Buses

So I typed this up last night and stupidly erased it.

My first official day, the 29^th, was pretty educational, but mainly exhausting.

Up and straight into town to get official stuff done and for Scott to pick up his starter pack. After a lot of walking, Scott and I decided that we'd head back to his to drop off his pack, then go to IKEA to get other essentials.

NOTE: Kaupattori (cow-pat-tori) is the centre of everything. All of the buses go through there, so really, if you need to go anywhere, you need to go to KP first.

So from KP, Scott, Rachel (she lives near by) and I all hoped on the bus towards Scott's. After a little while we were mildly concerned that we didn't seem to be getting close to his flat. But then we started to recognise stuff, only to realise that we were pretty much back at KP. Confused, we hoped off and realised that we'd gone in the wrong direction, so got back on to continue in the right direction.

All fine, dumped stuff at the flat and got back on the bus, yes you guessed, back to KP. Whilst waiting for the IKEA bus we thought we'd try some funky chocolate; one that appeared to have a wafer in it and the other with some sort of dark centre. We opened the latter first, SALMIAKKI, only to discover it was some kind of weird salted liquorice. I wasn't too hot on it, but Scott was definitely not buying it again. We decided to wash it down with KISMET, basically a chocolate wafer, or a really flat wannabe KitKat.

After what felt like ages, looking out for giant blue and yellow-ness we eventually made it to IKEA. The usual went down and at 9pm we got the bus back to KP. Luckily for me, my number 18 was sitting waiting for me, so I hoped right on. How naïve I was... Almost instantly I realised that for the second time that day, I had got on the bus going in the wrong direction, only this time it was dark and I was alone. But, no worries, it'd just turn around and head back to KP. Oh no it wouldn't. When we finally reached the end of the line, the doors opened and the big Finnish bus driver got up, started talking and motioning for me to get off. 'Kaupattori?' was all I could utter, and to no avail. He kicked me off. Luckily, before I had time to freak out (I could feel it coming!) I caught sight of the bus timetable, and the next one was along in 5 minutes.

An hour and a half after leaving IKEA, I finally made it home.

So, I learned a lot of things today: keep a copy of your address on you at all times, you never know when you won't know where you are, or how to pronounce it; always wear sensible footwear; you can steal packets of salt and pepper from Hesburger; be able to pronounce Kaupattori, if you can make it there you are half way home and use 'kiitos' (key-etos), thank you, whenever you can, they like it when you try.

Oh and I forgot to mention that it was bucketing with rain the whole day, and we even had a little thunder and lightning accompaniment to our balcony breakfast.