Architecture, Karaoke, and a few days in HelSUCKY

Sorry for the delay between posts! I came back from study tour only to discover that I have a ton of work to be doing the next couple of weeks. No, I haven't been working on it yet... but I've been seriously thinking about it, and that has to count for something, right?

So Helsinki. Definitely the furthest north I have ever been, and would ever WANT to go. Did you know Santa Claus likes in Finland? Yeah. We weren't that far from the arctic circle. In fact, we were at the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska. After we got off the ferry from Tallinn, we checked into the Holiday Inn. It was really nice! I roomed with Christie and we chose to hibernate that first night and watch ridiculous British TV.

The next morning... it was raining. Shocker. For whatever reason, I chose probably the worst footwear possible for walking around the city. It was a shame because this was the day that we had the most free time to explore Helsinki, but all we could do was hide out inside a cafe. We did visit the Rock Church (a church made out of rock...) and the Helsinki University Museum. Both were really cool, but I was really wet and not thrilled about it.

Helsucky

The Rock Church

The highlight of Wednesday was probably our visit to a Finnish health center. I know that sounds really lame, but it was definitely by far our best academic visit yet. It was really interesting to see how they keep GPs, hospitals, physical therapy, etc. all under one roof. They gave us watermelon and grapes, AND there was hand sanitizer every 10 feet for germaphobes like myself. All-around success.

Don't worry.. Thursday was infinitely better. The sun came out, which made our 30 min. walks from point to point muchhh easier. We kind of came to the conclusion that Helsinki looks more like an American city than any of the other places I've been in Europe so far. Something unique though..... there are lots of saunas. And when I say lots of saunas, I mean one sauna to every five people. It's a huge cultural thing (prob because they are so wet and cold all the time) so of course DIS had us try it. They divided us into men and women... which was probably pretty awkward for the guys considering there are only 3 of them, plus our teachers. The rest of us girls put on our towels (even though you're really supposed to go in the nude) and piled into one sauna. Some people really liked it, but it wasn't for me. You all know how sweaty I can get... and I get really freaked out when I can't breathe very well. Fortunately, there are cold showers right outside the door so we could take breaks pretty frequently. I have to say, my experience with showering with the XC girls every day definitely made this a lot easier for me than it probably would have been otherwise.

Next stop was the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra... but most of us opted to go back to the hotel and take a real shower first. We got all dressed up and headed to Finlandia Hall ..... where we ran into who, but the ARCHITECTURE program. I knew a few of them from my Visual Journal class, and from other things, so that was an interesting surprise. The concert was amazing. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I definitely dozed off for a little bit and had a weird Fantasia-like dream... but once I woke up from that it was great! Haha being at the orchestra made it feel even more like Christmastime to me. Gotta keep reminding myself that it's not even Halloween yet.

After the concert, most of us still needed to eat dinner. So we went to a place called Virgin Oil where we once again spent more than we probably needed to on wine & pizza. Somehow, through this whole trip we kept justifying our food purchases by saying "it was worth it" and "we're only in Helsinki once!" Whatever. I stand by those statements. We had a great time, and lots of good girlie bonding. I'm telling you "2 truths and a lie" is a great way to get to know people hahah.

We were just going to walk back to the hotel afterwards, but we somehow managed to stumble across a set of hipsters outside a karaoke bar. Allie immediately identified them as "ARCHITECTURE" so I mean, we naturally had to stop :) Also, I had been blabbering all week about how much fun karaoke is and how badly I wanted to do it. We put our names in for "I Want it That Way" and even though the wait was pretty long, Allie, Ariel, Jonelle, and I stuck around for it. Definitely, definitely worth it.

After not a lot of sleep, we woke up Friday morning and went to this crazy modern art museum. I could give you the name of it... but my itinerary is across the room hahaha. At any rate, it was really weird but really cool at the same time. There was this video exhibit called Elixir which involved laying on the ground and watching all kinds of weird images being projected onto the ceiling and walls. From there we went to our last group lunch, and then headed back to home sweet Copenhagen.

One last little anecdote that I left out .... we were looking for food before the philharmonic on Thursday, and we stopped into this little cafe by the central train station. Everything was in Finnish, so we had to ask what was in all of the sandwiches and wraps and stuff. The girl behind the counter pointed to one and was like, "this is rainbow and tomato. No, no, I'm sorry... I mean REINDEER and tomato." Reindeer. Really? Looks like the Finnish Santa is going to be one short this year. Sorry Rudolph :(

So now I guess it's time to get started on all of that work. I brought back a nasty cold from that nasty weather.. so now I'm a little HelSICKY. okay sorry I'll stop.

Until the next adventure,

Caitlin :)