All the way to Santa’s Village and he’s out to coffee!

Moi!

Last weekend we went on the much anticipated Finland North Excursion. We did more on this trip than it’s possible to write about in one post, but we really had a great time.  We were shuttled around in a bus a little bit too much (had a few flashbacks to my Israel trip) but it is certainly better than walking from place to place in -33 degrees Celsius.  I also managed to fall asleep on a few of the bus tours and while standing up in the Oulu town hall designed by Alvar Aalto, but what’s new?  Here is everything that all/most/a few of us managed to do in 3 days.  Be prepared for lots of exclamation points.

• Take a 6:30 am train 6 hours North to Oulu, Finland & sleep most of the way with scarves or jackets covering our faces
• Arrive in Oulu, drop off bags at the hotel, walk to the Architecture school (Northern most architecture school in the whole world!!!!!) and eat lunch in the cafe (student lunch: 1.90 Euros!)
• Listen to a presentation on the Oulu school of architecture followed by a presentation on algorithmic architecture from a few of the students
• Dinner at a traditional Lappish restaurant with a few of the algorithmic architecture students….sauteed reindeer (DELICIOUS!!)
• Friday bar at the Oulu school…which is their equivalent of our happy hours back in St Louis but with a really great DJ.  We interacted with actual Finnish Architecture students here! Then we went out dancing with them and now I have two Finnish Facebook friends!
• Huge Finnish hotel breakfast and then bus tour of Oulu
• Take a bus to Kemi to see the snow castle!  Peter MacKeith went tubing down the ice slide!
• Take a bus to Rovaniemi
• Socialize with the cultural and intellectual elite from Rovaniemi
• Go out for drinks and dancing with the cultural and intellectual elite from Rovaniemi….and sadly decline a invitation to an after party
• Huge Finnish hotel breakfast and then a tour of the Aalto buildings in Rovaniemi
• Reindeer Races! This was the best part of the day…Anne will be elaborating in a post later.
• Free Time!
• Board overnight train back to Helsinki

It was quite an adventure.  I’d really like to go back again to see what it is like when there is mostly daylight and no snow on the ground.  We also made a friend who goes to art school in northern Norway and discussed a possible roadtrip/spring break plan to visit him and other Northern cities.  But that plan was made at around 2am so we’ll see if anything comes of that…

If there are two suns this far north, then why is it so cold???

mls

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