Scando Uni Mates: How to blow half your budget in your first month of backpacking

Well I'm in, on European time, and starting to feel a bit like a traveller. Actually I feel like I'm back at uni. So far I've stayed in three places, and each time it's been with an old College mate. I've read before that when you travel you'll spend twice as much money when you're with mates than when you're alone. I've also heard that Scandanavia is by far the most expensive place in the world to travel in. These are the only two facts which keep me from crying, rocking back and forward holding my knees every time I check my bank balance over here. The following are the awesome times I've blown my wad on.

First expensive scando country was Finland. Actually, Finland wasn't that expensive. Actually they're not even real scandanavians. Don't ever mention this within arms reach of one, but Finland is basically the lovechild of Scandanavia and Russia. They deny it, but there are statues of guys called Alexandr everywhere and they're really good at hockey = Russians. I stayed with my old college roomy Jannica. It's been absolutely ages since we've seen each other, but like all good friends it was pretty much straight back to where we left off: lots of banter, and her making me sandwiches and cleaning up after me. Unfortunately we also picked up where we left off with Jannica's football career. Back when we were at Lander, Jannica kicked a whole lot off arse as the ladies soccer teams striker. Unfortunately I was her kryptonite. I have never seen her score a goal, and the chances she's managed to miss have been comical. Others assure me that she can in fact kick a ball into an open net, but not while I'm about. This trend continued as poor Jannica hurt her foot right before I got there and was the saddest soccer player at training ever.

Apart from Jannica's foot, Finland was amazing. The people were lovely (apparently seeing the sun for the first time in 6 months makes them especially happy) and typically scanadanavianly beautiful, the food was awesome, and the alcohol plentiful. I spent the first few hours in Helsinki, which is classic euro city. Cobble stones in the old parts, beautiful architecture, buildings older than Australia, and immovable guards standing outside their dignitaries homes.

Fact: Guards love this

We then went back to Turku which is where Jannica lives with her now fiance Teppo. Teppo is awesome, and was great to hang out with. He's a chef, so not only did I get pampered by Jannica, but Teppo also just casually knocked up a gourmet feast one of the nights I was there. The two of them showed me around the town, we caught a few hockey games on tv (the world champs were being held in Finland when I was there and the Finns were going crazy for it) and very generously took me to an Aussie bar to see the very people I was trying to run away from (not you guys reading thid of course). Luckily they had one non Aussie beer there: Karhu - the only beer made for bears in handy 1L cans.

KARHU! So manly, engaged women are forbidden from looking at it.

I even caught a few of Jannica's training sessions where I got to learn how to use my camera a bit (photographing Scandanavian female athletes, someone has to do it) and met up a few times with one of Jannica's old friends, and team mate Anne Sofie (who I originally bonded graffitiing her good friends face in America...funnily enough that friend didn't come see me...). 

Anne Sofie on the left

After taking in Turku and basically hanging with Jannica and Teppo, Jannica and I went down to her hometown Hanko. Hanko is a really pretty beach town on the southern most mainland part of Finland (ha, bet you didnt think you'd learn stuff here aye). In Hanko I caught up with Jannica's mum, who is possibly my second favourite mum in the world. I met Mrs Finnberg (yeh, that's not a nickname, Jannica the Finn's surname is Finnberg. "Hi I'm Caedyn Ausberg") when she came to Jannica's graduation. We speak pretty much none of the same language as each other, but we both think that's pretty funny, so it's always lots of laughs when we're around each other. We met her at the service station she owns and she attempted to load me up with enough provisions for the rest of my 11 months travelling (btw I'm writing this in Norway and I should have taken her up on that). 

From there we went to Jannica's house to pregame for a party thaty night and to have a sauna....because Finns have sauna's in their houses!

After sweating out all the bad stuff from my body (vegetables, vitamins, etc) I then headed off with Jannica to our old friend Shady Pies. Her real name is Heidi or something like that, but no one who actually knows her would ever call her that. Shady just happened to be throwing a house party with a whole bunch of her beautiful Finnish girl friends. Crashing a girls night in scandanavia has obvious upsides:

With only one real downside, being made to drink fancy girl shots with lots of cream to go with my KARHU!! I had earlier:

Ah who am I kidding, they tasted like happiness.

As a first big night out it was definitely far more upper crust than I expected, and it was awesome catching up with the girls and seeing they were just as insane in Finland as they were in America. I'd love to tell you more stories about the night, but all I really recall was having dreams about my mouth being coated with strawberry jam. The next day I didn't feel crash hot until I realised my view was this:

 That combined with some loud punk music perked me right up, and Jannica and I raced around Hanko being tourists, and taking advantage of the balmy 17 degrees temperatures. I got to see where she'll make a very lovely bride in 15 months time, and where the reception will be after. She informed me that this therefore meant I had no further obligations to attend her wedding, and that she wouldn't never talk to me again if I didn't come. Brides...so understanding.

Maybe I can skype attend?

Sightseeing with Caedyn

After that it was back to Turku, stopping off one more time to say bye to Mrs. Finnberg, and then I reluctantly had to say my goodbyes to Jannica after a great start to the trip. I really can't thank Jannica (and Teppo) enough, but I think this drunken photo goes some of the way.