Freezing my bälls off...

Aahhh. I have the room to myself. I can read and relax (though my damn Ultraviolet player wouldn't play my Batman movies). So I stayed up later than I should have reading a Steven King novel (damn you Steve!).

My plan to hit the morning sauna was slightly delayed as I was lazy by a half hour. Then I went down to wash my clothes only to find that the cleaning staff had booked the machines. There are only two washers and one dryer. There are no laundromat anywhere near the hostel. And we have to share the machine with the cleaning crew - so they use it all day. This would be called sucking.

Cool street art on the walk from the hostel to the cruise ship dock.

I walked down to the nearby dock open market area to find information on ship and bus tours. It was much colder today than yesterday, so I was freezing my previously mentioned unmentionables off. I did manage to book a combo ship cruise around the bay area and 48 hour hop on/off bus tour. I then looked around the market which was next to the dock to try and find a cheap hat and scarf. All the hats started at 20 euro, so I figured I could do better by going into the huge mall in town.

The cruise was pretty cool. It lasted an hour and a half with lunch and a bar on board. So I had a roast beef sandwich with dill and a couple lattes. The outdoor part with the good view for pictures was cold, but they did provide blankets you could put on your legs. Nothing to help my head though. There were a lot of islands and most of them had fortifications on them. They were a big deal during the Finnish/Swedish war and later when the Russians used it. The really cool thing is that they have withstood the test of time, so they are still very much in place and unspoiled. A sad thing is that the guide was saying that the bay usually froze up, making it possible to drive to the islands during winter - but that it no longer happened the last couple decades. Might be that whole pesky global warming thing.

The cruise eventually got chilly enough to where I went inside the boat and decided I definitely needed to hit a mall to get some clothes. After the tour I walked up the main thoroughfare to the shopping district and its main mall "Focus". The mall was different from the ones I'm used to and this one was built into a hill. They setup is a number of small halls (maybe 15 feet wide) branching in many directions with a very small open area in the middle. Very cramped compared to our malls, yet they had over 130 stores in it - so the size of the mall was the same. I went in at ground level and figured out it was built into a hill when on level four I walked out the back into a neighborhood. Whoa. I ended up hitting a sports store and got super thing thermals, a hat, and gloves. I needed the hat anyway from yesterday's encounter at the station. When a giant bigoted Nazi Fin tells you your hat is a bad thing, it must REALLY be a bad thing. I then ended up having a Southern Fried Chicken meal on the bottom floor.

Sign for the downstairs bathroom, I self entitled it "Why does it hurt when I pee?!?!"

I was able to find the 4 tram to my hostel right off the bat this time and headed straight back to the hostel. I got to the laundry room just in time to see two students (mining engineers) trying to get some laundry done too. So we took the clothes out of the washer (it was the hostel staff and we checked first) and we each took a washer. After a half hour we stuck both our loads int he dryer. Cool guys, they were hitting the various college teaching mining engineering in the country.

While sitting here waiting for my clothes to dry, and in between text Mr. Pete Lee to go get some drinks tonight (he's here for a month vacationing); I noticed something pretty cool. In the apartments they have these fully enclosed double glass insulated balconies so that they can enjoy the sunlight when while they can and not get frozen. Me like. Also, as in Sweden, it appears they think dryers are a silly idea and most households simply hang the clothes in a bathroom (with warmed floor tiles) or in a special room by the heater.

Now just awaiting for my clothes to dry.

The bathrooms here have a twist to them that I can only picture as uniquely Scandinavian, like having heated bathroom floor tiles. There are speakers in front of the two toilet rooms that continuously play the sounds of a bunch of birds chirping. Obviously to cover up the sounds of the people in the toilets. Its these cultural dualities that always intrigue me. They won't use a dryer, but they take the time out to cover bathroom noises.

I think I caught a session of OCD though. There was a guy with arm sleeve tattoos (I haven't seen a lot of tattooed folks) washing his hands when I went it. He was already soaping, rinsing and repeating. He maintained this throughout my bathroom visit and only moved to the dryer to dry his hands when he seen I needed the sink. Just helping out unintentionally it seems.

Heading out now to meet Pete and Pub Sirdie.

Ok, Pub Sirdie was really cool. It is owned by an old Bulgarian guy that married a Finnish wife and opened a bar about the size of my living room. There was old Soviet gas masks and uniforms on the walls along with a string of old beer mugs lining the area above the bar itself. It also had the unique distinction of being on of the very rare pubs that had a working jukebox that still played 45 albums. Though the songs ranged between Kenny Logins and old Soviet songs. Very unique character. We had a couple beers, tried some unique Finnish liquors (one tasted like Glenlivet and one was smokey that was made with pine tar). This was on a hill in the Bohemian Kallio district.

After this we headed down to Molly Malone's further downtown. It was owned by an ex-pat and it was a typical Irish pub stuck in the middle of Helsinki. There was a cute Moldavian bartendress I chatted with, we played blackjack (minus side the house wins on a push, plus side everything goes to charity), and talked to a blind stinky Irish guy that kept lamenting on how he wanted to get into a fight with someone randomly. Yeh. Stereotype confirming isn't a good thing homey...

I ended up losing Pete, so headed out to the hostel. Met up with the new hostel mate. Speaks fluent English and he's from Berlin. Wants to travel to different cities and check out how people live in each city. Cool guy. I might get up early enough for a sauna. Might not. We'll see.