Hey, Mom. And Shaun.

I’ll pick up where I left off to Finnish (never gets old) my Helsinki adventures since WordPress really didn’t want me to do so in the last post.

To refresh your memory, I was just talking about my walk back from King’s Gate to the ferry terminal.

I was able to visit the Suomenlinna Cathedral which hadn’t been open yet on my first pass.

 

I also stopped by a little grocery mart while I waited for the ferry, and I could help but stare a little when a group of uniformed men (and one woman) came into the shop. I was unsuccessful at sneaking a picture, but they were all in little felt hats and pea coats with gleaming buttons. I did a little last minute exploring on the other side of a bridge to determine that they’d come from the naval academy stationed on a tiny island adjacent to Suomenlinna.

Then another pass over the icy waters, followed by some shopping.

I have no idea what these tiny bowls could possibly be used for, but I want them all!!! (Don’t worry, I didn’t get any. They were all priced at €12-15!)

Then I hit up yet another library, this one being the National Library of Finland.

So prettyyyyyyy.

I was fairly content to camp out in this delicious leather armchair (I want one) for the next hour to read a bit. It didn’t bother me that it was positioned on the end of a stack of books, open to the elements, because there were few other people roaming the staircases in front of me and the stacks around me. In fact, I had to stand up every fifteen minutes or so to reactivate the motion-sensing lights. Ha!

I then snuck across the street and into the Helsinki Cathedral. I say ‘sneak’ because it is technically closed to visitors right now. I know this because I explored the crypts the other day through a side entrance with a sign explaining the renovations being performed on the organ. I also know this because I tried to enter just before visiting the library and was shooed away by an attractive young military man who was part of a team loading something inside.

The military man was not present when I exited the library, however, and the front door was left ajar. I slipped inside, admired the view, and made my exit just before a man appeared from nowhere to berate the other few guests who had wandered inside. If that’s not perfect timing, I don’t know what is.

I also tried my luck at infiltrating an interesting-looking government building, but I decided against it because everyone else entering seemed too official.

I opted instead for ramen and some more reading. (I’m not actually reading that ‘Betrayal’ book. My Kindle just gives me ads when not in use. Tehehe.)

I walked downtown to check out the ice skating rink and this creepy cardboard cutout in the window of a theater.

The ice skating wasn’t in the cards because I had no railing or hand to hold me up, and the theater wasn’t in the cards because a Finnish stand-up comedian was performing that night and I didn’t have time to learn Finnish before the show started.

Satisfied and sleepy, I made my way back to my cute little apartment for the last time.

I wanted to sauna, but I screwed up in my scheduling for the seemingly best one in town, and the one close to me was pretty expensive. Also, I could barely keep my eyes open by 7:30. I did a little research and resigned to suana-ing in Rovaniemi.

Sleep took over quickly, and just in time for me to wake early in the morning for my long train ride up north.

So here’s where I made a couple mistakes. When I went to sleep, I suggested to myself that it might be a good idea to check my train ticket, just to be sure the train was leaving at 6am. But no, I thought, it was definitely leaving then and there is no way I would have purchased an earlier ticket. I was safe.

Well, I managed to wake up before my five o’clock alarm, at 4:45am, to be precise. I was unnervingly well rested, and I made a mental note that I should really try this whole ‘going to bed early’ thing when I get home. It certainly has its perks.

I quickly cut up an apple, packed my food, packed my bags, and said goodbye to my cute little shower-less apartment. The sky was the same color as the ground, somehow: a soft, fluffy pale grey, bright as can be even though the sun wasn’t set to rise for several more hours.

I made my way through the empty streets, reveling in the silence. Traveling in the early hours of the day can be exhausting, but waking before the rest of the city has always tickled me a bit.

I got to the train station and did not immediately see my train on the platform postings, so I brought out my ticket to see if it said anything about my platform. What the ticket lacked in platform info, it made up for in departure time: 6:24am. A glance at the giant station clock told me it was precisely 5:30.

Oh, Lizzy. Why do you do this to yourself. I could have eaten in my apartment! I could have explored a bit more! Yada yada yada. I reminded myself that I woke up on my own anyway, and I could just as easily eat and read in the station. So that’s what I did.

When the train finally rolled onto the platform at 6:15, I booked it for the coveted window seats the ticketing agent had told me about on my first day in the city. I’d been assigned aisle seats, but there were a couple seats on the train that are not allowed for booking, I suppose in case something gets overbooked or employees need special rides?? Anyway, I had my sights set on an unclaimed two-seater row, and victory was mine. Woohoo!

I checked my email that evening to see that, after nearly three weeks of waiting, the train company had finally gotten back to me to say they had switched my seats to windows, but by the time I saw the email, I was already cozied up in my next hostel. Ha! Weird timing.

I spent my 6.5 hour train ride (and that’s just the first leg!) reading feverishly through the third installation of a trilogy I started back in high school. It’s always interesting trying to piece together the distant memories of characters and events, but I fell back in love quickly enough and couldn’t put the book (or rather, the Kindle) down.

I was also astonished to see that even the train bathrooms come with the little hose-bidets. So strange, dude. But I kinda like them. Tehehe.

Here’s me noticing how light my hair has gotten and proving to all the haters that it is definitely not black!!!

And here’s me wanting to be in the picture but also not wanting to block the winter wonderland outside my window:

I was amazed every time we passed another tiny town suffocated in snow and dozens of people got on and off the train. How do these crazy Finns live like this?!

That was the third or fourth boy I noticed entering or leaving the train holding a hockey stick. Where were they going with their sticks? This I cannot answer. I also made a trip to the dining car to snag a salmon-pretzel-bun sandwich for lunch.

I was getting antsy as our train inched closer to Oulu, where I was meant to transfer to another train. The transfer was only ten minutes, and we arrive about half an hour late. Thankfully, though, this was a common enough route, and they held the second train for us. Two Finns, a kind middle-aged gentleman and an attractive boy (eh… sadly, he was probably in high school if I’m gonna be honest) translated for me and had my follow them to the next train. Strangers for the win!

Then it was another two and half hours of watching the sun start to set before we touched down in Rovaniemi, home of Santa.

Dude, if I thought Helsinki was cold (and I did), Rovaniemi was… I don’t even know. Colder.

My nose hairs froze almost instantly as I stepped off the train. (I tried to capture this phenomenon in the above picture, but I don’t think I was succsssful.) The air sparkled with frost. And all of my pictures came out blue because everything was the same shade of greyish-white: the sky, the ground, the buildings.

By the time I made it to my hostel, the front of my thighs were burning with cold. I got to the front door and realized I had no way of getting inside. I had forgotten to check the check-in details. I had a moment panic – I didn’t want to walk back to the train station to get WiFi because it was just so stinking cold, but I also had no way of getting inside. I wandered the block a little bit to see if there were any cafes nearby – no luck, and finally resorted to knocking desperately on the windows.

Thankfully, another tenant let me inside, and I immediately warmed up. Turns out the host had sent me check-in details about five minutes after I began my walk from the train station. Not the best timing, there. But the adorable ’boutique’ decorations and the friendly suggestions from the host made up for everything.

For some reason there were two toilets in the bathroom, so I made a point of using them alternately. Hahaha.

Feeling as though I’d wasted the better part of the day (and all of the sunlight) on the train, I quickly regrouped, grabbed my swimsuit, added another layer to my existing outfit, and made off for the public swimming pool across town. I had a mission to sauna, and if there was a bit of swimming involved, I didn’t mind.

Honestly, though, the swimming ended up being the best part! The pool was part of a community workout facility, like a YMCA. I was probably the only person in the whole building who wasn’t a local, and I was definitely the only non-Finn. A reviewer online had said she’d gotten weird looks and felt like she maybe wasn’t welcome or was feeling out of place in a bikini, but my one-piece and confused smiles seemed to get me through the day, and people were quick to offer help when I needed it.

The pool room consisted of a standard lap pool, a kids’ pool (with a giant water slide), a smaller heated kids’ pool, and a heated multi-use pool. I spent most of my time in the strange multi-use pool. It wasn’t crazy warm, but felt like it was maybe 70-80 degrees. Nice and comfortable. And all around the perimeter of the pool were buttons. Each button set off a nearby set of jets that served different purposed. The first I tried just slammed water directly at me, and I realized I was supposed to hold on to the bar on the wall and run against the current. Another set off a large fountain/ curtain of water that was highly pressurized. This served as a lovely neck and back massager! Another was a foot massager, and I spent about ten minutes playing with this one and allowing it to rocket me above the surface of the water as I tried to balance on its jetstream.

The strangest button of all set off a little 8×8 foot square of space that was elevated up and covered with netting. The whole thing bubbled like a shallow pan of water, and you were supposed to just lay in it. Kind of strange, but I finally got the hang of it by watching others, and when I found a nice place to rest my head, I ended up laying there for a full twenty minutes. Kind of a like a lukewarm bubble bath filled with strangers. Hahaha.

I also went down the water slide once, just to make my sister proud.

And then it was time.

For the naked sauna.

No swimsuits allowed. This rule was posted in Finnish and English and was depicted by a smiling little naked cartoon girl with her hair covering her boobs. I reminded myself that I knew nobody here (all girls, anyway, as the sauna was located in the locker room), and I threw caution and my swimsuit to the wind!

Review: strange. Liberating. Sweaty. Also strange. But all in all, a lovely experience!!! Big fan. I think it really helped that I couldn’t understand what anybody was saying. Eavesdropping while naked or holding a conversation while naked is an adventure I will save until I have absolutely no shame or sanity left in my head!

—

Side note: I’m writing from the Rovaniemi airport, and my flight is scheduled to leave in seven minutes. Unfortunately, about ten minutes ago, a woman on the loudspeaker announced that runway conditions would not allow our plane to land, so we will be bussed two hours away to a different airport in Northern Finland, and we will maybe be able to fly out from there. For compensation, we will each be given a €15 voucher to spend in the airport cafe.

There is also no wifi in the airport, and they have yet to give us any other details or to tell us when, exactly, we will be getting on this mystery bus.

So far, this day has not gone according to plan.

I’m reminding myself of Jonathan’s travel motto, though, which is that even when things don’t go according to plan, it’s really never that bad. An event like this can be viewed as trip-ruining or day-ruining, but Jonathan would choose to look at it as a minor inconvenience and another story for the books, so I will do my best to do the same!

—

Okay. So I did the naked sauna. It was great. I also took my first shower in three days, and that was also great! I then tried and failed to dry my hair using the little hotel-style, wall-mounted hairdryer. I eventually cut my losses, bundled up as best I could, and set off in search of dinner.

On my way to dinner, I explored the downtown area a bit. I found Santa and his mailbox (excuse my weird tired face):

And an outdoor ice bar:

When I made it to dinner and reached out to open the door, all of my hair followed my arm in one rigid, frozen chunk. It was seriously frozen solid! I could even snap it in half! (Don’t worry – it snapped the ice, not the hair.) Very very strange feeling. I tried to take some pictures, but it really doesn’t look like anything, so I’ll spare you the tangles.

Dinner was meant to be a highly-reviewed ramen burger, buns made out of crunchy ramen and a burger made of reindeer meat, but they were fresh out. I settled for the pork noodles and was served something yummy with meat that didn’t really feel or taste like pork.

Oh well. As I said, it was yummy. I indulged in some more of my book and packed my leftovers up to bring back to the hostel.

I essentially collapsed immediately and was sound asleep by nine or so. Stay tuned for exciting adventures to come, and to find out how I finally escaped the Rovaniemi airport.

Parhain terveisin/ best regards,
-Lizzy-wa