home about photos phd v1.0

Having walked such a long distance in day, my back muscles were uncomfortably painful. I met two interesting characters at the hostel during the day. The first was Liver, a penniless Romanian who spoke Spanish and Romanian, and maybe only 10 words of English. In Finland he was basically unable to communicate with anyone. Using the handful of words he knew, Oliver managed to tell me that he was trying to save money to bring his mother to Finland.

Unfortunately things didn’t seem to be going very well for Oliver, as he didn’t even have enough money for food. So come dinnertime I decided to share half my meal of spicy chicken, capsicum, potato and broccoli with him. Unfortunately I was a little too generous in giving half, and I found myself still quite hungry. I then boiled up the remaining broccoli for myself, and things were fine.

The second fellow I met was a completely smashed Bolivian, whose name I forget. Beginning on a decent note by offering me a beer, the conversation went downhill rapidly, as he talked about all the crack/coke that he snorts; later I found him chatting with some African about how he doesn’t like black people or black rights. From that moment on I steered clear of the troublesome guy.

In the evening I met two young Australian sisters, who I’ll call X&Y. The crazy girls had been in Turku for about 1 month, staying with whatever friendly people would give them a room. Very energetic and friendly, the girls took me to one of the local clubs, 410. Unfortunately, I was feeling quite ill from earlier in the evening, when I got 3x of interrupted 10-minute naps, as the washing machine/dryer cycle needed constant attention. I went anyway however, as it was the first real opportunity to experience Scandinavian nightlife since arriving. We drank heavily, taking Jagermeister mixes, sex on the beach, ciders, vodka, Sambuca shots and more.

I left around 3am in search of food; stepping into a Lebanese kebab shop I met a lovely Finn by the name of Murray. We chatted for around an hour before I headed back to the club. So far my experience with Finnish youth, both on the street asking for help and in the club socially, has been negative, with few making eye contact or willing to talk to foreigners. This of course isn’t always the case as I would go on to meet some lovely Finnish girls later in my travels.

One of the girls