Vaasa excursion

Today was sight-seeing tour around Vaasa's surroundings by bus. It was free journey organized by University of Vaasa for new exchange students. It was great opportunity to learn something about Vaasa city and it's neighbourhood. We had very jokeful tourist guide that makes fun from boring facts and we were lucky with weather. Because the weather in this time is usually very cold in Finland. That makes finnish people little sad. But I'm glad.

What have I learned about Vaasa?
First notices about Vaasa (or Mustasaari - in Swedish Korsholm, which is fractured archipelago here in Ostrobothnia) is dated to 14th century. The city was founded in 1606 by king Charles IX of Sweden. In 1613 the town was renamed after the Royal House of Vasa.

In 17th century citizens lived upon tar trade and town was growing. But in 1852 breaked out the big town fire and mostly wooden Vaasa was almost destroyed. Then in 1962 started building new town named Nikolainkaupunki (in Sweden Nikolaistad) about seven kilometers from burned town. Nikolainkaupunki was systematically designed to prevent from fire disasters. After overthrowning of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917 was city renamed to Vaasa.

During the Finnish Civil War in 1918 Vaasa was capitol of Finlad for about four months. Now Vaasa is the city of universities and industry.

Vaasa have three universities:

• University of Vaasa - headquarter in Vaasa (naturally);
• Åbo Akademi - headquarter in Turku;
• Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration - headquarter in Helsinki.

Main employers of Vaasa are:

• Asea Brown Boveri - production of industrial and power electronics and automation equipment;
• Wärtsilä - manufacturer of large (diesel) engines and power plants;
• Vacon - electronics company that manufactures AC drives and frequency converters;
• TeliaSonera - dominant telephone company and mobile network operator.

Something about neighbourhood:
During the bus excursion we visited some places near Vaasa in Ostrobothnia. We saw parts of the archipelago belong to the UNESCO World Heritage Site named Kvarken. It was added in 2006. We also visited Finland's longest bridge named Replot bridge. It connects the island of Raippaluoto (in Sweden Replot) to the mainland. We had opportunity to walk around the ruins of Saint Mary's Church from middle of 14th century. It was destroyed by town fire.