvia

The objective of the meeting was to organize an international intensive week in October 2008 in Slagelse/Denmark. Students and staff members of the above mentioned universities will be taking part in the event.

Study Excursion BAI05 and BAI06 to Frankfurt Germany

(see previous post)
...and go for a promenade instead. This turned out to be a very good
idea. The "see-and-be-seen" game could easily compete with the Zoo.

In the evening, we went out to have dinner in Sachsenhausen, one of
Frankfurt's oldest part. Many pubs and restaurants along with the many
people on the street created alomsot a Southern European
"fiesta-ala-plaza" feeling. The iluminated night skyline of Frankfurt
closed this interesting first excursion day.

A day in Frankfurt

Our first day in Frankfurt started with an ample breakfast in our hotel Mercator. The hotel is quite ok, although the rooms are pretty clairaudient. It must have been some lady whoes high-heels shoes' ticktack at five o'clock in the morning prevented at least some of us
from sleeping well.

The honorary consul of Finland in the state of Hessony, Prof. Dr. Alexander Riesenkampff, with whom we had our first appointment, expected us in his office at ten o'clock. The weather was nice so we decided to walk to this first appointment instead of taking the underground. We took a shortcut via some parc, which resulted in being at the office half an hour ahead of time.

The reception at the honorary consulate was warm and Prof. Dr. Riesenkampff and his assistant were welcoming us. The following presentation and the discussions about Finish-German trade relation lasted for about two hours. We covered a wide range of subjects. After the meeting we were invited to have a view over Frankfurt from the roof terrace of the building in which the consulate is located. The skyline of Frankfurt with its skyscrapers reminds somewhat to
Manhattan.

We could also see the 241m high Hessische Landesbank skyscraper building which was our second destination for this day. The acceleration of the elevator of that building could easily be felt in one's stomach (indeed, the descend even more). The view from that building was great. We took many photos from above Frankfurt. The sight was pretty clear today.

Since we became a bit hungry after all the activity we decided to go to a restaurant and have a snack. The opinions about what would be the best place to eat were a somewhat divided. Luckily we could agree on a charming cafeteria next to the old opera. Pretty soon after we placed our orders, we found out that our waiter mixed up some of the dishes so that three of us were serve a differant dish than ordered. As a compension were were all served a free cocktail.Because it was already pretty late we decided to skip the visit to the Zoo...

Photos & video of Frankfurt excursion not yet available

Comment to those blog readers following the Frankfurt excursion of
BNI05/06: We currently do not have the possibility to upload any
photos or videos to this blog. We hope that this issue will be solved
soon.

Departure to Frankfurt/Germany

Once again the Degree Programme organizes a study excursion. This time the financial centre of continental Europe, Frankfurt in Germany, is our destination.

There are eight students from the part time study programme plus one teacher. We will spend about five days in Germany, Wednesday 21. May to Sunday 25. May. During the next days we will provide daily updates in this blog about what is happening during the trip.

As usual, the budget airline Ryanair is our carrier. The check-in at Tampere-Pirkkala airport went ok. Prior to our departure, we had some discussions about the limited baggage allowance. Each passenger was allowed to bring only 10kg of own luggage, restricted to the usual cabin size baggeges. Mainly the female passengers amongst us were worried about being able to take additional cosmetic articles along. We solved the issue by booking one bag in which we stored all our cosmetic articles as check-in luggage.

While writing the message we are flying somewhere over Denmark. Once we can switch on our mobile phones again, this message will be posted to the travel blog.

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Degree Programme in International Business participating in congress about internationalisation of higher education in Finland

The congress was hosted by the University of Helsinki 12.-14. May 2008. Representatives from the Degree Programme were:

• Sven Rassl
  
• Harri Tuomola
  

Delegation of HAMK and Vaske in Nanchang/China 11.–19.04.2008

A delegation of HAMK University of Applied Sciences and the regional development organisation VASKE has visited Nanchang/China. The objectives of the trip were to promote the cooperation between Valkeakoski and Nanchang.

This included amongst others:

• Development of HAMK University’s cooperation relationships (Nanchang & Beijing), e.g. double degree
  
  
• Further development of VASKE’s and HAMK’s business cooperation in China
  
  
• Introduction of the Valkeakoski campus as a training and investment target
  
  
• Marketing HAMK’s and Valkeakoski’s Campus educational opportunities
  
  
• Increasing the knowledge of Finland in Nanchang