First repeat visit? Huh?

It’s a little hard to believe, but with all of my travels and all of the countries I have visited, this last weekend was the first time I have been to the same country twice for non-business travel (excepting America’s Hat – Canada).

I’m currently in Germany for some business travel and decided to make the most of the flight across the Atlantic by coming over a few days early to visit Kyle (the girl) and Paddy in Helsinki.

My last visit to Helsinki was also a part of an extended business trip to Europe…but it was very much in the dead of winter. I got to experience such fun as cold, snow, cold, darkness, cold, and cold. There was also walking on the frozen sea, some (cold but enjoyable) sightseeing around the town, a ferry boat ride to Estonia to visit some grad school friends and eat bear (do not eat bear), and cooking sausages in the sauna.

This time the weather was considerably warmer and the days were the longest I've seen since going to Iceland. Thank goodness for my trusty sleep mask!

Not as much sightseeing on this visit as last time, but there was still a lot of fun to be had.

I got to experience my first ever rugby match! The national team of Finland managed to fend off a furious comeback by the Turkish national team to hold on to a victory. The other notable anecdote of the game was that the stadium managed to have the most uncomfortable seats ever. I think I would have been more comfortable on a bike seat with the legroom of a Central American minibus. After 12 hours on a plane, my ass couldn't handle more than one half and I decided it was better to stand.

I also got to experience Eurovision for the first time. I may have lived in Germany for 2 years, but I never bothered to watch the spectacle that is the world’s oldest televised singing competition. I've seen clips on YouTube. I've definitely made fun of it. Never have watched it though. We settled in with a couple beers and a very healthy amount of snark for FOUR HOURS of nonsense.

For those not familiar with Eurovision, it’s an international singing competition where one act per “European” nation sings a 3 minute song live. This year there were 27 countries competing. The quotes are there because the definition of what is in and out of Europe is a little fuzzy. Additionally, some countries don’t get to compete in the finals because…well…as bad as the songs in the finals are, their songs were worse. After about 2 hours of 3 minute pop songs, people spend $1 per text/call to vote for their favorites. The catch is that you can’t vote for your own country. The top vote getters from each country are awarded 12 points; 10 points for 2^nd, 8 for 3^rd, and so on. The voting stays open for about 30 minutes and then they Skype call reps from each of the 40 countries in the voting pool to get their results live. Honestly, as bad as the songs were…the vote counting is worse.

Four hours after it began, the Swedish artist had won with his kinda clubby pop song that was performed with a Banksy-style video that he interacted with in a choreographed manner. The most important thing to everyone in the crowd (and Paddy) was that Russia did not win. Would you believe that Eurovision is EXTREMELY political? Countries often vote for their historical allies and neighbors, and if your country has been a bunch of dicks recently to the rest of the world…people are going to boo your very bland pop song and cheer when you don’t get points in the voting. I’m sure that’ll show Putin!

The weather was a little meh the next day, so we went to Mad Max. All I will say about this movie is that it reminded me of when I played God of War 3 for the first time. The opening level on that game has you fighting against the god of the seas while climbing up the back and around the limbs of the titan Gaia. I had only been playing about 20ish minutes when Megan came out of the bedroom and said, “you do know that your mouth is open, right?” I caught myself multiple times with my mouth open while watching Mad Max. That…and smiling for no reason.

To close out the weekend, Paddy and I spent Monday wandering around Suomenlinna, a former military fort in the water outside Helsinki. The fort has an amazing history of changing hands from Swedish, to Finnish, to Russian, to Finnish hands. The sun came out and it was a great walk around the island and waterfront.

Monday evening we participated in an orienteering challenge in a park outside the city. You are given a map with a bunch of points marked on it and you have to go find them in a specific order before returning to the starting point. It’s a combination of following trails and using a compass to go off trail to find the control points. Kyle is preparing for a big orienteering race that is coming up in a few weeks and hasn't had too many chances to get out and practice.

We didn't get off to the best start and there was a little bit of a meltdown. It was a little awkward, like watching a married/dating couple explode at each other on the Amazing Race but without the comfort of not seeing it in person. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed and I demanded a group hug to bring us back together.

We did rally and find the points. We lost a little time on the first part, so we cut a few points out and made our own routing just to get the practice of setting a bearing and judging some distances. It was a lot of fun…kinda like going for a trail run and instead of always following the trail…going off trail and random times in directions that don’t make a lot of sense because it’s right through a bunch of bushes or swamp.

The best part of the evening was on the way back we found an Angry Birds themed playground! No better place to be at 9:30 on a Monday night with a good 90 minutes of daylight left!

Pictures below of Suomenlinna, post-meltdown looking for control points, group hug!, ANGRY BIRDS PLAYGROUND!, the pillowcase and duvet cover Kyle picked out for me to sleep on (the artist is a Finnish war hero and would you believe a very influential gay icon?).