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Published: July 12th 2007
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Thursday July 12th: Helsinki
Well i arrived in Finland with no dramas. my stuff is currently sitting in a locker at the terminal. i decided whilst on the ferry that i would do a boat tour of Helsinki and it's islands. the boat arrived at 10 am and the tour started at 1030. i just made it.
the tour was nice but you do see a hell of a lot of trees. the Finn's have quite a recreational culture and apparently the entire city of Helsinki vanishes into the country during July. the islands have many residential and holiday villages which all seem to have saunas by the shore. the Finn's are 'sauna mad' as spoken by the tour guide.
i found the market square after the tour and i must say it is one of the most spectacular market's i have seen on my travels. there is the usual plethora of typical tacky tourist crap but these market's have a vast amount of cultural and decent tourist crap combined with some very traditional finnish food i.e. Reindeer Hush (stew) with lingenberries and potato mash. yummo.
and yes mum i have bought that magnet. i think i will return to these markets and get a few more souvenirs.
caught up with Sami in his lunch break and went to his work and surfed the net until he had finished. we had pizza at one of his favourite pizza shops. i swear this thing was the size of a car tyre and the thickness of a 20 cent piece. it was covered in a special fininsh cheese and tasted divine. after dinner we decided to go get my stuff from the ferry terminal. after walking all the way there we found out that the terminal was closed and i couldn't get my gear til morning. oh well time to go have a drink. we went to a place called public corner and just chilled out and talked about old times and new.
Friday the 13th
got up this morning and headed on the bus towards the ferry terminal. i got off way too early and ended up walking 40 minutes to get there. i only jus tmade it in time before the locker expired and bared my goods to the world for all to plunder. all geared up i jumped on the tram and headed back to.....i don't actually know where sami lives. a quick text message and a few trams and trains later i was where his message told me to go. the problem i found to be not myself, but the useless tourist map i was following. the map suggests there is street connections where there isnt and roads where t here shouldnt be. so after leaving home at 9 i got back at 1230 only to find that the key Sami had given me did not open the front door. dilemma. not to worry, a random person living in his place opened the door and i tailgated inside. luckily the key to Sami's flat worked.
after recovering from my epic adventure this morning i went back to the markets and had salmon, savoury rice and salad for lunch. it was delicious. I bought my souvenir lappish beanie that i had been looking at and then headed for hte white church i have dubbed the Taj mahal because that is what it reminds me of. i got on the tram after checking out the church. the idea behind this was to see as much of the city as i could on this special tourist tram. i think i saw most of the main city. i fell asleep so i cant be too sure but i definately did atleast two laps on the tram.
Caught up with Sami again after he finished work and we went and had dinner at Chico's. an american burger place that makes some really fantastic burgers. we thought we would catch a movie so we check out what was on before heading down to the lake to drink some wine. the movie 'Deathproof' was the usual twisted Tarantino movie.
after the movie we decided to check out the 'Aussie Bar' because Sami had never been there and well the other reason is obvious. the bar was really cool. very similar to home but much smaller with a much safer atmoshpere (and hot Finnish women: something we don't have at home). We randomly met one of Sami's girlfriend's friends who was out with her friends. apparently in summer it is Finnish custom to head down to the beach after a night out and go swimming...so we did. Kaati (kit kat was what it apparently translated to in English but i'm not so sure) had a Sauna at her place so we all went and had a Sauna until 6 in the morning when we caught the bus home.
Silja Serenade
The boat trip back to Sweden was fantastic. i randomly met one of the guys from my university course onboard.. What are the chances!!! well considering he is swedish they are pretty good; somewhere around 1 in 15 million.
The midnight dance show was spectacular. it was a performance of 'danice cinema' a collection of different well known movie themes to correographed dances. met up with Alex (guy from my course) and his mate (also doing my degree just a different year to me)again at Club Bali(night club on board) and we had a drink there and did some dancing. unfortunately the ship was overrun with under 18's south American soccer teams (200 or so of the little devils) who 'should' have been kicked out at one when the club turned to 18 +. they weren't because 'it is summer'.
all in all it wasn't a bad night. a little disappointing. the soccer teams beant there was 200 less spaces on the ship for good looking scandinavians. they were also complete animals. i have never seen anything like this before. if a girl stepped on to the dance floor she was instantly surrounded by 10 of the soccer boys dancing and grinding up close trying to kiss her. it was disgusting. we had one or two run in's with the little devils but for th emost part they were too busy fighting with each other over who gets the girl. very amusing. the night ended about 4 and i was thankful for the extra hour i gain coming back to Sweden.
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