Getting off at the Slutstation.

Now, because my family reads this blog I feel I should explain the title of the blog at the start rather than humorously leaving it until the end like I usually do. Slut is the word for 'end' in Swedish, and was one of many many words that to a native English speaker looked absolutely hilarious and on the train to Malmö, I was repeatedly informed that Copenhagen (or Köpenhamn in Swedish) was the slutstation. Tee hee!

My journey began Wednesday last week when I took a late bus up to Tallinn, my flight was at 5:10am so I needed to be up there at night. What I didn't plan was what I was going to do so the start of my trip was terribly boring with me sitting in the airport until I could check in. After a very brief visit to Riga airport, I arrived in Stockholm where I promptly boarded a train to Malmö! The train was very nice but you had to pay for wifi if you wanted to use it (Estonia has spoilt me obviously). Upon arriving at Malmö station, I was greeted by Emma and Dan who I know from Melbourne. That night we proceeded to drink a litre of vodka and harassed his dorm mates who had just gotten back from the sea battle!

The next day we spent in Copenhagen where we saw The Little Mermaid statue and the Lego store and it was generally lovely before I boarded a plane back to Stockholm where I spent the night drinking with David Stock and discovered the joys of McDonald's cheese sauce! Yum!

On Saturday I caught up with old school friend Britta Dahlborg and super schalger fan Lina Paulsson before Lina and her friend Johannes came out for a karaoke party! There was Bengtzing, Carola and almost every one of the last 20 Swedish entries sung, as well as a heap of MF entries! Amazing times.

With that over, I spend Sunday doing bugger all and then went back to Tallinn.

Thats about all I can say, there will be photos on facebook!

Currently I'm sitting in the press centre in Yerevan for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest! Woo!

Mis on sinu lemmik Koogi?

Hello everyone, I trust you've been well? Not a lot has been going on around here, just the usual writing, study, classes, drinking and partying although that doesn't mean that I havn't had an adventure or two!

Last weekend I went to the cute village of Koogi to hang out with my friend Liina and her family as they celebrated the birthday of Liina's brother's wife!

The bus sign for Koogi, a town whose name translates to 'Cake'

We arrived in the dead of night (aka about 5pm, stupid dark Estonian late-Autumn!) and met Liina's parents who were both really nice, despite not speaking much English. Her mum spoke more than she let on and to be fair I speak more Estonian than I let on too, but despite not being able to communicate directly her family were still very kind and Liina was there to translate. I also met two of her sisters, younger sister Margit and older sister Liis who both spoke great English, Liis having even spent time in Australia.

With some basic greetings done, we walked the massive 1:30 minute walk to Liina's brother's house where we had a very nice dinner. It turns out mushrooms in Estonia are friggen delicious, who would have known? I spent most of the dinner harassing Margit in Estonian asking her what her favourite things are, most of the time I was met with the 'I don't have a favourite ' response, although we later ascertained that her favourite cake was chocolate cake and her favourite singer was Beyoncé; both good choices.

After dinner we went back to Liina's house for tea and then to bed. I woke early the next morning but stayed in bed and watched movies on my computer, thrilling stuff!

Liina and I at the waterfall.

Then we went off and I saw the widest/biggest waterfall in Estonia, Jägala Falls which was very pretty and I discovered that I can't take a photo any more without looking fat in the face (Jury is still out if it's the fault of all the extra layers or I am actually fat) and drove around her village and surrounding areas and it was all very cute, however I've been assured that it's all much nicer in the Spring!

When we got back we watched Eurovision 1997 with Liina's family which was lots of fun until I it got right to the end when her entire family came to watch Love Shine A Light and then I remembered that Minn Hinsti Dans came next, that was a little awkward (Eurovision peeps will feel me here, everyone else click this for context) and then we just hung out and ate food until it was time to go back to Tallinn. A few uneventful hours later including Liina's first time in the First Class carriage of an Estonian train we were back in Tartu. That was pretty much it!

The other highlight of this week (highlight is a stretch) is that I had to make a poster of something to do with life in Estonia instead of attending Estonian class, however since half my classes had been cancelled I kinda forgot to go to the others (As we speak I should be in Nordic Viking and Medieval Literature, oops!)

I have also come to the realisation and acceptance of something that I've known for years: Despite my love of language, I'm really kinda crap at learning them! I just don't have the natural flair. As such, I will probably not be taking Estonian class next semester as I've pretty much already hit my ceiling there and the grammar has become too complicated for me to remember, but fear not, I hear that a Dutch class will be taught in English next semester, so I might take that and see how I fair at a language much closer to home. I hope nobody is too disappointed!

The second realisation was already known by me: I'm terrible with kids but awesome with Animals. Evidenced by my awkwardness around Liina's nephews and total lack of idea how to deal with them and the amount of love showered apon Liis' dog who loved me. So cute!

Well, thats all for now! Nägemist!

Finnotastic!

You know what they say, third time's a charm! And this is apparently true when it comes to poorly planned weekend trips to Finland! Although this time I actually bought my boat tickets ahead of time so my sense of stinginess forced me to actually go!

My boat!

So at 4:30am after drinking heavily, I got my shit together and ran to the bus station. I almost missed it because of the actions of someone who shall not be named, but he knows who he is and will probably be pissed at me for vaguely alluding to him, but this is for almost making me miss my bus! mwuhaha!

At 8:00am I was on board the Lindalines Karolin boat bound for Helsinki and immediately fell asleep. I woke up to daylight and perhaps one of the bleakest skylines I've ever seen upon arriving in a foreign country. A far cry from last month's brilliant blue dutch sky!

Don't worry, the rest of Helsinki was much nicer than this!

Once I arrived I sent the message out to my friends to let them know I'd arrived, but as it turned out, everyone was busy until 3pm. So I killed 5 hours walking around Helsinki randomly and in the process seeing one of my lecturers from Tartu. This time was passed as follows: Wandering, drinking coffee, sitting in the middle of a public square since it was the only place I could find free wifi, drinking coffee and wandering. Adventure! My hands eventually went purple from the god damn cold-ass Helsinki.

3pm rolled around and I finally caught up with my friend Saara and her friend Helmi, who explained the dramas that caused the delays and we scooted off to a nice restaurant where I had some good reindeer meat burger thingy and some ice cream which cost more than I spend in a week on groceries here in Estonia. It was at this point we were joined by another friend, Axel! Then we went clothes shopping, it was at that point when people kept staring at us that I suddenly remembered I was clothes shopping with famous Finns! An interesting experience for sure!

After purchasing a new jacket and almost losing my scarf Axel and Saara went to see a play while Helmi and I wandered around and looked at stuff. Eventually we all rejoined and took some photos in the train station! Neat!

This is just an odd photo for all involved. Saara looks good though!

After a quick run through the supermarket we said goodnight to Axel and went back to Saara's for power smoothies and bed! It was awesome to finally meet Saara and Axel and cool to hang out with the very quirky Helmi, but alas all good trips must come to an end and that took us a about 200km to the north west, to Tampere!

After a ticketing issue which meant I had to pay €50 for my train ticket I arrived in Tampere to meet my other friend Eveliina! Tampere, like Helsinki is perhaps not a touristic paradise, but it was a very peaceful pretty town, and it was actually a little sunny on Saturday! Eveliina cooked me some food and listened to her potential Euroviisut 2012 entry and then it was off to the Karaoke bar! I got my sing on in Finnish all over their 1973 entry 'Tom Tom Tom' and then Eveliina helped me discover how terrible of a rapper I am as we painfully dragged ourselves through 2009's 'Lose Control'. After each performance we received great applause and someone even came up to me to thank me for singing in Finnish. I guess it means something that a random Australian appreciates their weird ass language!

Eveliina mopping the floor with Christina Aguilera's Beautiful

We also went to the Näsinneula, a big ass tower in Tampere where we could see all the lights in the town and caught a movie; Abduction startting Taylor Lautner! Decent storyline, good action and just enough instances of him not wearing a shirt, a winner all around, except I almost lost my scarf AGAIN.

When Sunday came, I had to say goodbye to the effervescent Eveliina and head back to Helsinki and spent several hours trying to find the west port as my boat was cancelled and I had to take the Tallink back. The rest of the story is less exciting and pretty much the highlight was watching three episodes of 'Bones' over the shoulder of the guy next to me on the bus back to Tartu, thank god for subtitles!

All in all, I would describe Finland as a nice country that is reasonably uneventful, particularly at this time of year, but it's definately a nice place to visit with friends and as you can see Horace made some new friends!

Final thought: If I hadn't have interviewed these guys, I'd never have made friends with them, so I guess the thought here is always do stuff you love, because you might end up friends with a bunch of people who are famous in Finland!