Sunday, July 29 – Aire-Maija and Train Ride

So, apologies – I’m behind because there was literally no internet in all of Naantali (where I stayed last), not because I’m lazy. Also, today, I really didn’t take pictures, so apologies for that too.

Today, I met up with my Finnish teacher Aire-Maija, which was an adventure in itself. The hostel phone refused to call her phone, so I ended up being very stalkerish and looking up her hotel. She wasn’t in her room, so I stalked her in the breakfast room (and found her, yay!)

We didn’t really do much exciting. We wandered through the market and a few little stores. She bought me a new companion, Marja, as a souvenir gift (who I send home because I was afraid the travelling might be too much for her). She is a dwarf, or in Finnish, “tuntti”.

We had lunch at Fazer, the home of Finnish chocolate. Finnish chocolate isn’t famous, but its actually really good. Anyways, I wish I had photos of this place for you guys because its impossible to explain. Just imagine a huge room full of chocolate and candy and then shelves of cakes and desserts and then a tiny shelf of sandwiches and, of course, coffee, because it isn’t Finnish without the coffee. For dessert, I had this very exciting pineapple-meringue thing in vanilla sauce. I think Finns have a super sweet tooth. I thought I was doing dessert by eating their sweet buns and donuts (I generally do dessert for breakfast, though now I have oatmeal, wheeee!) but then,  there’s all these cakes and explosive tart things, Finland is just a good place to find sugar. (yum)

We stopped at Kiasma, too, which was this interesting modern art museum. The best part was right at the entrance, where there was a life-sized crocheted police car. The rest was kind of…weird, though it was interesting to see the Finnish take on the Occupy movement. It was this very weird satire that made me borderline uncomfortable, but, at the same time, the mocking of Americans amused me to no end.

Then, saying good-bye to Aire-Maija, Moomin and Pippi and I got on a train to Turku. We were on the second level of the train, so there was amazing visibility, it was awesome.

From Turku, we took a bus to Naantali, where our hostel was, woohoo!