This morning we accidentally slept in and barely got breakfast before it was closed. It was a good breakfast and a full breakfast and held us through the day as these free hotel breakfasts are best utilized to do. No pictures of it though. The hotel we stayed at for the two nights of the conference did not have breakfast but I supplemented it with snacks from the conference and the free lunch we received both days in the University Cafe. It was not pleasant food. Makes me happy I’m not in college any longer. Here is a picture of the building at the Univ. of Helsinki where the conference was held.

Pretty non-descript and sits right in the middle of the city. I walked past it the first evening without a clue I would be spending two days there. It is best known in my world for being the locale of the New Finnish Interpretation of Luther initiated by Tuomo Mannermaa. And you thought Finns were just pretty faces.
So after that tangent we headed into Helsinki from our spot in Espoo which is next door to Helsinki. We wandered the city for a bit as we window shopped and tried to find some finds. It is an expensive city soit is hard to want to spend money while at the same time you want to buy all kinds of things. Lucky for the pocket book many shops were closed on the weekend.
Helsinki seems to exhale design on so many levels that you simply breathe it in while walking the streets. It makes you feel good about life and future it holds even when Mr. Putin is right next door.
Time for some pictures

This is a chapel in one of the main squares called Kamppi (both the square and the chapel go by the name). It was purposed with providing a quiet place for prayer and meditation in the midst of the city bustle. In tourist season I don’t think it succeeds but I hope for the rest of the year that it might. It is dramatic in its effect and I think is also a nice counterpoint to the steel and concrete which surrounds it.
I showed the picture before of the boy peeing near the main harbor market and found the title for the sculpture so I thought I should share it again.

In the afternoon we met an old friend who lives in Helsinki. He is not old, just a guy I haven’t seen for over 25 years. But that will have to wait till the morning as I need to fall asleep in order to get early in order to fall asleep on flight across the ocean in order to not fall asleep on the drive back up to Duluth tomorrow. That’s the plan anyway. So is a flight free of Icelandic Ash.

The second day of the conference also started with a run. I love running in different cities because it is a great way to see parts of the city you often don’t get to. I took some pictures today.

This is looking out to Soumenlinna (which I will tell you more about later) from the the city.

This another island just across the water. There are thousands of islands along the southern coast.

Here is a morning ferry heading Tallinn, Estonia which is only 30km away according to one of the conference participants. I can’t verify that at the moment as I’m laying in my bed but that seems kind of close.
The run was nice as it helps with the jet lag and gave me the chance to see Helsinki wake up.
Being a two day conference this was the last day as well. It sounds short but I sat in 16 different sessions in the two days. That’s a lot of ideas being proposed. Some of the topics today were more interesting to me: Fandom and Religion, Pentavangelical Glocalisation in the West Cape of South Africa, Leonard Cohen as a Modern Troubadour, Religionless Christianity in Mumford and Sons, the appropriation of social media in British evangelical aid organisations and the religious undertones of Lego’s Ninjago and Chima. That last one was presented by a Norwegian woman whose PhD thesis was on virginity in late Antiquity. Little did you know, eh? A picture just so that you believe me.

Also, during a break I ran an errand and came upon this dude on a smoke break from the construction site wearing knicker work pants.

Pragmatic fashion.
The conference filled the whole of the day. It was interesting and an enjoyable time for myself and reminded me of what my undergrad mentor once told me, with PhD. you know more and more about less and less until you know all there is about absolutely nothing. In this case it is a turn on that phrase in that it is the realization that I know less and less about more and more until I know absolutely nothing about all there is. Hopefully that is also a lesson in traveling the world. It’s a big world and we really don’t know much about it.
The other lesson of travel I also experienced at the conference, we are all human beings and pretty interesting if we get to know each other. There were people from 19 different countries at the conference and most were really fun to spend time with. I was the only American I met so I freely represented the other 316,999,999 of you all with my opinions. I heard more variety of British accents in one room than I had before and also heard a Senegalese Sufi worship band who. Closed out the conference. Academics can be boring and we can criticize them for having their heads in the clouds or being irrelevant but the truth borne out to me was that the exchange of ideas is very important for moving things forward.
Any way time to sleep.

Today began with a morning run around this part of Helsinki. There certainly are a lot of bikes zipping around the city and great paths for them to zip on. I even saw a fat bike last night.
Today was also the first day of my conference at the Univ. of Helsinki. The sessions have been varied, from interesting to boring including a discussion on the syncretism of religion in video games, the dangers of Slender Man for youth, the religious presence in Kanye West video’s, the role of religion in Estonia’s youth, what religion can learn from popular music and vise versa a couple of others and then my own. Mine seemed to be received well and there was some resonance with it. That always makes one feel better about one’s effort. Academics is an interesting world to poke one’s head into, there is a lot going on in little spaces.
The Finns are nice people which seems like an odd thing for me to say but there is a genuine care underlying most of the conversations I have had which is certainly not always with generalized observations. Maybe it is the circle I am in here.
I don’t have much more to articulate as it seems I’ve been articulating ideas all day and they’re starting to seem inarticulate.
No pictures today because I was mostly concerned with my presentation and who wants pictures of people talking. I’ll get some tomorrow.
Good night.

Thanks to the wonders of Ambien I slept great last night. Even with a snoring roommate I managed a good nine hours with ease. Nancy has always said the first night is the most important when crossing oceans and she is right. After a nice big breakfast at the hotel we set off in search of our next hotel.

The first one was formerly the county jail and our room sure felt like it. It was down in the corner of the basement and hardly any light shone down through the window. It was great for the aforementioned sleep.
On our way to the next hotel to drop our bags we passed by the main harbor from which the ferry’s mainly operate, the Esplanade runs off of and on which the Presidential Palace is located. The last is hardly noticeable and located right across the street from this fellow.

We found our hotel, dropped our bags and hit the streets. I was here for a day back in 2003 with Nancy and for a couple of days way back in 1989 with Teen Missions. So the city is relatively new to me. My dad has been here more often so has a better idea of things. One thing I forgot about traveling with an architect is that suddenly he will be gone and you’ll look back for him and there he is taking a picture of a building, or the facade of a building, or the detailing on a building. This used to happen when we were kids but I had forgotten about. And now being in a city pulsing with design through its veins it happens even more. And he is the happier for it.
We ate lunch at the harbor, I had a moose kabob.

It was tasty and very filling. Like most food in the Nordic countries it was more expensive then we are used to but lasted until the 5 Euro pizza we found for a late dinner. Another thing I expected in a Nordic Capitol was a sea of black clothing. Not the goth black but rather the modern, black hip clothing that says I’m afraid of expressing myself. Stockholm and Oslo were flowing with it. Helsinki still has it’s black but color is accenting it well. And others have no fear of color, most of which falls into the acceptable use of color. (You still awake Dug?)
We dodged rain throughout the day and enjoyed this part of the city. In the evening we set out for the Rock church. Tonight it was rockin’ indeed. The church itself is set in a rock and is very beautiful. It also has wonderful acoustics which we did not experience. We were there for a Heavy Metal Mass. The Finns love their heavy metal and have brought it into their Lutheran services. Outside of the obvious it was not that different of a service. We shared communion, listened to a long sermon in two languages and recited the creed together. The pastor fit the part.

And they performed a special recessional that was a treat for us (this was tied into the conference)-Stryper’s “To Hell with the Devil”. Hard to beat. I will leave you with that.

A quick update as we wander around Helsinki and slip into stores to dodge rain.
The name of conference I am here to attend is Holy Crap to which I duly submitted a paper titled “How to Crap in the Woods”. Surprisingly, they accepted it.
A link to the conference website can be found here
http://www.nuorisotutkimusseura.fi/en/node/1190
If you can tell me more details gleaned from the collection of vowels and vowels and consonants and consonants let me know what going to happen at the conference.

I am always surprised about how many modes of transport one trip takes. Mine began with drive down Interstate 35 followed by a walk to the Hiawatha Line in Minneapolis. From there it was a train ride through the old neighborhood out to the Airport and a rush through security. I made it to the gate and onto the plane with complete ease.
I had decided to carry both my pieces of luggage on as it seemed like less could happen if I didn’t let them out of my sight. Also, I could have packed both into one and still fit I to the regulation size. I had trouble trying to figure out why I wasn’t bringing more along when I packed. It was less than I usually bring anywhere I go for a weekend. The only gear I had, I realized, was a pair of running shoes and that was the difference. This was a city adventure and gear necessary for that is very little compared to bikes, skis, etc. And no skis to drag around an airport as I’ve done for most of the flights of late.
So there I was sitting in my seat waiting for the door to close and the flights to Helsinki begin. I was Chicago bound on Delta and then transferring to SAS for a flight to Stockholm and then on to Helsinki. Apparently, thunderstorms and lightning decided to hover around O’hare and all the flights were delayed, with the exception of my out bound flight to Stockholm. Long story short (because I really don’t want to relive it) I deplaned in MSP caught a later flight to Chicago not knowing if there were any options after missing my Stockholm flight. I was very nicely put on a flight to Copenhagen and now am on my flight to Helsinki. I haven’t traveled in the last number of years without some delay messing up my itinerary. I hope that changes.
Also, as part of that dance, my dad was on corresponding flights through O’Hare and Berlin to meet up in Helsinki. We are now planning to meet at our hotel. I hope to see him there with no further complications. He is spending the week in Helsinki with me with no part in the conference, just fun.
Travel has always been very existential for me. Seeing people from all parts of the country and world walking around in their own existences and circumstances always causes the questions to role around my head. Where are they going, why are they going there, who awaits them, what do they do, how do they feel about themselves? I guess the only question I don’t wonder at is when. The problem with such questions is they lead to more questions and at some point I should probably just read a book. A these people also cause me to want to go to all the places they are going and I suppose that is the danger of hanging out in an international terminal.
I experienced the same Nordic phenomenon in Copenhagen as I have in Sweden, Norway and Finland-seeing people I know I all the faces passing by. It is the game Nancy and I always play over here, pointing out friends and relatives in the faces we see. It’s all based on that simple premise, it’s a pretty small Nordic gene pool.
I haven’t taken pictures except one out of the window as we lifted out of Copenhagen and one of the Finnish archipelago. The first looks like a bridge to nowhere but I don’t think they build those over here. If you look close you can see the road descend into a tunnel. That’s all for now from high over the Baltic. Oh look, I can see Russia from here.

I haven’t used this blog except for a failed attempt back a few years.
I have been impressed with my friend Buck’s blog at buckbenson.org and his details, impressions and stories during his months long journey down the spine of South America on bike.
Inspired by him this is my own attempt at sharing my week-long journey to Helsinki.
The trip is purposed by a conference at which I am presenting a paper. I’ll have more on the conference later beyond it’s title “Holy Crap.”
With that I am off on my travels. Bon voyage!