Helsinki

First--We have hot water! It was off for about 3 1/2 weeks. When they first turned it on again on Thursday it was very dirty and rusty, and only slightly warm. Every day it has gotten a little hotter. And someone came and fixed the window air conditioning unit in our bedroom, just in time for the weather to cool down again and we haven't needed it. But it works. Yes Tyler, we know we are lucky.

We LOVED Helsinki! Finland is beautiful and clean. We found it was very easy to get around. We were amazed at how helpful the Finns were. And almost everyone speaks English to some degree! Often when we asked if someone spoke English, the answer was "a little," but they understood everything we asked and were always able to answer very clearly.

Dave snapped this picture of a bus. He thought the wrap was cute. The bird is real and on the sign, not the fence on the bus!

We were disappointed in our trip to the American store because the selection was poor and very pricey (example: a vending-machine size package of Twizzlers--4 pieces--was around $2.50. However, the Finnish grocery stores stock a lot of the food we've missed and their prices are much more reasonable. Often we didn't know the Finnish word for something, like cloves, but we stopped other shoppers whenever we had a question and they were ALL willing and able to help.

We were delighted to find some of the things we haven't been able to find in Russia: a small tin of baking powder, one of vanilla (powder again, not liquid), ground cloves, garlic powder, cinnamon, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, and taco seasoning. A few of those we can get in Russia, but in very small packets. Finland had them in bigger quantities, like a 250 gram tin of vanilla powder instead of the 1 gram packet we get in Russia. Alas, the only place we saw Twizzlers was in the American store.

Our purpose for going to Helsinki was to pick up our new visas. They hold them in a safe in the Temple President's office. We arrived a little early and walked around on the temple grounds. And of course we did a couple of sessions while we were there. It was WONDERFUL! We hadn't realized how much we missed being in the Temple. We saw a familiar face shortly after we arrived-- Kent Michie from our stake at home! We knew the Michies were serving a mission, but we didn't remember where. We visited for a few minutes and then saw Barbara Michie at the end of the session. Their shift was ending when we were leaving, so we talked with them some more. They showed us the housing, which is nice apartments for the temple missionaries and dorms for the visiting missionaries. Then they offered to take us to the train that would take us back to our hotel (they have a car). However, when we got near the train Kent said he'd like to take us into town. He took the scenic route and told us all about things we might like to see on another visa trip. Kent served his first mission in Finland and is able to read signs and get around, and thus was an excellent tour guide and knew lots of things to show us. We now know what to look forward to on future visa trips. It was a wonderful, wonderful day. We later said we wished we would have thought to get a picture with them. Oh well, we've got another visa trip coming up a few weeks before they finish up their mission and hope to see them again.

One night around 10:00 I heard some popping noises and looked out the window. It wasn't dark, but that didn't stop them from putting on a fireworks display. It was very pretty.

Normally we would have had another day in Helsinki (they let the senior couples stay two nights, probably because all the nighttime travel is very hard on older bodies), but the Saturday evening flight was full, so we flew out Saturday morning and spent the next day in Moscow. More about that next week.