Day 10: Rolling Up The Sidewalks

Another relatively slow day on Saturday. We slept in, just barely making it downstairs in time for breakfast. After breakfast, we did a little shopping before Mary Beth had to go to a session. Apparently we’re comfortable enough that we actually spent time in a Finnish bookstore without feeling too ridiculously out of place.

We then walked to Mary Beth’s conference. As her session for the day was scheduled to last a little over two hours, I tagged along. I found a place in the same building where her conference was being held (the Aurora, pictured above) and set up shop. While the campus is very nice and I was able to leech off the conference wi-fi, as you can see this particular building was pretty—functional. If the intent of the University of Eastern Finland in bringing American scholars is to upgrade the prestige of the school (and therefore allow an upgrade of the facilities), I can see where the plan has merit.

Once Mary Beth got done, we had great plans to do more souvenir shopping then have dinner. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan on the whole town basically shutting up shop at 1800 (6:00 p.m.) for the evening. Not just one or two stores, basically the whole town. Even the kioski (convenience stores) and supermarket were shuttered.

So we decided to have dinner and call it a night. Attached to our hotel is the Amarillo, a Tex-Mex restaurant. Well, the opportunity to see what a Finnish perspective of Tex-Mex food—and to a large extent, American culture as a whole—was just too good to pass up.

A few things learned about restaurants in Finland. First, you don’t tip. I’ve found myself leaving tips anyway, simply because I can’t shake the feeling of guilt about stiffing a waiter, but that’s simply not how it’s done. I’m assuming that the lost income is made up in the waiters’ salary, although I will admit that service here isn’t what you would expect back home. Additionally, for the most part you seat yourself, which draws some odd looks from Finnish wait staff as you stand around waiting to be shown to a table.

The restaurant and the menu were filled with clichés, of course, but nothing more than you’d expect at a chain Tex-Mex restaurant back home. Some of the references were a bit lost in translation though. There was one dish that was called an “Alabama,” suggesting the finer points of American regionalism might be lost on a Finnish clientele.

Having said that, the hot wings were very good (better than the “best chicken in the worldĵ” from Tracks in Omaha, rest assured) and the burger was pretty tasty. Not as good as the guy from Tallahassee running his wood-smoked grill, natch, but very good nonetheless.

After dinner, Mary Beth and I basically shut it down for the evening. We read and relaxed in the hotel room. Later on in the evening, I managed to get the World Cup and the College World Series as a split-screen on my computer (both in English, which is now a luxury for me—amazing how travel changes your perspective).

However, even in Finland, it’s still a beautiful thing when the Longhorns lose.

Maybe we went to bed too early, as I simply could not sleep. I took a picture outside of our window at midnight, just to remind myself of just how bright it was. I’ll try to post a noontime-picture comparison, although the difference might be hard to spot.