Reading The Return of the Elephant 14
After saying goodbye to the cats in Tallinn, Ger Ger took a ferry to Helsinki. On board, she entertained herself with Wanchain’s book.
Sitting at the head of the ship, she also revelled in the view of the sea while reading.
Arriving in Helsinki, she took a tram to the central train station, dropped her belongings off at the hotel in front of the station, and began her exploration of the Finnish capital city.
She found postcards, stamps, and mailboxes inside the train station, a combination that sometimes do not exist in close proximity in some cities.
After saying hi to members of Jia Jia Kingdom, she walked around the city.
Her favourite shot is this one:
After taking this shot, a Chinese lady approached her for directions to the market, in Mandarin. She gave directions in Mandarin, without first having gone to the market herself. So naturally, her next stop would be the market.
The market was situated next to the harbour, and there are ships sailing to a little nature park that is on an island.
After exploring the open air market, she explored the underground mall beneath her hotel. There, she purchased a couple bars of Finnish chocolate. At the checkout counter, when she paid by cash, the cashier said, “In Finland, we don’t take one and two cent coins.”
Ger Ger had received quite a number of these smaller coins during her trip in the Baltics. Now she would have to keep them as souvenirs.
Returning to her hotel, she asked the concierge if she could borrow a voltage converter, something that she discovered she had dropped when she ripped apart her suitcase in Vilnius.
“We don’t borrow voltage converter,” the concierge replied, placing an emphasis on the word borrow.
Ger Ger asked if there was an adapter she could borrow to charge her iPhone.
“We don’t borrow adapter,” the concierge replied, again emphasizing the wrong choice of word.
Not sure whether the language annoyed her more or the negation, but Ger Ger managed to ask the concierge to let her use the computer, so that she could charge her iPhone.
After that, Ger Ger returned to her hotel room to savour the Finnish chocolate and of course Wanchain’s book.
