Turku

    Funny. We were told to be down in the hotel lobby at 9:00 so we could start our day in Turku. Who woke up at 8:45? This dude. A few crude things may or may not have been said to myself in my hotel room. But it was okay. In the rush of ransacking my room into complete ruin, I got ready in time.

    Before we were to start touring, we had a part of our orientation to do. We met in the hotel’s conference room to talk about things we needed to know about Finland, culture shock, and meeting and living with our host families.

    Then we started out on the town for the day. Our first stop was Turku’s Lutheran Cathedral (most Finns are Lutheran). We met a YFU volunteer there on the steps of the church who also was going to give us a tour of this stone giant. When we walked in we could see straight down the 90 meter aisle which is the longest church aisle in Finland. Between the tall arches, ceilings, and organ music playing, everybody was in awe. We all talked about how this organ music wasn’t your typical church music. I can’t explain it but it made our visit more special. 

    Sweden ruled Finland for over 600 years and the only Swedish monarch to be buried in Finland was buried in this cathedral. Her name was Catherine Månsdotter. There’s a bit of scandal in her story, but I’m not really remembering from the tour too well. Also, this cathedral is so popular for weddings that there can be up to six a day during the weekend! 

Catherine Månsdotter's tomb

    Next on our list was lunch at the Teini Restaurant. This restaurant was a Finnish buffet style. Finnish food contains a lot of potatoes and fish, among a lot of other things. But this meal was definitely potatoes and fish. The potatoes were what you would expect from potatoes, but the salmon here was the greatest I’ve ever tasted. I’ve had salmon before but never as good as this. There was also all sorts of salads and a meat stew. And of course, coffee at the end of the meal. Finland drinks the most coffee per capita in the world and holy wow Finns love their coffee. You will find coffee anywhere and everywhere.

    From the restaurant Teini, we walked about just one block to the medieval market of Turku where all the workers were dressed in medieval clothing. Pretty cool sight in the middle of old Turku. But a group of four of us wasn’t able to walk around the market right away. A journalist from Turun Sanomat interviewed the four of us about what we were doing this summer. We answered questions about everything from how we found out about the program to the big question: Why Finland? I have already been asked this question so many times from Finns and non-Finns. Finnish people always want to know why we would come here! They are very proud of their country but they generally find it amazing when a foreigner is so interested in Finland. Most of our answers were about how we really didn’t know too much about Finland before we came and how we wanted to find out what it was like firsthand as a resident and not just a tourist.

    From the market we got on a bus and were taken along the river to Turku Castle. This was a neat place. It’s a fortress that started out as just a camp for soldiers that gradually got built bigger and bigger over the centuries into the magnificent building it is now. We got a tour through most of the castle and found out so much about the history of Turku through seeing the changes of the building over the centuries. This museum is a must-do if coming to Turku. 

A gingerbread display at Turku Castle

    After the castle, we had around two hours to walk around the city in groups on our own. I went back along the river with some others to walk through the medieval festival again. It was interesting to see all the stands selling medieval crafts and food here and there. There were also performances from the people dressed up in medieval clothes. 

    Up next was a Sauna night at the Ispoinen Beach which was awesomely organized by the YFU volunteers. For most of us, this was going to be our first Finnish Sauna experience. So we got there and the first thing they had us do was try some Finnish delicacies/snacks/candies. The first thing we tried was piimä which is a drink that they said was sour milk. Okay, when they said sour milk, I kinda got weirded out, but I tried it and it was just like yogurt. Unflavored though. Next on the list was mämmi which is the dessert to eat at Easter time in Finland, and only then. What did it look like? Sludge. What did it taste like? AWESOMENESS. It tasted sort of like raisin bran cereal or the filling to Fig Newton cookies. You usually pour cream over the top of it. I really liked it. Next was salmiakki. Oh…okay. Definitely an acquired taste. It’s like black licorice but it’s not and it’s sort of salty. I couldn’t figure out if I liked it but I did enjoy eating it. So I guess I liked it somewhat. Next was a hard candy that tasted like salmiakki but spicier. It’s called Turkinpippuri (Turkish Pepper) and it was different but I liked it. It’s flavored with ammonium chloride just like salmiakki if that means anything to anybody. I really can’t explain what it tasted like. Then we tried Fazer Chocolate which is the Finnish chocolate. It was just really good chocolate. It had nothing special to it like exotic ingredients like the last two things. But to the Finns it's their favorite chocolate.

    So we got changed into our bathing suits (we were going co-ed) (usually you go only with the same gender with…well, yeah.) and went in the Sauna. (SOW-na in Finnish). It got REALLY hot. Actually hotter than I thought it would be. As you threw more steam (löyly) onto the stove, it got hotter. And hotter. And hotter. So just when I thought my eyes might melt away from my face, I ran out onto the dock nearby and plunged into the Baltic Sea (Don’t jump! There are lots of rocks!) If I hadn’t just come out of the Sauna, I would’ve gotten hypothermia. It was COLD! But then we did just as the Finns do and repeated the whole process of going from Sauna to sea probably up to five times. And then when we were done I felt so clean and so awesome. It’s definitely a workout to sit there in the heat and then freeze yourself for the beginner.

    After cooking ourselves we cooked up a Finnish barbeque which was sausages, grilled corn and vegetables, salad, and Karjalanpiirakka (Karelian Pastry) which is a pastry with a rice filling that you can put butter on top of with cheese if you’d like. So good. Just before we left this beach clubhouse, the YFU Finland staff presented us with ‘Sauna Diplomas’. Just a funny thing for us to keep saying that we passed training in using the Sauna correctly. 

So here our day came to a close. The next day was a big day. We had another orientation meeting in the morning and then our host families were going to pick us up and we would start living with them. 

I took like eighty trillion photos and I couldn't put them all on here, but you can see the rest here if you'd like.