Estonia

    When I left my host family, I took a train from Tampere to Helsinki with my friends Emily and Tristan. This was my first time being on an actual train that wasn't just a metro train. The ride was about two hours and we chatted the trip away. At one point Tristan's infamous deck of United States trivia playing cards came out and that took the last third of the trip. I learned two new card games (that I would have no idea how to play now) and one of them was Finnish. We got stuck on the way through the Finnish game but luckily the Finnish man who was assigned to the same table as us said something to help us through...okay, help me through.
    We got to the Helsinki main train station and were quickly attacked by three other scholarship students on the platform. We crammed ourselves into a taxi and were soon on our way to the harbor to take the ferry across the Baltic to Finland's southern neighbor, Estonia. Throughout the morning there had been the wondrous feeling of knowing we'd be in another country that same day.

    We met up with the rest of the students who were going to Estonia in the harbor of Helsinki and we boarded! When I say 'Baltic Sea ferry', I'm not talking about a ferry that can hole ten cars. More like hundreds. The ferries that cruise the Baltic are more like ocean liners than ferries. They have hotels, casinos, malls, restaurants, and just tons to do. We rode the Tallink Star, which was huge, but not as grand as the ones that would cruise to Stockholm, Sweden, for example. But woah. 

(This isn't my photo.)

    The ferry ride was going to be another two hours across the Bay of Finland to Tallinn, Estonia, the capital city. We hung around on the back deck and just took in the vastness of just this small part of the Baltic. People know that there's a Mediterranean way of life, but there is just as much of a Baltic way of life in Northern Europe. 

    Getting off the boat into Estonia was a cool moment. We had all become so used to Finland, and it wasn't foreign to us anymore, but now that we were in a new country, it was an awesome feeling. We said that Estonia felt so exotic to us because it was a new place to us, with another language (similar to Finnish though) and knowing the fact that it used to be part of the Soviet Union just about twenty years ago showed us how progressive this country actually was. We also had the chance to be tourists again as we'd been seeing Finland as residents. 

    We walked to our hotel to drop our backpacks off and then we met up with four Estonians in the lobby who were YFU volunteers and had been on exchange in the last few years. They were going to give us a tour of the old town of Tallinn. In the rainy weather we walked about twenty minutes throught the new downtown area to one of the gates in the medieval walls that surrounded old town. We basically walked around and stopped here and there for different stories and myths about different places in these old parts. We went to a few lookouts at the top of the hill in the middle of the city, went into some churches, and for the greatest view of Tallinn, we went up to the top of the tallest church's steeple, which happens to also be the tallest steeple in Northern Europe. 

The Russian Church. After I took this, some guy told me to put my camera away...  woops.

We climbed to the top of this one! Only to the top of the white part though.
(Fun fact: hundreds of years ago this cathedral caught on fire and it was so bright that it could be seen from Helsinki across the Baltic.)

A famous door in Tallinn, which is on the cover of a book I know of. 

    The rest of that afternoon was full of more touring until we went to dinner. When we finished, we headed to the 'Peppersack', a medieval restaurant that served traditional Estonian food. The waiters and waitresses even dressed in medieval clothes! (Well, Tallinn is said to be the best kept medieval town in Europe.) That night we crammed into one hotel room before actually dispersing to our rooms to sleep to hang out for hours.

 The next morning we ate at the hotel's buffet for breakfast and then met two of the Estonians we had met the day before. We had the rest of the day until the boat left to go off to anywhere in the city by ourselves (we stayed in one group though). They both had been exchange students this last year in Ecuador and Colombia, so they definitely knew the exchange life too. We first went to a shopping mall where we went to a Kalev chocolate shop, which is an Estonian chocolate company. Let's just say that my life took a turn in the right direction when I tried the grapefruit dark chocolate... oh my. Across from this shop was an Estonian handicraft shop (there are so many handicraft shops in Tallinn that I saw) where I picked up some souvenirs to take home to my family. After, we went to a supermarket in that same shopping center to try a sweet Estonian creme filled chocolaty half-frozen something or other. I'm not too sure what it was but it turns out that something that could be a dessert is actually a breakfast food. So then we were off in the city again on our own. We took the tram to go see Kadriorg palace, which was the palace of Catherine I of Russia. We meandered our way through the grounds of the palace which were filled with very ornate royal gardens and fountains with statues. 

Our new Estonian friends, Madli and Liisa.

The back of the palace.

       

    From Kadriorg Palace, we walked along the coast, saw a famous statue and then we headed to Tallinn's giant outdoor concert dome where huge concerts are held. We went up on the steps where massive choirs perform and had our own little concert, of the American national anthem...in Tallinn, Estonia. We hung around there for a while, just messing around and taking a break from all the walking we were doing.

The stage was HUGE. (you can't really tell here.)

ACTION SHOT.

    The dome was at the bottom of the hill, so it was like a natural ampitheater. We labored to the top and became loud teenagers again.

    To get back to the city center, we took the bus from a stop near the dome. Did we buy bus tickets? Nope. Let's just say it was a very sneaky moment... We went back into Old Town, where we were the day before, and meandered around some more. That meant some more souvenir shopping too (I got a sweet Estonia scarf!) Then we took a final relaxing moment while being in Estonia in the main square. We sat at long outdoor table at one of the cafes that line the perimeter of the main square. This was a total European moment. 

With my very sparse knowledge of Estonian, I ordered Estonian apple pie, and a frozen Estonian drink made with plums. The pie was different from American pie, mostly because there was vanilla creme on top, then strawberry jam. 

    We were running a bit late so we hurried back to the hotel to meet our chaperone and her daughter so we could head over to the harbor. We had a very Finnish buffet dinner on the ferry on the way back to Helsinki.

It was funny because once we saw Helsinki again off in the distance, we all felt not as excited as when we saw Tallinn in the distance. It was Finland which was our second home country, and not so foreign to us any more. 

    I had a lot of fun during my side trip to Tallinn. It was definitely one of my favorite things I did this whole summer, and I got to go there with some pretty awesome friends while meeting even more international friends. 

    

Leaving my host family

Monday morning I had to wake up really early (earlier than for school) to go to Tampere Rautatieasema (train station) to catch my train to Helsinki. It was also the morning that I’d be leaving my host family and my Finnish house. I must say that it was a bit awkward to leave, since staying with my family in their house in Nokia became so normal. We all knew I was leaving, but we just tried to keep our morning as normal as we possibly could.

I got ready just like every other morning, had my open-faced sandwich breakfast with coffee (caffeine…) and pretty quickly I was back in my room putting my two backpacks on along with my suitcase (I packed the two days before then).

And then we said bye. I tried to put myself away from this moment as much as possible, and I guess not thinking about what was happening too much helped. It still felt really weird to leave the house and family I’d been living in for over a month though. I said bye to my mom Anne, and my brother Eeti and left the house. I saw my other brother for the last time the night before because he was staying the night at his grandpa’s house. I didn’t say bye to my host dad, Matti, because he was the one taking me to the train station. We drove the twenty minutes or so it takes to get from Nokia to downtown Tampere and it just seemed like any other normal car ride I had taken with him (except it was super early in the morning). The ride was filled with useless facts being streamed from one of us to the other, just like I would do with my biological dad.

When we got to the train station, Matti and I met up with two other Tampere students, Emily and Tristan, along with Emily’s host mom and sister. We went up to the platform to find our train and then that was the time I said bye to the last of my family. I said bye to my host dad right in front of the door to train car number two, and then I was off. My host family and I have unofficial plans of meeting in the coming years, so I think that kept me from getting even more weird about leaving. But of course, I was sad to leave my favorite Finnish family. My family.

Eeti, Ante, Anne, me, and Matti

Finnish Day!

Yesterday we had a very Finnish day. Finnish you say? But isn't everyday a Finnish day in Finland? Finland is Finnish you know... no. Everyday in Finland is Finnish, but yesterday, we made and ate all traditional Finnish foods. I started out by helping my host mom make pulla which is sweet bread with cardamom in the dough. There are so many different types of pulla you can get here, but it is all with cardamom. And it's so good. I'm definitely going to miss the baked things here in Finland. 

It's a pulla boy!

This type is called 'Boston Cake'

Next up on our menu for the day was REINDEER. Yes, it took me this long in Finland to finally have reindeer. I knew I would have some pretty upset friends at home who would be disappointed if I came home not having tried reindeer. The way we had reindeer was with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. Might seem a little foreign (well...) to some people to have berries with meat and potatoes, but it's actually really good. 

For a dessert, we had a very traditional Finnish something. It was like a pudding made with berries and rye flour. Usually it is eaten with milk or cream poured on top. It was good, but not my favorite. 

The color is awesome!

Last night after all my taste-tests, I headed off to my friend Lex's house for her birthday party. I met more of Lex's extended host family there. I got to hang out with Emily and Tristan (other Americans staying in Tampere), Lex's host brothers Samppa and Teemu who I'd really gotten to know this summer, and Teemu's friend Sanni. Along with Lex of course. It was nice to have time to be a loud teenager. 

On the way home from the party, at around 11:30, it seemed really dark outside. I hadn't really noticed the change in light until last night. When I first got to Finland, it was still bright out all night long, but now since it's getting closer to fall it actually gets dark after eleven. It will be hard adjusting back to dark nights at home, because here when it's its darkest in the summer, the sky is still a deep blue. 

And with talking about night time, I must get to bed. Tomorrow is my last full day with my host family before I start the rest of the scholarship trip in Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonia. I'm getting mixed feelings about leaving. But I'm just going to try to go with the flow. They really are my second family now. 

Buffalo follows me wherever I go.

You can basically not go anywhere in the world without having at least one connection to Buffalo. On Monday, I went to IKEA (ick-yeah in Finland!) with my host mom and walked around the store for a while. We were in the cabinet section and Anne was pointing out cabinets that she was interested in for my brother's room when all of the sudden she was like "and then I think Ante could use these cab- OH MY. IT'S TEPPO."

Okay, small explanation. On the Buffalo Sabres there is a player named Teppo Numminen who's home city in Finland is Tampere, where I'm staying. When I first came here, it was a funny surprise to my host family and me that he went from Tampere to Buffalo, our two cities.

So here I was in the cabinet section of IKEA Tampere four thousand miles away from Buffalo, staring at one of the people that make Buffalo famous. He was there with his family. My host mom in Finnish said to Teppo "This is William from Buffalo!" So we talked for a minute or two, just basically saying how weird it was to run into another Buffalonian here. In IKEA. In the cabinet section. Four thousand miles away.

Yes of course I was the one to be like "Can we get a picture?"...your welcome very much ;)

For the few minutes after my mom and I just basically stared at each other like crazy people crying and laughing in the middle of a giant furniture store. None of the showroom was any longer interesting for us. What just happened was way too crazy. So immediately we called my host dad to tell him and he thought it was super crazy too. 

All after that was kind of a daze, and I just remember waking up on the side of the highway. Just kidding. But we did walk through the rest of the store still crazily shocked.

The funniest part about this story is that my friend Jacquie, before I left, joked that I should watch out for her favorite player from the Buffalo Sabres, Teppo Numminen, because he was from Finland. And that is just what happened. I think I thought of Jacquie before I even thought about how rare this really was. 

Talk about a one-in-a-million chance. Buffalo, oh Buffalo. Sometimes you're just so out there in the world. Don't stop.