Bite it like a bulldog!

Woo, okay so now that I've got a few hours in which to update this, I can add the pictures of Rovaniemi, the Arctic Circle line, and Lordi's Rocktaurant!


This is the sky outside of my window in Rovaniemi at midnight. No joke. I stayed up until midnight exactly to get a picture.

So today I awoke (late, thanks to the phone deciding that 8.30 wasn't a permissible time for me to awaken, and changing to 9 behind my back...), ate and then walked down to the bus station (which is blessedly very close to my guesthouse) to catch the shuttle/bus to Santa's Village. Getting there, I definitely got the sense it'd be more entertaining in winter when the "Christmas spirit" seems to abound... but my main motivation was to see the Arctic Circle line anyway so it was fine.


Very commercial, lots of capitalizing on Santa being from Finland. Also would be great for people who really like Christmas, which I am not one of those... At any rate I can say I crossed the line at the Arctic Circle, which was the objective of visiting.

After this whole bit, came back to the guesthouse for a bit and then it was off to Lordi's Rocktaurant! First, however, I needed to make a stop at the square. Renamed Lordi Square, it has a plaque with the imprints of the bandmembers' hands.

And from that point it was time to go eat!



Inside it was a little more fast food-y than I expected, but it was still cool to see Lordi stuff on the walls and the chairs were definitely pretty awesome.


I got curry!

Well, at this point that's all I have to update... tomorrow I catch a couple trains to get to Pori, where I'll reunite with Laura and perhaps go on more madcap adventures.

Tavataan taas!

From Jyväskylä to Rovaniemi...

So it's been a few days since the last update... things seem to pile up in terms of travel and availability of internet. At any rate, Laura and I moved to stay with her grandparents, both very kind people. I stayed only about a day or so, long enough to check out the Panda candy factory and the water tower Vesilinna which her grandfather helped build. The view from the tower was fantastic!

Later that same evening we went to a midnight hot air balloon race - the idea being that one balloon leads, lands, and the others push out the sandbag ballast and try and land it as close as possible to the landing site. Either way, it was definitely neat to watch the balloons inflate, and there were a few fun ones... Like the sauna balloon! They rigged up a sauna in it - so Finnish. You can see the guy standing right next to it is holding a vihta, the bundle of birch branches used in sauna.

You can of course imagine the jokes resulting from this one...


Keep in mind this was all around 11 or so at night... the near-constant lightness here is so awesome.

Next morning (today) I caught a train from Jyväskylä to Rovaniemi. Actually, to be more accurate, it was a little more like 3 trains and a bus. But my trip to Pori will be easier since I remembered to ask for the least number of changeovers...
At any rate, I got here with little difficulty (granted I was nervous about figuring out the Finnish travel system because seriously - being lost in a foreign country where there's a mild language barrier because of your lack of fluency? Not fun. But I found the city just fine, met a girl from Ohio and a couple from Australia on my last train, which was neat. And so, here I am at Guesthouse Borealis. I went out to explore a little of Rovaniemi tonight, ending up at Restaurant Nili where I tried reindeer.


It was all rustic and fun inside! And the reindeer itself was wonderful, although really not unlike beef. I had two different types in the same meal - grilled silverside and braised foreloin. I wasn't sure which was which, really, but one tasted rather like beef tips in stew, and the other tasted like a gamey steak. Pretty good stuff!

I'll upload more tomorrow perhaps, as I'll be going to the Arctic Circle line and Lordi's Rocktaurant, the main reasons I came here!

Until then,

Tavataan taas!

Jyväskylä

It does seem like I post once every city or so... but I don't know when I'll next have wireless and this seems like a great time to post anyway. We've been here in Jyväskylä for a few days now, hanging out with Katri and Sami - Laura's aunt and uncle - and their daughter Siiri. We've taken a train around the city, shopped, gone to the lakeshore, gone out dancing (an adventure and a half in itself...) and had a lot of fun.
It's so pretty here - there are these gorgeous wildflowers everywhere, and so many trees it's amazing.

The constant lightness of the sky does screw me over a little - this picture on the lake was taken around 8 or 9 at night.


I am apparently a force of corruption wherever I go (or inspiration, depending on which viewpoint you choose...), and ended up dyeing Siiri's hair purple - only a couple of streaks, but similar style to my own (which I think was the point haha).


We took the Lillijuna around the city, which was neat to check out as well - I don't think I would've seen quite so much of the city just by walking.


Beyond that, we went out for an evening on the town. I'm definitely frustrated I couldn't figure out a way to pack my combats, considering I like them with anything that involves a skirt, but they wouldn't fit in my bags. It was fun - we went for drinks and dancing at a few places, and I did end up getting told I have a perfect ass...

At any rate that's about all I have for everyone right now... Updates will keep coming as time flows onward. Until then -

Tavataan taas!

Nyt olemme Suomessa!

So as quite a few of you know, we arrived safely and without much incident. I've definitely learned I dislike the Paris airport, though. I got off the plane, after getting a little help from the woman in my row to figure out where I was going in the first place, went downstairs, found where I needed to go for my flight, went back upstairs, got sent through customs (which was weird, but there you go...) went out by the baggage claim, stood looking confused, asked a couple people at a desk, got sent in another direction, followed the signs to my terminal, and had to go through security again. That was ridiculous. At least when I got to my gate, shortly thereafter a woman sat next to me and I glanced over at her book to see it was in English so I said hi and turns out she was from PA in France on a tour kind of thing. We were confused about the gate thing together but we both got on our planes just fine so it worked out. Arrived in Finland, grinning like a maniac while looking out the window... I did manage to order a can of soda in Finnish on the plane, of which I was proud. Met with Laura in the airport, bought a SIM card and a bottle of soda and off we went on the 4 hour car ride to her family's cabin. Cars being soporific as they are for me, I fell asleep multiple times on the way... though I did hear some familiar songs on the radio before I did. Got there, met the family - all were very very kind and hospitable - dragged our things to the room, and then it was time for the Juhannus eve festivities. We went to the sauna, roasted sausages and drank quite a bit.

Shot of the yard - far left is the sauna, on the right is the picnic table surrounded by mosquito netting, behind which you can see the little room in which there was a small grill.
Shot of the front of the cabin - it was once a schoolhouse. Inside, it was like a maze. Lots of fun to wander!
Me in jail. Vankilassa.

Went to sleep, got back up and had a great Juhannus during which we did more of the same. I learned to play Mölkky as well, a lawn game somewhat like Bocci ball. Today we left the cabin with Laura's grandparents, went to the grocery store and their house, and now are at her aunt's place. They're all so nice here! I'm definitely shaky with the language... I think I'm thinking too much - trying too hard to speak well immediately that I can't say anything well... I'm learning slowly, though. They're all so tolerant of my idiocy. Hopefully by the time I get to the class I'll be able to say things at least somewhat well. My writing is better than my speaking, so I definitely have to work on that. But a little bit at a time.
And I think my class would be greatly disappointed if I didn't choose to end each entry with:

Tavataan taas!