Finland: Hospitable People and Expensive Beer

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Time for a new entry is long overdue. I would just like to say that I have been extremely busy laterly, catering to work, some school, and the reality that I have less than 2 months left in Vienna. This means I have been desperately trying to savour every moment, spending late nights that turn into early mornings (maybe too often) with friends here.

But to move on to my latest adventure....Finland!

This trip was round two of my travel adventures with Mr. Joel Timothy Meadows. This time we had some joiners as well. They included Jasper, a good friend of ours this semester form Amsterdam, and Satu, one of my good friends and co-workers from the bar in Vienna. Satu is from Helsinki originally and had been planning a trip at the same time to visit her sister and her brand new niece. We decided to all go as one big group.

As per usual, when flying with RyanAir, we had to finagle our route. We started out with a quick train to Bratislava Slovakia, and then a short plane ride to Frankfurt, Germany. In Germany we overnighted in the airport, a place Joel and I know already too well. The following morning we caught our flight to Tampere, Finland and caught a bus to Helsinki. We arrived finally that evening in Helsinki and were more than excited to sleep in a bed!

Helsinki

We spent the first few days in Helsinki, Tuusula, to be exact. This is where Satu's mom lives, just 30K outside of Helsinki. We were greeted with warm and welcome arms and lots of food from Satu's mom. A nice change from the students diet of pasta and pizza. We visited with Satu's sister and saw the new baby, Lumeta. Satu showed us a bit around Helsinki, included the Churches and of course local Irish Pub. Helsinki isn't much of a tourist destination, so there isn't too much to see.

Tallin

After a few days, we left Satu to visit with family and Joel, Jasper and I trekked our way over to Tallin, Estonia. We took an early morning ferry which took about 3.5 hrs. We arrived in Tallin to already several cm of snow. We tried our best to check out the sights: churches, old town, city wall, palace, former KGB HQ. However, the best part for me was building a snowman. Joel would say his favorite was the snow ball fight we ended up having with some British "Blokes". But Joel also didn't get nailed in the head with any snow balls. We took advantage of the relatively cheap prices and treated ourselves to an outstanding meal at a medieval restaurant in the Old Town center called Old Hansa. The menu even included bear. We tried to visit some pubs, but as it was a monday night, there was not too much happening. We found our hostel after a long drawn out search and tucked in for the night. The next day we did most of the sightseeing we didn't do the first day and loaded up on cheap alcohol before returning to Finland. We didn't want to buy too much and have it confiscated at border control, so we bought about 4 bottles of alcohol.

We late found out that there are no limitations on the amount of alcohol you can carry back to Finland. Thanks for telling us sooner.

Turku

Turku is basically a student town. We spent the last few days here with Joel's friend Justin from Australia. Saw a few of the things Turku has to offer, which isn't much. The best experience was the Sauna of course. We tried to go on a Thursday. It turned out to be closed on Thursday. So the boys amused themselves while we waited an hour for the bus by building a fire. We came back the next day. Finnish Sauna is interesting. I went into the women's changing room and asked some old ladies what exactly I should do. One took me outside and told me I had to jump in the 6 degree Celsius water before going into the sauna. This seemed like something I would never do, but when a 60 year old lady is basically pushing you into the water, you don't have much choice. So, then I ran straight into the sauna. I think I could spend about 8min. in the sauna each time before having to step outside. It's a series of sauna, freezing water. I lasted just under and hour total. Then we headed back to town. We also took a day and went to the archipelago. Unfortunately, there wasn't too much sun. We did however, find Muumi Land. It's an island where the Muumi (Scandinavian cartoon) are supposed to live. It's like a theme park with no rides. So we wandered around a bit.

Finally, our trip came to an end and we had to head back to Tampere to catch our flight home. After 10 days, we were ready to come home. It was real Finnland, but Vienna was calling....

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