(no subject)

I'd set the alarm clock on my telephone to wake me up at something like eight in the morning, but of course I reset it and went back to sleep when it went off. Then I woke up when the youth hostel guy came into the room yelling, ``Alright, it's quarter after, please leave!'' to the two of us still there. The hostel, like most, is closed during the day, so one has to be out by ten in the morning. Quickly I got dressed and put my stuff together (leaving my big red backpack and most of my stuff there on the bed) and set out to explore Helsinki.

In the city center I found myself in some kind of shopping center. In this shopping center I found a donut store, which I found very exciting, even though it was just some kind of chain. I hadn't yet seen real donuts anywhere in Europe and had come to consider real donuts to be something really and definitively American. I bought two maple donuts and some coffee for something like twenty one marks altogether and sat down to enjoy my purchase. But first I took out a sharpie marker and wrote on the paper covering my tray, ``HELSINKI DONUT.'' Then I took a picture with my donuts and coffee in the foreground and the donut place in the background. It was a very satisfying photo. Quickly one of the workers came out to tell me that I wasn't allowed to take photos. What nonsense. Anyway the donuts were pretty good, actually donut-like, unlike the wares from Dunkin in Berlin.

Then I spent many hours wandering around.

Late in the day I got myself a Helsinki Card, which would allow me free entry to a huge number of Hensinki museums in addition to various other perks during the following twenty-four hours. From the little booklet that came with the card I learned that one place still open where the card was accepted was the Helsinki botanical garden, so I decided to check it out.

The botanical gardens themselves, of course, were completely dead and frozen and under a blanket of snow and ice. But the garden also features a green-house complex where plants can live in a comfortably tropical atmosphere year-round. The glass houses themselves were very beautiful, covered with icicles on the outside, lush plants inside. When I walked in the lady said that they closed in half an hour, but I could stay for an hour. In the tropical glass house, I was excited to find a vanilla vine, arabica coffee, and lots of other nifty plants; but sadly I couldn't locate the pineapple (king of the bromeliads, and you can grow your own!). Then there was the savanna, the familiar desert and mediterranean houses too. Their official web site has some pictures, including a nifty tri-lingual virtual tour of the plants!

After this I visited the city and state museums at Tennis Place, which had exhibitions on, respectively, "the Art of Star Wars" (no kidding), and a history of arctic expeditions. And then I took the tram back to the Youth Hostel.

I arrived at the hostel at the same time as a bus full of kids, a hockey team from way up in Lappland. Fortunately they were staying in some other part of the hostel...

Donuts and coffee	FIM 21
ATM withdrawl	(FIM 300)	SEK 522.17
Kebab lunch ?
Helsinki card	FIM 135
Hostel	FIM 85 (€14.29)