A Little Helsinki and a Lotta Berlin

Hello friends and family!

Here's an update to catch you all up on what I've been doing for the past week and a half or so. So I did get to explore Helsinki a little bit more, but not quite as much as I would have liked due to utter exhaustion from so much traveling and a couple of issues that I had to work out with some of my classmates. I don't think I've talked about it before, but living in constant contact with 42 other college students can get just a little bit stressful and crazy sometimes. But hey, we worked through it. Anyways, a big part of our foray into Finland was the chance to encounter Finnish theater, which is one of the quickest growing nationalist theater movements in the world right now. In total, our class got to see three plays, although most of us only made it to two. The first one I saw was a little disturbing. From what I could tell (the whole play was in Finnish), it explored the relationship of a gravedigger and his wife, who just happened to be fascinated with zombies. Most of us were a little displeased, to say the least, with graphically violent content, awkward and somewhat erotic scenes, and full frontal male nudity (I did not need to see that). But the play that we saw the night afterwards redeemed Finnish theater for us as we witnessed a very modern and artistic representation of the artist's plight in society (which apparently holds special significance in Finnish culture? Once again the play was in Finnish...).

After we had all had our fill of drama, we spent a day on an island dominated by a sea fortress. We explored underground tunnels, scared each other half to death by jumping out from behind corners, and pretty much just had an amazing time goofing off and freezing to death in 45 degree weather.

We then left Finland on a plane to Germany, where we have been staying in Berlin for the past week. We met up with our tour guide for the next few weeks, Gabriel, and took a number of walking tours of the city, learning about Germany's history along the way. So basically, I have learned more about World War II, the Holocaust, and Communist East Berlin in the past week than I have in all of my years of history classes combined. And it's been awesome to actually see the places where all of this took place. For example, yesterday we learned about Hitler's suicide while standing on top of the bunker where it took place. Any other history class is going to be downright boring after this.

But now for the important stuff. Bratwursts, hamburgers, German chocolate, etc. are all amazing, and I'm pretty sure I've spent more money on snacks here than anywhere else we've visited so far. We went to one chocolate shop where you could actually pick out how much cacao you wanted in your chocolate, anywhere from 32% to 82%. So naturally I picked up four bars to span the spectrum. :) Tomorrow we leave for Prague, which should be awesome, although I don't know exactly what to expect. But I'll let you all know when I find out!

Cheers!
Ryan