Mounted SMB shares always access root directory

Hello everybody,

I have no idea how to frame this in technical terms, so it might have been answered before. Anyway I hope someone recognizes this and can give me a clue!

My problem is this.

When I mount my user folder in my university via VPN, the finder will pop up that folder as soon as the connection is made. (e.g.: smb://student.uni.ac.uk/S_users/students/geography/smith).

However I can never navigate to this folder, for example, in a save dialog. I can also not access it again should I ever close the Finder window that pops up first. Unlike Windows Explorer, Finder does not show my user folder in the left-hand bar, but the university server's root (it's probably not the real root folder but I hope you know what I mean!). I cannot even navigate down to my folder, because I don't have the permissions on the server I guess. Even if I could it would be a nightmare! So all I can do is eject the folder and re-mount it to get to my popped up window again. Quite annoying.

This doesn't happen in Windows, which puts the correct folder right there in the list of mounted shares, so it can't be a technical limitation. What can I do? Does this still happen in Lion? It's so annoying that I'd put up with upgrading I guess.

Thanks for your help!

Ben