I’ve had some shining moments over the past week in Finland. I drove from Helsinki to Pori without knowing what any of the road signs meant while being yelled at by my GPS driving buddy. I used an ass-wand on my head due to poor placement of toilet tools by the hotel. I saw a man peeing on the sidewalk during the daylight hours. I suffered from a bad case of vertigo and had to get some “Emotion Sickness pills.” I got spit on while walking home after dinner. And finally this morning, and angry old man yelled at me after taking a picture that he didn’t want to be part of. I’m sure he was shouting death threats, but my English only voice recognition capabilities force me to leave it up to the imagination.
One should really look into the road signs of a country they are about to visit. I’m not sure what the hell I was thinking. I slid into the brand new Dodge Avenger at the rental garage at the airport in Helsinki, stuck the GPS receiver to the windshield with a giant suction cup, flipped the switch, and was on my way. It became immediately apparent, as I exited the garage, that I was completely unprepared for the task of driving in this foreign land. The sheer number of street signs was overwhelming. It was impossible to rationalize the purpose of each sign as I whizzed by them, while taking direct driving orders from my GPS driving buddy. The relationship we had was one of necessity, but it would eventually come to an end. A major issue with my GPS friend is that it wanted to continually rotate the map always showing my direction of travel as up. This quickly disoriented me, as I am one that has learned to navigate using maps with North always up. The best bet while using this POS is to just listen to the commands given. It is worthless as a moving map. After making several “authorized” u-turns as stated by my GPS buddy. We were finally out of the city. I was finally able to figure out which street sign was the speed limit as the number of signs per post decreased from 6-8 to two. The winding road kept me awake over the next few hours as I traveled to Pori.
Once in Pori, I had my first encounter with roundabouts. After being here for a week I realize how efficient they can be, but my first few encounters with them were a little crazy. My GPS driving buddy was of little use at the roundabout, as it screamed, “take the second exit at the roundabout.” I was just thinking, “What’s a roundabout?” Before I knew it, I was driving around in circles and then I just picked a random exit. Of course, it wasn’t the right one, so I found myself using another roundabout to turn around to get back to the other roundabout. I turned what should have been a 5 minute drive off the highway to my hotel into a half hour driving extravaganza. I finally arrived at the hotel and promptly checked in. I dropped my luggage off at my room, moved my car into the free parking courtyard, and went in search of food. I ate the only restaurant open in the hotel, Amarillo, which had a tex-mex style menu. I ate shrimp fajitas and drank coca-cola, not willing to try anything new on my first night. I went back to my hotel room, took a shower, and went to sleep.
Having taken a shower the previous night, I did not take one the following morning. My hair was a mess and was going to require a little water to comb it. There was a convenient little shower head attached to the sink, almost like a kitchen sprayer. I turned on the water and wet down my hair. I finished getting ready and left for work. I eventually arrived on site after taking many more wrong exits at the roundabouts and making many “authorized” u-turns. Someitme during my first day I had to use the restroom at the facility. As I entered the restroom I saw that they had little shower things attached to the sinks, and for just a moment, wondered why anyone would need to wash their hair in the sink. Then I realized I had used an ass cleaning wand to wet my hair earlier at the hotel. I wasn’t sure if I should keep this wonderful story all to myself, but here it is, for all to read. Go ahead, laugh. I did.
During my first day here I experienced a bit of dizziness and assumed it was from all the flying. The dizziness became worse all week until I could barely walk yesterday. I finally found a pharmacy and went there over lunch yesterday to get some Dramamine. I walked into the store, and tried to make sense of the items on the shelf. No English words were to be found on any of the boxes. In fear of picking up some butt rash creme or numerous other embarrassing products I proceeded to the counter to ask for my ailment. I asked the lady behind the counter for Dramamine, and received a blank stare and non-English mutterings. I said it again, clearer and slower, as if she would miraculously understand what I was saying. No dice. I then though I should explain my ailment to her. I told her I had motion sickness. She looked at me, quite puzzled, and said, “Emotion Sickness Pills?” So now I’m standing there and everyone thinks I need antidepressants, which I might, but that’s not what I was after at the moment. I then played a game of charades with her to explain my condition. I made an ass out of myself in the store as I demonstrated dizziness and spinning room to her. Something clicked in her head, and she reached under the counter to grab a magic box of pills. She pointed to a nice red warning symbol on the box and asked if I had taken them before. Not wanting to get denied the opportunity to buy my pills, I said “yes.” I’m still not sure what I am taking, but I feel much better.
The other night I was walking around the town square after eating Kebab at local Kebab and Pizza joint. As I’m exiting the square past some tall buildings, I feel something hit my shoulder. It made anice splat sound as it hit, and I knew I had just been crapped on by a bird. interested in what the bird had feasted on earlier in the day I look over at my shoulder. It wasn’t bird crap at all. Someone had spit on me from above. After using an ass cleaning wand on my head, I shouldn’t be too grossed out by a little spit, but this was a lot of spit. It was as if they had been saving it in a jar all day, just for me. Disgusted and tired, I looked to my friend and said, “I want to go home.” We walked back to the hotel and called it a night.
This morning, after breakfast, I went out to take pictures of the city during bright morning light. I visited the market where vendors were selling fresh fish, flowers, and potatoes. The market was somewhat empty, which I attribute to the cold weather. I took pictures of the people shopping at the market, some of them looking at me and my camera as if I was from some secret government agency. They weren’t sure what to make of me. As I was about to snap one photo, an old man put his hand up in front of his face and started to yell at me. He did not want to be part of any soul sucking picture taking. He continued to shout at me as I walked away at a brisk pace, but I can only imagine what he was saying, since I don’t know the language. I headed back to the hotel, and decided to summarize my week here while I hide from the old angry man on the street.
