You may have noticed the title of the last blog, then its complete irrelevance considering what the story turned out to be. Well here's what shoulda coulda woulda been in the last blog post story:
Now Joensuu isn’t the most eventful place on Earth, you can ask any Finn….NOT. Come on people, when are you going to learn that Joensuu is actually an awesome city? That’s right, most Finns think Joensuu is a joke…haha I learned this near the end of my time there. If you say you’re going to Joensuu, people react in the same way you would react if someone told you that they were going to Detroit, actually even worse – imagine that! Joensuu got its reputation back in the nineties, which back then was well deserved, because of a bad uhh…ehem…uh well a bad skinhead problem. It’s not like that anymore I swear!!!! I didn’t even know there were skinheads in Finland much less Joensuu before someone told me about this old problem. Weird thing is now that I’ve heard that, a few people told me that these days Finland is some sort of safe haven for those types of people. Of course I didn’t see, notice, or come in contact with any of them so it’s not a bad problem whatever it is. Anyways that’s a complete and total side note, my point is that when I went to Joensuu is was absolutely beautiful and bright with colors even more than when I left. Finns tend to complain about it because it’s away from everything, which I would say if you don’t like the place you live so much that it’s inconvenient that you can’t go somewhere else easily because you wanna leave where you live so bad….well, maybe you shouldn’t live there in the first place.
Anyhow, I know I love Joensuu so there’s no need to justify my undying love(or something). When I went there everything was in bloom, and oh how was I was sad that I missed the white nights there. By gosh Joensuu, I’ll see you one of my coming summers…I just know it. I wish I had taken pictures, but for a bit I had this been there done that mentality. NOPE. By gosh what was I thinking, my re experience of Finland at least in these days were just as blogworthy as other days back in exchange.
So now I’ll get really actually going to my Joensuu story and stop rambling. I got to Joensuu the day before a festival – the festival of the arts. If there’s one thing you have to know about Finns in the summer…okay two things……one is that they are damn happy as can be that it’s not cold anymore, and two is that they will be damned if they won’t take advantage of it. Taking advantage of anything in Finland usually means drinking in public. Now there is a no drinking in public law…..but there is one exception….you can drink if you are having a “picnic.” Hah, yeah that’s right, a picnic. So on beautiful festival days the Finns young and old, bookworm and skinhead, emo and jock all set out on the fields to have just a good ole fashion innocent picnic. Usually in the US you think hmm picnic….cookie cutter family, or hippies maybe….or…well okay maybe I’ll stop generalizing but anyways the point is that it’s very interesting the kinds of people you’ll see having a nice picnic on the grass sitting on a blanket because everyone loves picnics….cough…alcohol. It’s just part of the culture, period.
Luckily they’re a little more creative than that. If there’s something else Finns like, it’s very often rock and metal music. This particular festival had bands(about 4 stages strewn throughout the city), art exhibits in the museums(duh), and another thing I’m forgetting. The atmosphere is really cool, many thousand people in the city center, people having picnics, moving from place to place….it’s weird, everytime there’s a festival it’s like there’s a weird fog everywhere….maybe it’s just me…
So I arrived in Joensuu, immediately eating lunch with and meeting people. In the night me and two friends went to the sauna in the biology building(don’t ask). Then it was quite late and it was bed time alreadys. The next day is the real piece of odd, for real. The next day was festival time, after some floating around doing the thing, I met up with two of my choir buddies at 4PM(so good to see them! And well everyone too!) and we were off to the festival.
Okay this next part is gonna take a couple tangents, but what’s a roller coaster without a few twists, turns, and curves between the loops…right?
First we went to grab some alcohol (culture people! Cultural experience!), I got this ridiculous ridiculous wine called Valdemar. Come on I wasn’t trying to spend a lot of money, and how can you say no to this face on the front of the bottle?
So the people I was with immediately start making fun of me haha it was 5e and 15%(SUPER CHEAP IN FINLAND, WHERE THE ALCOHOL FLOWS LIKE WATERFALLS IN THE SAME WAY EUROS DO OUT OF YOUR POCKET). It’s so sweet it doesn’t even taste like wine, people are like “are you really going to drink…all of that??” Thing is that I have nothing to carry my legendary wine in, aside from some plastic bag. Oh well. Then we go to grab some food, cause we realize we have drinking plans yet no eating plans. Again we go for the student option…well not that there was a student option, but by gosh we made one. My friend told me there were these little 1e refrigerated pizzas in the market, and we were off. Two of the three of us ended up getting a pizza and a package of turkeydogs for dinner. That’s right, unheated pizza and turkeydogs, which I rightfully dubbed “weeners” at the time, for dinner. Wait, I don’t have anything again to carry this stuff in….you can’t move fluidly from picnic to picnic during a festival without something to carry your cheap wine 1e pizza and weeners in. There was only one solution to this situation: Manbag . It’s been a long time in the making, I need a manbag. I’d been seeing them around, my friends back in the states had bought them, they’re everywhere in Europe – it was time for me to conform. Luckily here’s another cool thing about Finland – they have super badass second hand stores. Usually in the US you have some random second hand stores here and there which you go to if you really can’t find a costume for an 80’s party. In Finland it’s completely different, you find for real stuff there. In fact, a have a couple of my favorite shirts from second hand stores in Finland. That’s not all, some of the damn things make a huge profit!! Some of them you can go there and sell your clothes to them, others you can go an buy a space for a table in the store with your clothes on it and you get all the profit after that. Maija makes something like between 150e and 200e every time she goes there to sell her clothes. It’s –cheap- too, I bought a full suit from a second hand store in Joensuu for 15e! The thing didn’t look bad at all either!
I think this is just because people in Finland actually give away stuff that looks good but they don’t wear anymore. I feel like in America we just hold on to their clothes even if we never ever wear them, even if they look good enough to sell again. If I got a suit for 15e, and shirts for 1e each…think about how much money, earth, and man power (or child power depending on where you buy from) you would save while still looking good if you shopped at these places all the time. Maybe we shouldn’t be tearing the skinhead pages out of Finland’s book, but by gosh we could definitely use an entire chapter on second hand stores.
So this means I knew exactly where I was getting my manbag, and you know what, I got one from my favorite second hand store for just 2e. Suuure this particular manbag wasn’t the most stylish one on the block, but it had personality and cost less money than taking the bus from town to where I used to live in Joensuu. So booooom, now I was in business. I started to carry this fashionable piece of equipment from picnic to picnic, getting why are you drinking that and what the hell are you eating reactions from everyone along the way…it was a blast! Then I went bowling with some friends, well they bowled I drank. My friend is a tutor and was helping the new exchange students get acclimated….whoa boy was it weird to hang out with them. Made me remember those days, it was just amazing. I’ve only been away from 3 months and I’m already having nostalgia. Whew!
So then by and by it was time to go to the club, which is where a lot of party and festival nights end up in Finland along with the rest of the world. There comes the krux of the night. At every club there’s an entrance fee, and a coat/bag check fee. The bag check is usually 2 or 3 euros, and back when I was a bit green I paid every time…then I got to know Finland. In Finland, no one really steals anything.. okay except bikes. But my bag, full at this time with an empty bottle and half a small bottle of wine, empty pack of weeners, and frozen pizza trash, was not a bike. There’s actually a saying in Finland I’ve heard from a few people that if your wallet gets lost, you find it with more money in it. Finns are just generally civilized people (at least in this respect).
I can already feel the reader thinking…wait, no, he’s not going to leave his bag somewhere like…outside or something is he? Nooooooo of course not. Well your senses serve you well, unfortunately. If you didn’t sense that then go practice watching predictable movies or reading predictable books or something. So yeah whatever, basically what ended up happening is my friend had my bag in his bag and then checked his bag…..but then wanted to leave before me. I told him to do with my bag what had done many times before and have probably over the life of the habit saved at least….10 or 15e come on so worth it! So I told him to leave my bag outside beside a tree which was right in front of the club sticking out of the sidewalk.
My friend felt a little funny about doing this, but I assured him I had done it a million times and it would be fine. He was like….well, okay….here goes nothing. Really he was gonna see me the next day so he would know then what happened to the bag. I went outside after clubbing….hm, no bag. This is strange. Surely no one stole it…come on it was a 2e bag and no one steals in Finland! My friend must have felt just funny about leaving the bag and figured he would see me the next day so he just took the bag with him. I was sure that’s exactly what happened.
So the next day I went to meet my friend and others. Everything is in disrepair with trash everywhere and a faint but ambient smell of vomit everywhere. I walked with my old flatmate to town from my old flatmate’s new place. It’s about a 30 minute walk so we were just walking and talking doing the thing. We’re about 3 minutes from the center and about to cross the bridge into Joensuu when I notice something on the ground……hmm…..odd…..there’s an empty frozen pizza package…..hm, wow those things must be pretty popular during festivals…..yeah hmm….well……wait….that….hm…hm, that….that looks suspiciously like uh….yeah uh like an empty weener package on the ground…..wow what a coinciden…….WHAT THE F***!...that was MY weener trash from MY manbag! I knew in that moment that my friend DID leave the bag like I told him to….and someone stole it…IN FINLAND!! Not only that, the Finn thief wasn’t just a thief, he was a litterbug! That’s insult to injury, at least the person who stole it could be environmentally friendly but no! How the hell did I run into MY trash from MY manbag the next day? What are the odds? Even though he is the jerk who littered I still felt some responsibility to clean up my stolen trash, so I threw it away. There is hardly anything more humbling than cleaning up after someone who stole your stuff haha.
Here’s the funny thing and the amoral of the story: if I would have been safe and checked the manbag at the door, I would have paid more than the manbag was worth itself – 2.5e was the coat/bag check cost. By having my manbag stolen instead of giving my bag to bagcheck I saved money! I saved money by having my stuff stolen!! Now that, my friends, is the beauty of good second hand stores. Case and point, even though I miss my poor manbag!!! PEACE
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