Bus Fail

After our two successful complicated trips to the hospital, as well as plenty of simple trips downtown and to campus, we’ve been feeling pretty good about our bus-catching skills. Up until last night.

Upon her return from Paris, our favorite Finnish goddess invited us and a few other girls over to her flat for dinner yesterday. It wasn’t too far from our own apartment complex, but because we wanted to minimize Elizabeth’s walking distance, we decided to catch a bus downtown and then catch a second bus that would put us closer to Laura’s street. So we caught the 12 downtown, and went in search of the shelter where we could wait for the 15. Unfortunately, that was where our adventure began.

As it turned out, we had just – and we mean just - missed the 15, and quickly realized that we were stuck downtown for the next 40 minutes, until the next bus left. We figured, hey, it’s Saturday night, it shouldn’t be too hard to amuse ourselves for that long… except we sort of forgot Finland is weird and closes down at 6 on Saturday night. (We still aren’t sure what people do, get drunk, maybe…) Also, it was really cold. As in really really cold. As in -20.

So finally the bus came, and, as we have done several times in the past, we asked the driver to let us know when he got to our stop. We happily plopped down in a pair of seats and waited… and waited… and waited… and started noticing as the number of bus riders dwindled from 7… to 5… to 3… to us. And that we were in the middle of nowhere. And that the bus had stopped. And that the driver was poking his head around the corner and giving us a look that said, “weren’t you supposed to get off 6 stops ago?”

And that was when we realized that he didn’t speak English. He pointed to himself, and said, “suomi.” And then pointed to Jaime, who said, “englanti.” And then he laughed, and pointed to himself again. “Ahhh. No englanti.” And suddenly it made a lot of sense as to why he didn’t let us know when he’d reached our stop. But he was very nice, and thanks to him, a pair of Finnish girls riding the bus, and of course Laura, we finally found our stop.