Ruldolph Got Ingested On The Train, Dear

Because I ate the reindeer. If it makes you feel any better, Rudolph was a little gamy. This and other delicacies can all be yours if you visit beautiful, stormy Finland. Once again proving the dictum that it's not the destination but the journey, the most enjoyable part of my Finlandian excursion was the voyage to and from Sweden. Unbelievably, my Eurail train pass provides free passage on the Silja Line cruise ship from Stockholm to Helsinki. No slouch of a ferry, this massive overnight cruiser had six restaurants, two clubs, several bars, a tax-free shop, and, most importantly, blackjack tables. The impact of the ship's enormity sunk in when I saw a full size 18-wheel Mack truck drive into the hull like it was a match-box car. My roommate on this fateful journey was a Korean student of architecture named Jo (actually Jo is his last name, but to pronounce his first name correctly I would need to pull out your tongue). A boisterous and jovial sort, we had a blast together. Having never been on a cruise before we both greedily explored the ship from bow to stern. We ate at the restaurants, drank at the bars, and discussed his requisite service in the Korean military. Jo was a member of the chemical decontamination unit whose job was to clean up the mess after a bioweapons attack. Scariest factoid: once a bioattack region has been thoroughly cleansed, it is the responsibility of the youngest team member to remove his protective biosuit to give a live test of the affected area. As Jo explained with cold logic, the youngest member is the least experienced and therefor the least valuable. Yeesh! We had a good laugh about it though. I also taught him how to play blackjack; as I once again walked away from the tables with 100 euro in profit. I could make a living off of this. Helsinki itself was nothing special. It was cold, rainy, and overcast which is not out of the ordinary, according to the locals. Dark and snowy for most of the year, Helsinki is to suicide as obesity is to Houston. It's really a wonder that anyone lives there at all. For me the highlight was walking around the open-air fish market down at the shore. I bought a couple of whole, smoked mackeral right out of the back of a boat and fought with the seagulls as I munched on a pier. The gulls swoop down and try to grab the fish right from your hand so you can imagine the scene as I'm sitting on the end of a pier waving a bunch of half-eaten mackeral in the air like a madman. I sampled a few other creative dishes, my favorite being the miniature, whole (head, tail and all), whitefish that are battered and fried then served like french fries with a garlic sauce. Yummy. Tell me if you've heard this one before. So, a Jew, a Korean, and Frog walk into an Irish pub where an international crowd is listening to a Swedish band playing American music. There's no punch line, except that if you've heard this one before then you were at my birthday bash at Molly Mallone's. The place was packed (almost certainly in my honor) and the band belted out tunes from the eighties while we sang along, tapped in rhythm, and tried our best to talk above the din. A met a mongolian man who bought me a celebratory shot of Finland's national drink, Salmiakki-Kossu. The powerful, inky-black liquor tasted like a cross between licorice and Nyquil. As I sipped the shot, a warm burning sensation spread out from my lips across my whole body; and my phlegm was definitely looser. All and all, not a bad way to crest into my 28th year.