Thursday, June 10
And so the conference continued along in much the same way as it had the previous three days. Dr. Kikuchi, my advisor, finally presented to the conference on Thursday morning. Reviews from the other students were quite good, and apparently the consensus is that I'm lucky to have him as my advisor.
Thursday's food choices, I should note, were pretty darn good. Apparently the cafeteria always serves the same thing on Thursdays - split pea soup - and it is apparently a fairly traditional Finnish dish, according to the locals. I've got to say, Scandinavian food is good and hearty, but honestly I miss a lot of the... flavor... that I've come to expect from meals in America. It's not that the food is bad, I just expect it to taste like something other than starch.
Anyway, I have no photos of the food itself, but I did take this picture of the curious mural they have on the underpass to the cafeteria. I hear from the locals that there was a plan to expand the Helsinki metro to the Otanamei college area at some point a decade or two ago, and this mural was painted in support of transit. But based on the butt grabbing and breast fondling that is present in it, I'm not really sure they got their point across.
In the evening, Donny and I stayed late on campus and used the good internet connection - not to mention the fact that we were in a computer lab and therefore didn't have to queue with all the hotel guests for use of the single terminal in the lobby. I was able to by and large catch up on the blogging front before the two of us embarked on a quest across town - me to get a milkshake and him to get a full meal - from something called Hessburger, the local fast food chain.
I can report that my milkshake was satisfying and reminded me just how much I appreciate frozen desserts. However, Donny says that his burger was lacking in flavor - thereby confirming the observation I had made just a few hours prior about the generally bland nature of the food there.
Friday, June 11
So the conference had come to its last day. People trekked into the lecture hall, as usual, and we were treated to a couple more talks about a variety of transportation subjects.
Today, however, we were asked to split into groups and conduct a planning exercise using some of the techniques we'd learned over the week. Specifically, we were supposed to develop a plan for a new connector between the airport and the downtown area, with a couple of other goals like reducing congestion for commuters and improving environmental quality along the route. The groups all wound up coming up with slightly different solutions, from a bus rapid transit system to HOT lanes and general freeway improvements to my group's solution of a new spur line on the city's metro system. It was all quite interesting.
At the end of the afternoon, the session finished with a toast of champagne - techincally "sparkling wine" since we're in the EU and the beverage wasn't from the Champagne region of France - before we were all dismissed with a few hours to spare before the big dinner banquet downtown.
So being good transportation engineers, the three Americans decided to make a stop on the way back at the Helsinki tram museum. Unfortunately, my camera's batteries died and I'd forgotten to take spares, so until Donny sends me some of his picutres you all are going to have to make due with this.
We finally met up around 8pm at Kellarikrouvi, a really fancy underground dinner place. Now I know where all the money from the €500 tuition fee is going. (Fortunately I got a tuition waiver.) We ate a lot, and there were drinks and toasts, and it was good. In fact, the food was so fancy that a representative picture is below - it was the first time I'd ever had any sort of fish eggs. I don't know what the big deal is... based on this experience I almost certainly wouldn't pick them myself.
Finally, as the night was wrapping up, a group of us headed for a bar at the top of the tallest hotel in Helsinki. Apparently there were a lot of high-level cold war negotations there as well, so it was interesting to know that we were in the company of a great many historical figures.
However, as a storm rolled in - making my day trip plans for the following day a bit more uncertain - the group of us was more concerned withthe present then with history: it was the first day of the World Cup. By the end of the second match, everybody in the group was crowded around the bar's tiny TV, eagerly awaiting the outcome of the game. True to form, it was a tie - all 3 games I have seen have been ties - but in the early rounds of the tournament that's still a very important result.
And that's how my trip in Helsinki ended. Or so I thought, until a bit of company on Saturday changed the experience of that day around for the better.And I'll talk more about that later, but here in the present I'm being kicked off of this computer terminal on the cruise ship on Sunday morning so they can clean the room. Time to get off into Stockholm again!
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