Thoughts on the Train

I realise that my last entry may have given some a bad image of Helsinki. I’m sitting on the train reflecting on the experience and it certainly was not all bad. In fact, the people were very very nice! I had a purse returned to me (although it was not mine . . . I didn’t actually lose my purse, thank goodness!), and someone advised me not to pay to use the man’s water closet at the train station. Thank you mysterious stranger. The city is incredibly clean, and no one ever seems to be in a hurry. I actually saw a train with 26 cars stop when someone was running after it (and I was at the train station ALL day and only saw one person running!) This is a crazy crazy place.

Since everyone thinks I’m finish (in fact, there is one old lady on the train that speaks English but refuses to talk to me in English, because she thinks that I’m trying to trick her – not kidding), I have actually picked up a few words.

Hey – means hello
Yo – means yes
Saippuakivikauppias – means soapstone salesman (also the longest palindrome)

Well it’s 11:00 pm here, and the sun is just starting to set – it is beautiful. Finland looks a lot like Canada, only more trees. I will post some pictures as soon as I get to a hostel where I can plug my camera in! One update before posting – the sun started setting at 11 pm, from 11 – 2:30 you could not really tell whether it was a sunset or a sunrise because the whole sky was pink, gorgeous. Then at 3:00 am the sun started to glare like it was midday. Really astonishing and beautiful – just a little hard to sleep though!