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Indeed, I couldn’t sleep. What is it with keeping the lights full on all night long for seated passengers?! Is it a way to entice people to pay for a couch instead? Grrr…

I’m exhausted and freezing, so after a hot chocolate and a quick talk with a nice lady at Tampere station, I go for a walk. However, temperature isn’t rising at all, so I enter a shopping mall. At least I found some Smash and a new jack-USB-C adapter. After half an hour slowly wandering through the aisles, I went for the mall cafeteria. It only opens in half an hour, but I’m welcome to seat on the comfy couch meanwhile.

There enter sandman. I completely doze off, and get waken up well past opening time by a member of the staff. She talked to me in finnish, so I can only assume she was reprimanding me. Anyway I took a coffe, and spent another hour and a half there, updating the blog and stuff.

Finally waking up a bit, I did a quick tour of the city center. It’s an old industrial city, and to be honest, not very good-looking. I found an all-you-can-eat buffet, and went back to the station.

I arrived in Turku at rush hour. It was chaos around the train station. I managed to extirpate myself and took a bus, towards my night accomodation: the flat of my friend Ilkka. He’s another friend from the TM World, the second such friend I’m meeting for the first time on the trip after Matthew in the United Kingdom.

In the evening, we went for an asian restaurant, then he treated me with a guided tour of Turku, the oldest city in Finland, established centuries before the notion of Finland was even a thing. It was super interesting as he knew a lot about the town. We went past one of the (the?) biggest church of Finland, the frozen river, and an old observatory on top of a hill. We also went for a drink, and came back to his place, which hilariously enough doesn’t have a bedroom but a gigantic bathroom with a sauna. Ah! Finns!

It’s great to get to meet long-time friends, and put a face and a name on a nickname!

I fell fast asleep not long after my head hit the pillow.