Hello Helsinki
So, you know you’ve become an experienced traveler when it doesn’t even occur to you to blog about a trip to a new country until people start asking how your trip is going. Yesterday I arrived in Helsinki for a conference (the same one I attended two years ago in Taiwan). This time, I have 3 of my graduate students attending with me. We arrived at 2 pm Helsinki time and spent the afternoon walking the city in hopes of beating jet lag. Helsinki is about the same size as Minneapolis but is very walkable (even though I’m pretty sure their weather gets as bad as ours) and has an astounding amount of public transit (subway, trams, and buses). We walked through the famous market square and got crepes, walked through the city center, saw the Olympic stadium (where the Women’s Euro football tournament is currently being held), and rode a ferris wheel to get a good view of the city. I managed to stay awake until 10 pm and slept a solid 9 hours (embarrassed to write this number when I know how much sleep Charles is getting at home - sorry). This morning we hit the conference right away for a full day of educational sessions and had dinner this evening at a Russian restaurant who’s menu featured bear meat (none of us got it because it was 120 euros). Tomorrow I have to give a talk that I haven’t started on yet…