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FINLAND: Helsinki day 5 + Helsinki day 6/Turku day 1
OKAY HERE WE GO.
Day 5 opened onto a lot of snow. Really, the people of Helsinki are snow experts: they scoop it up and then dump it into dump trucks, which carry it away. We watched this giggling for a little while on our way to go see the Temppeliaukio Kirkko, or the church in the rock. This is literally built straight into the rock; it was constructed in the 1960s, and holds services regularly. The ceiling is a dome that sticks out of the rock, so when we first came across it, it almost looked like the top of a snowy mountain! You can climb on the rock that the church is built out of (though not on the dome, because of the glass), so we wandered around on the top of a church that day. We couldn't find the actual entrance -- instead, we found a back entrance, which was locked. We were going to walk around the church and try to find the real entrance when lo, a person who worked there walked out of the door! He politely let us in the back entrance (the "personel entrance" he called it) and there we stood, on the inside of the Temppeliaukio Kirkko, right beside the altar. I assume that he doesn't do that for everyone; we just happened to be lucky enough, or simply looked lost enough.
After that, it was getting dark, so we decided to head to dinner. On our last full day in Helsinki we wanted something uniquely Finnish -- so we were going to try this restaurant made out of glass in Esplanadi, a park near our hotel. To our (great) surprise, almost everything in their menu contained either pine nuts, pesto (which, in European countries, usually has pine nuts in it), or just "nuts." It's safe to say that we didn't eat there. For those of you who don't quite get the reference to why we didn't eat there, it's not that we don't like nuts. I have a deathly tree nut allergy, so everywhere we go has to be checked and double checked in case of places like this, which just put "nut sauce" once in English and then wrote it every other time in Finnish. The second restaurant we tried was another Finnish restaurant -- but unfortunately, people in Helsinki really like to take your bags and store them before you go into the dining area. Since we have our passports (as well as our money!) in there, we decided not to go to that restaurant, either.
Our final destination: McDonalds! (Again.) We got chicken nuggets, and tried the different, Finnish sauces that they had available. Zae tried "McFeast" (which tasted a lot like ranch but not really) while I tried "Curry" (which tasted like...well, curry). I also had a McFlurry with some sort of European equivalent of M&Ms in it, which was really good. However, we might need to inform them that a "big ice cream" in their country is actually a "really small ice cream" in America. Because we both giggled over that fact like dorks.
Unfortunately for me, my forgetful mind got the best of me. I left my Oberlin sweatshirt in the McDonalds, and when we came back for it, it was gone. The people that worked there hadn't seen it either. So somewhere around Helsinki, someone must be keeping it warm with my favorite hoodie. I hope they weren't disappointed; the only thing I had in my pockets was a mechanical pencil. Oh well, I'll just get a new one when I get back. They still sell them in the bookstore.
---
Day 6 was actually a travel day -- we got up early (for once) and packed our bags, headed for the train station. What was once hard to find was now really simple; what made today hard was the fact that Helsinki's skies had finally seen fit to rain down on us with...well, rain. Snow rain, actually -- it came pouring as we dragged our bags to the train station. After a little snafu with the ticketing counter (they assumed that Zae and I weren't traveling together, but instead that Zae and a complete stranger were) we settled into the train and off we went! Turku is about two hours away from Helsinki by train, right on the southern coast of Finland. It's a slightly smaller town than Helsinki, with a little less to see and do. But that's okay, because really the main reason we decided to come here was to meet our friend Aave, a Finnish native who happens to live in Turku. Of course, we're going to do some sight-seeing too; but the first day, Aave met us at the train station (with a sign that read O3O) and helped us drag our bags for the ten minute walk to our hotel. The Radisson Blu looks out over the river -- and we have a river-side view, out of which we can see a huge hill with a windmill on top -- and we rested for a bit before dinner. Aave took us to Harald, a Viking restaurant that served so many different menu items that it took us forever to decide what to get! Finally, Zae and I settled on the Archer's Pot, which was deer and elk along with potatoes, vegetables, lingonberries and something called "sea-buckthorn," a kind of fruit that...is. Well, when I say it tastes distinctly like sea-buckthorn and nothing else, you get the idea. We finished our meal with a serving of Finnish crepes, which unlike the French ones, have nothing inside of them -- they were still ridiculously delicious, and we all left extremely full. We hung out for a little bit more, and then Aave went home; she has to take the bus out of town to get there, so she left a little early. Zae skyped her mom; I skyped my boyfriend (hi Rob) and then we both went to sleep.
We haven't done anything yet today; we both woke up ridiculously late (as did Aave) and neither of us are feeling particularly tip-top shape. I'm thinking that the cold is starting to get to me; I'll be happy to be home in South Carolina soon, where it's warm. Today is a lazy day, but if we go out, I'll write more about it.
Day 5 opened onto a lot of snow. Really, the people of Helsinki are snow experts: they scoop it up and then dump it into dump trucks, which carry it away. We watched this giggling for a little while on our way to go see the Temppeliaukio Kirkko, or the church in the rock. This is literally built straight into the rock; it was constructed in the 1960s, and holds services regularly. The ceiling is a dome that sticks out of the rock, so when we first came across it, it almost looked like the top of a snowy mountain! You can climb on the rock that the church is built out of (though not on the dome, because of the glass), so we wandered around on the top of a church that day. We couldn't find the actual entrance -- instead, we found a back entrance, which was locked. We were going to walk around the church and try to find the real entrance when lo, a person who worked there walked out of the door! He politely let us in the back entrance (the "personel entrance" he called it) and there we stood, on the inside of the Temppeliaukio Kirkko, right beside the altar. I assume that he doesn't do that for everyone; we just happened to be lucky enough, or simply looked lost enough.
After that, it was getting dark, so we decided to head to dinner. On our last full day in Helsinki we wanted something uniquely Finnish -- so we were going to try this restaurant made out of glass in Esplanadi, a park near our hotel. To our (great) surprise, almost everything in their menu contained either pine nuts, pesto (which, in European countries, usually has pine nuts in it), or just "nuts." It's safe to say that we didn't eat there. For those of you who don't quite get the reference to why we didn't eat there, it's not that we don't like nuts. I have a deathly tree nut allergy, so everywhere we go has to be checked and double checked in case of places like this, which just put "nut sauce" once in English and then wrote it every other time in Finnish. The second restaurant we tried was another Finnish restaurant -- but unfortunately, people in Helsinki really like to take your bags and store them before you go into the dining area. Since we have our passports (as well as our money!) in there, we decided not to go to that restaurant, either.
Our final destination: McDonalds! (Again.) We got chicken nuggets, and tried the different, Finnish sauces that they had available. Zae tried "McFeast" (which tasted a lot like ranch but not really) while I tried "Curry" (which tasted like...well, curry). I also had a McFlurry with some sort of European equivalent of M&Ms in it, which was really good. However, we might need to inform them that a "big ice cream" in their country is actually a "really small ice cream" in America. Because we both giggled over that fact like dorks.
Unfortunately for me, my forgetful mind got the best of me. I left my Oberlin sweatshirt in the McDonalds, and when we came back for it, it was gone. The people that worked there hadn't seen it either. So somewhere around Helsinki, someone must be keeping it warm with my favorite hoodie. I hope they weren't disappointed; the only thing I had in my pockets was a mechanical pencil. Oh well, I'll just get a new one when I get back. They still sell them in the bookstore.
---
Day 6 was actually a travel day -- we got up early (for once) and packed our bags, headed for the train station. What was once hard to find was now really simple; what made today hard was the fact that Helsinki's skies had finally seen fit to rain down on us with...well, rain. Snow rain, actually -- it came pouring as we dragged our bags to the train station. After a little snafu with the ticketing counter (they assumed that Zae and I weren't traveling together, but instead that Zae and a complete stranger were) we settled into the train and off we went! Turku is about two hours away from Helsinki by train, right on the southern coast of Finland. It's a slightly smaller town than Helsinki, with a little less to see and do. But that's okay, because really the main reason we decided to come here was to meet our friend Aave, a Finnish native who happens to live in Turku. Of course, we're going to do some sight-seeing too; but the first day, Aave met us at the train station (with a sign that read O3O) and helped us drag our bags for the ten minute walk to our hotel. The Radisson Blu looks out over the river -- and we have a river-side view, out of which we can see a huge hill with a windmill on top -- and we rested for a bit before dinner. Aave took us to Harald, a Viking restaurant that served so many different menu items that it took us forever to decide what to get! Finally, Zae and I settled on the Archer's Pot, which was deer and elk along with potatoes, vegetables, lingonberries and something called "sea-buckthorn," a kind of fruit that...is. Well, when I say it tastes distinctly like sea-buckthorn and nothing else, you get the idea. We finished our meal with a serving of Finnish crepes, which unlike the French ones, have nothing inside of them -- they were still ridiculously delicious, and we all left extremely full. We hung out for a little bit more, and then Aave went home; she has to take the bus out of town to get there, so she left a little early. Zae skyped her mom; I skyped my boyfriend (hi Rob) and then we both went to sleep.
We haven't done anything yet today; we both woke up ridiculously late (as did Aave) and neither of us are feeling particularly tip-top shape. I'm thinking that the cold is starting to get to me; I'll be happy to be home in South Carolina soon, where it's warm. Today is a lazy day, but if we go out, I'll write more about it.