The Finnish Experience

Saturday I met up with the lovely Aino. She's a really fun and friendly Finnish girl who speaks AH-mazing english (despite what she thinks) and knows Helsinki like that back of her hand. She was willing to take me around to where the locals hang out and even taught me north from south. Then it was time for the real Finnish experience. Dun dun dun.

I bought alcohol legally for the first time! It was pretty thrilling if I do say so myself. I bought a "long drink" (gross), a Finnish light beer (gross), and Finnish pear cider, which was absolutely delicious... I'm a girl, what to you expect? Although, I'm not much of a drinker so I ended up only drinking half of each and then setting them down, which I suspect is a cardinal sin among Finns, but maybe they'll cut me some slack seeing as I'm only a beginner. Anyway, with drinks in hand, we headed off to join some Finnish boys recently released from the army.

In Finland, joining the military is mandatory for men over 18. They either join for 6 months, do civil service for a year, go to jail, or flee the country. They're not the best of options, so needless to say these boys were ready to celebrate in a traditional Finnish fashion. They were hilarious guys who described the army as "running around in the forest and shooting lasers at one another." Oh, and sleeping in tents in the middle of winter and waking up every hour, but thats a lot less funny.

They taught me some important lessons too! Several Finnish phrases which I forgot all too soon and some essential steps when doing sauna.

Step #1- Do sauna... All the time.
Step #2- Get out of sauna and have a cold Finnish beer, preferably Koff.
Step #3- Repeat process and drink as many beers as humanly possible.

I think that's only one version of sauna, so I may try the other pleasant alternatives like getting slapped with birch tree branches or jumping into a hole carved in the frozen lake. The Finns have some interesting hobbies. And did I mention their passion for gardening?



All in all, it was a pretty fun night. Thank you again Aino for everything.. But most of all, thank you for this...



This, people, is what I love about the Finns... It's ammonium chloride flavored Finnish candy. Not even kidding. It's made almost entirely of sugar, liquorice, and ammonium chloride. And guess what? People here actually like it. Yeah. I, on the other hand, do not. But at least I actually let the stuff touch my tongue before spitting it out.

In conclusion, it was an awesome weekend. Today (Sunday) was pretty exciting too, but this is long enough so I'll post on it tomorrow. Goodnight!