Let's Talk About Finland

Let's start with the biggest question: why did you pick Helsinki? We went to attend a Google for Education conference, and strategically made it into a mini vacation…that’s why!

Helsinki is a beautiful city! Very quaint with a small town feel and very clean. The people are mostly quiet, but they were friendly and everyone seemed to know English. Helsinki is also super cold and super expensive. This seems to be true of everything in Europe! $18 hamburgers and Mercedes taxis…oh my! AND they have blue Powerade and Dr. Pepper...which were also...expensive. 

 

 

Our first day in Helsinki included eating in the airport after we arrived, taking a taxi to the hotel, and finding a delivery app for dinner. We were beyond exhausted after almost 13+ hours of travel. We stayed at the Clarion Suites which was super nice with great service and a really good breakfast spread.

The next day (Friday) we were woken up by the sun that stays up for 16ish hours during the spring. (Reversed in the winter) We bundled up in all the layers and hit the streets to find the tram station. Seeing that we really only had this one day to see the city, we had to make it worth it. We started by going to Senate Square to catch one of those big, red, double-decker tour buses. This was a way for us to see and hear about everything Helsinki has to offer while being able to get off the bus and explore. In its entirety, we went to 20 different historical landmarks. One of their biggest tourist attractions was Rock Church, which was just a church built out of rocks...imagine that. Needless to say, it was a bit underwhelming and we decided not to pay the 3 Euro entrance fee. After the bus tour, we took a ferry to Suomenlinna island.  Suomenlinna was a sea fortress that was used to protect the city and now the island is home to the Finnish Naval Academy and some private residences. We made our way back to the main land after roaming around the island aimlessly for about an hour in the freezing cold. It was then time to solve the riddle to the eternal question "what are we going to eat?" This was the hardest part of being in Finland because menus had zero English. (I miss being able to look on Yelp!) We stumbled upon a place called Naughty Burger and found comfort in a restaurant with burgers and fries and nothing weird.

 

 Saturday was the start of the Google conference. The school, International School of Helsinki, was around the corner from our hotel so we walked there and made our way inside. (Sidenote: This is the only private school in Helsinki because their public schools are legit!) Guess who showed up to a Google training without laptops or devices? Us. All four of us (travelled with two of our teaching partners). We sat at our table awkwardly as we watched other teachers flood in with their laptop bags. Kelsey decided that if anyone asked we should just lie and say that traveling from the Middle East with laptops is too difficult. Ha! We ended up borrowing Macbooks from the school. I wasn’t super impressed with the training, and we all left feeling less than inspired.

What does one do after spending 8 hours in a conference? Go to Hard Rock for dinner and then go see a movie of course. We Googled to figure out if Finland was showing Fast 8 in English, and found the largest movie theater in history. This 3-story theater, complete with restaurants and an art gallery, charged 18 euros (like $20) per ticket and sat 600 in a room. Loved the movie though!

 

On the 3^rd day, we woke up early for day 2 of the conference. We left our hotel for the school and ended up walking through what Texans with thin blood would consider a mini blizzard. Chunky snowflakes fell for most of the morning. Day 2 of the conference was even less eventful, but we did accomplish a few things. 1) We were able to network with teachers from the area. The rumor about teachers in Finland being the happiest in the world is true. They all loved their jobs! 2) I used the time to start planning our fall vacations. (Ear to ear grins for Christmas 2017)

 Travel days are always so intense. I think that the worst part of traveling is the traveling. When can teleportation be an option? The hotel arranged a 4 a.m. taxi for us to get to the airport for our 7 a.m. flight. We checked out and walked outside to the ultimate Mercedes taxi van. What a way to leave Helsinki…in style! Of course, the first thought in our minds was ‘How much extra is this going to cost?’ LOL! Poor people problems!

 On our way back to Kuwait, we had a 6-hour layover in Amsterdam. Since we’re truly living the “YOLO” lifestyle these days, we decided to randomly buy trains tickets and go into the city center. We seriously haven't been on so many modes of public transportation in our lives as we have in the last month. The ticket buying system is not the easiest to navigate, partly because there were train stops that we couldn’t even pronounce. We knew our Wi-Fi would be gone as soon as we left the airport so we studied the maps (sidenote: remember MapQuest days) and boarded the train. The ride into town was super quick! We hopped off and crossed a few streets and canals and found The Pancake Bakery. Service wasn't the greatest, but the food more than made up for it. After breakfast, we walked about a block and found the Ann Frank House. Tickets to visit her home are sold out months in advance, so we knew that we wouldn't be going inside. Something about even standing outside of it and remembering the words from her diary was an unreal moment. After visiting the house, we moseyed back to the train station and headed back to the airport.

Amsterdam seems like a very cool city. A teensy bit dirty but still very well maintained considering its history. I'd definitely like to go back one day.

  

Next up for the Johnsons: Dallas, Texas!