Still in Helsinki. I've been having such a good time, doing very little. Wednesday (the day we used Topi's cousin Jaco's sauna), Topi, Harri (the singer in Topi's band), and I went to the contemporary art museum for sumo wrestling matches between Finnish artists. It was held in the theater inside (the place was full), with the brightly lit stage at the bottom of the audience seating which was on a tall slant. The contenders were dressed in those funny sumo fat-suits. They would fight (the object is to throw the other person out of the ring, to get three points), then a panel of art critics and artists would judge who won by discussing it and then voting on it. The announcer, Topi told me, is a famous sports announcer, and made a lot of analogies to sports history, and was very funny. Of course, I couldn't understand a thing anyone was saying. I might have enjoyed it more if I knew Finnish, but it was still a good time. We didn't stay too long, only about an hour, to see two matches, which was enough.
Immediately afterwards we went to meet a bunch of Topi's fellow art students on one of the nearby islands for a picnic, which consisted mostly of a lot of beer and a little food. Some of the islands were used as fortifications by the Swedish when Finland belonged to them, to defend from attackers, so their are still big walls and buildings from that time. Anyway, I think there were about fifteen people in all; it was rather overwhelming. They were kind in that they spoke to me quite a bit in English. They were playing some word games. We hung out for about an hour or so, and then most of them left to take the boat back to the mainland. Harri, Topi, myself, and another guy whose name I can't remember but was really cool, stayed where we were and finished our drinks. I was rather drunk by that point. We all walked back to where the boat leaves, and everyone else was still waiting there because there wasn't another boat until that time. So we all got on the same boat and headed back, and went to a bar. I didn't have anything else to drink there but some other people did. It was a lot of fun sitting around and talking with people. This girl I was sitting next to, Izu, saw me writing in my little notebook, and decided to write me a finnish/english dictionary since I knew so little. It was mostly swear words, but it's still useful because now I keep hearing them everywhere I go. Izu is one of the 6% of Finns whose first language is Swedish; she also lived in Italy for four years when she was younger and so speaks Italian, so it was cool to talk to her a little bit in Italian. Any drunkenness in me was gone by the time we left the bar at 3 or so. We took the night bus back to Topi's place.
The next day we went to free outdoor concert a little out of the city. There were half a dozen bands, but none of them were very good. They were all Finnish, but most of them sang in English. Topi, Aleksi, his friend Lela, her friend, and I were there. We left in the late afternoon and I don't remember what we did, probably just hung out at Aleksi's apartment and listened to that horrible metal music that Topi and all his friends love for some reason. We hung out with Lela and her friend later that evening, at their place and at a bar, but I didn't drink anything. We spent the night at Aleksi's place because we had to take a cab and it was closer.
Yesterday Topi and I went to the contemporary art museum to see the actual galleries. There was some pretty cool stuff - most of it was by Finnish artists from the 1950s to the present. Topi left before I did to rehearse with his new band, so I met him a few hours later. That was all we did that day.
Today I'm going to meet Topi and maybe some other people at an outdoor festival in a park near the train station. I booked my place on the ship to Stockholm for tomorrow afternoon, so I'll arrive at 9:30am on Monday. I've figured out the train schedules and if all goes according to plan, I'll be in Florence on Wednesday morning, which gives me almost two whole days to prepare to leave. (!!!)
