Lost in Helsinki

This all started in April. Some of you may know about my slight crush on Adam Levine. Some of you may have never heard of Adam Levine.  But back in the spring when Erin and I were busy both adjusting to the fact that we were going to Finland and being in love with The Voice, some random googling told us that Maroon 5 was coming to Finland while we were here. It seemed serendipitous, and the plotting began. So this has been in the works for about 6 or 7 months now. Well, yesterday was the big day, and it turned out to be a much longer day than either of us expected.


Let me start by saying that Erin and I are two of the biggest planners I know.  We both like to know what's going on and have a plan at all times.  So you'd think we would have had the day planned to the minute.  But we decided that we were just going to go down to Helsinki (it's a 3 1/2 hour train ride) in the late morning and explore the city until the concert. Of course we got there and it was pouring rain and blowing wind all over the place.  So we wandered around the city center for a bit, and realized that it was very near where we had explored last month on our way to Russia. No problem, since it was gross out anyways- we found a McDonalds (one of about 12 in the city center) and I google mapped our route to the concert venue.


We set out for the venue, which was called the Cable Factory- because that's what it used to be.  Eventually we get to an incredibly shady complex of buildings that includes several people doing graffiti along a giant wall. Turns out they were allowed to be there; it was even marked on the map of the complex. We were early so we figured that there was just nobody there yet. Weelll, after about an hour more of confusion and wandering Erin found someone to ask, and learned that there are 2 places in Helsinki called the Cable Factory, and they are on opposite sides of the city. Naturally, we had gone to the wrong one. So we booked it back to the city center, quickly learned how to use the Metro system, and found the right venue. Then we waited in the cold for another 45 minutes.

Number 14: Graffiti 

Quick observation here: Finnish people really like to pregame things. And then throw their empty cans everywhere. I'm not saying all Finnish people, but these ones. Which is funny because Finland on the whole seems pretty environmentally friendly. Oh, and they also like to clap in unison, sing karaoke to house music, and pass out- all of these things I witnessed at the concert.


The show itself was great; it only started an hour after the ticket time so that was a fun wait, but once it got going it was wonderful. The opener was mediocre but not bad, and Maroon 5 was everything I dreamed of. Let me just show you my favorite video that I took. I dare you not to fall a little in love with Adam Levine.

After Adam finished conducting the audience, we peaced out and had a couple hours to kill before our 1:30am bus back to Jyväskylä.  Erin and I both really wanted to go to the well known ice bar in Helsinki so we wandered back to the city center to find it. When I say wander, at this point I mean hobble, because we had already walked several miles and then stood for 3 hours. The ice bar turned out to be really difficult to find, and was closed when we did find it- it's only open 2 days a week in the winter, probably because you could take a beer outside anywhere in Finland and make your own ice bar. So we hobbled back to the same McDonalds and killed time until about 1:10. Then we tried to find our bus. Except that clearly it wasn't that easy. We went to the wrong bus station and missed our bus. Which meant we found the correct bus station (only about a 3 minute walk from where we were- so close!) and continued killing time until 3:00am, when the next bus left. Things I learned during that time- Finland has some very drunk people, and of all the foreign languages that a man could start muttering to nobody in particular, Russian is the scariest. 


Fast forward to 7:45, and we made it back to Jyväskylä.  Then a quick bike ride home, finished some homework, took a shower, and I was ready to face the day on 2 hours of dozing. A day that included a Finnish exam. So clearly, Erin and I are magnificent planners, and I am way too old to be running around on these adventures. But I'll leave you with this and say it was worth it. :)

PS totally off topic, but it snowed for the first time the other night! It was so pretty! Until I realized that Finnish people believe neither in shoveling nor salting. But they do throw gravel down, which seems to do nothing but make my bike tires veer in even more odd directions than they usually do. And then it melted. The snow, not the gravel. That appears to be sticking around until... Spring? I may never know.