Suomen Soliloquies

The inside of the Sagrada Familia, reminiscent of a forest with sunlight peeking through Part of the Sagrada Familia I went to Barcelona this week on a holiday from what has already felt like a holiday ever since I finished my thesis. Since I had two months in Finland before I go back to the US, I thought that some traveling was in order to take advantage of being in Europe where you can hop from country to country without (sometimes) even having to show any form of identification. And so I decided to finally go to a place in Europe that I have wanted to visit for years: Barcelona. The week leading to the trip was a flurry of activity. I was looking up transportation, walking tours, the many sights in the city, possible day trips to take. At one point I had at least seven tabs open to pages related to Barcelona. All of the research made me excited for my three days to explore a little bit of Spain. The first day was a flurry of activity. Having arrived late the previo...

A game of hockey going on on the river My boyfriend plays on a hockey team from September to May. It isn’t an official team—they don’t play games throughout the season and aren’t in any leagues—but they meet diligently every week for practice (he actually plays with two teams but it still isn’t clear to me what the difference is between them except that one team is better than the other). This requires some dedication because practices for both teams are either very late in the evening or very early in the morning. At the end of their season, before they take a break for the summer, the players come together and have a full-length game. I wanted to go last year and this year but wasn’t able to make it either time. Instead I asked him to send me a picture of himself in all of his gear. Last year he sent me a selfie of himself before the game, but without his gear on so I hoped this year he would manage to get a picture with both. He did not. I was willing to drop it, figur...