let's just say there was a lot of ice cream.

and leave it at that.

last week was spent in a whirlwind tour of sweden and finland. they are lovely places, about which, to be frank i don't remember much because it was a blur of sketching and record high temperatures and candy and truck stops and bus rides and wearing the same damn shorts every day because of aforementioned record high (unpredictably so) temperatures and alvar aalto and definitely not sleeping.

oh, and then there was the ice cream. and even though it was never as good as it is in copenhagen, which is never as good as it is in the south of france, i still ate it.

and while i said let's leave it at that, there is one more thing: someone needs to set a thriller in finland. because if you let it, that place can freak.you.out. there are just so many woodland spots and the language is very elfin and the people all kind of look the same in an extremely beautiful but not entirely un-creepy way and they are all VERY into death metal and during the winter war with russia they wore white uniforms and skied around and hid in the snow and shot people. russians, specifically, but tell me that won't give you the willies the next time you're in the woods in the snow. which probably won't be for a while, but still.

mostly, though, there is this:

one night, our first in finland, we went to this sauna by a small lake and saunaed and jumped into hypothermia-inducing lake water and cooked food over an open fire pit and i wanted to stay forever. from the lake, you can see this ski jump that is not in use, obviously because it is the summer, but some of my housemates and i decided to climb over and see it (because hiking is definitely something you should do at 10:30 pm in flip flops and a bathing suit. whatever, the sun doesn't set there).

i guess what i'm trying to say that it was unsettling in a way that could only come from a semi-abandoned old wooden ski structure that you happen upon in the woods. definitely when you stand on top of them and peer down, but even more so when your new friend greg tries to go open the judge's tower and the door IT WORKS, but only because someone previously broke the lock and like a bunch of idiot teenagers in a horror film, you all go inside and start climbing the stairs until someone starts finding dead bird skeletons and you all run down the stairs and scramble back to the campsite because some deranged, homeless, albino, elfish woodland creature is about to attack you in his white uniform with his skis and his gun.

or maybe his rollerblades, since it is the summer, and, for whatever the reason, rollerblading has yet to go out of vogue in the nordic region. because, if not downright popular, there at least does not seem to be any sort of social stigma attached to the sport.

of course, it always was supposed to be good exercise.

back to the tale at hand, we were spooked. i never really felt at ease in the country after that, particularly not after seeing some of the art that fins create (my personal favorite being a wall of old doll babies and with exchanged heads) and i'm dropping out of school to write a best-selling novel that takes place in the endless finnish forest.

but first: ice cream.