Tuomas Grilli

Lihapiirakka

Ian and I also discovered the greatest sandwich ever created.  While wandering the streets, we found a small sandwich shop on a major bar street a block from our hostel.  Neither of us could pronounce the name, so I took a picture of it with my camera and showed it to the woman working.  She asked if we wanted a lot of toppings, not knowing what she was asking, we decided to just say ‘Yes’ and nod our heads.  It was a small sandwich, and the only ingredient we could figure out was egg.  This was the greatest sandwich ever created.

The next day, Ian and I made it to the National Museum.  It was massive, and covered the entire history of Finland (minus the hockey).  I went with Ian and we spent about 5 hours there and seemingly went through the museum backwards.  There were many artifacts from the viking times and old currency from throughout the world.  I learned about the fierce rivalry with the Swedes, which I will try not to cover here…

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Tags: Finland,Food,Helsinki,Museum,Sandwich
Categories: Travel
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I made it to Tampere.  I flew in yesterday around 6pm local time.  The flight from Newark, NJ was not too bad, I tried to sleep for as much of it as I could, but sadly that wasnt much.  A husband and wife seemed to be getting divorced in front of me and then decided to start yelling at the people behind them and the entire flight crew…  Not exactly a quiet flight.  Other than them, however, the flight was great.  SAS has great planes and the inflight entertainment centers were nice.  The food was actually really good (for airplane food).  I had fish for dinner, which was good.  The breakfast, not so much.  The bread was good though, so I stuck to that.

I landed in Copenhagan, Denmark for a 5 hour layover.  We were forced to go through security again, and they arent as strict as in the USA.  I got to keep my shoes on, however they made sure I didnt have any drinks with me.  The airport there is really nice.  There are a ton of shops and there was a new Ferarri and Porsche on display and for 35dkk, I could enter to win one of them.  I decided the odds were agaisnt me and I should probably spend my money on some food.  After wandering around for a while, I decided to get some noodles and pork from a vendor in the airport.  There was nobody else there but me, so I stuck up a conversation with the guy and he was from Poland here for 6 months.  We talked about the US economy, which he had been following very closely, and I was shocked to hear him talk about Ben Bernanke and the credit crisis.  After that I stumbled into OLeareys sports bar.  There is an irish pub with a ton of Boston sports memorabilia in the Copenhagan airport.  Since it was about 10am, I didnt do any drinking, just got a Coke, and watched a football (soccer) match.  I dont remember who was playing, but it was a decent game.  Afterwards I left to get on my plane.  When I got there, the plane wasnt there yet, and it was delayed for 1hr 20 minutes.  I met a family from Estonia who were also waiting for the plane, and learned the finnish word ‘kiitos’, or thank you.  That and ‘ei’ (no) are all I remember at the moment.  Dad was right, Finnish and Estonian are pretty similar.

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Tags: Finland,Tampere
Categories: Travel
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