Austria Trip - The Final Hours

Today is the day that we begin the long journey back home. I am so excited to see the kids! This has been the longest that we have ever been apart and I must admit that I have probably missed them more than they have missed me. We've tried to email them every day and we had the opportunity to Skype them once, but I'm eager to snuggle and be with my little buddies once more.

We got up and ate some cereal with Stan, Grace and Kirsten before leaving. I was able to prop the camera up on the piano and get one last picture with our dear friends. Today was drizzly and cool. We quickly loaded up the van and took off for the Vienna airport.

Stan drove us. He said again and again how much he appreciated our coming. He said to be sure to give our greetings to all of our church folks back home.

Our flight took off for Helsinki without a glitch. This is a short flight and as I was not tired, I was able to see some landscape as we came into Finland. The Gulf of Finland looks gorgeous from the plane. We de-boarded and navigated our way through the airport to the exit. Our flight for Paris wasn't going to leave until the next morning. We had booked a hotel somewhere near the airport, but we had no idea how long it would take us to get there. I had hoped to be able to go and see the Sibelius memorial. Jean Sibelius composed a beautiful piece entitled Finlandia. You might know it better as the tune to the old hymn "Be Still My Soul." He's somewhat of a national hero in Finland. My thought was, "My chances of getting to Finland again are pretty slim. I might as well make the most of it and see what I can." Unfortunately, we were short on Euros. The tour to go see the memorial was outlandishly priced. We didn't want to have to withdraw any more so we decided to explore Helsinki on foot instead.

We took the free shuttle to our hotel. On our way there we quickly realized that our hotel would not be near downtown or anything scenic. It was located basically in an industrial park. A little disappointing, but it didn't matter to us. We were happy to be in Finland and made ourselves comfy in our hotel room before taking off for the local shops. Our room was terribly hot. I remember dozing and then waking up all hot and sweaty. I checked the thermostat in the room and had it turned down all the way, but that didn't seem to make a difference. We asked the lady at the front desk about it. Were we doing something wrong? She informed us that they had been having air conditioning problems in that wing and if our room was still hot when we came back from our walk, they would move us to another room.

The shops were a nice little 20 minute walk away. Taigen and I enjoyed talking about our trip as we walked there. So many good memories!

What we found was a huge mall. We meandered around, looking for a momento of Finland that we could bring home. We ended up going into a store that was similar to a Macy's and I asked the sales clerk what I could purchase that would be uniquely Finnish. She pointed me in the direction of a few items, but eventually I fell in love with these little cappuccino cups and saucers made by a Finnish company called Iitalia. I asked the sales clerk about the significance of the owls that were printed on every cup. She didn't know, but thought it was due to the fact that there were a lot of owls in Finland. I have since made a contact with a lady in Finland (who happened to like my cards on Etsy), and she told me that the cups probably have the artwork of an artist named Klaus Haapaniemi. I looked him up, and sure enough, she was right! She also told me that the print is called "Taika" which means "the magic." Isn't that a neat factoid?!? The design isn't particularly my style or what I would consider beautiful, but it is from Finland and uniquely Finnish and I was thrilled to have my little owl for my kitchen shelf.

While I was waiting for the salesclerk to wrap up my cup and saucer, she explained how excited she was to have a United States citizen in her shop. She said it is very rare and she was happy to practice her American English. What most Europeans learn is British English and so they are eager to practice American English when they can. She chatted and chatted with me and was very personable. We had a great time in her store.

When we were done making the purchase we went in search of food. Unfortunately at the mall, there wasn't anything authentic to Finland. There was Italian, burgers, Mexican, etc. Isn't that funny? We ended up finding a small woodfired pizza place. We ordered a chicken barbeque pizza that had bacon, barbeque sauce, pineapple and chicken. It was outstanding! After pizza, we walked around some more and then finished off the night with ice cream. We ate as we walked home.

Our room was still hot, so we were transferred to another room. We got hooked up to the hotel's wifi and were able to contact folks back home and let them know that the first leg of our journey was complete. Tomorrow was Paris and then home.