Amelia i Sverige: Helsinki

This past weekend my friends Kat, Dru, Charlotte, Natalie and I went to Helsinki, Finland. We flew there, got in around 8pm and checked into our first Hostel, which was in the Olympic Stadium (not on the field, just in the building).
After that we (with the help of a young couple we met at the tram stop) figured out how to get downtown via tram and stopped at a bar called "Bar Llamas", because it seemed to be very popular. So there we were, 5 American girls from Stockholm drinking tequilla-beer in a Mexican-themed bar in Helsinki. A fitting first night in a city that is about as strange as the previous sentence.

The next day we walked around a little, went to a market by the water (where we spent a lot of time trying on fur coats, hats, earmuffs, etc), saw the "Buddy Bears" art exhibit in the Senate Square, and eventually made our way to a public sauna (saunas were invented in Finland and still very popular), where we paid 7 euro and went upstairs to the women's floor for a sauna and cold shower (some of the saunas have pools that you swim in after, but this one just had a shower room).

Then we went to the island Sumolina (a 20 min. ferry ride from Helsinki), which is known for the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress, where we were staying in a hostel for the night. We had some pizza at a bar/restaurant on the island then bought beer and candy at the store and hung out in our room (which had 6 beds, but no one was staying in the last one, so we had it to ourselves), because it was raining and the island was pretty quiet at night.

The next morning we explored the fortress, which was beautiful and by far the best part of Helsinki. Then we went back to the mainland and shopped (I bought a really nice wool coat with an epic hood), had a long lunch, browsed the design district (mostly the Marimekko store), and had a long fika before getting on the 45 minute plane ride back to Stockholm. By Sunday night it was good to be Stock-home.

All in all, Helsinki was very strange, but cool. It was apparent in the design of the city that Finland has been under both Russian and Swedish control over the past few hundred years. It was much more industrial-looking than Sweden. It was raining the whole weekend, on and off, but it seemed appropriate for the city. I'm glad I got a chance to go somewhere that is different than most of western Europe (not to say that I'm not excited for my upcoming trips to Paris, Nantes, Amsterdam, Rome and Copenhagen though...)