Helsinki

I've made it safely to Helsinki. Although the individual legs of travel were pretty short, it was actually a bit of a trek to get over here.

Thursday morning, mom dropped me at the airport in Phoenix at 5 AM for my flight out. It was about a three and a half hour flight to Chicago in the middle seat. Got in to Chicago around noon and ended up having a six hour layover. O'hare is a really ugly airport. It's almost like it was supposed to be High-Tech but ended up looking like a sad parody of victorian train station. Had a pizza and a beer for lunch while I waited for my flight. Flew to London also in a middle seat. For someone who has been on 12 hour flights before, a six and a half hour long flight is almost nothing. Got a few hours of sleep, which was great. Didn't even finish reading all of my books.

Dad picked me up at the airport in London and drove me back to his house, where I had a shower and a great breakfast and a nap for an hour or two. Dad pretty much had to drag me out of bed when it was time for lunch. We actually ate at a pub in Guildford, right on one of the meandering streams. England is so green and lush right now. Really pretty. Dad put me on the train in Guildford and it was a short ride to Gatwick airport for my cheap flight to Helsinki. I crammed my messenger bag into my backpack to comply with the "one bag" rule. Hello, EasyJet. The flight to Helsinki was pretty short, about two and a half hours long. When the messages over the intercom started being in Finnish, it made me crack up a little bit- Finnish sounds a bit like English spoken backwards with too many Os and As.

Finnish airport looks a lot more designed than Heathrow- there is wood everywhere, clean Scandinavian lines, sleek design in wood, steel, and glass. The bus into town was easy to figure out- I walked outside the terminal and the bus sign said "Helsinki train station". About $5 for the city bus. The ride in was about 30 minutes- even well past 9 o clock at night, the sky was a dark blue dusk, but still light enough to see by. Tall, skinny trees grow densely wherever there is a patch of forest.

Saori met me outside the train station. It wasn't too cold or dark yet outside on this friday night, and there were tons of Finns just hanging out outside. Poeple here seem to really take advantage of the public space. Lots of public plazas here.

For some reason, my variation on jet lag meant I was pretty wide awake around 10pm, so we walked over to an outdoor bar and had a beer. It was wierd to think of myself in Helsinki since a little over 24 hours before, I was in Phoenix, then Chicago, then London. Took a streetcar back to Saori's flat where she lives with two other guys in the program. One of them, Phillip, had already taken off for St.Louis.

I've been having a hard time falling alseep, partly from my jet lag, but also from how early the sun rises and shines directly into Saori's room. So it was little surprise that we ended up getting up around noon. Saori led me on a walking tour around the city- we stopped at Cafe Ursula on the coast for a very nice snack and coffee. Smoked salmon and dill on rye toast, trying to keep the aggressive sparrows at bay. Really a beautiful day. We made dinner at Saori's apartment- Salmon soup, before heading out to catch the final football match in the European cup at a sports bar. There, we met up with a bunch of Saori's classmates, many of whom will be continuing on to Buenos Aires in the fall.

Today, we woke up late again, so we decided to make a day of research and packing. Saori needed to buy a new suitcase since her old one broke, and I needed some long sleeve t shirts, so we went shopping for most of the day. They have the cheap fashion stores H&M here like they have circle-Ks in Phoenix.

Afterwards, we had a cup of coffee at the Cafe Aalto, in a bookstore that he designed before heading back home. Everything closes in Helsinki on Sunday nights anyway, and Saori wanted to get started packing things up.

So right now, we're trying to figure out what to do with our time here in Finland. The problem is that its so expensive to go anywhere.  We shall see.