Turku with Friends!

On Thursday, June 26, I woke up feeling very excited that I would be able to meet some of my best friends again after not seeing them for 2 weeks. Some people couldn't make it because they lived too far away, but we still had a great group consisting of Anna, Fabian, Carrie, Carrie's host sister, and Elizabeth. Fabian lives only one hour away from Turku so he came by car while the others came by train. I ate a big breakfast to make sure that I wouldn't be hungry during the day and soon we got into the car and headed for the train station. Johanna gave me a brief explanation on how to get to the cathedral, where we would meet in half an hour because she had to run a few errands, but I was so excited to meet my friends I only remembered the basic instructions. I headed inside the train station and immediately saw Fabian. We were so happy to see each other again, but I had to quickly run out and let Johanna know I found someone already. We talked about our towns, compared our families, and took selfies (of course) but it wasn't long until a group of 4 familiar girls approached us with equally delighted expressions. 

Meeting Fabian again was great but I'm too tall for his selfies

It was a mini reunion! We started to walk to the cathedral, hoping that I was following the directions correctly, and talked non-stop about what we had done in he past two weeks, what our host families and cities were like, and even memories from Helsinki. Although we thought we were lost, we made it to the cathedral although we were 10 minutes late because we stopped for pictures and probably took some wrong turns. We took some more pictures in front of the cathedral and we met Johanna about three minutes later. She introduced herself and then took a picture of us in front of the cathedral with her own camera. After our photo shoot, we went into the beautiful 700 year old cathedral where Johanna used her tour guide skills to give us an explanation of the paintings, chambers, and the cathedral itself. At one point she told us that there are over 4,000 people buried under the cathedral floor because if you were from the upper class or a respected person, that is where you would be buried. She then took us around some of the side chambers and told us the stories behind them, all of which were very interesting. 

Mini reunion!

Once we finished our tour, we agreed to meet Johanna at 4:00 at the castle, giving our group 3.5 hours to walk around the city center and medieval market as well as just hang out and catch up on what everyone's been doing. We first walked around the medieval market where we looked at a lot of booths and what they had to offer. We also almost lost Anna a couple of times. Next, we went to a restaurant/café to have lunch as my breakfast wasn't that big after all and my friends were hungry from their two hour train ride. I had a falafel with salad and Fanta and we all sat on couches or chairs around a big coffee table. In Helsinki, a I sometimes worried that our group was too loud in public but I am so thankful now to have such a talkative group of friends. We talked, laughed, and took selfies just as every teenager should every once in a while and it was about an hour before we left the restaurant.

Trying to act cool in the restaurant

 I wanted to show my friends the large open air market in the town square because I knew some of them really liked fresh fruit. Almost all of us ended up buying at least one or two bags of fruit because it was so fresh and cheap (1€ for a liter of plums!). Next, I wanted to them the tourist office so that we could all get Kiss My Turku shirts but I guess we took a wrong turn and we ended up at the river again. We sat on the edge of the sidewalk (which in hindsight was probably a horrible idea) and ate our fruit. 

We were lucky to have organized this trip on such a wonderful day as it was 16° C and we only had a few drops of rain. At one point, Fabian tried to take a selfie of all of us at the river and ended up dropping his fake RayBan sunglasses into the river. We then continued to walk along the river, where we met some street acrobats. We asked them if they would perform for us but they unfortunately said no because they were packing up. We kept walking along the river when we stumbled upon some very creepy statues. So, of course, we took pictures with them.

Looking off into the distance...

 We were getting a bit worried that we went the wrong way because we could begin see the harbor but we didn't see anywhere that looked like a place that a castle could be built. 

Once we saw the castle we took a celebratory picture in front of this giant daisy statue!

Thankfully, I saw one of the spires poking out from under the large oak trees, reassuring us that we hadn't just spent 45 minutes walking in the wrong direction. We met Johanna at the castle and we quickly begun our tour because my friends already had to catch the 6:00 p.m. train. We saw the prisons, accounting offices, ball room, and more. The castle used to be a fortress so, although it was beautiful, it wasn't like a palace that was built for beauty and luxury rather than defense. After our tour, we took the bus to the city center and stopped for at a café for a quick meal before heading to the train station. It was sad to say goodbye to 4/11 of my FUSYE friends but I would see them in Talinn in two weeks. I waited until Fabian got picked up by his host mother and then waited until Johanna picked me up because she had to go get Aleksi from a soccer match. On the way home, we stopped by the supermarket to get some snacks for the big Germany vs. U.S.A. FIFA match. Johanna treated us to some candy again and I took some recommendations from Aleksi who seems to be an expert in the candy world. We then watched the game before going to bed after my wonderful day in Turku with some of the best people I have ever met.