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!