Hanging in Helsinki

It’s been a pretty crazy few days for me. I caught a nasty cold on Thursday and as a result spent my last few days in Prague trying to get better as soon as possible to avoid a miserable flight experience. I did, however, manage to spend a few hours out and about with friends and buy a few last minute gifts.

The really exciting part, however, is that I did this crazy side trip to Finland.

Before I start telling of my adventures, two little side notes about myself:

1.       I am a spontaneous traveler. I don’t like making lots of plans when I’m going somewhere. I am much more the kind of person who gets on a bus and figures things out as I go.

2.       I have wanted to come to Finland since I was pretty young. When I was in middle school, we went camping up in Michigan and on the way home found a university (one of seven in the US) that taught Finnish. I bought a sweatshirt and some textbooks to study with at home. Through most of high school, I planned on going to UC Berkeley because they not only had an Asian Studies program (a good one too!) but also were one of those 7 schools with Finnish.

So, I land in Finland. I have a booking at a hostel, somewhere. I have a bus number, a stop, and an address. I get mildly lost in the airport. Luckily, my luggage slept over at the airport and didn’t come with me! I am pretty sure I walked out the wrong gate and all the way to Terminal 1. For those of you who haven’t been to the EU before, they have this little agreement thing called the Shengen Agreement. Because of this, you can travel anywhere within the member countries without going through boarder control. I knew this. But it still freaked me out that I literally just walked right out of the airport without seeing ANYONE. It’s quite convenient though.

Finding the bus was pretty easy, finding my stop was not. At first, I asked a girl a year or two younger than me who had picked up two foreign exchange students from the airport. She didn’t know because she had just moved to Helsinki. Another passenger overheard and said he thought it was about at this one place. Then another guy (who sounded like an American expat) said he was sure it was there. But then when it came up, he wasn’t… And then a lady behind me piped up that it was this next stop and gave me directions as I hopped off, which I barely heard because guess what!? I’ve lost the hearing in my left ear again! Well, then someone else got off the bus. I’m pretty sure he shouted at me as well as I was getting off, but again, can’t be sure since I can barely hear. He was from Latvia and happened to be staying at the same hostel, so he helped me find it. Lovely lad.

The hostel was really nice. Everyone there was really nice. I felt awful for coming in so late (midnight) and waking up pretty much my whole dorm (20 people!). I had a top bunk and the guy below me woke up while I was stashing my stuff in my locker. I tried to be quite but I guess I wasn’t? He felt bad because his stuff took up the whole hallway where the bed was (tiny, tiny space). But was super nice about being woken up? He moved some of it for me. I had brought clothes to sleep in, but by the time I got settled in, I didn’t feel like changing, so I just slept in my street clothes. It was not the best sleep of my life, but it wasn’t horrible either. The place was clean and it wasn’t that loud.

I woke up at a decent time in the morning. Got my stuff together, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and then headed out into Helsinki! Like I said earlier, I went out with no plans. I found a bus, got on and rode until I thought I saw something that looked like a downtown. It wasn’t. But I did find a convenience store and got juice and bread for breakfast. This was when I realized that my backpack set off all the door alarms. But no one stopped me, so…..

I ate breakfast in a park. This part of town was pretty much just offices. I didn’t even take my camera out. One thing that struck me as sort of odd was that compared to London, York, Prague, Munich, and Nurnberg, Helsinki is the one that reminded me the most of Asian cities. Not because it was tall or crowded, but because of the way they managed space. The sides of the buildings were all labeled with the businesses that owned the space, just like in Seoul. Not that I could read any, but….

After breakfast, I got back on the bus and decided to take it all the way to the end, which I figured would lead me somewhere. It did. Right down to the Sea. Okay, not right to the Sea, but pretty close! But I’ll get back to that. I was trying to find a book store to get my Finnish copy of the Little Prince, which was actually pretty easy, since everyone speaks English and is super nice! The book was a bit expensive (more expensive than the copy of Harry Potter next to it!) but since I do collect them, I had to get one. It’s called Pikku Prinssi. After that, I did a little souvenir shopping. Set off all the alarms again. They had the cutest sweaters. I really wanted one, but Helsinki is painfully expensive.

After the shopping times, I went and sat in the park. There was an interesting statue surrounded by benches so I decided that I would just sit there for a bit and draw the statue. I don’t draw from life very often, especially things that aren’t people, so I ended up screwing up the proportions. As a result, I just drew the parts that were interesting all over the page. Still, it was a lot of fun. After I had had enough of messing up the Finns pretty statue, I decided to walk down to the other end of the park. That was when I saw the sea!! It was beautiful! And right there on the wharf was a artisans and farmers market. It was beautiful! I wanted to buy some more gifts there, but everything was outrageously expensive. I ended up just walking around and window shopping until I got to the other end. From there I could see a pretty church across the bridge. Since I was in Europe, I figured I might as well go see it up close. It was closed but the building was still nice to look at. It was also on a hill, offering a nice view of everything below it.

I also went to a café back over by the bookstore. That was where I discovered the magic of Helsinki City Free WLAN. It totally made up for the ridiculous amount of money I had spent on everything else. I got to read that day’s update of A Redtail’s Dream, a Finnish webcomic I’ve been reading about a man and his dog who have been thrust into the world of Finnish mythology and must save their village. It’s quite good and getting quite dramatic. I can’t think of anything more perfect than actually reading it in Finland.

Around 1:00 I decided to head for the airport. I was able to find the right bus and buy a ticket properly. I got in with plenty of time to spare and decided to start typing up this blog entry instead of exchanging my euros for yen. That was dumb for reason I will go into more when I talk about Japanese bureaucracy.