finland

The thing about Finland that took me the longest to wrap my head around was how sparsely populated the place was. As I was flying in I could see these large spaces of green land, with a solo house here and there, but not in clusters, instead very spread out. And it didn't make any sense to me. Did people really live this far apart from each other?




It took awhile, but it all sorta made sense eventually. The place really does have a low population, the capital only having 600,000 peps. In addition, privacy is highly valued. It seems that the Fins really appreciate nature, being out there with their friends and family. So most everyone has access to a cabin in the woods, either their own or someones they know. They seem to come complete with a sauna, conveniently located next to crystal clear lakes. You might see someone else using this lake at the same time. But probably not.










Oh, and the sunsets are amazing. They last for hours and is followed by a sunrise about 3 hours later. It is seriously difficult to tell when the day ends and the morning begins, it never seems to become completely dark this time of year.






Finland is the only country that I know that actually encourages population increase, though I'd imagine places such as Russia might too. They do this with payments of 100 dollars a month for each child for every family regardless of income! This is also very difficult for me to understand. Why every family would get the same amount, never mind that they are getting anything at all.

Me you and a bottle of whiskey

I will spare you the details of my flight into stockholm, besides that a delay at PDX caused me to miss my connection in chicago, so instead they sent me to london, and then to stockholm, 12 hours late, which wasn't too awful, EXCEPT that I got there without my luggage....yea that sucks. but luckily Arlo swept in and retrieved me from the airport, got me on a bus, and presented me with a bottle of scottish whiskey (yea, this guy knows me pretty well).

Our hostel is called the Red Boat, properly named, as it is indeed a boat, in the Baltic Sea.

What about my other favorite subject, food?
well, the best airplane food I've ever had was from London to Stockholm, salmon, served over potatoes with a heavily dilled mayo sauce, a slice of swiss cheese, a dried apricot, and a little pastry with cream cheese and raspberry jam, plus black coffee and chocolate.

They best meal in Stockholm: we shared two dishes, the first, swedish meatballs with mashed papas and the second, poached sole with this AMAZING lemon sauce, i dont know how they made it, but it was awesome.

I'm just now realizing that Stockholm is the coolest city I have ever been in. The buildings are so impressive, massive things made of rocks such as granite and basalt. They look nearly indestructible, and maybe they are, Sweden's never been taken over by another country, not like those poor Fins. As a result, Stockholm has all these really old, awesome buildings. They are brightly colored, honey yellows and brick reds, and decorated with really unique carvings and statues. It is really amazing.

The combination of sleeping on a boat for 3 days and an average of 3 hours of sleep a night as left me feeling constantly dizzy. It feels like I'm on a freaking boat everywhere I go. I am looking forward to retreating to land based hostels so I can loose these sea legs.


We took a ferry from Stockholm to Turku last night, a 12 hour ride. The boat was huge, and presented us with a really amazing Scandinavian dinner. There were 3 kinds of gravlox, it was so good, plus 'serve yourself' beer and wine, both out of the tap. On the ferry I found a significant decrease in the number of people who spoke English. I used this as an incentive to pick up some Finnish. I started with learning to count to ten.


Yksi

kaksi

kolme

neljä

viisi

kuusi

seitemän

kahdeksan

yhdeksan

kymmenen

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