Friday in Pictures

I spent Thursday night riding the number three tram around Helsinki. So did an estimated trillion other students (okay, i'm not a student anymore, but studying abroad has meant that i've been excluded from this novelty... Up until now!). The reason for this intoxicant-saturated mass commute was, of course, the infamous III-kierros. The demon child of a marriage between a pub crawl and sightseeing tour,  the beer rally's goal, according to the organizers, is to get furiously wasted. I'm pretty sure all parties involved accomplished this. Since what happens after eleven drinks at eleven different bars is hardly difficult to guess, i'll impart no further details. Simply put, there was too much of this:

Luckily, i'm hardly at a loss when it comes to hangover cures. My remedy of choice this morning was this: An ice-cold strawberry smoothie with goji berries, flaxseed, cranberry juice and crushed ice (beats hair of the dog hands down!). After recovering from a serious case of rapid smoothie consumption-induced brain freeze and listening to some old school Atreyu (at least i'm not lying and claiming it was something cooler), i decided to venture out. There's this cool festival going on in Helsinki next week, called Lokaviikot. Catering to the under 25s of Helsinki, workshops, film screenings and free theatre tickets are all part of the game. Personally, i was after the theatre tickets; the thirty euros i save in scoring free theatre tickets can go towards remedying the deficit in my personal budget due to last night. It all works out. I'm really looking forward to seeing the cyberpunkish-vibed adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, and the kind people of Kansallisteatteri were happy to provide me with tickets.  


Feeling pretty good with tickets in hand, i decided to head to Hakaniemi and have a look around the market. I really like the atmosphere on a Friday; the market is packed with people going around stalls picking up good stuff for the weekend. It kinda reminds me of the market outside my building in Paris. On my walk back home, i stopped by the Botanical Garden in Kaisaniemi. The old school glass greenhouses always impress me. I didn't go inside, but instead sat around on a bench thinking about the giant water lilies that i remember seeing there when i last visited. Got distracted when i realized a creepy dude was staring at me from behind a giant oak and decided it was time to move on.

I made one more stop on my way home, at Akateeminen, and was happy to find a Vintage Tattoo book on sale. Some cool pics i think i might add to the ever-growing desktop folder called 'just get the damn tattoo already'. Absolutely starving and dead tired at this point (even the super smoothie cannot cure everything, sadly) i wreaked havoc in the kitchen, frantically throwing together some halloumi, hummous, toast, shrooms, tomatoes and tabasco, and it came out looking like this. Fries and a big sandwich can do a world of good. 

What really made my Friday, though, was the dessert i picked up at the market. Big fan of the perunaleivos. Nom nom. Best postprandial stupor ever.