My Apologies

Hey everyone, sorry its been so long since my last post.  I was on vacation for fall break all of last week.  Me and my friend Emily went to Poland, Finland and Sweden.  Yes, all in a week.  While country hopping is not the most thorough form of transportation, you can definitely see a lot of old shit in a short amount of time (pardon my French). 

My journey started in Sweden, then we took a plane to Gdansk.  This means that I was in three countries in one day, which I can now say as an accomplishment.  Gdansk is a very old small town on the northern coast of Poland as part of the Danzig region. 

We stayed in an abandoned train station

And yes Alissa, I had some butter.  Poland is amazingly beautiful, and cheap, which is a huge relief from absurd scandinavian prices.  The town however is tiny, and we walked completely around it in the first day.  We saw a lot of old churches and the largest church that is completely made out of brick is there as well, but you had to pay to go in, which is lame, its a church.  I also had pizza for the first time since being in europe, which was amazing!!  You really forget the little things, when you’re cut off from them.  And yes, the danes do have pizza, but for the price you pay, it better be made out of gold.

After Poland, we flew to Turku.  Turku, mind you is in the middle of NOWHERE.  So we get to the airport and its raining, and in order to get to the main terminal, we have to walk all the way around this fence on this gravel path in the woods and go to the front door.  Poland is on the Zlotych, while Finland is on the Euro, so we didn’t have any euros on us to pay for the bus.  We went inside to see if there was a money exchange place or an ATM, and evidentlly there is no such thing in Turku.  It was ridiculous, so we had to take a taxi to the main train station.  From there we went to Helsinki. 

This was an exhibition in the Kiasma

Ive heard a lot of bad things about Helsinki, but from my personal opinion, I really liked it.  Also, the days that we were there, it was design week.  So we got into all the museums for free because we were under 25.  Also, the hostel we stayed in was awesome.  In the 1950s, the summer olypmics were held in Helsinki.  They built a brand new stadium for the occasion.  When the olympics were over, they needed to do something with the stadium and instead of using it as a stadium which would be the obvious choice, they decided to turn it into a hostel.  So we stayed in an olympic stadium. 

We then took a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm.  This was not your typical small ferry, it was a gigantic cruise ship full of casinos, booze and tax free shopping.  There were a couple of bands playing band covers from the 50s and 60s, which was really silly.  The view however was spectacular, but the wind was unbelievable.  My eyes were watering uncontrollably.  Also the boat ride was 16 hours long, so we arrived in Stockholm in the morning. 

Small islands off the coast of Helsinki

Going back there again just made me fall in love with Stockholm all over again, it is just such an amazing and gorgeous city.  The morning we arrived there, we dropped our stuff off at the hostel and we to go walk around.  We saw the Max Ernst exhibit at the Moderna Museet.  We were then walking along the street where the Grand Hotel is and we turned a corner and saw our friends Roslyn and Cookie from our building which was totally bizarre because we had no idea they were even going to be in Stockholm.  We went to the city library, behold the wonder:

GLORIOUS

 Afterward, we went to this anti-fascist cafe for a benefit concert. We met some people there who were activists.  And they were telling us about this friend of theirs who two weeks ago, went to this rally in Russia and one day when he stepped out of his building, these nazis killed him with a machete.  Really brutal stuff.  So the concert was for his funeral costs.  After the concert they took us to a bar where there was another concert going on and they played a bunch of covers including squirrel nut zippers and other bands of that calibur. 

This is the lead singer, he was wearing a black shirt with white stripes, black pants with two white stripes close together and a red ascot. I dont even know how to begin to start making fun of that.

Unfotunately we had to leave the next day.  After traveling to four different airports on this trip, I came to the realization that Copenhagen airport is the easiest one to get to and from.  All the other ones were hard and ardous journeys.  Well once more apologies for taking so long to write this, its been a long week.