Sweden, Estonia, & Finland

Reading time: 9 minutes

Themes: Adventure, exploration

22 - 24 June

My days in Sweden were somewhat uneventful, truth be told. At that point, I was getting a little homesick and spent a lot of time talking to my family on the phone when we could manage between eight time zones. During my short time in Stockholm, I was amazed; at the food, the people, and the beauty. There are not many cities like Stockholm, that's for sure. I spent the days roaming the streets and observing them by myself, a change from the rest of my time in Europe. I spent the nights watching movies and talking about life with my host, Kaaro, with whom I shared a studio. In my journal from my first day, I noted how clean everything was. I remember it feeling incredibly modern despite all the old buildings. The stereotypes about the Swedish people's beauty are astoundingly accurate - I couldn't believe how many people looked like supermodels. Stockholm was also the first place I saw a Kawasaki ER-6N motorcycle which I immediately fell in love with and would later buy back home in the States. As a budgeted eighteen-year-old vagabond, I couldn't afford to stay in Sweden longer than a handful of days, however blissful they were. Plus, I had a friend waiting for me in Finland.

[When I was in high school, I became great friends with a foreign exchange student from Finland named Oskari. Oskari and I became fast friends even though we met halfway through his time in the United States. Our last months together in the winter and spring of 2015 were jam-packed with adventures. We went mudding on rural northern Colorado county roads and got stuck in a monsoon in my Passat. We stayed out all night in Boulder, partying and laughing at people who inquired about where Oskari was from and how he might have spoken such good English. We hiked to secret overlooks and may or may not have shared a couple of beers that we had snuck from our houses. The first family that Oskari was placed with didn't suit him the best, so halfway through, he relocated several houses down from my friend's grandmother's house that served as the local hangout. It turned out to be prime conditions for developing a friendship. By Oskari's last day in Colorado, I found myself driving home from our last adventure, quietly weeping with a smile as we jammed to Ride by TwentyOnePilots (our favorite song). Saying goodbye to Oskari was extremely hard as I hadn't gotten that close to a friend before him. Reflecting on Oskari and I's friendship was a huge motivation for me to travel to Europe, seeing that my best friend had been from a foreign country and only was in my life a year. Doing so, namely going to Finland, turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.]

25 - 26 June

I departed Stockholm via the St. Petersburg Line ferry and headed for Tallinn, Estonia. I had never been on a cruise liner before, but having a room to myself was second to none. I remember the pizza from the restaurant onboard as some of the best I'd ever had (I supposed the glass of white wine and balcony sunset view may have helped too). I have a permanent imprint of that ferry: blood-red carpet, brass fixtures, and the most atrocious 80s music playlist that ever existed (and I like 80s music). I had a small box on the wall next to my bed that controlled the volume of the radio so I could turn it off though it sporadically turned itself back on a couple of times during the night. Estonia was the first country I decided to go to entirely on a whim with zero planning. You'll remember my friend Jaan Matti from London, who was from Estonia - he went to the US to visit some friends after we parted ways and offered me his apartment if I wanted to see Tallinn on my way to Helsinki. A separate friend of his that we had linked up within London took Jaan Matti up on the same offer the same day I was there...go figure. We met up, took our first ride in a Tesla to Jaan Matti's apartment, made some spaghetti together, and sat on the porch smoking Cohiba cigars that Jaan Matti had generously forfeited. That night, I learned a harsh lesson about how much tobacco I can handle after smoking two cigars and spending the next few hours with my head over the toilet. That was also my first exposure to the northern latitude's lack of true darkness in the summer.

The next day I took a quick walk through the streets of Tallinn and caught the Tallink/Silja Line Ferry to Helsinki. The second ferry was a quick three hours compared to the sixteen hours I'd done the night before. Oskari made one request of me before departing the ship: bring two giant cases of beer from the duty-free section. Reuniting with Oskari was terrific. I saw the joy in his eyes and in the way he talked now that he was allowed to show me his home after living in mine, and I was equally as excited. It felt different from being with someone I knew. I instantly dropped all my anxiety and was able to relax in a nice bed in my own room (on land) for the first time since leaving home. Until then, it was all shared rooms or my tent outside the train station in Hamburg, Germany. Oskari's father, Jari, spoke close to no English but was a fantastic cook. His mother, Merja, sister, brother-in-law, and cousin all spoke fluently, so it was no trouble telling my stories of London and Amsterdam. I have never had a bowl of pasta and meat sauce better than the one that Jari made for me that first night in Lahti.

27 - 30 June

The next couple of days, Oskari and I spent driving through the Finnish countryside through the rolling green hills with the music blasting. Oskari's parents had a Renault or a Peugeot - I can't remember, but I know it was foreign and fun to drive. I later had my driving privileges revoked, however, after almost mowing down a pedestrian making a right turn after stopping at a red light and all three passengers screaming. I learned quickly that Finnish driving rules are very different from my native ones. The weather was fantastic, my best friend and I were reunited, and we had a whole week to catch up and explore Finland. Oskari took me to his family's cottage built in the early 1900s by his great-grandfather, the original structure and sauna still withstanding. It caught me off guard watching Oskari's parents strip naked and go for a swim in front of us, but after the initial shock settled, I grew to appreciate the sentiment of embracing our bodies and not being ashamed of them as we are back home. We alternated between swimming in the somewhat frigid lake and rejuvenating in the wood-fired sauna. I had been in a sauna a couple of times as a kid, but it was nothing like a 1900s wood-burning sauna. Oskari derived a lot of humor out of dowsing the coals continuously and watching my face as it singed with steam. To this day, I still use the sauna regularly, and it was all because of my first experience in Finland, the origin of the practice. The sunset that night at the cottage still lives in my dreams - hopefully, it's clear why I have fallen so hard for Finland and gone back twice by now.

Oskari quickly introduced me to his many friends with whom I've since become equally close. We spent several nights clubbing in Lahti and flirting with Finnish girls. To say my sleep was jacked up would be an understatement. The sunset was at 10:30 in the evening, and most of the time, we didn't go to bed until three or four. We ran on 'long drinks' and beer for that week, and all my notions of how much alcohol a human being can handle were quickly diminished when I met the Finns. On a random Thursday afternoon, my friends decided to drive up to a Swedish town just past the border called Haparanda. When considering it's a 635km drive one way, one might ask why, as I did. They explained that there was a large warehouse where you could get Snus, a tobacco product unavailable to Finns, but in Sweden, it can be bought wholesale. I eagerly agreed to the road trip, and the five of us piled into a red Audi A4 and set off. Luckily one of Oskari's friends was able to score some cannabis which we consumed extremely inconspicuously in the trees nearby his apartment before hitting the road. I also learned quickly that it is legal to have open containers of alcohol in the car so long as the driver is not consuming any. This, combined with loud euro-dance music, made for a fun trip start.

That road trip has a particular fondness in my mind, but not because it was comfortable by any stretch of the imagination. I honestly didn't think my body was going to be the same by the time we got back over twenty-four hours later. Reminiscing on the photos from our road trip, one that sticks out to me is a video I took of the foggy sunset ahead of the car at approximately midnight. If my memory serves, the sunset just moved across the horizon for an hour and then came right back up. We called it a day when we got to the city of Oulu. We closed a nightclub there around four in the morning, then got some pizza at a local joint nearby. We left and drove to the Finnish version of a rest stop and got an hour or two of 'sleep'’ After Oulu, everyone was itching to have a go at the passenger seat - the only source of refuge in this moving prison we found ourselves in. Luckily we got to Haparanda after a short time and packed the trunk with boxes of Snus, which my friends planned on quickly turning a 200% profit back in Lahti. I don't remember much of the drive back, but I was overjoyed when we got home. According to my journal, I managed roughly an hour of sleep before Oskari and decided to go to a party for a little while. Though the car ride was rough, the memory of that trip is cherished by me because I realized how unique the culture was. My notes are filled with paragraphs and joyous rantings surrounding my new friends. I felt welcomed and loved and truly belonged there, even for a short time.

31 June - 04 July

I woke up the morning of the fourth of July to a test siren blaring through my window that I still am not sure the origin of. It's quite the awakening, though. I felt a bit nostalgic and patriotic that morning. I had been immersed in a place that felt as much like home as a place could and yet my soul knew it wasn't my true home. I yearned to be stateside celebrating with my family and friends on this special day. Apart from that, it was the last time I would wake up in Finland on my first trip there and I wasn't ready for that. I had gotten extremely comfortable with sleeping in and free food (for which I'm grateful). During my last couple of days, I enjoyed time with Oskari's family, I learned how to play Finnish baseball though I did far more observing, and I got a tour of some cool landmarks in Lahti such as the Salpausselkä ski jumping venue. I departed Helsinki on the ferry back to Sweden with a bittersweet feeling. I was headed for Frankfurt and had long been anticipating seeing Germany but I was leaving my newfound home away from home and missing my family. Luckily, plenty of adventure still lay ahead of me.

Finland has continued to feel like a second home to me because of the ones I now consider family. Thank you to Oskari's parents, Merja and Jari, and his aunt Kirsi. To my Finnish brothers, Oskari, Taavi, Juuso, Patrik, and Olli-Petteri - thank you. I look forward to many more decades of friendship.