Day 9: The Mouth of the River

Friday slowed down a little bit in terms of excitement. After breakfast (an extraordinarily generous buffet offering, although liver sausage is just as vile in Finland as it is back home), I had a couple of hours to myself to catch up on writing while Mary Beth went to her conference. Given the amount I had eaten, I thought some exercise was a good idea, so I went for a run.

Our hotel is only about two blocks from the Pielisjoki River. The name of the town, Joensuu, literally translates to “mouth of the river,” and from what I can tell the town arose as a local hub of commerce based on its position at the mouth of the river.

I was the only “runner” I saw (with the caveat that calling what I do running is likely stretching the definition of the term), although there were a number of people on their bicycles going by me. I felt a little bit like running might be more of an American thing, or at least not a Finnish thing, but that might be hypersensitivity on my part combined with a small sample size.

After getting my breath back, I stopped by a “kioski” (a convenience store) to get some water. While I am getting a little more comfortable not speaking the local language (and, thankfully, most people can speak English), it is interesting to see how quickly you can develop survival skills when you don’t speak the local lingo. I have some of the basic survival phrases down; “hei” for hello, “kiitos” for thank you, “anteeksi” for sorry, and “puhukto englantia?” asking if someone speaks English.

But I don’t know the numbers. So when you go to buy something, I have learned to cheat and look at the cash register to tell me the price. If, for whatever reason, that’s not visible, then I just keep handing the person at the register money until they appear satisfied. What could go wrong with that plan?

I got back to the hotel and showered, waiting for Mary Beth. When she got back in the early afternoon, we did a little shopping in the area around our hotel.

Downtown Joensuu is filled with very square, functional buildings. It’s hard to describe them, and the feeling of the downtown area in general, as anything other than Soviet. I don’t really mean that in a pejorative sense, merely descriptive given the clear time frame when things were built, the stark and functional nature, and the fact that we really are just about on the border with Russia.

Inside most of the buildings around us, however, are mini shopping malls. Joensuu is pretty clearly laid out to function in cold weather, allowing people to park in garages and shop inside, needing only to cross the street to get from one shopping area to the other. When downtown Sioux City was a shopping area (as opposed to currently), it had the same idea, with covered walkways connecting the buildings to allow people to get back and forth without the need to brave the elements.

After doing some shopping, we went back to the hotel room to clean up and rest a little before meeting up with Aaron, one of Mary Beth’s team from UNO. We walked a few blocks to Ravintola Kielo, which looked to be a fairly unassuming place but which offered some of the best food in Joensuu.

A brief aside on my growing knowledge of Finnish. “Ravintola” is Finnish for “restaurant,” but the word is used in front of just about anywhere that serves food. It would be akin to seeing a sign reading “Restaurant Olive Garden” back home, although without the chain restaurant feel.

The meal was spectacular. I had a pork dish on horse bean risotto, and both Mary Beth and Aaron had a brazed beef. We all shared a white chocolate sponge cake with caramel and Bailey’s ice cream afterwards which made a long walk back to the hotel room a pretty good idea.

We did stop at a local bar for a drink and met up with Salli, a friend Mary Beth had made at the conference. After enjoying the gorgeous evening, we headed back to the hotel room for the evening. I wanted to watch the World Cup, and was less than thrilled at the prospect of watching it with Finnish commentary. So I used the HDMI cable I had purchased earlier that afternoon with my previous fiddling to get access to the American WatchESPN site to run the game through the television in the room. Mary Beth was, needless to say, thrilled with this development.