Exhausted in Helsinki

April and I flew back to Helsinki on Friday evening. By the time we got there, it was already 10 pm, and it seemed wasteful to rent a hotel room for only 8 hours (we had a 7 am flight). So, we did what we always do in that situation -- stay up all night! Unfortunately, we discovered that Helsinki is not the post-industrial telecoms boom town that it purports to be. There weren't any restaurants open after 10 pm, and very little in the way of clubs, either. We did go to Club Helsinki from 11pm - 4 am. With a name like that, you'd think it would be a rocking hot spot of activity. Not so -- we comprised 20% of the Club Helsinki population that Friday night. The picture below is us at 4 AM Saturday morning, after staying up all "night," a term to be used loosely, because it never got dark.

Grinda

On Thursday, Fred was able to take the day off work, so we travelled together to Grinda, one of the innumerable islands that comprise Stockholm's archipelago. The weather was perfect, and there were many other sailboats out, including some impressive trimarans. As you can see, April and I were already becoming quite patriotic about Sweden.

Stockholm

On Tuesday, we flew to Stockholm to meet up with Fred, Ehrin's friend from Coleraine. After some delays, we arrived in Stockholm on Tuesday night and then watched the World Cup playoff match between Italy and Germany -- Italy scored two amazing goals in the last minute of the second overtime to make it to the finals.

On Wednesday, April and I traveled around the old city of Stockholm (Gamla Stan), and visited the palace and the Ridderholm Syrkan, where Swedish kings have been buried since the 13th century. In the evening, we met up with Fred and went out to the Soldermalm area to watch the Portugal vs. France world cup match. We were joined by Mons, a friend of Fred's who works in IT. He took us on a tour of Soldermalm, and we ended up in Gondolen, an expensive bar overlooking Stockholm, where we enjoyed delicious strawberry daquiris, and then stumbled back to Fred's flat.

Swimming with Russians

After Savonlinna, April and I started the long drive towards Helsinki, with plans to sleep out in the car that night. Approximately 4 hours into the trip, we took a break at a roadside stop, which happened to be right next to a lake. There was a nice dock by the water, and we sat down to enjoy the view. After about 5 mniutes, two Russian truckers drove up in their 18 wheelers, stripped to their skivvies, and jumped in the water. Not to be outdone, Ehrin quickly put on his American Flag shorts (see previous wife carrying blog) and jumped in the water as well. Quite refreshing, really.

Savonlinna

After napping a few hours in our car, we drove the next morning to Savonlinna, in the eastern lakes region of Finland. It's a beautiful town reminiscent of Camden, Maine, with gaggles of tourists clogging the streets throughout the summer. At other times of the year, it is truly deserted -- a local saying is that the definition of the phrase "paranoia" is walking down the street in January and thinking someone is following you. We walked through the market area, but April made the comment that everything is Finland is both unfashionable and expensive. Ah well, Finland is many things, but it is not Paris.

The main attraction in Savonlinna is the castle. It was built in the 1400's by the Swedish kingdom, because Savonlinna used to be a border town separating Sweden from Russia. It was taken by the Russians in the 1700's, but then was eventually given to Finland. Every July, an opera festival is held inside the castle keep. We looked into buing tckets, but the cost was exorbitant, even by opera standards -- $350! Instead, we took a tour of the castle, and found that a dress rehearsal was being conducted for the opening night of "The Magic Flute." We snuck into some balcony seats and sat entranced, for over an hour.

After our opera excursion, we had lunch at Huvila, a local restaurant that specializes in reindeer meat. April ordered a big bloody reindeer steak, and wolfed it right down. I even had a taste, to satisfy my interests (the little known "exotic foods" exception to the vegetarianism rule) -- I may not eat beef, but I eat reindeer.

Wolf Park

After our massive tower experience, we drove along through the Finnish countryside toward Savonalinna, a famous opera town in eastern Finland where an opera festival is held every July. Near the start of the drive, we picked up a Czech hitchiker who was trying to get to Helsinki. His name was Peter, but that's about all we could get out of him. He didn't speak English, Chinese, or Japanese, and we didn't speak Czech or German (the potential areas of overlap in our respective linguistic vocabularies). We eventually dropped him off at a roadside stop, and trekked onward down a small road. We stopped in a local spot for some pizza,. At that pizzeria, we found a local tourist map that pointed out a wolf/dog hybrid farm. This was an exciting discovery -- not in the Lonely Planet guide, either! Despite it being after 11 PM (you never can tell the time in Finland in the summer, since it was never dark), we took some back roads to the wolf park. And there really were wolves there - lots of them, all howling at us behind approxpriately high fences.

You know what they say about the Size of a man's tower!

After departing from the Olympic village of Sonkajarvi, we drove south to Kuopio, a lakeside town in central Finland. We had yummy fried herring at the edge of a lake (Finland has more than 180,000 lakes!) and then took a boat cruise through the small islands. The highlight of our time in Kuopio was visiting the Kuopio tower, which lies on one of Finland's largest mountains (all of 98 meters!). We climbed up to the top of the tower and went outside, where a storm was approaching. Ehrin pushed April in front of him to protect him from the large rain drops. At the end of all this monkey business, Ehrin showed everyone what it reallly means to be well hung (see picture)!

She ain't Heavy, She's my wife!

We recently traveled to Finland for the World Wife Carrying Championships. The competition was held in Sonkajarvi, a small village of approximately 1,000 peope in the middle of Finland. Here we are representing the entire North American continent with our necessarily obnoxious regalia. There were about 45 couples present in the competition, many of them with far more ridiculous costumes than us (for example, the Finnish "pro wrestling" champion). The winner, for the last five years, is a former Olympic 800 meter sprinter at the Atlanta games -- not quite fair, if you ask us!

You can check out our North American wife-carrying competition in October 2005 at: http://www.sundayriver.com/summer/wifecarry.html