Joensuu and Helsinki!

Joensuu

Merel and I left to Joensuu on Monday morning. Our train was 3 hours; we got into Joensuu around 1:00pm to find it was rainy and much colder than we expected. I was told there is a place in Joensuu where we could look up family records so we walked around the city (not that big) to find it. We walked into a bank, the post office, stopped a police officer on the street, went into another random building then to the town library. The library finally gave us the address of where we needed to go. We made the mistake of having lunch since it was almost 3 and we hadn't aten since breakfast. We showed up at the place at 3:45 and it closed at 3:00. We talked to a guy who said I would need some kind of permission before I could look anything up but he couldn't tell us anymore. So, we decided to come back at 8:30 the next morning when it opened. We walked to our hostel, which was in a scary part of the city...I thought, Merel didn't think so. After dropping our stuff off we walked about into the city center and wandered some more. I have found that a lot of the cities here look really simular and are all set up with the city center in the middle and then residence surrounding it. We decided to see a movie that night. So we bought our tickets and got some dinner. We went back to the movie theater and the girl working said the boys dropped the 2 kilometer long film role so they cancelled the movie and we could see another movie starting at the same time. We ended up seeing The Boat That Rocked. On the way into the theater, we saw the film that was dropped although it looked like someone dropped it then rolled around in it. After the movie we walked back to the hostel and took about 5 minutes to get into our room, the guy in the room next to us actually had to help us get in. It was my first night in a hostel and I learned that disposable sheets are like cardboard. The next morning we got up and went back to the records place. We explained to 3 women what we wanted to do and they all up and walked away and went to their desks without saying anything. After a few minutes we weren't sure what to do, so I asked if we would be able to look and they told us we had to be patient. So, we waited...and waited some more. A lady came in and said a bunch of words in English that made absolutly no sense at all. I told her I didn't understand so she said "the man will explain". So, a man came in to explain that we couldn't look up anything unless we knew someone who currenlty lived in Joensuu or pay them 21euros per hour to look up extensive family history. Now, this man was the exact man we talked to the day before who would only tell me I needed permission and nothing else. We were pretty frusterated he didn't tell us yesterday. So we booked it to the train station and went into Helsinki.

On the bridge heading from the trainstation to the city center

City Center

City Center and art museum on the right

City Center

heading out of the city

Helsinki

The train was a long 5 hours. We got to Helsinki and went to find the Temppeliaukio chuch that looks like a pile of rocks that Grandpa told me about. We found it and as soon as I was about to take a picture, a tour bus pulled right in front of me...I did get one though. After the church we walked around the city center, which is a lot of shopping and designer stores and the market place. From there we took a ferry out to Suomenlinna, an island fortress in the Helsinki Harbour. It was built in the mid 1700s when Finland was under Swedish rule. We stayed on the islands(4 of them) for a little while and had some food and cider then went back into the city for dinner and took the train back to Jyväskylä. We got back around midnight.

Temppeliaukio Kirkko (church)

inside

inside

Helsinki City Center

Old church in Helsinki

City Center

Helsinki train station

Helsinki from the ferry

Military Base on the island

on the island

where we had our snacks and cider on the island

Back in Jyväskylä

I met with my finnish family this morning at 10am to go to the symphony practice. I was not too thrilled about this but Jaime and Elizabeth(2 other American girls) really wanted to go. We stayed for an hour and a half then went to Viherlandia, the largest garden center in Finland. It was nice, but once again not my thing. Although, my mom would have loved it :) We walked around for just a few minutes then went upstairs for lunch. We had a long lunch and decided that next month they would teach us how to make pulla bread and a finnish dinner. Today we noticed our finnish moms talk about us a lot in Finnish, when we are around. They asked us how we knew they were talking about us and we told them that our names are the same in every language. Although, they are always laughing when our names come up :-P
Thursday, last day of April, and Friday, first day of may, is the celebration for MayDay (Vappu in Finnish). It is the end of winter and beginnins of summer. I have been told this is one of the biggest celebrations in Finland short of Midsummer and Christmas. My tutor sent me a link about the holiday from finland.com...and it says Vappu is a party in the streets and Vappu without alcohol with like Christmas without presents..haha. Jackie's finnish family gave her a can of pea soup and told her is in Finnish tradition and she had to eat in on Vappu.