Helsinki, Finland

September 4, 2009, Friday
Helsinki, Finland

Our last day in Finland and we started off with a huge breakfast. I got mushrooms, baked beans, eggs, cheese, ham, bacon, croissant, juice, mixed fruit bowl and latte. I was in heaven!! We decided to take the tram downtown and we got on in front of our hotel. No sooner had we boarded than a very peculiar man sitting a couple seats ahead of us decided to focus on us. He got out of his seat and made strange noises and strange faces and then he came over to us and stuck his hand out to Don to shake. Lo and behold, the guy had on plastic gloves, like they wear in the hospital. Don shook his hand and we went back to trying to ignore him but he wouldn’t be ignored. He grabbed my hand and got down on his knees and kissed my hand, slobbering all over it in the process. Then he got up and mimed that he wanted to fight with Don. It was all very strange and everybody was looking at us and him. I told him to go and sit down but he just wanted to “play with us”. He stood on his head in the middle of the aisle and then tried to get Don to shake his hand again. In the mean time, he would intermittently hit me in the shoulder. Finally I just got up and walked to the back of the tram and very shortly Don joined me and that was the end of the strange man but the people in the tram talked with me and told me that there was a mental hospital nearby and that they thought he might have come from there. They were all apologetic but we assured them that there were nut cases all over the world and he was harmless and we did understand that Finland wasn’t a country full of dingbats!! It was kind of exciting though!! After we got into town, we went in to the large department store and found a washroom where we both washed our hands!! The guy had slobbered all over the place and at one point had taken his teeth out to show us and we both felt kind of “germy”.

We picked up my stuff from Marimeko and they were very helpful in telling me how to get my VAT back. We wandered up and down the Esplanade and then went to the farmer’s market where Don bought a pint of raspberries (5 €) and proceeded to eat then whole thing!! I swear he has a cast iron stomach! If I did that I would have diarrhea for the next week but he will be fine. He is SO trusting. He asked the sales girl if they had to be washed before he ate them and she said that they did not and so he just started eating them right there. I took pictures of him feeding his face!! His hands got all red with berry juice and he was licking his fingers. Ick!! Ah well!!

We found some pretty thing in the market and bought more than we had anticipated buying and now we aren’t sure how we are going to get all this tuff home!! I did tuck a fold up suitcase in our suitcase before we came over and I think I may be glad that I did that!!