Helsinki 6/24/10

What a wonderful city.  Not too big, not too small, just right.  It’s a bit pricey, but it beats Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen-and they are on the Euro, so tha’s a plus.  What I think is making Helsinki so awesome is my host-Jesse Sipola, 23 year old native Finn who is very charismatic and impulsive.  He brought me along fishing on a beautiful island (we actually dug up the bait ourselves.) And then, jumped off a cliff into freezing water.

He has to work a lot which is nice too, because sometimes I like to be alone to explore a city.  Helsinki has some wonderful attractions: Olympic Stadium, Sounmentinna, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Church of the Rock.  The city is very modern and it was recently chosen as the Design Capital of the World.

A word about the language: Finnish is hard, and unlike any other language.  Even with my linguistic knowledge, the best I could do is hope there’s Swedish, from that I get German, then English.  It’s interesting fact Swedish is an official language, when only 5% of Finns speak it.  Everyone’s English, however, is very good.

Still the White Night effect here, which is lovely.   Everyone is so nice too.  Yesterday we BBQ’ed with some Ukranians who gave us vodka and hookah (which he got from Egypt.)  Everyone is so kind and trusting here, it’s almost unbelievable.