Hola! Boy, am I glad to be back in Copenhagen after this past week. This week was probably the longest week of my life. For most of it, I was like wow I have nothing to write in my blog about this, as it was all becoming a giant blur of museums, chapels and cemetaries but I do have a few select parts of this week in Sweden and Finland to share.

My study tour consisted of 22 students and 2 faculty members. Of the 22 students, the 10 graphic design students all stuck together and we were paired with an architecture class. Luckily, mostly all of my friends were on my tour so it was a pretty good group!

We started the week off on Saturday in Stockholm, Sweden which was an absolutely beautiful city, but other than that lacks any concrete memories. It was located on a much more interesting terrain than Copenhagen, with a lot of rocky cliffs and beautiful facades. We stayed in a hostel (so European of us) but it was not as I imagined at all. I imagined a bunch of beds pushed together in a little cement rom with a bunch of smelly teenagers, but we got our own rooms (with roommates from our tours) with little bunk beds that were not cement. The only thing different than a hotel was there was a community bathroom and no TV or any amenities at all really and we had to lock our closets and make our own beds. So I guess that's actually pretty different from a hotel.. yeah. Like I said, our time in Stockholm was basically just filled with museums and what not and lots of sketching and photo taking. We did find a little plastic turtle covered in glitter on the sidewalk, whom we named Gustav, who later became a model in some of our photos at an architecture museum.

We departed from Stockholm on Monday evening via a large ferry ship called the Viking Line. The ferry was an over night ride from Stockholm to Turku, Finland. While the ferry itself lacked in fabulousness, it did have a wonderful buffet with unlimited wine and beer (very cheap wine and beer) for a few hours, so that was nice.

The next few days were museum, chapel, cemetery and repeat for the most part. However, one museum that is worth  mentioning is the Kiasma in Helsiniki, which I actually had the pleasure of researching before the trip for an on site presentation. It ended up being by far my favorite *museum* that we went to. It was a modern art museum, and usually modern art is pretty weird but this museum had some great exhibits. There was a ribbon sculpture that you could walk through (I posted pics on Facebook), which was fun and there was a video exhibit that I really loved. It was a text only video with one picture, talking about photographer Kevin Carter. Kevin Carter took a famous photo of a starving African baby girl hunched over with a vulture lurking behind her (its a pretty chilling photo). He sold the photo to Times and it became a famous photo with a lot of backlash and controversy surrounding it. Obviously, people wanted to know why he took photos instead of helping the girl. Kevin Carter ended up killing himself shortly after all of this, and nobody knows what ever became of that young girl. The photo is actually owned by a photo company that is owned by Bill Gates, which is also a chilling fact. I liked it so much (not sure if "liked" is actually the correct term for how I felt about it), I watched it twice.

On the same day as the Kiasma, we also went to this beautiful home called Hvittrask that was on a little lake and it was designed by 3 architects to share. That was my other favorite *educational* place besides the Kiasma that we visited on this tour. It made me excited to begin my double major in interior design next year..  that's for sure!

On that same day (this good day was Wednesday by the way), we also went to a Finnish sauna. Saunas are very popular in Finland. Almost everyone has a sauna in their home actually. Finland is also the land of the lakes (it actually reminds me a lot of Minnesota) with over 166,000 lakes so this sauna was also on a little private lake. We ate dinner at the sauna, which was delicious. I willingly ate mushrooms for the first time in mushroom soup and they were DELICIOUS. We also had reindeer meet on top of mashed potatoes with fresh berries. After dinner, the girls in the group got the first go at the sauna.

It's funny because as I grow up I can pick out more and more weird traits and likes/dislikes that I definitely got from my parents, and my time in Finland definitely showed me that I am my dad's daughter. I cannot stand being hot, so while most people were sitting in the sauna having a grand old time, I was trying to be a big girl and hang with everyone else while in my mind thinking "this is literally what its like to be burned alive". I took breaks much more frequently than anyone else, that's for sure. My favorite part was running straight from the sauna and jumping right into the ice cold lake.

After dinner, we went up and sat in this little cabin while the boys had their turn in the sauna. The owner of this little sauna place sat and talked to us for awhile and he officially became the COOLEST person I have EVER met. He is basically a modern day male version of Pocahontas. He told us he has had a deep connection with the forest ever since he was 8 (that was probably over 50 years ago), when his mom read him "Snow White". He said picture on the book of Snow White sitting around a fire with a bunch of animals made him want to find a place in the world where animals and humans could live in harmony, so he ran away into the woods. Ever since, he has been pursuing this harmony. When he saw that I had my pair of rain boots with me, he asked why, and I told him my weather app said it was supposed to rain that day even though it never did and he said that technology does not know and the best way to know the weather is to hug the trees. And he was dead serious. And his son who is probably only a few years older than me made all us girls cinnamon rolls which were also the best things I have ever had.

Thursday, we left from Helsinki to go to some weird little city in Finland called Jvylaska. It had like no people in it and all the signage was horribly designed, but other than that there isn't much to say about it.

For the 4th of July, we went to a few more places then boarded the cruise in Turku to go back to Stockholm. This cruise (technically a ferry) was much much more fancy, with an even more glorious buffet (I had 6 plates--my group was quite impressed) and an even wider drink selection of free drinks. It was fun--but I did miss America.

Today (Saturday), we arrived in Stockholm and basically spent the day on the bus coming back to Copenhagen from Stockholm. I did try raw salmon though, so this was definitely an adventurous food week for me!

I sure am glad to be back in Copenhagen though! On that note, its time to celebrate the weekend so skol (cheers in Danish)! See ya later, blogosphere :)

XO, Bri