When we were planning for our week long adventure Jessica did some research about some things to do in Finland. One of the things that she found was the home of Santa Claus. It is in the north of Finland. We didn't end up doing that for the week long adventure but she still wanted to go. I decided that that would be pretty cool and so I looked more into it. Long story shorter. We made the plans and were on our way.
We decided to take a bus from St Petersburg to Helsinki because it would cheapest and it would still work with our time schedule. Our microbus left at 11 pm St Petersburg time. We were off and going and we were thinking that things would be good. We got to the Russian border and things started to happen. It was at the "butt crack of dawn" as Katie might say and so the details are kind of hazy. But we got stopped at the border. Our bus was searched and then searched again. There was a dog that was brought in even though the dog didn't smell anything. Then the driver drove away leaving all of us just in the building for passport control. We waited for probably an hour and twenty minutes. Then finally he came back and we got in and drove to the Finnish border. Things got better. We were only detained for like 40 minutes. There were 3 guys, at least one of them was Greek but I guess he also had a Russian passport. Well they got through passport control but then a border officer saw something suspicious and so then those three were detained. 40 minutes of sitting in a freezing van later we are on our way again. We drive for maybe 10 minutes and we stop again. This time to stop at a 'duty free' store. We were making great time. All this time we were thinking, "How are we going to make our train that leaves Helsinki at 6:30 if the bus ride is supposed to be 8 hours but we got stopped for 2 extra hours. The (slightly) comforting thing was that the woman worker said that we would make it there in time. Then fast forward past all the time in the uncomfortable bus bouncing around all the time and being cold for much of it. It was only after dropping people off at the airport and then making our way to the train station in the center of Helsinki that I saw a clock and then was pacified because for some reason Helsinki was 2 hours behind St Petersburg even though they are in neighboring time zones. Well I wasn't complaining because that meant that we didn't miss our train. What we have done if we had missed our train? You know I don't really know. But I am glad that we didn't have to find out.
We arrived in Helsinki to early for anything to be open and so we were left with the little cafe in the Helsinki train station for breakfast. I had hot cocoa (which wasn't very sweet) and then the musli that I had brought with me. Then we sat on a very comfortable train. It had everything. I had a table to put my laptop on. I had electricity and internet. The train traveled very quickly and very quietly. I would love if all travel was that comfortable. Plus I got to play Plants vs Zombies. We were on that train for like 6 hours. Then in Oulu, Finland we switched to a different train to Rovaniemi. This new train was not as comfortable and didn't have a electricity or internet. Oh well. We were only on that train for 2 hr and 40 minutes.
I was not disappointed in Rovaniemi. When we got there it was snowing and it snowed much of the time that we were there. Rovaniemi is not a very big city. It may be the capital of Lapland Finland but that doesn't really mean much. It was still a small city. We arrived and quickly found our hotel. Not without Jessica almost falling. Though I am not really sure how she didn't fall especially her being the one to wonder who was going to be the first one to fall because there was snow and ice everywhere. We found our hotel Aakenus but almost froze on the way there. We got all checked in and then decided what we were to do. We were going to go to SantaPark but we didn't know how to get there really (in theory we did) but we were also cold and hungry. We asked the reception girl for suggestions to eat and she suggested this traditional Finnish restaurant. She said that we needed a reservation and so we had her call for us. So then we walked from the hotel to the restaurant and saw the main square on the way. A good adjective to describe the city is quaint or cute. After passing the town square we found the restaurant and realized that it was really out of our price range. We went into a mall and found a little place to buy a donut to hold us over before dinner. We ended up buying a buffet dinner from the hotel. After dinner (meatballs with mashed potatoes and baked potatoes, steamed vegetables, salad, bread, and a ginger snap dessert) we went back to our room. Jessica had me turn on the Christmas cartoon Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. I fell asleep during that because I had hardly slept on any of the trains. After the movie I was excited to go to the sauna. There were different times for men and women in the sauna and so I went before Katie and Jessica. I liked the sauna though I didn't spend much time there. I felt like I did a poor job at regulating the heat. So then I came back. I told Katie that she should go and she did with Jessica. Then not very long afterwards she came back saying that she doesn't like saunas. But it was part of the Finnish experience and so I am glad I encouraged her to go. We then went to sleep.
The next morning (Saturday) we ate buffet breakfast at the hotel and then made our way to Santa Village which is different than SantaPark. They are actually 2 km apart. Right next to Santa Village there was a husky park. They had all sorts of huskies of all ages. They were really cute. You could even go on a sled ride with them but it was 25 Euros for 500 meters. Not very worth it. So we just paid the 6 Euro entrance fee and saw all the huskies and the other people on the sled. When we got cold we went into this little building with a fire and some hot drink and cookies. The drink was a juice and it was pretty good.
Then we went into Santa Village. There were a bunch of places to buy souvenirs. We also went and saw Santa Claus. We could get a USB drive with the video and the pictures for 49 Euros (again not worth it). But it was cool to be able to meet him. In the room that was next to the one that Santa was in there was this giant turning wheel that was turning. It had to do with the earth's rotation and there was an on and an off button. So Santa can turn on and off the rotation of the earth.
The other cool thing about Santa Village was that it was on the border of the Arctic Circle. So we crossed the Arctic Circle a bunch of times. Awesome! We also saw some reindeer. I was surprised at the size of the reindeer. They weren't very tall or very big. If you can imagine those miniature horse except with antlers on its head. That is what a reindeer is. Surprised! I was.
We then decided that we had seen everything at Santa Village and that it was time to go to Santa Park now. I wasn't aware but it was actually a 2 km walk. But we enjoyed the walk because it was through the Finnish forest and the trees were close and there was snow everywhere. Stunning! We get to SantaPark to find out that it is in a hill. They actually had this hill that they had removed a lot of the insides of the hill and put SantaPark in there. We were kind of contemplating not going because we would be there for like 3 hours or so and that was all. It would be expensive to enter (29 Euros) and we weren't sure that we would be able to do all the things that we wanted to do. We then go to the cashier and tried to pay. But there was a problem. So every one has a chip in the credit or debt card but none of us have that. Unfortunately at that time the card reader wasn't working and so they could only accept cards with chips in them. So we were denied entrance because we couldn't pay. So then we stood outside SantaPark and waited for the bus to take us back to city center.
We went back into the mall and the grocery store there and got some food for the train ride. Then we went and found the train station again. It really wasn't any big deal that we had been 3 hours early for our train because we just waited in the train station. I was able to charge my laptop and read the book that I am reading.
At the appropriate time we got on our train back to Helsinki. The train was like our second train from yesterday and so didn't have all the luxuries of the first train. It didn't matter as much because I wanted to sleep most of the way but I wasn't able to because they wouldn't turn off the stupid overhead lights. They were on the whole 12 hour train ride. It was horrible. I eventually was able to sleep but not very well. Jess seemed to sleep the whole train ride. She seemed to be sleeping a lot of all 3 of the train rides. Eventually we did get off the train in Helsinki. While we were going to work things out with finding our bus stop back to St Petersburg I got a phone call from the company asking me if I was still coming. I said that we were and got things worked out.
We then left the train state and went to Senate Square. I am not sure that it is the senate building or if it is a cathedral because it said that day (Sunday) there was no tourists from 9:30 am - 11:45 am. A reasonable time to hold Mass. We just looked around the building and the market in front of the building. Then proceeded to see other parts of Helsinki. We enjoyed that part of Helsinki very much. We bought shirts in a souvenir shop and then found an information place that had warm drink and ginger snap cookies. People in Finland like their ginger snap and their warm fruit drink. Information showed me where we should go to catch our bus and then we were off.
We just had to walk down this one street. Then continue on that street when it branched. Then take a right and we would be there. It was actually that easy. It was then that we really realized how different this trip to Helsinki looked than last time. This time there was snow all over and last time there was no snow. The last thing we did in Helsinki was go to Subway. I got me a meatball sandwich because I have never had a meatball sub from Subway and wanted to try it. When we left the mall that Subway was in we realized that Finland has cool malls and Utah doesn't have cool malls. We entered the mall on one side of the street and then went down to Subway and then came up on the other side of the street. It was really cool.
We easily found our bus and got on. It was the same thing. A micro bus that was full. There were about 20 people to start out with. I say start out with because half of them jumped bus midway through. Just like our other bus ride it wasn't uneventful. We started going and hadn't been going for very long and then we stopped. What the actual story was I am not quite sure but this is what I think. We supposedly ran out of gas. The driver left the van and didn't come back for ever. There was another bus (like a tour bus) that stopped and was allowing people to come on board. I heard that they were charging an arm and a leg to go though. We decided that we didn't really have money and so we would just stick it out with the van because the driver had to come back some time. The driver did come back maybe 5 or 10 minutes after the other people had left. They did whatever the needed to to get things running. We went up a hill right ahead and then on the left was a gas station and we went and stopped there to fill up on gags. But one difference between this group of people and the other was that they didn't all go into the store. Only a few did and they were quick. It seemed that the bus driver wanted to make up lost time and was going rather quickly. When we talked about it we really wanted to catch up to the bus that there other people were on and say hi but we didn't see them. We may have seen their bus at the border but we were sure. Crossing the borders was the easiest thing. Both the Finnish and the Russian borders were really quick. We waited only a short time at bother of the borders and nobody got held up. It was awesome. We were then on the bus for a long time. We left Helsinki at about 1 pm (3 St Petersburg time) and then got to St Petersburg at about 11 pm. This included that more than an 1 we were sitting in the van waiting for the driver to come back. We got back to the bus stop and then we had the metro ride back to our normal stop. Then I had my normal 30 minute walk from the Metro Station to my apartment and I was home free. I got back about 11:30 pm and immediately looked for something to drink and then something eat. My host family did not fail and had something in the fridge for me for when I came home. I was very happy to be back at home.
Overall the trip was a very nice one. I really enjoyed it. I decided that I enjoy traveling by train. You just have to sit there and it is more or less comfortable. When I say this I have in mind more comfortable than a bus where you are bouncing all over the place and being jerked back and forth and side to side.
No comments:
Post a Comment