Two Months Down, One to Go

Well, we’re officially past the two month mark here in Helsinki. (The royal ‘we’ that is.) Actually, I realized today that in exactly one month, I will be sitting back at my Bonnier Corp desk in sunny Florida again. Before that, I will be completely stressed slash stoked about trying to travel after this whole Grow sitch, considering the Helsinki money gods have sucked me dry. (That’s what she said?)

But enough of the panic room, here’s some more random tidbits to keep you interested in my bloggy blog world.

I suck at getting dressed. Layering, tying scarves, wearing proper shoes -- I’m terrible at all of it. I’m convinced I can control the weather solely upon my outfit choice of the day. For example, if I wear my Converse sneakers and light jacket, I’m asking for a blizzard to hit, whereas if I bundle up like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, I will bring about a heatwave. (Temps in the 40’s constitutes a heatwave, btw.) If I’m wearing semi-warm but extra-absorbent boots (they were cheap for a reason!), they’ll have to face massive rain puddles, while the faux-fur lined proper snow boots see only the sunshiny-ist of days. It’s very frustrating.

Speaking of absorbent boots, Reagan came to visit! And she has the same shoe issue. Luckily, I have a hair dryer:



I miss speaking American. With Reagan's recent visit, and a Sunday encounter with two American girls traveling through Helsinki, I've been able to speak good 'ol improper American English. It's been wonderful! And while most Finns understand and speak perfect English (and God bless them for doing so!!!), there’s something so awesome about being able to say “like” every five seconds without second-guessing it. (I wish I didn’t, like, talk like a valley girl, but like, I just, like, can’t help it and stuff. Like, you know?”)

Man, oh, man. Helsinki’s got the funk. As you may have read in my captivating Bonnier Grow interview, my favorite kind of funk music is *everywhere* in this town -- bars, cafes, night clubs, restaurants. It’s like my own personal wonderland of music. This is probably only noticeable to someone like me, who would recognize when Evelyn Champagne King’s “I’m in Love” starts playing at a random pub. Most of the DJs I have met play strictly vinyl (yay!) and there are eight record stores at the end of my street. EIGHT. One block away. Le sigh. The best parties so far have been Solid Gold’s funk night at YK and Keep It Up every First Friday at We Got Beef. God, I wish I could DJ here.

Hair mustaches = still fun.


I’m dreaming of a non-white November. In October, it officially snowed three times but not enough to stick. I’m not too keen on the idea of snow (see the part where I suck at getting dressed) but the Finns always look sad that I won’t get to see “proper snow.” To me, no snow = better than lots of snow.

I finally made it to Suomenlinna! We lucked out with gorgeous weather, too! Pictures coming soon!


I am homesick. Yep, that’s right. Even though I’m taking full advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I miss home. Besides obviously missing family and friends, it’s the little things I am longing for: flavored iced coffee; showers with bathtubs; American keyboards: öåä; driving my car when the sun is setting; editing the DWH site; Fahrenheit, pounds, feet, miles; Mexican food; speaking English without worrying if I’ll be understood; prices in dollars instead of Euros (eff the exchange rates and bank fees!!!); my orange and yellow living room and record collection; biking around the lakes in my neighborhood... these are a few of my favorite things. I look forward to reuniting with them in December.

More frequent posts coming soon. I have so many ideas and photos to post before I get home. Next on the agenda: Alyx and Bill are coming this week to visit -- yay! Stay tuned...

Month-end Highlights, Accomplishments and Random Tidbits

Well, it’s been a whole month here in Helsinki. What’s going on with me? Thought you’d never ask!


I finally learned how to pronounce my street name - Jääkärinkatu! Yay! Not an easy Finnish word to start off with, but now I’ve got it down. (Pronounced Yah-kah-reen-kah-too. But quickly. And with a Finnish accent.) Up until now, when someone asked me where I live, I was advised to say Jäger Street and people would get the point. (It was true, they all figured it out.) On a semi-related note, I’ve probably drank more Jäger in Finland than the past five years combined. I guess I live on the right street.

I've found my favorite Finnish phrase. Ok, so it's less like a phrase and more like a few Finnish words put together: “kaksi yksi yksi.” It sounds like “coxie, ooksie, ooksie” and I am in lalalaloooooove. I heard this on a commercial and was dying to know what it meant. Turns out, it’s not so exciting: “two, one, one.” (It was the announcer saying a phone number.)

Yay for laundry! Stoked to have a washing machine in my apartment, but seriously miss having access to a dryer. Especially for my jeans.

Got myself connected... sort of. I was cell phone-less for awhile, and relying on Facebook to try to make plans with people, which didn't work out so well. The upside: not having a phone number when random dudes ask for it at bars, on trains or while randomly crossing the street (true story). But no more - now I have a Zach Morris-style cell phone from the ‘90’s. Ok, maybe it’s a tad more updated (circa 2005ish), but it can send faxes! Ha! (And I still don't know my phone number, so I have a good excuse if I need it.)





I've officially realized I “live” here, rather than just taking a vacay. The realization kicks in a bit more every time I have to take out the garbage (which was a surprisingly difficult task to figure out, btw), wash my dishes and clean the bathroom.

I have turned into an eavesdropper! Any time I hear anyone speaking English, my ears perk up and I am immediately immersed in their convo and trying to place their accent. It’s a fun game.

Finnish does not equal Espanol. Speaking of languages, Spanish is the only one I even remotely understand (un poquito), so my brain will start tricking itself into thinking I’m hearing words I understand in Finnish. A good example was when I overheard a co-worker mention vessaan, which in the context of the sentence sounded like cerveza. “Oh, are you guys going for beers?” asked the silly America. “No, she’s going to the bathroom.” D’oh.

Dread mustaches are fun.

Finns don’t say anything if you sneeze. Since our office is 100% communal (and you Bonnier Corp. kids thought you had no privacy in your cubes!) it always weirds me out when someone sneezes and no one says anything. Not “Bless You,” not “Jesus,” not “You are soooooo good lookin’ “ -- nothing. For a country that isn’t overly religious, it makes sense, but I guess I thought they would at least say “kaksi yksi yksi” or something.

The artist formerly known as dissing Finland has done it again. The Prince concert was “postponed” aka cancelled. Boooo!!! Apparently he does this to the Finns every time. I’m starting to understand why they feel like the red-headed stepchildren of Scandinavia.

I haven't traveled yet but... Ticket to Stockholm is officially booked, and St. Petersburg is in the works! Boo-yah!

Sorry I haven’t been writing -- that crazy thing called life gets in the way. I have a bunch of drafts started, though, so stay tuned! Miss you all!!!

Kitchen Nightmares

Obstacle of the day: Working the oven in my apartment

Last night, I decided to heat up some leftover pizza for dinner, something that should really only take 15-minutes, max. Instead, it took this silly foreign girl an hour and half to work the damn oven. Why so long? Because of weird stove symbols, a major language barrier and my tendency to over-analyze everything, even the smallest, most mundane tasks.

The oven I’m familiar with has two knobs for cooking: one to control the temperature, and one with the words “bake” and “broil”. I turn the temperature dial to the usual 350 degrees Fahrenheit, set the other knob to “bake,“ add food and voila! A meal in no time.

So what threw me off last night? You might think it was the fact that the oven temperature knob was in Celsius. Not so! A handy Google search clued me in to set the oven to about 175. Piece of cake. No, the hard part was the other knob – the one with four unfamiliar icons instead of words. Since I had no clue what they represented, I looked for the instructions. They were located inside the oven, of course, because that’s totally where a 10-page printout should be. (Um, good thing I checked before turning it on! Oh wait, I couldn't turn it on.) And, this being Finland and all, they weren’t printed in English. Still, no problem - Google Translate could help me read the directions, which would help me decipher the hieroglyphics on my oven, right? Right. (Seriously, what did people do before Google? I am writing this in a Google Doc now!)

I set the translator from Finnish to English and began typing phrases like ‘undervarme tillkopplat.’ Nothing. I assumed it was because my spelling was incorrect so triple checked as I typed. Still nada. Then I guessed it was because my American laptop is not equipped with special characters like ö, ä and å, which were in every word. Of course. I resorted to staring at the words as hard as I could and willing them to mean something. Didn’t work. (Sadly, it never does.)

In a desperate measure, I started Googling the phrases that weren’t recognized by my trusty translator. The results included PDFs of oven manuals - no help, since they weren’t in English. But something caught my eye in the search results - the word Svenska. Swedish??? The whole time, I had been using the wrong language?!? Oy vey.

So finally I was able to figure out that undervärme tillkopplat meant “during heat coupled” and övervärme tillkopplat meant “of the heat coupled.” Uhhh.... I still had no freaking clue what any of that meant!!! So I did what I should have just done in the first place and chose one of the damn settings. The pizza came out fine.

If I only I could shut off the part of my brain that has to analyze every possible outcome of a situation before just taking action. Goodbye two hours of my life I’ll never get back!

First Day at the Office!

Uhhhh.....


Feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment....

Grocery Shopping in a Faraway Land

On my third full day in Helsinki, the harsh reality set in that I can no longer afford to eat out every night. That means…. drumroll, please… a trip to the local grocery store, Alepa. Rather than overcomplicate things, I went with the college tactic of survival foods: simple items that are cheap, fast and versatile. Bread, cheese, butter, eggs, cereal, milk = eggs and toast for breakfast, grilled cheese for lunch and cereal for dinner. Maybe not the most nutritious, but it works for now.

The grocery store experience seemed so harmless at first, with the produce aisle luring me in. “Oh, hello, avocados! I know what you are! No problem, I got this,” I thought to myself as I confidently entered the store. (Dear silly American, note #212: You are supposed to weigh your produce and print out a UPC to take to the cashier.)

Things got a little more complicated in the cheese aisle – dozens of choices, at least twice as many as a the average American grocery store. No matter how long I stared, I couldn’t decipher between feta, gouda, havarti and the other bazillion options. Luckily I found a pack of slices – perfect for grilled cheese – conveniently labeled ‘cheddar.’ Done.

I sensed trouble when I hit the bread section. Not only do I panic about the high caloric content and ingredients in American bread (seriously, does everything have to contain high fructose corn syrup?) but now I didn't even know what kind of bread I was buying. At this point, unless I wanted to ask someone to for help – as an independent woman, that is definitely not one of my strong points – I was forced to become a slave to marketing tactics, and base my purchases solely on packaging. Are consumers really more likely to buy products based on colors, images and graphic design? In this case, yes. Yes I was.

I bought the bread I thought was whole wheat based on the light and dark brown color combos (vs. the blue on the other package – rye, perhaps?) and imagery of wheat fields on the side. The butter I chose had a green label and a heart logo, which my brain processed as “heart healthy.” I bought something in a blue carton I assumed to be milk, because it said 1% on the label. (If there was a fat-free variety, I couldn’t tell.)

Me = clueless.

The toilet paper with a cute li’l lamb on the side with a pink and green butterfly design won my approval, all because my stupid womanly hormones simultaneously kicked in and said “Awwwwwe!”

Now with more Soft & Caring!

And finally, the dumbest (but most delicious) decision I made was reverting back to my youth and buying cereal with the Nesquik bunny. There were all kinds of Müesli-esque options, but this was the least intimating, the most safe and definitely the least healthy option. It made me feel somehow connected to my American roots, which makes absolutely no sense considering I wouldn’t touch the stuff if I was living at home. Nothing but processed sugar and empty calories, yet it was the only thing I wanted.

Shrek is Finnish for "Annoying movie character." Also, what's up with the whole grain graphic and check mark on the top of the box??? 32% misleading marketing!

And finally, after being dissed several times by Alko, I bought Finland’s champagne of beers – Lapin Kulta. (No marketing tactics here – I bought crap beer because the price was right, college-style.)

Mmmmm.... beer.

All set for now! Looking forward to a week’s worth of eating budget-friendly junk – just like the old days.