Travelogue, Day 7: Turku

Today was a workday – laundry and lunch time at Kerttu, a bar/restaurant which has some washers and dryers in the basement and was supposed to have free WiFi, which I hoped to use to do the usual e-mail/blog update routine as well as maybe finally post some pictures.

Hah.

Lunch was ably accomplished, at least – the lunch buffet was pretty yummy, and Christian (who’d come along to spread the burden of laundry and childcare) and I ate pretty well. It’s somewhere between homestyle and cafeteria, and was a nice break from the usual meat/cheese/fruit from the grocery store.

Laundry did happen, but given that the washing machine instructions were only in Finnish (no Swedish to help this time!), some of my guesses about where washing powder went were a bit off, so one load got washed without soap (but in very hot water, as intended, so we’ll live). Fortunately, I did manage to figure out some of the labels, so I didn’t wash everything on the delicate setting or anything, but I did display my incompetence in getting the machine to start by not closing the doors adequately. Go me…

And WiFi? Well, the staff was very helpful, but it was hard to communicate with the lady behind the counter, and the network password she gave us didn’t work, even trying the usual range of geek tricks, so… no WiFi. Boo.

Grumpiness hit its peak too, which sucked – a lot of it was misunderstanding, some of it stress, and whatever, but everything appears to be ok now.

Finnish is driving me nuts, not because I can’t pull it apart, but because I’m starting to. This is the way my brain works – sometimes I like it, sometimes I’m resigned to it, but even before I did grad work in linguistics, my brain seems to work overtime to parse strange language. I all of a sudden am acquiring really weird (mostly written, sadly) vocabulary without intent or English equivalents, and found myself figuring out agreement rules (no comment as to their validity, btw) based upon the back of the shampoo bottle in the shower the other day. Christian thinks it’s funny, but it’s very odd to find yourself in a position to observe your own brain’s quirks. Enough about that – I don’t claim to suddenly be able to speak Finnish – but it’s always pleasing to know that I could probably pick it up with enough time and motivation.

Anyhow, I think the grumpiness problem is waning after some talking, and tomorrow Torsten and I will have a Torsten Day by going to a Finnish amusement park. Should be interesting…