Helsinki, Finland

Friday Aug. 24/12

Arrived in Helsinki via the train in the afternoon. I met up with my host, Fernando. Fernando is originally from Columbia. He lived in Australia for 6 years and has now been in Finland for 5 years. He is some sort of important accountant.

Fernando has a fairly big 3 bedroom apartment, very close to the train station and city centre. He was hosting 2 other girls from Switzerland as well. So I met them and then we all went to the shop to get some groceries for supper. Fernando cooked up spaghetti. Later, he took me for a walk around the city. We stopped at an Australian bar for a welcome beer.


Saturday Aug. 25/12

Today was the Australian football finals. Fernando's team from Helsinki was playing in the gold medal match against Turku (West of Helsinki).
I went with him in the morning and helped set up the beer tent. First was the bronze medal game. It took some time to catch onto the rules.. it's like rugby, soccer, football mixed. By the time Fernando's team was playing I had the hang of it. There is a guy on his team from Saskatoon, which was super cool.. because most people have never even heard of Saskatchewan.

Back Row, 3rd from right: Micheal Huck (Saskatoon)
Front Row, 3rd from left: Fernando Leon 

Helsinki Heatseekers won! It was great! And the celebration after was even better!
We had some grill and some beers.. then back at Fernando's more beer. Then to a pub followed by a club followed by another club :) and many more beers! I met tons of new people, all very interested in hearing about my trip.  It was a fun night.




Sunday Aug. 26/12

Hung over. The worst I have been so far this whole trip.

I managed to shower and I thought I could power through the hangover and go see some sights still.

I tried. I went to the National Museum.

The first room was prehistoric.. I walked around and attempted to read the scripts.. but nothing was being processed. I was useless. I did manage to finish walking around the rest of the museum.. but I got very little out of it.
Then I took a short nap on the grass in the park beside the museum. At least it was nice and sunny out.

On top of the hangover, I got an infection in my leg. I got bitten by something like a week ago on my thigh and it never got better, just worse. So I got some stuff from the pharmacy but it was aching pretty bad.
I was in rough shape. So I took it easy for the rest of the evening and night.