Take Every Opportunity Handed to You. : Let me Finnish telling you about my trip to Finland

Finland! Suomi! Finlandia! Who would of thought!

So a few weeks ago we found some discount tickets to Finland and decided it was time to go visit our friends from first semester. So after a lot of planning and anticipation, myself, Lauren and Amanda packed up last Thursday and began our trek to Santa's home country. I should tell you now that I had been sick with a nasty cold virus all week and was feeling super under the weather, and to make it worse I woke up with pink eye Thursday morning. Ya... I was thrilled. I had mixed emotions about going on the trip because of how awful I was feeling but no one else wanted to go in my place and I wasn't about to let the trip go to waste. And I am so glad I ended up going. Sick or not.

It started with an 8 hour overnight bus ride from Glasgow to London. The bus was cramped and cold and wasn't too fun being sick but we made it and you know what, it could've been worse.

Once we got to London at approx. 7am we had about 6 hours to kill before having to catch another bus to the airport located outside of London.

{Read blog about my trip to London next!}

At noon we met up with Amanda's friend Kelly (another Canadian, working as a chef in London) and boarded the bus for the airport. The bus ride was about 1 1/2 hours since Ryanair doesn't fly out of major airports. By 4:30 we were preparing for takeoff and headed for Tampere, Finland!

We arrived at about 9:30pm their time (+2hrs difference) and our friend Esko was there to pick us up. We then headed into Tampere (Tem-par-ra (roll the r)) city centre to meet our other friends! Once there we met up with Nina and Joni and hung out for the night.

The first interesting experience was when the girls went out to get pizza while the guys stayed behind and we had quite

Almost everyone now a-days speaks English but the place we went to was owned by some Turkish guys so Nina was trying to translate and order for us to a guy who speaks Finnish as a 2nd language and little English. He was super nice though and we ended up getting free salad bar and pop for being nice and foreign.

The next morning we were up early and headed for Helsinki! We stopped in Hämeenlinna and went to see Hämeen linna (Häme castle) which was pretty cool, it's very big and fully intact and has military barracks behind it.

Credit to (and borrowed from) the lovely Amanda.

I'm sorry, I don't have many pictures, because of being ill I wasn't willing to take off my mittens to take pictures.

Anywho, so we hopped back into the car and took off to the capital. Poor Esko drove while we all passed out. Travelling tires you out!

Helsinki!

Helsinki is a pretty neat and vibrant city right in the heart of it, lots of stores and signs, restaurants and people. We walked around with Esko for a bit, did some tourist things like see this church that's actually built right in a rock mound. That was pretty cool. Because of the ice age a lot of Finland has random and visible rock faces and boulders everywhere, so they just build into it apparently. During this time I bought myself an 'I Love Finland' keychain at a souvenir store across the street. Once a tourist,
always a tourist :)

Church in the rocks

After this we headed for the train station to meet up with Nina and Joni who had taken the train from Tampere, then went to find some food.
We ended up eating at this Italian restaurant which was set up in an interesting way. You go in to the front counter and get a card and go pick your seat, then you go to either the pasta, pizza or salad/appetizer station (and bar) and wait in line and decide what you would like to eat.

Rautatieasema järnvägsstation - Train Station

They make it right there in front of you and then charge the cost to your card, so when you're all done eating, you give them back the card at the front and pay the balance. The food was absolutely incredible, everything (including the pasta) is all freshly made and cooked in shop. While I was inline with Esko and Joni the cook behind the counter looked up at me and said something in Finnish to which I responded with a bit of a panicked look to Esko and Joni. Apparently he just told me that there were 2 other pasta stations up the steps (only one of which was operating and had a longer line), but I was not about to stray from the Finnish pack. Ya, so that was lunch/dinner.

Nina, Amanda, Esko and Joni & Lauren are in behind.

Check this out.. there are only 2 Starbucks in all of Finland. One in Helsinki Airport and one in downtown Helsinki - yep, we found it. I've had Starbucks in every country I've been to. Consumerism at its finest.
We then headed to our hostel after to check in and put our stuff away, I wasn't sure about going out that night because I wasn't feeling great, but then decided I didn't want to sit in our room with a random russian lady all night. I also had a weird run-in with an Italian guy who didn't

understand why the dryer in the laundry room was beeping at him... I didn't know so he made me go ask the front reception lady. Weird. And random.
So myself, Lauren, Amanda, Kelly, Nina, Esko, Joni and his friend Paavo hung out in one of the social rooms at the hostel before heading out to a happening Finnish bar. Where we met up with David! Another friend from first semester! Just a bunch of social butterflies we are :)
Did you know that Finnish people like to dance? Samba to be specific. Me either, but its true. We went to this Rio bar and it was happening, there was people samba-ing all night long. There's actually samba competitions and concerts in the city centre in the summer!
At this point I literally had no voice so mostly used my phone to ask questions and communicate with our friends. David was so kind to order my drink for me because there was no chance the bartender would've heard me.
At one point this guy started talking to me in Finnish to which I responded with "....what?" as if I knew what he would say once he repeated himself. He spoke English though so we were okay.
That was pretty much our night, at the end we had to say Goodbye to Joni which was really sad

GIANT Cathedral at the top of like 30 steps

because you never know when you're going to see these people again. Then walked back to the hostel, had some snacks and off to bed.

Finnish Love Lock Bridge <3

Most expensive hotel in the entire country

Turku

Bright and early the next day we were up and at em' off to Turku before going back to Tampere. Esko drove again while we slept... such a trooper. I felt bad but with no voice knew he wasn't going to hear me very well from the back seat.
So! Turku! First stop was at this giant cathedral. It's important to understand the Russian influence in a

lot of Finnish architecture, nothing is very bright and colourful but more so bold and sharp in their features. We took some pictures and were going to go in... then we heard something... musical almost... and realized it was 11AM on a Sunday... church was in progress. Ya, we really thought that one through.

So we headed to the other side of town, where we wandered through another castle.

There I am :)

We then walked some more to go find some food. Apparently Turku is where all the children are kept in Finland because there was an excess of them there compared to any other place we had been.
We ended up eating at Finnish McDonald's equivalent called Hesburger (Don't you just love reading about every single little detail???). It was pretty good, we initially stood standing staring at the Finnish/Swedish menu, just looking at the pictures and prices before a lady from behind the counter came over and asked us if we'd like an English menu - that makes things MUCH easier.

Here we are :)

So walk walk walk, drive drive drive, back to Tampere we go! Learned lots about Finland and Finnish culture on the drive talking to Esko while everyone else slept again haha.

Back in Tampere we went to the tower where you can see the landscape from the top, that was pretty cool. We could see people Nordic skating super far out on the lake which looked like fun, oh! That's another thing, a lot of old Finnish people like to 'Nordic walk' like with the poles and everything, its pretty funny to watch them go at it, also jokingly referred to as 'dementia skiing' since they've got the motion right, they've just forgotten the skis.

Oooo next fun fact! People do not J-walk in Finland, they just don't do it, it doesn't happen. Well... Not until we got there... I think Esko was a little mind blown that we would just look both ways and run across the street. Also pedestrians don't have the right of way, they have the right to get out of the way. Yeah, those pedestrian crossing strips are just there for decoration apparently. We survived though so don't you worry.

I met Tom Selleck in the window! Found out where he gets his hair cut.

People are also SUPER nice when they find out you're foreign, so that's always nice to experience. We headed back to Nina's for a bit before going out and finding some dinner. All I have to say is thank goodness for English menus haha. We had some good laughs at dinner - tried a little reindeer (traditional Finnish food/wildlife), reminisced the good old times and treated Esko and Nina as a thank you for being super cool hosts for the weekend. Then we had to say goodbye to Esko as he had to head home. We couldn't thank him enough for being our chauffeur and tour guide for the weekend and saying bye was harder than I thought - just because you don't know if/when you'll ever see them again. We ended up getting milkshakes from McDonalds on the way home and were up early the next morning packing up and off to the airport. Once again having to say goodbye to Nina.

More Tampere

More Tampere - McDonalds

Me, Nina, Lauren, Kelly & Amanda

Makes me sad that we had to leave, but we definitely would not have had the incredible time that we did if it weren't for our friends. They were very welcoming and put up with a constant stream of 'How do you say ____?' and 'What does that say?' and repeating the same word 6 times before it was finally pronounced right. We go to learn a lot about them and their country and language - which I loved. Everything is pronounced as it's spelt, so I was continuously trying to say the words on the signs and use random words here and there. I'm actually pretty proud of my Finnish vocabulary haha. I can't even begin to thank them enough.
I would definitely like to go back at some point and go north up near Lapland. Finland is full of really cool things (and people), you just gotta find them. :)