Things that don't translate.....

Travel Tip 108

Anyone that has traveled has most likely suffered from a condition known as travel funk. This is the condition that is a result of stale airplane or hotel air coupled with an unsavory hotel shower and topped off by a slim layer of grim that evenly coats ones body as a result of wearing the same shirt for a week. Ah, the open road.....

To cure such a condition one needs to remember only one thing: department stores. These modern day meccas are one stop shops for travel weary people suffering from the funk. Simply find a department store and make your way inside. Meander aimlessly for a spell while making your way slowly to the cologne/perfume aisle. Once there begin examining the bottles in detail making sure to avoid eye contact with any of the customer service staff. When you find the scent you like simply plop a couple of shots onto your neck line and 'poof'....lovely and scented again. Ready for the day ahead.

Leaving on a jet train!

" This is the end, beautiful friend....This is the end, my only friend....The end of our elaborate plans...The end of everything that stands....The end"....Jim Morrison (sometime before the overdose)

Today is the last official day of our groups ambassadorial obligations. Tomorrow; freedom. As some of you may know I´m headed to Estonia. I have heard nothing but positive things about the country and the capital city of Tallinn since I got to Finland. Things are cheaper, the language and people are different, the currency isn´t the euro, and apparently I´ll have an opportunity to get in that much coveted game of chess that I´ve been searching for since I hit the tarmac, as the game is alive and well due to the Russian population (40% of the overall country) living within their borders. Here is the plan (in typical JP fashion)....

4:00am....wake up at Hotel in Tampere. Grab cheese and ham sandwich (illegally bootlegged from hotels prior morning continental breakfast) along with luggage and get moving on foot. I have to make my way to city center to catch a 4:45 train to Helsinki. I timed the route this morning and at a brisk pace (void of the 80lbs. of luggage I´ll be carrying) it took me 20 minutes on the nose. Normally I would ´borrow´uncorraled grocers cart for such a trek, but in this country it costs you €1 deposit when you use one so people don´t just leave them lying around after they´re done using them...more on that when I return.

6:50am...train arrives in Helsinki. I then (fueled by a ham sandwich) will grab my luggage yet again and head to the harbor port. Note to travelers in Finland: when booking ferries make sure you know which port you sail out of before confirming your order. There are 2 seperate ports, and the second (cheaper and of course the one I selected) is about 15 minutes further by foot than the more expensive (traditional option)....I need to board the boat by 7:15 (good luck).

7:30am...board ferry and possibly deposit luggage at the ship lines long term lockers for pick up when I return to Helsinki before my outbound flight. I figure a pair of boxer shorts, a clean t-shirt and a pair of socks will all fit in my coat pocket so why not travel light....

10:00am....arrive in Tallinn! From there I´ll make my way to the hotel that I found and hopefully check in by 10:30 (the earliest possible check in time according to Svetlana; the hotel assistant).

Best parts of this painfully complicated plan......

-I´ll save about €10 by not taking a cab for any of the legs of this deal, as well as burn about 1000Kcal by totting 80 pounds of luggage with me (hiking season is right around the corner).
-I saved about €5 on the boat ticket as apparently there aren´t a whole lot of travelers that prefer some obscure boat that leaves at the ass crack of dawn from some remote port in a major European city.
-If all goes as planned (which it undoubtably won´t) I should by in Tallinn in time for morning coffee and have my first Russian in checkmate no later than noon!

Now, if I can just find one of those furry Siberian musk oxen hats......

Here we go again.....

Tomorrow morning brings yet another change in location as our group will make a return trip to the big city of Tampere south of our current post. It looks like we´re going to be shacking up for the remainder of our time in a hotel in downtown city center. I have no doubt that it´s going to be a great closing week to what has been a life changing trip.

Some thoughts.....

During my time here I have had an opportunity to experience first hand a sterotypically closed and conservative culture in a very intimate manner. For four weeks (and soon to be 5) I have eaten like a Finn, drank like a Finn, saunaed like a Finn, played badminton like an American (but with Finns on my team), hiked like a Finn, and took to the forest like a Finn. The whole time the social barriers and conservative stereotype that western Europe has bestowed upon them; broke down at first introduction. Invited into people´s homes, shared meals in their children´s schools, saunaed with their friends, and toasted hockey victories in true Suomi fashion during the world championships that have been playing out during our visit. The only disappointment that I have about the Finns is that they didn´t do a good enough job reproducing. The whole country has roughly 2 times the amount of people as the Front Range. I think the world could use a couple million more.


The Finnish social economy is foreign to the American capitalistic way of thinking. Despite being a card carrying democrat supporting the ideaology that ´thou shall help thy brother out, for thou don´t knoweth when thou ends up in that situation´ I´m not sure that I had a clear understanding of what an economy looked like that truly built and inacted policy to support the pedagogy. Some things are better, some things are worse. It´s an apples to oranges comparison that´s too complicated to argue about. The Finnish private doctor that pays income taxes of 65% probably wishes the system had fewer social programs his income had to support. At the same time, if you ask him about it, it was the subsidized tuition free education that same social system provided for him to obtain the tools and knowledge to have the privlige of earning an income that pushed him into those higher brackets. He also sleeps pretty well at night (most likely in a modestly sized three bedroom house in the suburbs) not having to worry about how his two children will pay for college, or where his retirement money will come from, or if he can afford health care when he´s 85. When you think of the current consumption the doctor foregoes in the context of the big life picture, perhaps it´s not such a rub.


War to Finland is very real. It´s not something that they learned about while reading in a histroy book, it´s not some light show they sat and ate dinner in front of while Peter Jennings narrated, and it´s certainly not a power point presentation from the pentagon outlining a faceless nameless attack on terror. Instead, it´s something that landed in their back yards, that burned their churches, that killed their grandfathers, and all but cost them their sovereignty. Perhaps it those dark days that guides their foreign policy at present. Perhaps it´s their population of just over 5mm people that prevents them from taking global chances for fear they may end up in the wrong ´neighborhood´ for too long at too much a cost...whatever it is, it seems to be agreed upon that military force is a last resort, and not simply a political game of leap frogging from country to country in hopes of restoring justice by declaring marshall law. Isn´t that same cautious attitude what we ask our commander and chief to pledge to as well?


The saying goes (as we´ve heard many times) that ´few Finns have too much, but even fewer Finns have too little´. It seems as though every part of the Finnish system has been designed to hinder the class seperation that so many developed countries face. If there is a more homogeneous population mass on the planet please show it to me. This equality creates an interesting social dynamic. The Finns don´t brag about what they have, and they don´t audibly yearn for what they don´t since everyone has the same.


The ´Finnish dream´ is still alive and well. Every Finn wants a house (with a sauna) near a lake, a steady means of making money and supporting themselves, 4-5 weeks of paid vacation a year, and a small (often without running water or electricity) cottage that they can go to in the summer to ´get away from it all´ and spend time with their 1.73 children. This dream is achiveable for Finns. A modest job, a couple lucky breaks perhaps, and the dream can be theirs. It´s clear, concise, and obtainable. Now, go ahead and define the present day version of the American dream. Is it enough to obtain a modest house with a medium sized yard, a small (god forbid) fuel efficient car, 2.1 children, and a riding lawn mower? Probably not. What would the neighbors think?


Finns will never be as blonde, beautiful and boisterous as their neighbors to the west, and they´ll never be as cold, crooked nosed, and corrupt as their comrades to the east. This slots them into some sort of purgatory where their president more resembles Conan O´Brien than an international leader. It could be something in the water I suppose.

Postcard From Finland!

Finlandia Update

So, the last week has been a true week of travel. No internet, no cell phones (that part felt like home), and no big city life. First part of the week our group was holed up at a hotel in Hamelina. Fun time (I guess), as we happened to catch the infamous ´vappu´ (May 1st) celebration we had heard so much about from the Finns. Turns out (despite the name), the holiday actually begins on the last day of April. No one works that day, and the city (with the exception of the bars) shuts down early. Our guide for the days (daze) was none other than a Brazillian transplant named Lewis. Long story short, he ended up in Finland by following some dane who apparently was a great pastry baker....I may not be translating that perfectly as my Finnish has yet to become ´fluent´, but none the less..... We hit the town and unintentionally ended up in some odd karokee bar(s). Turns out Finnish lads don´t dance much, and we all know that Jeffrey does. You can figure out the rest. Next morning, it was time to meet for morning brunch (which consisted of champagne and nothing really at all to eat) for some good ole Finnish folk song singing. The town mayor was there as well as some other (apparently) important people, all of whom were wearing these white sailor hats with tassles that resembled victorian era curtain ties. It´s a good look really. Anyways, we started getting grilled about American folk songs and being asked to sing a couple.....the only one I could think of was Óld MacDonald´. So there we sat, with the better part of the Finnish parliment making animal noises. Add that to the already long list of ´things I should leave off my resume´.

Moving on, our group moved to a new location outside the rural city of Laukaa. We spent a few nights at the equivelent of a summer camp retreat on (of course) a lake shore. The place was grand! The sunsets were amazing. We had our own cottage.....row boat.... hiking trails.....and of course sauna. It was some much needed r&r!! We all took in some sun with the weather being exceptional for our entire time there. Record highs of around 24 degrees C. Who knew I would be wearing shorts and a t-shirt in Finland while wishing I had my flip flops? Our stay at the summer camp ended with a special treat. A traditional smoke sauna at a summer resort that a gentleman and his wife run as a hunting, fishing, sauna, ice fishing, eating, naked lake swimming, four wheeler rodeo, logging, camp. While smoke sauna is always a special treat, this one was even more so. The lumber jack looking lad who owns the place went ahead and prepared a special peat moss skin exfoliation rub for us. The men went first as the sauna was too hot for the ladies. After grabbing our thinly cut birch planks to sit on (CHECK FOR SPLINTERS) we went in for our initial warm up. A few minutes later it was time to hit the icy cold lake for a quick dip. Then it was time to lather up in peat. After the group was good and covered it was time to grab our planks and head back in. 20 minutes was the time goal with constant water throwing on the blazzing hot stones. We were being urged to take in water cups with us as we were going to be losing some serious fluids. As the steam engulfed us the peat turned to a gooey liquid that slowy melted off our bodies and piled onto the sauna floor making the whole place look like an unkept feed lot. 20 minutes later it was time to wash off in the lake. Add that whole experience to the already long list of ´things you never planned on doing with your pants off´.

Other experiences or notes from the week:

- We took part in some cryogenic therapy at a rhematory arthritis facility. The chamber is chilled down to -110C (-166F). It´s so cold that your breath freezes into little snow flakes when you exhale. You can only safely stay in there for 2 minutes at a time. Side note, I did this less than 2 hours after my morning sauna. If the sauna was roughly 80C (176F), that´s one hell of a temperature inversion. Felt great though.

- A rest room is not the same as a bathroom. A rest room is truly a room where people can rest. They have them in all the schools. They have a small cot in them and the school nurse checks on them while they sleep.

- Kids in Finland speak better english than anyone south of the mason dixon.