Kiitos = Thank You.
Let me start off by saying that Finland is not known for it's stunning cuisine. My diet was mostly oatmeal, black bread (a flat rye sourdough), cheese, meat, and potatoes. The Fins have a special dessert called Kiiseli, a mix of thawed fruits like strawberries, currants, blueberries, cloudberries, and lingonberries in a thick sugary syrup. They ladle it into bowls and devour it, an interestingly delicious but almost sickenly sweet dessert that would most likely add a few pounds if eaten for months on end. I had very nice salmon however, and some native karelian pastries (a rye crust filled with rice, barley, or potatoes, brushed with egg and melted butter).
I was a little disappointed, coming into Finland off the ferry from Stockholm to Turku, to still not be met with more than a few melting piles of snow here and there. No snow also means nothing to reflect the very small amount of light available, thus making the days seem darker than ever. Nevertheless, the Christmas cheer brought some extra light to my days in Scandinavia, and for that I was thankful. Helsinki has a beautiful Christmas market with a bigger variety of goods than I saw in Stockholm, Oslo, Paris, and Tallinn. But Helsinki, having been under Russian rule and gone through civil war conflicts in the 20th century, is made up of mostly 70's style buildings because all the historic ones were destroyed. A day or two in Helsinki was enough for me, so I decided to take the ferry to Estonia for a day, a cheap two hour ride. Tallinn is the capital, and has a very nice old town complete with the Christmas market selling sausages, sauerkraut, and hot mulled wine, as well as a stage with Christmas carolers. The country is largely influenced by Russia, and the architecture is a combination of Baroque, neo-gothic, and Russian Revivalist, with everything from onion domes to wooden churches and even some German looking buildings.
A LOT of Scandinavians also drink A LOT, and it was funny to see people wheeling their personal carts onto the ferry stacked high with racks of beer and handles of liquor; lots of Finnish take the ferry over to Estonia for the day because Estonia is so much cheaper than their own country.
The tourismy part of Tallinn seemed pretty safe to me as long as your bag isn't easily pickpocketable, so it never felt dangerous because I stayed among the crowds.
After a laidback day in Tallinn I was in for a long wait the next day, taking one of the latest possible buses from when I was staying to the train station in order to get to the airport, only to wait seven hours until my 7am flight to Copenhagen. In as few words as possible, my trip home seemed to drag on forever. In Copenhagen the time was one hour earlier, so I waited five hours for my flight to London. In London it was yet again another hour behind so I waited three hours for my flight to New York. Seven hours after boarding I landed in New York at 7:30pm... that was about 32 hours of sitting, waiting, watching, nodding off, and listening to a grumbling stomach. Consequently the four hour drive home felt like nothing, and you can guess how glad I was to collapse in my own bed (only AFTER drinking a cold tall glass of raw milk).
Tack så mycket, Europe.
