We finally got out of the airport and into the real Finland air. Scott and I stepped into Thomas' Volvo. We crammed all out luggage in that tiny thing. It was a good thing that our other bags didn't arrive with us because we would've had no place to put them. We started to drive away and get to know Thomas.
The Finns talk with an accent but we can understand them most of the time without any problem. As we started to cruise the countryside Thomas told us that he was Finnish but had been in the United States before at Eastern Illinois University for one season. So we knew we would have at least one guy that would help us with the transition from US to Finland.
Since we flew into Helsinki we had a hour and 40 minute drive west into our city of Turku. We started to know some differences right away from US and Finland just when we were driving in the car. There are not many stop signs and few stop lights. People just merge into traffic at their own risk. The street signs are in blue and red and the speed limit signs are tiny. There are no express ways just windy two-lane roads. However, the driver is still on the left just like in the United States, but the cars have much smaller engines (Thomas' Volvo was a 1.8 Liter engine). Then we drove past a gas station and Scotty noticed that the gas was cheap over here cause it said 1.19. Then Thomas pointed out that the gas is measured over here on liters and 1 euro equals about 1.23 cents and one gallon equals 3.9 liters. We didn't do the exact calculations but that is almost 5 bucks a gallon for gas. We were surprised but the land is similar to Kentucky and Indiana because there was a lot of farms and trees, but the trees are tall, skinny, and don't have a lot of bark.
We finally made it into Turku which is one of the biggest cities in Finland, but it doesn't have any tall buildings like a big city in the US. There are a ton of stores on ground level but the upper levels are all apartments. Thomas first took us to our apartment where we would be staying for the summer. He also lives in the same apartment downstairs. We then found out that they are not apartments but dorm rooms basically with a bathroom inside. One of them was tiny and the other was huge, so instead of fighting over which one of us got the big one, we decided that we would put both beds in the bigger room with the computer and the TV and use the smaller room for our clothes and storage.
Shortly after we got to our new homes, the offensive coordinator (Harri aka Hatsa) called Thomas' cell phone and wanted to meet us for lunch at a place called Blanko. So we walked through the city and both Scott and I were pretty intimidated just because the whole atmosphere is unlike "The States" as they call it here. The streets are all 2 lane streets but have big sidewalks in some parts because most of the people walk everywhere and you don't see as many cars as you would expect in a big city. There is a bar about every block and Thomas points out all the grocery stores and nightclubs just so we know where they are. I was pretty nervous going to meet my new offensive coordinator and Scott and I were feeling pretty spacey from the long flight. We sat down got the menu and we couldn't even read a word. Hatsa made the waitress say the lunch menu in English and there was only 5 choices. We ordered what we thought was the safest thing on the menu... fish and potatoes. However, the fish we got resembeled salmon so it was redish, smothered over lettuce and potatoes. Doesn't sound bad, does it??? Execept when the fish and potatoes are chilled and the fish tastes like raw hot dogs. So I made a trip to the bathroom and pushed around the fish a little bit on my plate. Then I talked to the offensive coordinators about some plays because we had practice that night and a game in two days.
In the resturant we relized a two things. Nothing was going to be cheap over here, especially since we are paying in euros... there was going to be a lot of Finnish spoke in the next 3 months and we would have no idea what they are saying. After lunch we were about to pass out but we decided to stop at the grocery store to get some small items. Then another thing hit us, we were going to have no idea what anything says over here, so we were asking Thomas what everything was and he helped us out a ton. We returned to the apartment because we had practice in a few hours, so we took a nap.
We had to leave an hour early for practice, since it was an hour north because a junior hockey camp was using our practice facility. (As if we didn't do enough traveling in the past 2 days.) We picked up our starting running back, Teemu, but he is hurt with a knee injury and find out that he is also our Team President. When we arrived most of the players introduced themselves in English so that was good to hear ... too bad their names are Finnish and too hard to remember on the first day. About half the team was there at practice and Thomas said that most of the time we will have a lot of guys missing from practice since no one else is getting paid but us Americans. The other guys have families and jobs that they have to take care of first.
There was about 25 players out of about 40 players on our entire team and our coach, Tomi Haula, had invited another hockey team watch our practice. When Scotty and I first walked out and onto the field, we talked to a few of the coaches and all of a sudden we got bombarded by little kids wanting our autograph. It was pretty cool. We signed about 15 autographs right out on the field before practice.
Practice that day was only in shoulder pads and helmets but for me since my helmet was my other luggage it was only shoulder pads. It was a short practice compared to that at Hanover. We only did a little bit of individual drills, then 7 on 7, and team. I also found out that I am the only Quarterback on the team so I will be playing the entire game on Saturday. There was also only one other linebacker there except for Scotty. One interesting thing is that Scott and I had to go over to the kids, welcome them all to the camp introduce ourselves and explain that we were going to do in the 7 on 7 drill. It wasn't bad and I was just concentrating on learning some plays so that we could use at least a handful for the game on Saturday. After practice Scotty and I signed a few more autographs and we drove home. We were both pretty exhausted from our long day and plus when we got back it was about 10:15pm and the sun was still shining bright!!! I'll talk about that more on Day 2 because Day 1's entry is long enough. Now you can see why it was the longest day of my life!
Coming up... Day 2 and our first game!!!