The (very secure) return to the States

The trip home was long, but overall uneventful. I only had to pass through four security checkpoints, and the agents of the Finnish, German and U.S. governments all seemed to agree that nothing harmful could come of my book, pocket lint and bottle of water. You would think that the government of Germany would trust the government of Finland to be able to screen passengers and their carry-on luggage, but apparently not. I guess that EU friendship only goes so far.

Same thing for the U.S. and Germany. I mean, I was patted down in Germany. Surely that's more thorough than the DHS screening where I take off my shoes? Needless to say, in each airport I stopped at (Helsinki, Frankfurt and Philly), I had to go through the "walk through a metal detector and screen your carry-on luggage" security process. I can see where there are certain countries you might be wary of providing the only security screening of your passengers, but I would think that the NATO countries are all up to par at least, right? I suppose in the age of global terrorism I'm willing to be more understanding, but still.

I thoroughly enjoyed my "in seat entertainment system" on the flight back. I don't know what they do in First Class now (maybe live performances of any show on Broadway and a spa?) but I was pleasantly surprised that we plebians in "economy" had our own in-seat TV screens. There were several movies to choose from and even some TV shows, and I cleverly used my own headphones to avoid "renting" theirs. The problem is that on a nine hour flight, even this entertainment only lasts so long. You watch a movie, read for a bit, watch an episode of "Friends" and then look at your watch...only SIX more hours! Woohoo! I thought we were supposed to have scram jets or something by now. Alas.

And, unlike the trip over, they didn't lose my luggage, which means I really don't have much to complain about. I was a little nervos when the first Customs agent was kind of gruff and wrote lots of things on my declaration form, but the second guy mainly looked at the markings, asked me a few more questions, looked puzzled, and sent me on my way.

So, by Thursday I was pretty much recovered from my jetlag. It usually doesn't take me that long, so I must be getting old. Tuesday was pretty much a haze, though. Which made for bad storytelling for everyone who asked...

"So Marc, tell us about Finland. What was your favorite part?"

"Ummm...Finland? It's cold there. And I did ate the, um, thing, and did some stuff...zzzzz"

"Marc? Marc?"

All in all it was a great trip, and I'm coherent enough to talk about it now if you're curious. Below are some pics of the cool things I saw.




This is a picture of one of my favorite places I visited in Finland, the "Rock Church." It is named this because it is quite literally a church just cut into the bedrock. I thought it was a really unique place.









I also really liked the architecture in Helsinki. When it was made the capitol, they brought in a German architect named Engel to design (among other things) this Cathedral and the main government buildings in what is now "Senate Square." A lot of city is modeled after this style of achitecture.

Here are some street shots so you can see more of the architecture

This is the Roman Orthodox Cathedral in the city, which is apparently the largest in the Western world. I didn't get to go inside, but from its position on the hill you can see it from most places in the city, which I thought was cool.

You know Dasher and Dancer...

I have now discovered two important things:

1. I like Finnish food.
2. Finnish food and Italian food should not be combined.

Two nights ago, we went with some of Mom and Ron's Finnish friends to a traditional restaurant just around the corner. The hospitality was, um, Finnish (more on that later) and the food was great! For starters I had salmon soup. This is not something I would normally see myself eating, but it was great; some sort of creamy potato base with salmon and potatos. Continuing to love the seafood here, one of the Finns we were with informed us that you shouldn't eat fish from the Baltic more than once a week. Apparently it's very polluted and full of heavy metals. I choose to believe that the salmon I had earlier this week came from, um, somewhere else.

Dinner continued my foray into Finnish dining. After all, I was here, so I wasn't just going to eat something I could get some variation on in the states. So I had what translated on my English menu into "Reindeer Sizzle." I think that that was their way of pandering to we uncultured tourists who clearly wouldn't eat anything without a peppy name. Reindeer it was! Reindeer is, well, a little like beef, only lighter. That's the only way I can describe it. It was served with mashed potatos and lingamberries, which are berries that only grow up in the far northern artic region of Finland. They were sort of like cranberries, only a little less tart. After dinner, we had some lakkaliquoori to drink, which is made from cloudberries (another arctic berry) that was sweet and very good. For dessert...French Toast! Of course it's a dessert, after all, it's fried bread covered in sugary berries and whipped cream. What else would it be?

During dinner, mom's friend (who is a linguist) explained the difference in culture between positive politeness and negative politeness. She said most people consider Finnish culture to be grounded in negative politeness. You can probably guess, but positive politeness is the "hi, how are ya, hope all is well" school of interacting with other people, whereas negative politeness hinges on respect for the other person's space. Thus, our waiter didn't really have much to say other than getting our food, and generally left us alone for the entire evening. This was really okay with me, given my recent experiences back home with overzealous waitstaff, who seem to think that if left alone for more than 6 minutes you're bound to run out of something.

Unfortunately my Finnish dining experience took a different turn last night, in part due to my stubborness. We found a little place that looked kind of touristy, but we were in a hurry to eat, so we ducked in. The menu could have been lifted from Ruby Tuesday or TGI Fridays. I, however, given my prior excursion into Finnish food, refused to eat something I could get in Virginia. Scouring the menu (past burgers, fried mozzerella and pizza) I finally found it: reindeer! But not just regular reindeer. Reindeer pizza.

Let me just say that some things are never meant to be combined. These, I now know, include reindeer and pizza. Apparently reindeer pizza also needs to have ham (because they don't really give you that much reindeer, it was kind of annoying), onions (for flavor) and sour cream (because...um...yeah I have no idea). I mostly ate around the sour cream, and I sadly couldn't taste the reindeer very well. Needless to say, something of a disappointment. But at least a unique experience!

So all in all, I'm enjoying the cuisine here. The fish is fresh, the reindeer is good and there are lots of cool artic berries to make things out of.

Just don't put any of those things on a pizza.

Ode to Finlandia

So, I've decided to join the world of blogging. Not for any particular reason, really. Mainly it seemed like all the cool kids were doing it (what's that? we're jumping off a bridge later? 7 o'clock? count me in!). Hopefully the stories I tell here, which should be mostly true, will entertain and keep whoever decides to read informed about some of what I'm up to. I'll try to keep postings to just interesting things that happen, but no guarantees.

I'm starting the blog on my trip to Finland to visit Mom and Ron, which may be a mistake as I doubt future tales will start off with a phrase like "I'm starting the blog on my trip to Finland." Oh well, not much to be done about that now.

So I'm over here for 8 days visiting Mom and Ron. Ron is here on a Fulbright, teaching at the University of Helsinki and generally being an intellectual force for good. It turns out that Finland has the most cell phones per capita in the world, and since Ron studies communications and society, especially cell phones and the internet, it makes sense for him to do research and teach here.

My original travel plan (note how this is starting) took me from Richmond to Dulles to Munich to Helsinki, taking about 24 hours with the time change and 17 hours of real time. Fate intervened however, and since they had to shut down runways at Dulles, we didn't get to take off from Richmond on time. Of course, we learned this as they pulled away from the gate, and given how well I fit onto airplanes, most especially small ones, this made for an exciting hour of sitting on the tarmac. The benefit was that we got lots of "fiesta mix" from the flight attendant, who took pity on us.

Arriving in Dulles, I walked directly across the hallway to the gate for my flight to Munich, which was fortunately also delayed...unfortunately, it was delayed about 5 minutes too little, and was pulling away from the gate when I walked up. I found my way to the customer service line (I'm assuming there was a desk at the front of it, but I couldn't see it at the time...remember that Dulles had been shut down) where another passenger shared the brilliant idea of calling United to see if they could do something faster than the line was moving.

Thanks to a very kind customer service representative, I got shifted onto a flight to Frankfurt, at least one step in the right direction. This was about the time I realized that any hopes I had of seeing my checked bags on the other side of the Atlantic were long gone. So with my new itinerary, I flew from Dulles to Frankfurt, added a leg to the flight and hopped up to Stockholm, and then over to Helsinki, arriving only a couple hours after I was originally scheduled to land. My luggage was, as expected, not there, but given my new lack of faith in the airlines, I had fortunately brought at least a day's worth of essentials in my carryons (this was the first time I'd ever done this, and highly recommend it). I got my checked bags a day later (much faster I'll note than the last time I traveled and they lost them which was within the U.S.) and all in all it turned out okay.

You're probably wondering if I'll ever actually talk about Finland. Finland is a really cool country. It's just starting to become spring here, which means that it gets up into the 40's during the day (around 5 degrees C) if we're lucky. The ice in the harbor is starting to melt, and it's only snowed once while I've been here.

Some interesting things I've learned about Finland:

1) 1 in every 2 Finns has a library card. They are very proud of this statistic.
2) Finnish and Swedish are the national languages, and both are taught in elementary school (which starts at age 7), along with English at least.
3) Finland won its independence in 1917, after being ruled first by Sweden for several hundred years and then by Russia.
4) 60% of the world's ice-breaker ships are made in Helsinki.
5) There are more ethnic restaurants in Helsinki than in Charlottesville.
6) Every year Finland rises about 2-3 inches because as the glaciers melt it is buoyed up from the runoff into the sea (I'm not sure I believe this, but that's what I'm told).

This is getting to be a long post, so I'll write more about my various adventures here later! Hope you enjoyed it.