HELSINKI!

This morning at 7:30am i arrived back in Oulu by night-train after an amazing two days in Helsinki. Amy (other South African exchange student) and I left on Thursday morning, but our trip started with a bit of a "hiccup". When we arrived on the train ready to sit down, there was a lady in one of our seats. We thought she had the wrong seat and when i checked her ticket she had a different date to us. Naturally i thought she had the wrong date and was about to point this out when Amy and realised to our horror that the date on our ticket was wrong - it said we were catching the train on Tuesday (which had passed) and not Thursday. We didn't know what to do and the train started moving. All we could do was wait for the conductor...of course we thought of all the worse case scenarios and we prepared ourselves to be chucked off the train but Amy said we should just be honest to the conductor as it was not our faults. Nervously we waited for the conductor to come check. When he came we immediately started explaining to him that they had sold us tickets for the wrong date but all he was interested in was checking whether we were in fact students. At the end, he were moved (upgraded) to a cabin (with tables) that we had all to ourselves...what luck! Amy and I holding up the tickets with the incorrect date...

For the rest of the day, we seemed to have just good luck. When we arrived in Helsinki (after leaving a cold, windy and rainy Oulu), the weather was AMAZING, warm & sunny. We arrived at 5pm, first we went to the Olympic stadium and then we walked to the Sibelius statue and stopped for a picnic. Amy holding up one of the ingredients to our sandwiches we made for lunch...yummy paprika flavoured salami! Afterwards we discovered the most beautiful, unique cafe' that specialised in making the best Pulla I have tasted so far in Finland so we enjoyed some pulla and tea and relaxed sitting on rocking chairs and chatting the afternoon away. At sunset we went to Senate square and took some amazing photos of the majestic building.

The next day we first went to the famous rock church in Helsinki and then we saw the changing of the guard at Senate square (the end of it). Afterwards we took the ferry to Suomenlinna Island. It was again an amazingly warm and sunny day...17 degrees! We had a picnic on the island and made ourselves some "deluxe" sandwhiches of egg, salami, cheese, tomato and cucumber...yum! But while we ate we got attacked by some crazy seagulls and Amy was robbed of some of her tomato, cucumber and cheese...right from her sandwhich in her hand, after which war broke out between us (Amy and I) and the seagulls...we had to fight them off with some stones...crazy seagulls!

One we had departed the island later that afternoon (after sunbathing for a bit in the glorious sun) we headed back to mainland and walked up the Olympic stadium and saw and amazing view of Helsinki!