Sunday, July 31, 2011

Worthless, Worthless Frenchman

I was awakened last night at I don't know what hour by a drunk Frenchman coming into our hostel dorm room. He had been out all night "partying." When he laid down in the bed next to mine I could smell the alcohol on his breath and so I got up and changed positions so that my head was at the other end of the bed. That's how thick the air was with alcohol. Then he pulls out a thing of crackers and starts eating them slowly and loudly, one cracker at a time. Crunch (chew, chew, chew) crunch! (chew, chew, chew) like an elephant. I sat up and just stared at him and watched his nearly lifeless hand reaching for the crackers. He had his eyes closed and I'm pretty sure he won't remember it this morning. But I will, of course. You just lost big points with me, French people.

Vanilla Milkshakes in St. Petersburg

I've been up all night hanging out with Roman, possibly the most hospitable human on the face of the planet. First he asked me where I was going, what I wanted to see, and then he suggested a town I might like. He said it was an old Russian town, not too big. We were looking at train ticket prices and I decided I wanted to go there. I told him "Let's buy it. I don't want to know where it is, or anything about it. Let's just buy the ticket." So now tomorrow I'm going to a town called Вологда, and I have pretty much no idea where it is (pronounced roughly "Bologda"). He tried to point it out on the map to me and I waved my hands and covered my face and said "I don't want to know anything about it!" and he looked confused by this strange American gesturing wildly. The only thing I do know is that tomorrow I will get on a train at 8:40 in the evening. I have a bed on the train. Between 8 and 9 the next morning I will be in Bololgda. And it will be great.

The trip to St. Petersburg from Finland was eventful. The bus driver and I got off to a bad start, him yelling at me in Finnish to put a suitcase on top of another suitcase and me yelling back "I don't speak Finnish! I don't speak Finnish!" But then he found out I was American and tensions eased. I think he's sick of Russians because he has to deal with them all the time and they never speak Finnish and he doesn't speak Russian. But with me could excuse the lack of Finnish.

After about 15 minutes in the bus he offered me a strawberry, and I gladly accepted. Then, when we crossed into Russia, he found out I did speak a little bit of Finnish and the floodgates opened. We spent the next 2 hours having the most broken conversation it's possible for two humans to have. He would speak in Finnish and I would say, "Uh huh, OK, yep". And then eventually he would say "Did you understand?" and would smile sadly and say, "No, sorry."

We did manage to communicate a few things, like how he had lived in Moscow for a year and how I had studied in Savonlinna for 3 weeks. I told him my sister lived in Africa and that I might go visit her. At one point he asked what the word for bridge was (silta) and I thought he had said hedgehog (silli), so I said "Hedgehog! Hedgehog!" and again he looked confused. He gestured to the construction workers up ahead and it clicked for me and I said "Ohhhhhh -- bridge". I thought we were talking about hedgehogs. There's lots of hedgehogs in Finland.

St. Petersburg has been overwhelming. It's a national holiday here so everyone is dressed up like sailors, because apparently the holiday is to commemorate mariners. I honestly thought it was just Russian fashion, but the girl at the hostel set me straight. After checking into the hostel I immediately went and bought a Russian dictionary. The words are of course in Cyrilic but after some work on the bus and some work here (comparing MacDonald's in latin to МакДоналдс in cyrilic, for example) I can sort of read the language. My accent is awful and I have no idea where the stress lies in the words, but I can sort of read it. Which is a good start. Tomorrow my goal is to take a Russian course, whatever the cost, before getting on my train tomorrow evening.

About 30 minutes ago I went to the ATM to get cash and then afterward got a vanilla milkshake at Carl's Junior. I could be in California right now. Instead I'm in St. Petersburg. And will write more tomorrow.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Strawberry Ice Cream

Free late night Savonlinnan internet found! It's located in the hotel Seurahuone and it's on the bottom level in the corner and it's completely free. I am of course not staying here but I pulled the foreigner card by speaking to the reception in English who then either assumed I'm staying at the hotel or more likely just doesn't care that I'm using the internet.

Last night I spent picking up cans. I walked around with two grocery bags and when I saw beer cans and cider cans I picked them up, emptied them, and put them in my bag. After a while my bag started to stink and it started to make me sort of nauseous, but luckily at that point I had probably about 5 euros under my belt and felt good enough to quit.

Tomorrow I go to Russia. I am excited about this. I also don't care. I have found through traveling that most places are pretty much the same. Finland is essentially Minnesota albeit with people speaking in a barbaric tongue and dancing like polar bears standing on their hind legs.

Cuba is essentially Florida except with a dictator, tons of Russian cars, buildings in ruins, lots and lots of extremely poor people, and absolutely no American influence. So I guess the analogy breaks down. What I mean to say is that you build up a place in your mind, like I have done with Russia, give it all sorts of mystique, and then you get there and you realize it's like a lot of other places. There's people going to work, there's waiters out having cigarettes on their 10 minute breaks, there's rich people having coffee, there's homeless people begging. Some of the customs change and the money changes and the language might change, but most places are essential the same. Most places.

Tonight is my last night in Savonlinna. I am celebrating by eating everything in my fridge and also taking myself out for ice cream. I love that term "taking yourself out". It sounds so nice. What it really means is that I have no friends here. I would love to go with someone else but everyone has left. So I go by myself. I go and get a strawberry cone, hopefully successfully order in Finnish, and then sit by the water and eat it. I look at the sky on fire to the west and wonder what other people are doing. I wonder what Barry is doing at home and what my parents are doing. I wonder what my sister is doing in Africa. I wonder if I should go to Africa. I wonder if my brother is in Juneau right now flying. I wonder what kind of words my three year old niece has learned. I wonder how my twin nephews are doing. I wonder what my sister Lynn is doing. And then I finish my icecream and I walk home, and thus will have passed my last night in Finland.

The bus ride tomorrow is 8 hours long. This is because it makes lots of stops and also because going through customs is a huge hassle. You have to go through Finnish customs and then through Russian customs. The Russian part is ostensibly harder. They look at you and inspect your visa and wonder why you have a beard. They wonder why you would want to go to Russia, especially alone. They wonder why you have a skateboard strapped to your back.

The days in Finland are already getting noticeably shorter. When I get here it would still be really light right now, but now it is almost dark. And now at night it gets genuinely dark. Real dark. Night dark. The kind of dark you associate with night. This means it's time for me to start heading south. St. Petersburg is slightly south of where I am, and Moscow is slightly south of that. And then maybe China and who the hell knows. I certainly don't. And I'm thankful for that.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Everybody is Leaving

The course here in Finland has come to an end. Almost everyone has left. The dorms are eerily silent. The only thing you can here is the sound of the washing machines washing my clothes. This is the 4th time I have washed my purple UW shorts without wearing them. Ever since I left them in a locker in a Helsinki hostel after swimming for four days without giving them time to dry out, they have been impregnated with an unremovable funk that has rendered them unwearable.

I am sitting at the computers where I would often check my email between classes or more often than not during class. Things feel sort of normal, but also completely not. There is no one here. Downstairs in the cafeteria there is food in the hot trays waiting under the lamps for students that will never come. It's as if the lady working there cooked for everyone today not remembering that everyone was leaving today. I think she made chicken nuggets. They look delicious.

I am once again fasting. I missed my fast day this Wednesday because we had the end of the year dinner where I piled my plate high with several pounds of food and then finished it off with some apple pastry and delcious vanilla icecream, so now I have to fast today. To make matters worse, I was up eating candy last night until 1am which means I have to wait until 1am before I eat tonight. And most likely around 1am I will be too tired to even want to eat, which will kill all the excitement I've been building up all day about eating in the first place. Either way it will be good, though. Or I will be asleep.

On Sunday I will go to Russia. I will take a bus that takes over 8 hours and then I will be in St. Petersburg with absolutely no idea what I am going to do or where I am going to go. It will be great. I will be lonely. It's hard to underestimate the heart-crushing loneliness that can be experience after spending three weeks with the same people every day, always having people to hang out with and activities to do, always swimming and walking around town and getting icecream. But it will be good for me. I need this loneliness. Mabye it will help me figure out what I want to do. Maybe it will make me buy a plane ticket to Africa. Or maybe it will make me go to Mongolia and lose my mind.

The only thing I have really been thinking about all day is Chipotle. I want to eat Chipotle so bad right now. But there is no Chipotle in Finland. In fact, there is only one Chipotle on this side of the water and it's in London. And I'm not going to London. Though I did just check flights.

But I better go now. Bo and Mike are about to get on a bus to Helsinki where they will eventually catch flights to the US. I have to play floor hockey at 4pm with the Finns and also do my situps and pullups for the day. And fast. And go the post office. And clean my room. And bask in beautiful loneliness.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

The Time We Almost Went to Russia

I am currently at a forestry museum about 30 miles southeast of Savonlinna, and I am not happy. I hate museums. Why are we at a forestry museum when instead we could be out in the forest? Insead of walking around the museum I have found this computer with free internet where I can do some low-level blogging. I also found Andrey, one of the Russian guys in the program, sitting in the entryway with his computer doing some work so I have been talking to him, too.

Yesterday Bo and I tried to go to Russia. We failed. We made it to the border, could see a tiny Russian flag in the distance, but didn't get to the actual actual border. We took a 50 minute train to Parikkala and then walked about 10 kilometers in the heat before a green van with bear insignia on the side of it pulled up to us and asked us what we were doing. We said we were walking in the countryside. They asked us if we were aware we were so close to the Russian border and we said yes and asked if we could see it. They said we couldn't go within 200 meters of it or they would have to give us a hefty fine. Then they took Bo's information from his ID and drove off.

After more walking we finally made it to the actual border patrol office. There a guy let us fill up our water bottles and then said he would just take us in his van to the border. He was very nice and didn't speak much English. When I told him in Finnish that we were studying Finnish his face lit up and he said "You speak Finnish! Let's speak Finnish then!" But he soon found out that our Finnish was very limited.

He drove us to the no-man's land near the border and let us get out and take photos. He said last year they caught about 6 people trying to sneak in from Russia illegally. When someone tries to sneak in illegally from Russia, they are questioned and then sent back to Russia, free of charge. When someone tries to sneak into Russia from Finland, they are held in Russian prision and then eventually sent home. He told us that a while back a German guy rode tried to ride his bike across the border. The Finns didn't see him and before it was too late he was in the custody of the Russians, who kept him in Russia for a month before sending him back to Germany. So it was probably a good thing we didn't get too close to the border on our own.

Russia's mystique continues to grow for me and my visa should be in the mail any day now. I would like to study Russian in St. Petersburg for a week or two and then head east towards Mongolia but we'll see what happens. Mabye I will be lonely amidst all the Russians and maybe I will have to celebrate my 28th birthday relatively alone. Or maybe I will be in a Russian wheat field drinking vodka and singing Russian folk music! It's always 50-50.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Tough Dough

Tomorrow Bo and I might try to sneak into Russia. It won't really be sneaking, since I'm pretty sure there won't even be a fence there, so you could say that tomorrow we might just try to "go to Russia."

Savonlinna is about 40 miles from Russia. To get there you (ostensibly) take a train to Parikkala, about an hour and directly towards the Russian border, and then walk a few kilometers. At some point you either probably say to yourself "I'm in Russia now" or stumble across a Russian farmer plowing his fields and yelling at his horses in Russian. Or yelling at his tractor.

Things have become somewhat routine around here. But good routine. We still swim extensively and my diet has still included fasting on a regular basis. I have also learned how to make pizza from scratch. My first attempt was a disaster. Instead of putting the sugar in with the yeast I put it in the flower and the dough barely rose at all. When we made "pulla" the other day (bread buns) our teacher kept callling the dough "duff". This sounded hilarious but makes sense seeing as you would pronounce the word "tough" "tuff." English is a hard language.

Today I might play floor hockey. I played last Friday and sweated more than I have sweated in five years. I was running all over the place and at one point accidentally gauged an Italian girl in the hand with my finger nails and she started bleeding. Then she got hit in the nose by the ball and started bleeding from the nose. She was having a good time.

I'm going to skip the afternoon lecture today. It's on Finnish music. The teaching is atrocious. She says everything in Finnish and then immediately translates it to English. So effectively she says everything twice. It is pointless and awful and instead of going I will spend the day on the beach eating cashews and swimming and lying in the sun.

Finland!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Sauna and Sausage

I write to you now from the hallway the University of Eastern Finland in Savonlinna, Finland, where I am currently supposed to be in class learning how to use the passive voice in Finnish. But I had to get out. The teacher, though being incredibly sweet and nice and well-meaning, is terrible. Today we had to examine a text about what kids do during summer vacation in Finland. Instead of us reading the text aloud to practice our pronunciation (which in the case of 99% of us is somewhere between "bad" and "awful"), she read the text. Then, instead of asking us what various words meant and trying to get us to think about them, she explained all the words. Then, instead of making us look for the passive voice constructions and identify them, she pointed them out. And finally, instead of having us try to explain what these constructions meant, she explained them. So needless to say I am currently taking a "bathroom break" which will probably last in the neighborhood of 15 minutes.

This is not to say the class hasn't been productive. It has. I have been drawing a beautiful drawing using thousands of small, alternatingly spaced hyphens, sometimes switching the directions of the hyphens or their density, and what started as a simple mindless doodle is now taking the form of a beautiful chalice, which I will undoubtedly give to one of my new CIMO friends as a gift and a token of American craftsmanship and hospitality.

Yesterday we went in the sauna. I was excited because it was supposed to be a true Finnish sauna experience, but it was basically like any other sauna in the United States. The only thing different was that Bo and I ripped branches off a birch tree and formed them in the shape of a sort of mini broom with which traditionally the Finns rap against their skin to clean themselves and further exfoliate their pores. But of course Bo and I just ended up whipping each other as hard as we could.

The sauna was accompanied by a "traditional" Finnish meal, AKA dishes stolen from other countries like pasta salad topped off with something "truly" Finnish in the form of various types of sausage, even though the sausages were just store-bought and resembled something you might see on a hot dog cart at a baseball game that has been sitting there for several hours.

But hey, who am I to complain? Free sauna, swimming in the lake, free dinner? We roasted the sausages ourselves over an open fire and sat and talked and ate till our heart's content. Even though it was a school outing we were encouraged to bring beer if we wanted it or cider or whatever we wanted to drink. If people wanted to smoke they could as long as they put their butts in an appropriate receptacle afterward. This would never happen in the US. You could never have alcohol on a school outing. But the Finns treat it as no big deal, expect us to be responsible and I think people appreciate that responsibility and respect and respond accordingly. No one getting hammered drunk and falling over or trying to put their hand in the suana coals. People are a lot more benign when you take away the taboos involved with drinking that exist in the US, but that is an entirely different story.

Anyway, I better get back to class. It's been at least 10 minute and probably more. Today is a great day because I am fasting all day which means we will have a feast at midnight and also because today I am going to make a very concerted effort to submit the required forms to apply for my Russian visa.

But for now back to class!

Monday, July 11, 2011

How to Pick Berries in Finland: A Tutorial

The first thing recommended for picking berries in Finland is the time of day to go. Mornings are best, because the heat of day hasn't fully set in and if it's a weekday the trails are less likely to be crowded. Mornings are also best because as soon as one starts bending his/her back to pick berries motivation decreases exponentially.

The most common berries in Finland are blueberries and strawberries. Of these, blueberries are by far the most common. There is also apparently a berry called a "cloudberry", but I have never seen them and it is altogether possible that they don't exist. To pick blueberries, you want to be as far away from the road as possible. If you can describe your location using the words "forested glen," then you're probably on the right track. Blueberries loathe civilization. Strawberries, on the other hand, are just the opposite. Strawberries yearn to be part of the hustle and bustle of the modern world, but are also extremely shy. They like to grow close to roads but not without the cover of tall grasses and/or other shrubs. There is a patch growing by the parking lot of the supermarket near my dorm room here, as if the strawberries are desperate to see what's going on but too shy to take part in the action. For whatever reason, strawberries also seem to like to grow on an incline. This is probably also testament to the fact that they want a view of what's happening but also the inaccesibility that only a hill provides. In this way they are just like the Finns themselves, shy but always wanting to participate, eagerly anticipating the slightest invitation.

If you are going to pick berries in Finland, be sensitive to the wildlife. Today I saw a man walking with ski poles, huffing and wide-eyed like he had just run a half-marathon, and I was sure to give him a generous berth. Later I thought I saw a black bear standing on it's hind legs but it was just a large Finnish woman wearing a dark blouse and bending over a patch of blueberries, pawing at them greedily.

Your berry picking is over when your basket or strainer is more red than blue, as strawberries are much harder to find and require more effort. Don't be ashamed if you don't find strawberries on your first attempt. Try a few phrases in Finnish directed at the forest or feign that you genuinely don't care about finding them. When you least expect it, there they will be. Also, stick to the roads. Unless of course you're looking for blueberries, then stick to the glens. Any glen will do, just make sure to watch out for ski-pole wielding Finns.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Mother Russia

"I think I will give you a punch in the face."

"Do you think you are humorous?"

Two things the Russian girl just said to Bo during class.

Smoking in the Boys Room

Mikä päivää tänään on? I am sitting at the computers with Bo and Liis, a girl from Estonia, and I keep asking Liis over and over Mikä päivää tänään on? which means, what day is it? When she starts to respond I cut her off and say Mikä päivää tänään on? This has generally been how things with Finnish have gone since I've been there.

The first day of class was a joke. We spent at least 2 hours learning everyone's name. It is my opinion that if you are teacher and something is taking too long you need to take evasive action to make it shorter. Or you lose your students. Say OK we'll finish this tomorrow. And then don't finish. It doesn't matter. Do whatever you have to do. Just don't spend 2 hours in the sweltering (see: pleasant) Finnish heat trying to learn everyone's name.

But now class started at 13:15 and it is 13:17. I am two minutes late. I can hear the teacher talking in Finnish but I won't need to pay attention because she'll just repeat in English immediately after. Another gripe I have. I need to be like the German guy who wears black boots and just does whatever he wants. Durning the naming exercise earlier he just stepped outside the circle and started smoking a cigarette. Ahh, zee Germans.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Mansikkoita

Bo and are about 21 hours into a 24 hour feast. I am very excited to eat. Nothing sounds better to me right now than food going into my body. Smells have been intensified. The Finnish guy next to me was just eating some pastries with rice pudding inside and I could smell every molecule of them. I was salivating. And now they are drinking beer and wine and even that sounds like a decent way to get full.

What prompted this fast? Estonia. We were very unhealthy in Estonia. We drank quite a bit of alcohol, due to the fact that every time we met of a group of people we were offered drinks and we didn't want to be rude, and were constantly eating due to the fact that things were so much cheaper than in Finland. So after several days of Estonian decadence we were more than due for a cleanse.

To break our fast we have decided to eat only fruit. We bought melons and strawberries and grapes and all of it sounds semi-divine right now. One thing in Finland is you weigh your own fruit and the machine spits out a label showing exactly how much it costs. I scorned this at first but now I love it. It makes you feel like you work there, which means you feel slightly productive. Plus the girl at the cash register promised to only speak Finnish to us starting tomorrow. Or rather she will speak English but we will speak only Finnish. Because she wants to practice our English.

I am excited for the program to start tomorrow and I am excited to make new friends and go swimming and go sailing and go fishing and go skateboarding and have a good three weeks in Savolinna. It all starts at tonight at midnight with a bushel of strawberries. It's going to be great.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

I Love Estonia

I finally met up with Bo and we are in Estonia, which I love. It is officially now one of my favorite countries I have ever visited. In Helsinki you can easily spend 6 dollars on a bottle of water. If you tried to give someone 6 dollars for a bottle of water in Estonia, they would probably hit you.

Bo and I went to a beach town called Parnu, basically the California of the Baltics. We swam in the water and then asked some people on the beach if they knew of any place that might not be completely booked and a girl said, "Let me just make a call." She called her mom who owned a hotel and a few minutes later we were on our way to an apartment that turned out to be impossibly nice, fully furnished complete with a book on modern Swedish cooking, for 77 euros. Somewhat pricey but this was also one of the nicest places I have ever stayed. Then we hit the town where communication instantly broke down.

Unlike Finland where everyone speaks English and often times as well or better than you, in Estonia there are many people who speak little to no English. In the beach town we bought sausage from a guy in the street and he literally did not speak a word of it. He shook his head angrily when we would try to speak English to him. I wanted a half a piece of sausage and I kept pointing at the sausage and every time I would point at the sausage he would take his knife and cut off a piece for me to sample. I was trying to communicate that I in fact wanted to buy the whole thing and not just have him hand-feed me tiny morsels for the next 15 minutes, but he did not understand me. I tried Finnish too, but that seemed just to agitate him even more. Finally I convinced him that I wanted to buy it and he charged me 2.50 euros and we were on our way. Everyone happy and me with more sausage than I could ever possibly eat.

Now we are in a smaller town called Viljandi and our room is beautiful and has a balcony and only cost us 40 euros. We're going to the beach in a second and I can't wait. I love Estonia.