1-4 July 2014: Aging

To get an idea of how diverse the conference talks were, we began and ended our first conference day with keynote speakers.  The keynote speaker at the beginning of the day presented her work into documenting images of the aging female body.  As she noted, it's uncommon to see portrayals of older women in the media, particularly "ordinary" older women (i.e., not Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, or the like), and so she used a variety of phototherapeutic techniques to try to get older women to take pictures of each other, particularly ones that would subvert stereotypes about aging.

The one at the end of the day, who is apparently New Zealand's Chief Scientist, presented to us a lecture about the possible evolutionary origins of aging in humans, to help discuss why humans live so long and why our bodies seem to encounter new challenges towards the end of life.  Contrary to popular belief, many humans in the "caveman times" did often grow older than you'd think, into their 50s/60s/70s.  Average life expectancies were very low only because of child mortality; if you lived to be 18, you stood a quite good chance of living longer.  His interest was in trying to explain why for evolutionary reasons our ancestors who had aging accompanied by a largely poorer physique did better than the ones who did not see these problems, with a particular interest in why humans (but almost no other mammals, besides elephants and dolphins) undergo menopause.

Yep, it was an interdisciplinary conference.  In fact, it was basically a non-disciplinary conference.  There's a bit more available on the conference's website.

Part of the reason for that was why the conference existed in the first place.  The conference was set up by Universitas 21, a sort of football conference for academia.  Basically, it's a bunch of schools who consider themselves academic equals deciding to get together and chat about international collaborations and such.  One of their initiatives is a graduate student conference, held every summer at one of the member schools.  The conference is intentionally given only a very vague topic, such that as many schools as possible could present something somehow related to the topic.  This year's topic was aging, and, as it so happens, I had one experiment related to aging; hence submitting my abstract, which was selected by UMD to represent our school at this conference (along with two other marvelous presentations).

I won't talk too much about the particulars of the conference, but it was clear that there were many good talks, some not-so-great-ones (sometimes speakers didn't do a great job of talking to the extremely diverse audience), but, overall, a lot of spirited discussion and fun conversation.  There were also some non-talk periods where we could socialize with each other, and we were also expected to make group presentations with some other researchers around a topic that, well, pretty much none of us were supposed to have any experience with.  My group presented about an issue that one of the judges had been working on for decades, in which we accidentally (and unknowingly) contradicted everything he had been doing for decades, so that went about as well as could be expected.  We also got lab tours on the second-to-last day; I particularly enjoyed the robot lab we visited, which included robots that were supposed to help older adults take medicine and vital sign measures.

My presentation went pretty well.  I was presenting some of my research looking at the effects of how fast you talk at the beginning of a sentence affecting the number of words you hear at the end of a sentence.  I compared younger adults (18-21) with older adults (55-65) and found... no differences whatsoever.  This would normally be a boring finding, but based on the previous research done in the field, it was actually pretty shocking.  I think it went pretty well (some people said some nice things), but mostly I was just relieved that the audio in my presentation actually worked like it was supposed to!

Another fun bit was the keynote on the second-to-last day, who, it turned out, had been a postdoc (research scientist) for many years at UMD working in the labs of a couple of faculty that I know quite well!  It was a lot of fun to talk to her about what was different at UMD and what hadn't changed.  That day started with her talk, and had all three talks from PhD students at Maryland, so, needless to say, they heard a lot about how cool College Park is.

The conference schedule was quite jammed, so the only social activities I could do were those we had time for in the evening.  On the first night after the conference, some of us decided to go out together closer to the harbor in Auckland, as the conference-provided dinner we thought we had been promised ended up just being appetizers and finger food.  We spent a while wandering around before we found a place we could agree on - unfortunately, though, the sign said "burgers", even though I had already had burgers the night before!  As we sat down, though, it turned out we had stumbled on an outdoor patio site that was split between two restaurants, one with burgers, and one with other options.  Whew.  I discovered that the girlfriend of one of the conferencegoers worked in a lab I had been hoping to work in when I applied for a Marshall Scholarship, and so I got to spend time talking to her about what she was doing in that lab.  And, of course, the usual conference hijinx abounded... save for the copious imbibement of alcohol, as draft beers were something like $8 or $9 a pint.  Yikes!

The second night, some of us went out to a Belgian restaurant that I had found on TripAdvisor (which is an amazing tool, by the way, and hasn't lied to me yet!).  We all had a variety of tasty foods... but, entertainingly, and without any planning beforehand, all ordered exactly the same beer.  At least it was tasty.

The next day, after our conference, we hopped on a bus to head to the Sky Tower, Auckland's local version of UFO-perched-on-a-torch architecture.  (See also the Space Needle in Seattle, the CN Tower in Toronto, or the Sydney Tower in Sydney.)  The top of the Sky Tower included a rotating restaurant, where we had dinner.  It was, of course, inferior to Duluth's rotating restaurant, but we still got a 360-degree rotating panoramic view of the entire city of Auckland, which was pretty awesome.  Our seats were assigned through unknown powers; I was fortunate enough to sit with some fun people, including the Dean in charge of running the conference, who had a PhD in New Zealand History.  We then got a quiz on New Zealand history.  Through, er, no help at all from the Dean, er, right, yep, totally legitimately, we managed to get the highest score on the quiz, which entitled us to a free cocktail from the bar.  I got a Kiwi Bellini.  It tasted like lies success.

On the way back, I sat in the driver's seat... or, at least, what would have been the driver's seat had we been in the States and had it not been a double-decker bus (me being on the second deck).  I proceeded to drive the bus with vigor, aplomb, democracy, liberty, and, most of all, freedom.  Those sitting around me were entertained.

Our last day was the Fourth of July.  Theresa and I, being the born-and-bred Americans we are, were asked to start the day with a patriotic song.  Our rendition of "America the Beautiful" went about as beautifully as you might imagine.  As was put by one of the other students at the conference: "I was very impressed by how you were always at least a half-step out of tune with each other for the entire song."  Yep.  Oh dear.  After the conference day was done, everyone said our goodbyes... what a fun conference, in the end, and what lovely people I met!  Me and the others from UMD headed together to the Auckland Museum, a huge museum in the middle of Auckland's largest park.  Although we only had a couple of hours there, I saw a lot of interesting things, including a wide variety of Māori artwork (the Māori are the indigenous peoples of New Zealand) and a little computer simulator that turned your body movements into simulated movements by a Pacific Island chief.  I'll see if I can post the picture I took of me doing that.

I walked with Theresa and Alex (the other UMD student) towards our hotel, and we said our goodbyes.  It was time for Alex to head to the airport, and for me to head to the Couchsurfing-based Fourth of July party I had been invited to.  The rest of my trip was about to begin!

18-20 March 2014: Denmark

In preparation for my trip to New Zealand, I thought I'd, y'know, finish up my blog posts from this spring.  Sorry about the lack of timeliness.  I suck.  But, on the plus side, pictures!

My flight from Estonia was entirely uneventful.  As I stepped into the bathroom after my flight, the first thing I saw was a plug that looked like this:

I'M A PLUG =D

 I do not think the shape of Danish plugs is an accident.  Denmark seems like a country that's so happy even their plugs constantly need to be expressing joy.  In fact, as I left the Copenhagen Metro, heading to my Couchsurfing host, a guy just outside the Metro greeted me with a pleasant "Welcome to Denmark!"  I was used enough to Finland/Estonia's character by now to be terrified by the intrusion and walked quickly away.

Denmark also offers iPhone reparations.  For those who lost property in the Great iPhone War of 2011.

What's this "Couchsurfing" thing, you ask?  Think airbnb or VRBO, but without a financial transaction.  Basically, the thought is to find people around the world willing to put visitors up in their home, in exchange for the opportunity to have a cultural exchange and the chance to meet someone new and interesting.  Best of all, it's free - it's definitely nice to bring something with you for your hosts, or, at least, to do the dishes or something for them, but it's not required.  Basically, it combines some of my very favorite things: meeting new people, learning new things, experiencing places like a local would, and being frugal.  Most excellent!

The user experience of finding a host is kind of like online dating.  Basically, you write a little message about who you are and what you're doing in the place where you're surfing and why you'd like to surf at someone's place.  It's completely acceptable for prospective hosts to turn you down if you ask.  Unlike online dating, though, there's also a system of references, where former surfers/hosts can leave messages describing their time with a prospective host.  (My hosts in Denmark were taking a bit of a risk with me because I didn't have any references.)  This can really help in finding someone fun and safe.

As soon as I saw my Copenhagen host Jen's profile, I immediately dashed off a message to her and started praying, basically.  Jen seemed really cool - she had a ton of good references, worked in a "biohacking" lab (basically, open source science; so anyone who wants to can wander in and do experiments, more or less), had a very fun profile, lived in apartment in a cool place, and, best of all, grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, of all places.  I figured for my first host, it couldn't hurt to stay with someone who would seem a little familiar.

True to form, the first thing Jen asked me to do when I entered her apartment was to take off her shoes.  I was in the process of taking off my shoes, because, really, what else would you do when you enter someone's home?  (On a related note, it still weirds me out when I'm taking off my shoes after entering their place and people start insisting that I leave my shoes on.  "Oh, no, you don't have to!"  But I want to.  It's really uncomfortable to have shoes on in a house; it's abnormal, unless you are expecting that I'll be leaving right away.)  We were immediately best friends.

She tried to set me up with a spare bike outside their house.  As we tried to get it unstuck, the key wouldn't fit in the bike lock, and she didn't have oil to fix the problem.  Jen thought a bit, then went up and got her hair oil, which fixed the problem.  But, alas, the bike had a flat tire, which the bike store couldn't fix in time for it to be useful to me.

There are seriously bikes EVERYWHERE in Copenhagen.  The only other place I've seen such crazy biking obsession was Amsterdam, which is also a pleasant happy city right on the sea.

Regardless, I walked into town to see some of Copenhagen.  The National Museum of Denmark was a disappointment.  Not so much for its organization or style (quite nice) or the price (free!), but because of the disturbing lack of Viking paraphanalia.  Seriously.  There were only like 5 rooms with Viking stuff in them.  THAT IS THE POINT OF DANISH HISTORY.  VIKINGS HAPPENED.

On the plus side, though, while walking to the teensy-tiny Viking section, I happened to walk behind two older ladies, who were ambling slowly in front of me.  One of them turned backwards and said something to me in Danish.  "Sorry?"  She switched to English.  "We noticed you seemed to be walking faster than us.  Do you want to go ahead of us?"  "Oh!" I said, "That would be very nice!  Thank you!"  "We're getting old!" said the one talking to me.  "Oh, no, you're not!" I said, walking past them.  Have I mentioned that I love Danes?

After the museum, I wandered further around Copenhagen.  I stumbled on a beautiful church that I wasn't expecting to exist after hearing it chime on the hour.  The building was beautiful inside, with a huge dome and ornate decorations.

Kierkegaard?

Unfortunately, my attempts to see the anarchist commune of Christiania were prevented by the extremely confusing system of bridges of Copenhagen, so instead I had to hurry back to Jen's apartment.  She and her SO, Magnus (who's a Dane) treated me to a delicious meal: meatballs in a (thankfully mild) curry, with lemon mousse for dessert.  One of my pet peeves is the sound of silverware scraping against dishes, but I managed to struggle through it in order to eat every last scrap of that mousse.  I also gave them a huge bar of white chocolate with blueberries that I had purchased in Estonia.  We chatted the night away, and she shared with me some Minttu, a minty (surprise!) alcohol from Finland and told me stories of the knife throwing that she apparently saw everywhere in Finland.

Jen and Magnus had a rug that was the exact same colors as my shirt.

The next day, I set off to the train station to head up to Aalborg to see my friend Bailey.  I made sure to stop by Christiania, which was very disappointing at 8:30 in the morning.  Apparently it is too early for anarchists to be out and about.  I boarded my train for Aalborg.  My notes on my train ride say "crying baby", "happy baby", so apparently there were small children.

In Aalborg, I met up with Bailey, as well as my couchsurfing host there, Mads.  Mads is pronounced "Mess", by the way, in case you thought other languages might make more sense than English.  Nope!  After getting my stuff situated at Mads's place, Bailey and I decided to tour around Aalborg together.  We tried to take a selfie outside the local church... and, no sooner had we done that, but a Dane freely offered, with no provocation, to take our picture.  Oh, Danes!

Heading into the church

Bailey and I had a lovely time chatting and catching up, as I heard stories of her time in Denmark.  You can read more about her adventures at Bailey Abroad.  Finally, we circled around to dinner, and had a delicious meal at a sort of brewpub in town.  On their menu, they had "a refreshing, cool glass of milk" (yes, in those words) listed as an option, much to my entertainment.  My readers will be shocked to learn that I had beer instead.

Mads, my host, was a surprise.  He volunteered to host me the week before (this is another feature on Couchsurfing... when you ask any individual to host you, you can also basically put out an APB asking for help, and Mads was willing and able to do so), and I accepted, in part, because I didn't really have anywhere else to stay on Aalborg.  He turned out to be a wonderful guy: very friendly, and with an interesting job helping arrange conventions for Japanese culture aficionados in Denmark.  He liked basically all of the games that I like... yes, he had played basically every single Paradox game (and loved them all) and had run a game of Mafia (although it went by Werewolf among his cohort) with about 120 people playing in it.  He even drank more milk than me in a week.  Than me!

I spent the night at his place, then, in the morning, had breakfast with him and Bailey at a delicious pastry shop called Penny Lane.  Penny Lane wasn't too far from the bus station to get me up to Frederikshavn, the port that would get me to Sweden.  My bus ride was uneventful, and I started wandering around Frederikshavn.  But both of the restaurants I had looked up cost more than the Danish currency I had left, and not even the Friends café could save me.  So, I started milling about, until I finally found something that had something for the money I had left.

It was good I did so.  As I sat down and ate my mediocre sandwich, I saw an old lady motor past in her scooter.  She was wearing a jaunty red hat.  But it was a terribly windy day in Frederikshavn... as days in Denmark all tend to be.  Her hat flew off her head.  I continued monitoring her progress as she looked around and scooted over to the hat.  She tried picking it up herself, but wasn't able to.  At this point, I decided to take matters into my own hands.  Disobeying TSA guidelines, and leaving my baggage unattended, I went outside, gave her the hat (to which she said "Tak!" and something else, to which I modestly said "Nej, nej," because I had no idea what else to say), and made sure she got off safe and sound, hat in hand.  I felt reassured that I was doing my part in repaying Denmark the favor of a most excellent visit.

From there, I headed up to my ferry and boarded it.  It was... pretty bad, with the deck I was sitting on featuring a terrible disco-themed live band.  Blah.  I guess nothing could compare to my first ferry with the mysterious witch.  Next stop: Göteborg, Sweden.

28 June-30 June 2014: Traveling to New Zealand

I had never made a journey as the long as the one that got me to New Zealand.  I left College Park at about 3:00pm on Saturday, June 28th, and arrived at my hotel at about 6:00pm on Monday, June 30th, a total of about 35 hours of transit.  And, let me tell you: ugh.

After Peter drove me out to Dulles, I made my way around one of my least favorite airports in the country and boarded my flight to Los Angeles.  I had a window seat, thank goodness, and was even the first one in my row to board.  A couple of kids sat down next to me.  The one in the middle seat immediately turned to me and asked me if I'd be willing to give me his window seat, because he preferred sitting there.  A moral quandary ensued.  On the one hand, he was younger than me, and deserved to have the thrill of seeing his country from the air like I had enjoyed when I was his age.  On the other hand, gosh darn it, I wanted the window seat.

Thankfully, my quandary was forestalled by the rest of his family, who shouted him down.  (That way, they could sit contiguously.)  Whew.  That emergency out of the way, the only emergency that was faced for the rest of the trip was the medical emergency that unfolded somewhere over Texas.  I couldn't see what happened, and we didn't have to make an emergency landing, but, in between that and our already-delayed departure, we were about 90 minutes late into LAX.

So, I got to be one of the people who rushed out immediately after the flight attendants say "some passengers are making a tight connection, so please be seated if LA is your final destination", which was a first for me.  We came in at the gate literally neighboring our departure gate for Sydney, and they had delayed our flight to Sydney by 30 minutes, because I guess there were enough of us to make that doable.  I was pretty surprised, honestly!

I boarded my flight to Sydney, and got to my customary window seat.  Then began the great Prayer of the Window Seat: please don't sit here, please don't sit here, please don't take the seat next to me.  The Prayer is only sporadically answered in the modern aviation industry, but somehow the gods were listening - although the flight was almost full, somehow the seat next to me was not!  Yesssss!

Me being me, I had developed an hour-by-hour list of activities to do on my flight, to make sure I stayed productive and slept at a relatively appropriate time.  I'm generally terrible at sleeping on planes, so I figured I could stay up for a while in a bid to adjust my internal clock.  But I couldn't adhere to my schedule.  My flight from LAX departed at 10:00pm local time, or 1:00am internal clock time, and so soon I found myself collapsing.  At least I didn't have any problems sleeping for a couple of hours, I suppose?

It's about a 15 hour flight between LAX and Sydney.  Sure, that's kind of terrible, but, honestly, sometimes Heffner family road trips between Minneapolis and Detroit lasted that long, so I guess I had some experience with it.  The weirdest part was the complete blackness out of the windows.  Because of our departure time, it was completely dark when we left LA, and our arrival in Sydney was at 6:00am local time, so we spent the entire flight during "night".  There were also no lights whatsoever coming from the most isolated stretches of the Pacific Ocean, for obvious reasons.  It was a bizarre situation to be in.  I knew time was passing... great periods of time, actually.  But I had no way to tell beyond what our screens were saying the time was in Sydney and LA.

At the Sydney Airport, I had about a five hour layover scheduled... probably not enough time to go out and do anything in Sydney, unfortunately.  So I spent some time waiting with Theresa, one of the other grad students from UMD going to the conference.  She has an irrepressibly perky personality, I think part of her past as a teacher, so I got along with her swimmingly.  (It's hard to imagine anyone not getting along with Theresa.)  However, she had an earlier flight over to Auckland, so I got to spend a lot of time waiting.  Then a lot time more waiting, because my flight to Auckland was delayed by an hour or so for unspecified reasons.

By the time I was boarding the plane to Auckland, I was pretty exhausted.  The Air New Zealand clerk gave me a withering look as I tried to bring my carry-on suitcase onto the plane.  "That's much too big," he said, "we'll need to check it to Auckland."  He then proceeded to ask me several times whether my final destination was Auckland.  I totally understood his caution, but after the fifth or sixth time I felt a little talked down to.  Yes, despite my American passport, I was indeed going to Auckland, full-stop.  Jeez Louise.

My flight to Auckland was shocking.  I was fed!  I got a meal!  There were in-seat entertainment systems!  And all this for a 2.5 hour flight!  It was pretty nonsensical to my American sensibilities, but I wasn't complaining... at all.  For the meal, they mentioned that they had New Zealand wine, which I had heard was fantastic, so I had a glass... and, uh, that was a bad idea, it turns out, as drinking a glass of wine with the ridiculous jet lag and sleep deprivation I was feeling made the wine affect me much more than it should have.  Rather than doing some of the work I had planned, I instead watched "Wreck-It Ralph", which I enjoyed.

During my shuttle ride from the airport, I managed to avoid falling asleep, while the two other people on my flight (students from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney) did.  I felt somewhat smug.  After checking in at the (very lovely) Copthorne Hotel, I, Theresa, and a couple of grad students she had met went out to dinner at a burger restaurant we stumbled into, all of us (but the Australia student) speaking rather incoherently and doing a lot of staring at our burgers.  I returned to my hotel, stayed up past 9pm, then immediately fell asleep, and managed to stay asleep until 7:30am the next morning (with just one interruption).  Whew.

17-18 March 2014: Estonia

After my ferry docked in Estonia, I headed right from my ship into the Old Town.  Tallinn, like many European cities, has an "old timey place", which dates from the Medieval era, as well as a more modern city full of depressing apartment building surrounding the old timey place.  Tallinn's is considered a particularly beautiful old town,  My hostel was right in middle of it, and was, indeed, very much a part of it; it was listed as a historical building by the town council.

I was a bit worried about the place, though.  It had the reputation of a party hostel.  As in, its very own website advertised it as "Tallinn's #1 party hostel".  Luckily, its hostelbookers reviews said that it wasn't a problem at all to not partake as much as you'd like.  I was all in favor of going out and having a good time until late with new people... I was not in favor of seeing the sun rise on a new day in Tallinn with said new people.  But, when I arrived, things were pretty low-key.  I was able to check in and was told that I would be the only one in my room that night.  In a 6-bedroom dorm room.  Yessssss, no need to even use the lockers outside!

I met the people who were there.  It turned out that all of them at the time were staff.  That was a cool thing about the hostel: it was by backpackers, for backpackers, and so it seemed like half of the staff were itinerant free-thinkers who were traveling the world and decided to stay in Tallinn for a while because they thought the hostel was that much fun.  The staff were from anywhere from Estonia itself to Romania to Slovakia to New Zealand, Canada, and Australia.  I was a little worried that there weren't actually any guests besides me, but soon they started trickling in.  Soon it was time for dinner, another perk of the hostel: for just three Euro, the hostel staff would make a home-cooked meal, that would encourage everyone in the hostel to circle up and gather 'round before the night's festivities.

Did I mention it was St. Patrick's Day?  Yeah, it was March 17th.  As a good (mostly) Irish-American, I couldn't help but hope we would celebrate the holiday of my people, and was curious how.  First, drinking games... kind of unsurprising, though it was quite amusing watching some of the European guests learn to play drinking games that are common here in the States.  After a short detour to talk about the ins and outs of gun violence, and a quick realization that holy crap what a depressing topic, we ended up moving to one of my hostel's sister locations to join the party already in progress there.

One of the employees who I had met earlier was dressed as a leprechaun... his ginger beard was paired with entertainingly skintight green tights.  The hostel didn't disappoint on the booze front, either.  There was even a green drink or two—the greenness coming compliments of absinthe(!)—and I enjoyed the wheat beers, my drug of choice.  I met a Hungarian via France who does humanitarian work in Africa, a Finnish woman just down for the weekend, and was absolutely owned by said Hungarian at air hockey.  (It was absolutely pathetic.  Something like 10-1.)  And then, when it got to be too late, and others were proposing going bar hopping, I opted out, hovered around the other hostel a bit more, and then headed right back and fell asleep... just as I wanted.  The best kind of party hostel.

The next morning, I wanted to go on the free tour hosted by the local tourist information office, but I also wanted to sleep, so I ended up sleeping far too late and just eating a fiber bar for breakfast.  On my way out, I ran into the guy from India I had met the night before.  Sudesh also seemed keen on going to the tour, so we rushed over the tourist office and got there just in time.  Our tour guide was entertaining and fun.  Estonia is not a country that you learn much about in AP European History, so she filled in some details and shared anecdotes about all the spots we saw.  I was most entertained when we found ourselves in an unmarked and uninteresting-looking small parking lot, which our guide suddenly declared was the parking lot for the Parliament of Estonia, which was a few scant meters away.  Er, okay.  Kind of like how you can just wander into the parking lot... of the US Congress???

We then had lunch in Hell, or, at least, a restaurant named Hell, which served me a tasty pork chop sandwich and a genuine Estonian beverage called Pihtla.  I got to know Sudesh.  He was a long-time tennis player who was currently coaching youth tennis.  Tennis really seemed to have a hold on him; at one point, he got a law degree, but only practiced for two months before he went back to the sport he loved.  But he was interested and curious in a lot of different things, freely talking to me about international politics, psychology, and a lot of other fields.  He was in Tallinn just for a vacation, not for any particular reason; in fact, the weather in Tallinn (near freezing) was, he thought, the coldest weather he had ever experienced, which was particularly galling considering that he had left his jacket at a bar in Brussels two nights before (he went out and bought one at a mall instead).

Folks like Sudesh are why I love hostels so much... when on earth would I have met such people if I had stayed safe and sound in College Park over spring break?  Or if for some reason I had been staying in a hotel rather than a hostel?

After Hell, we stopped by a flea market (I didn't get anything, as it was mostly closing), then I took a tour through Estonia's (very reasonably priced) national history museum.  It was well worth the admission.  My tour guide earlier in the day had done a great job outlining the history, so there weren't many huge surprises, but I loved the multimedia presentation of the exhibits.  They were organized around central questions, with artifacts, presentations, and text working together to help answer the questions.  I particularly enjoyed the part of the museum about the Estonian language.

More than learning about Estonian history, though, I was entertained to learn how the Estonians saw themselves... negatively.  Take this sample from a sign (somewhat paraphrased): "Because Estonia lacks many significant natural resources, and does not have many people, Estonians have had to find other ways to build the economy."  Yes, you heard it first from the national history museum: Estonia is a country that lacks natural resources.  Also in the national history museum: "Estonia often ranks as one of the most unhappy nations."  As my tour guide said, "Estonians do not often smile, so it took years to train tour guides to be able to do it."  The museum's attempts to name famous Estonians came up with just one name that I recognized, and I only recognized the name because a member of my church told me about the composer in question the week before.  I'm not entirely sure why Estonians are so miserable, but they almost seem resigned rather than celebratory about their status as an independent national entity.  They keep surviving as a group despite being invaded repeatedly and stomped upon... so whoop-dee-doo, they suppose, we're a country now.

After the museum, I headed back for family dinner, then went out with Sudesh and a Frenchman to salsa.  I'm not entirely sure why I agreed to go to salsa.  As I demonstrated to Sudesh and the others, the only salsa move I have is the basic step, and literally nothing else.  I cannot spin.  I cannot do that thing where you are both facing the same way and walk around.  I am not capable.  But Sudesh seemed fixated on salsa, and I wanted to make sure he had a good time, and besides, hey, maybe in Estonia, of all places, no one could salsa.

This was manifestly wrong.  Many Estonians can salsa, and salsa well.  So I stayed firmly off the dance floor, and chatted with the Frenchman, who also seemed intimidated.  While Sudesh was out wowing many with his abilities (and dancing with the prettiest, most talented women), the Frenchman and I compared stereotypes of instrumentalists across national boundaries.  (Apparently where he was in France, many low brass players were female, wtf.)  Sudesh chatted up one of his dance partners, then invited us over.  Eventually, the woman's aunt started making gestures and saying things in tones that could only mean "Please marry one of these foreign men." ... the prosody and gestures associated with such a thing seem to be universal.

After salsa, we headed back to the other hostel, then went to another other hostel bar, where I was finally able to dance.  (Much to the amusement of my fellow patrons.)  Then I went back to sleep, again earlier than most, because the next day I had to head to the airport.

After stopping for some souvenirs (and white chocolate with blueberries, apparently a local specialty, to give to my hosts for the upcoming week), I took a bus to the airport.  Tallinn's aiport is quite small, only about 14 gates.  I particularly enjoyed one novel feature of the airport: a book nook with a library that travelers from all over the place could freely add to and take from at their leisure.  What a great idea!  I boarded my flight to Copenhagen—aboard Estonian Air, which has all of 10 or so destinations, all direct from Tallinn—and said sensible orthographies and quiet people goodbye.

16-17 March 2014: Finland

Turku, Finland Proper, Finland/Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland

H: 0/-1  L: -9/-14 Weather: Light Snow, Turning Clear/Scattered Clouds

I took the opportunity on Sunday morning to sleep in.  Like, a lot.  I've found that nothing eases the transition to a vastly different time zone like sleeping way too much on the day after you've made the time zone switch.  For me, sleeping in "a lot" meant 10:30am, but that was about 11 hours of sleep.  It felt really, really good.  Since then, I haven't really had any issues with jet leg!  Apparently forcing myself to stay up during the whole of the ferry ride to Finland helped.

We headed towards the Turku port, where I had just arrived the day before, to check out the castle.  Turku is one of the oldest cities in Finland, so it has no shortage of relatively old things.  Interestingly, most of them were Swedish,  Finland started its life as a united entity as basically a colony of Sweden, with Turku being eventually made its capital.  As such, Turku has some of the longest-lasting institutions in the country: the oldest newspaper and the oldest theatre, for example.  Both of those are in Swedish.

Turku's castle was built in two stages: the first in the Middle Ages (c. 1300s), the second in the Renaissance (c. 1600s).  The entire castle complex largely fell into disrepair in the 1900s before a successful renovation brought it back.  But the renovation lent an odd air to the castle.  Although there definitely were old things here and there, they were often overlain with modern touches: fire alarms, electric lights, wood platforms to walk on, and so on.  It felt somewhat like the owner of the castle was doing some renovations but was letting some lucky groups of visitors shuffle through.

Still, there were some cool artifacts that were preserved from earlier times in Turku, particularly wooden carvings of saints that had all had their hands chopped off or fall off - I couldn't quite tell which.  It was interesting to imagine how long the carvings had been intact and who had originally worked on them.

A tour of the castle took a couple of hours, so afterwards we decided to get lunch.  We were turned away from no less than two restaurants before we found somewhere with an open table, despite the fact that it was 3:30pm on a Sunday, much to our surprise.  Our next stop was the city's church... again, pretty much one of the oldest churches in Finland, originally Swedish, and somehow the National Shrine of Finland, whatever that means.  Like most Lutheran places, Finland went on an anti-Catholic spree around the time of the reformation, and took out all of the pretty carvings and shiny things from the church.  However, the building was still massive and powerful on the inside.  The Lutheran simplicity of the thing was almost a bit reassuring. As with most European churches, dead folks were buried all around the worship space.  While we were there, a couple of singers were warming up for some sort of performance (perhaps in a service), which lent the space a beautiful light.

Afterwards, we adjourned to the library, where we tried unsuccessfully to find American travel guides.  (I wanted to see what they had to say about Detroit.)  I floated the idea of grabbing a drink and loitering around until dinner... there was a Viking restaurant that I was desperate to try, because, lol, Viking restaurant.  But instead we just headed back to Essi's place and took a bit of a rest.  By the time we became less dormant, it was already something like 8:30pm.  Unfortunately, Finland, like much of Europe, basically shuts down at 8:00pm on Sunday evenings.  No, I can't quite explain it either.  But we were desperately short on dining options.  Our one savior: Rokbar.

Finland is known for its heavy metal scene.  I can't quite explain it either.  But Finland has one of the largest numbers of heavy metal groups in the world, and Finnish heavy metal artists have apparently been reputed far and wide for their prowess.  One Finnish heavy metal band shocked the world when it won the staid Eurovision contest (also known as the Europe-wide music contest that introduced the world to ABBA, Céline Dion, and Julio Iglesias) with its spirited heavy metal antics.  Apparently, this has led to a culture-wide phenomenon, such that there are now heavy metal-themed restaurants and bars.  Rokbar is one of them.  Thus, my second evening in Finland was spent nomming on a pork-and-mushroom sandwich and drinking a delicious Finnish lager at the only heavy metal-themed bar in Turku.  It was delicious and completely unthreatening.  We returned back to her apartment quite tired, but we still rallied to make a YouTube video for some friends before getting to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up with some time to spare before the bus, but unfortunately Essi wasn't so lucky.  So, on my own, I negotiated a bus to the middle of the city, a short walk to the bus station, and then figuring out how to get on the long-distance bus that I had reserved.  I could tell that, for a couple of the bus station employees, I was taxing their usable English, but because my Finnish vocabulary consisted of "Hello!" ("Moi!") and "Thank you!" ("Kiitos!"), we didn't really have any other options.  Eventually I made it on the bus.  Which was gorgeous and convenient and even had a screen with the current destination, time-to-destination, next stop, and everything else you could ever want.  It was nice.  The scenery made me realize how appropriate it was that many Yoopers are Finns.

In Helsinki, I had time to visit a church—built into a rocky hillside—and to have lunch at a Australian-owned bar (that featured delicious salmon pasta, nom nom nom!), before it was time to head for the harbor.  Helsinki is a more Russian city than it is a Swedish one, so it was interesting to find Cyrillic writing when out and about.  Eventually, I boarded my boat (after accidentally trying to plug in my details into the reservation system for a rival ship company... oops).  This ship was... er... a bit less classy than the one I took from Stockholm to Turku.  There was basically no where to sit except in a bar, so I planted myself in a bar that ended up featuring a rather repetitive band playing songs that sounded like they were from some Old Country.  Also crappy internet.  I was less than amused.  But I was making it to Tallinn!

14-15 March 2014: Europe 2, Transportation Boogaloo

Washington, District of Columbia/Newark, New Jersey, USA/Stockholm, Uppland, Sweden/Turku, Finland Proper(!), Finland

H: 15/9/4/3 L: -2/-6/4/0 Weather: Overcast/Mostly Cloudy/Light Snow/Clear

Yes, friends, it's time for another European adventure.  I feel like you all must have heard this story at one point, but, here goes: once upon a time there was a Facebook News Feed, and upon that Facebook News Feed one Jonathan Andrew posted a link to an entirely accidental sale by a regional Norwegian air carrier.  Lo, and much flailing was had, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the failure to take the $399 Turkish Air deal to İstanbul was recounted (actually, I found that deal independently of the Flight Deal, but I knew it would have shown up there at the time!), and it was resolved to definitely for sure take advantage of probably the cheapest flights I will ever see to Europe again in my lifetime.

And so I posted on Facebook requesting compatriots to join my in my travels, after someone who shall go nameless claimed that he "was already going to spring training in Florida".  The marvelous David Bogojevich had meanwhile posted the same deal to his Facebook Wall, stating his desire to go to Scandinavia.  I said I just wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, gosh darn it.  We agreed to travel together to Stockholm.  I accidentally got a return ticket for a Monday rather than a Sunday, but whatever.  Hurry, hurry, hurry, some previously unknown part of my brain shouted at me.  And so I bought tickets.  But disaster struck: though I had a receipt, and was ticketed on United the next day, my dear David was not so lucky, and his purchase never went through.

So, yeah.  That's why I'm going on a Baltic Sea tour for my spring break, rather than seeking warmer climes... say, Spain, or Italy.  My itinerary is as follows:

14-15 Mar: Traveling (via Newark and Stockholm) to Finland
15-17 Mar: Finland
17-19 Mar: Estonia (nothing says St. Patrick's Day like Estonia)
19-21 Mar: Denmark
21-24 Mar: Sweden

It's definitely fast-paced and exciting, but that's just how I like things!

The morning of the 14th started off way too early, at 5, which is not a time that most humans should often see.  I propoelled myself out of bed through sheer force of will, ate the last of my strawberries, drank the last of my milk, and set off for the College Park Metro station.  The day started with an ill omen.  Just as I get to the top of the escalator, sure enough, I hear "doors closing" and I get to watch the perfectly-timed "rush" Yellow Line train head for the airport and other places in NoVa without me.

Timing was a big worry during the day.  Not the timing of the Metro—the Yellow and Green lines share vast sections of track, and indeed I only had to wait a minute to transfer.  I wasn't worried about the transfer between planes—due to the parameters of the tickets I bought, I would have 8 hours to make my flight to Sweden.  I was using those 8 hours to visit my good friend and former labmate Prashanth Rajarajan.  No, the problem was in Stockholm.

Some time in the not too distant past, the Swedish government decided that the whole business of regulation was passé.  An unusual sentiment to Swedes, to be sure.  So, in their infinite wisdom, they decided to abolish (almost) all regulations on taxis.  In one fell swoop, Sweden, of all places, became one of the most unregulated taxis systems in the developed world.

What does this have to do with anything?  In my itinerary, I had taken a gamble.  I only had 75 minutes to get from my plane to my ferry to Finland.  Factor in customers, and at least 20 minutes for a trainjust to get to Stockholm, and I was already worried.  When I discovered on the 13th that that the ferry port was in fact nowhere near the railway station, and I'd probably have to take a taxi, I was upset; I absolutely despite taxis.  (Something about the financial transaction and the having to explain a destination in an unfamiliar land.)  When I discovered the Swedish system is what it is, and that I'd have to hunt and pick for the "right" taxi (certain brands with certain "unit prices", listed on their back windows), well... I was not a happy camper.

So, as I saw the Yellow Line train pull away, I hoped that I was not getting a premonition of the ferry doing the same.  But thing started looking up pretty quickly.  Just as boarding began for my flight to Newark, I got an email from Couchsurfing; the amazing, talented Minnesotan(!) living with her husband in Copenhagen accepted my request to crash on her couch.  My plane was 30 minutes early to Newark.  As I bought my tickets to and from the airport (oh, I can get both directions simultaneously?  how convenient!), an NJ Transit train showed up immediately.  The conductor used an adorable hole punch to punch an adorable hole in some sort of mysterious slip of paper that was slipped in front of my seat.

Lunch with Prashanth was absolutely delightful.  I could practically feel his excitement for his work and his future oozing out of him.  We talk about science, our programs, our friends, and swapped gossip and stories.  I can't wait to see him again (come visit me, PRaj!).  As we went our separate ways, and I entered Penn Station to return to the airport, I assumed that my luck and struck again: I heard that a train headed to Newark Airport was leaving posthaste for Track 4.  I made my way down there.  It was an Amtrak train, but it was taking basically the same route as the NJ Transit ticket that the NJ Transit folks had been so kind to provide me with earlier, so it was basically the same, right?  People around me grabbed hold of some paper printouts not at all resembling my ticket, but they had just bought tickets a different way, right?  I nervously looked it up, and the route I was on was listed as a recommended route for getting to the airport by NJ Transit.  Great.  So I was good, right?

Right?

I broke into a sweat when the conductor announced he was checking train tickets.  I was reminded of when I was churchshopping and had to stare every time to make sure how this next church decided to do communion; I eagerly scanned to try to see what everyone else was doing.  I didn't see a cute little hole puncher.  I saw none of my tickets, in fact.  I started shaking a bit.  I was in the second compartment.  He entered mine and got within 5 seats of me.  4.  3.  And then... he briskly walked away.  I froze.  He did not reappear.  We got to Newark station.  He did not reappear.  We pulled out of Newark station.  He finally showed up again.  But the victory was mine.  The next station was the one for the airport.

So when he got to me, and confirmed my worst fears—though I had bought an identically priced ticket, it was not the right one, and I was in fact doing a Very Bad Thing (tm) by having boarded the Amtrak train—he basically just shrugged and told me to get to the end of the train to make sure I actually left at the Newark Airport Station like I said I was going to do.  I had to take a Walk of Shame to make sure I did so, but I considered that a small price to pay.

The screening process at Newark was uneventful.  But, as I got to teh front of the line to get on the plane, my ticket caused the scanner to beep unpleasantly.  I frowned.  "Oh," said the gate agent, "You have a new seat.  There was a baby on board that meant that someone needed to be reseated.  11A is your new seat.  It's also a window."  At least it's also a window, I thought.  But, as I discovered, it wasn't just "also a window"; it was also an Economy Plus seat, the sort of seat that they give you a formerly-normal-coach amount of legroom in.  Sweeeet!  It had a defective screen at first (also, did you know that United's inflight entertainment runs on Linux?  I learned this from the errors!), but that somehow magically repaired itself after Peter texted me to get a flight attendant on the case.  As we took off, the captain informed us that our flight time was going to be a full hour early into Stockholm, so maybe those taxis would be no problem.  Maybe the Metro wasn't a premonition at all, I thought, as I watched Frozen and Who's Line Is It Anyway, and then drifted into a fitful couple hours of sleep.

We did get in an hour early, which meant that I had time for such luxuries as "going to the bathroom" before I headed on the train.  The train was gorgeous and new.  And the ticket person immediately assumed I was Swedish, greeting me with a cheery "Hey, hey!" (actually "hej", but it's pronounced identically and is adorable).  I've honestly been very curious about whether people would do that.  On my previous journey, nearly everyone assumed I was German (I remember this being particularly true in Frankfurt... which is entertainingly coincidental given that my actual German ancestors were actually from very near to Frankfurt).  However, all Americans constantly believe me to be Scandinavian (which is, in fact, false, according to my research).  I figured Scandinavians would be a good test case.  If they went by statistics alone, I should be Scandinavian.  But if my appearance strongly suggested that I was German, they should assume that.

Oh, and no one should assume I'm American, as no Americans ever travel internationally.  People seem to be pleasantly surprised when I say I'm American.  I know our own self-perception of us as international travelers is terrible, but in reality, although we're perceived to be uncultured and somewhat brash, we're also perceived to be exceedingly generous, outgoing, and cheerful.  We're the kind of people you'd like to get a drink with.  People are alarmed by our use of guns and the death penalty, but, well, if you're someone interested in traveling abroad, you're probably also alarmed by our use of guns and the death penalty, so that's nice.

I got to the central train station, and by this point was somewhat unsurprised to find that the ferry's official bus was pulling into the station about five minutes after I showed up to take people to the ferry.  I bought my ticket and got whisked off, then boarded the ferry, which is a nice, new, small little cruiseliner with free wireless internet.  Nifty!

There was not much to the ferry ride... it was longer than the plane ride, but there was WiFi, so that helped.  Also, lots of loud, bellowing groups of Swedes and Finns who were about the age of my parents but liked to take about four shots each at 1pm.  Also, there was a woman who looked like a witch.  She had a long, flowing black cloak, hair down to her knees and also sticking straight up a half a meter or so above her head.  I would've taken a picture if I hadn't known I'm completely incapable of being inconspicuous.  She was kind of terrifying.

Finally, I stepped out onto the ground in Turku, and my friend Essi came right over.  Apparently my smiling face was conspicuous amid the crowd of boisterous yet somehow still dour Nordic faces around me.  She and I boarded a bus for downtown Turku, and stopped at what she explained is Finland's answer to McDonald's.  We then had an entertaining exchange with a cashier wherein all were flummoxed (but me) that somehow my card does not have a chip in it (things that are found in every single card other than those issued in the US), and talked about the tragedy that is people who have a Harry Potter character who is someone other than Hermione (though Neville could pass by our estimation).  I'm now in her apartment, trying to slow down and get ready to obey my body's instructions: SLEEP.  SLEEP NOW.  Good night!