(2005) Sorry about the malfunction

My internet was whacko last night, it couldn't think fast enough for me. So that's why there were 2 entries. And if there was a comment on that first one, it got deleted as well, but not sure if there was or not. Onto day 5: We started out the day at an exhibition at a place called Steninge Slott. There were many American designers and artists at this one, including Darryle Hinz who I mentioned in a blog a while back, AND, get this, one of the musicians from the 80s band Ah-Ha who I guess decided to quit his day job and become a glass designer... Hmmm, I found that a little odd. This was a guided tour by an American girl who's been living in Sweden for about 4 years. There was an old mansion at this place as well (that's what the first picture is from)

and we decided to check it out and be goofballs. I thought this picture was funny and I wanted to share it with you all. These are great people I've met. I couldn't ask for a better group to be with for this class. The rest of this day was spent on ferries going around to 2 different islands around Stockholm, going to studios and whatnot.

This picture is from one of the islands when we were all sitting around on these giant rocks admiring the beauty surrounding us while one of our instructors humored us as he jumped in the water. We got some good laughs out of that one. We later ate dinner at another island where I had theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee best coconut curry chicken meal of my life. We ended up missing our boat back to Stockholm so we waved another cruiser down and they picked us up and brought us back. How nice of them. Day 6: We had to bring all of our luggage to the terminal for the overnight cruise in the morning so we didn't have to worry about it when we had to board later in the day. So this was supposed to be our free day in Stockholm to do whatever we wanted. We hadn't had one of those yet. Our instructors said that they were going to the National Museum and the Modern Art Museum and said that if any of us "wanted to come along with them we were more than welcome to do so." Reluctantly, with eyes rolled back in sockets, we all bit our tongues and went along with them. For the entire day. By this time, I had probably been to something like 15 museums and studios in the last 5 days of my life. The National Museum wasn't too interesting to me, since what we're studying now is glass and everything that was in that museum wasn't glass, but there was a very cool Scandinavian industrial design room full of fun things that I had learned about in my evolution of design art history class last semester. I walked through that museum fairly fast and half-heartedly; not to mention that it was like 98º in all of the showrooms. I couldn't handle that ontop of everything else. We finally got to go to the Modern Art Museum where I actually wanted to go to see some more "modern" art, and not so much old paintings and portraits of generals, kings, and their families and dogs and horses. That place was so incredible. We only had an hour and a half to spend there. I honestly could have spent the whole day there. There's a designer by the name of Lars Englund who had an entire exhibition dedicated to his art. He's a sculptor who uses geometric pieces which fit together perfectly like a puzzle. He had everything from huge floating mobiles to tiny tiny pieces put together to make HUGE wall hangings. Perhaps only my mom can understand how interesting that kind of stuff is to me, it's something I've always loved and am always overwhelmed by. Geometry is the only math class I ever got something out of. Anywhoooo... it was really cool to see in person some work from Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Matisse, and others. The boat departed at around 5 pm and we had to be there by 4, no later. So the afternoon had ended, but the adventure of the cruise was about to begin. It started out with a buffet full of hoarding, greedy, pushy shovey people. The food was good too. Delicious actually. The people ruined it for me a little. We had a table reserved at the very front of the ship, so we could watch the water as we passed over it and all the little islands along the way to Helsinki. It was very beautiful. The picture is from after dinner. For some reason, my face looks contorted. Just laugh at it.

I just have a problem sometimes on airplanes and on ships. I have to be directly watching what it is I'm moving over otherwise the room around me starts spinning and nausea sets in. On airplanes I HAVE TO sit next to a window. I was told it's called vertigo and that it's an inner ear problem. That frightens me. So the rest of the night was filled with fun and games. I took a video of one of the guys in my class, Mark, and my instructor, Erik sing the most atrocious rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody my ears have ever suffered through (picture).
I was laughing so hard I almost peed (not really) and my ears were bleeding at the same time. After all that miserable goodness I spent a large portion of the night listening to this acoustic guitar player sing some fabulous tunes with his phenomenal voice. I took a video of him playing a song that I had requested. It was super great. I even met a guy from Minneapolis on this ginormous cruise ship and he goes to Augsburg. Small world. Day 7: We arrived at about 10 a.m. and took a train to our hostel. We ate lunch at a delicious Thai restaurant (thank goodness one of the girls in my class is from Thailand, the waiter spoke Thai and the menus were in Finnish. We were at a loss...) and later went to the Marimekko textile design factory and showroom. At first I was wondering why we were there, but I'm really glad we went. I learned about this company in just a few hours and it's one of the most famous designer names in Scandinavia. I had no idea. We later went to the University of Art and Design, Helsinki and spoke with a Chinese/Finnish English speaking designer who is guest instructing glass design in the school year. It was very interesting. We walked down the street to the store Arabia where we walked through a quick exhibition and went shopping in the warehouse full of designer glassware. I bought a little children's plate and mug set of the Finnish Moomy characters I vaguely remember from my past. Later that night we ate a the Zetor Restaurant in downtown Helsinki and had another meal of delicious chicken. Day 7: We headed out of Helsinki into the countryside in an unnecessarily-massive charter bus for the 12 of us. There were 3 tables in it, 2 doors, and a bathroom. Huge. It brought us to the Museum of Glass in Riihimaki where we got to see lots of really cool Finnish glass, both new and old. Their showrooms were quite amazing and our guide was very knowledgable.
Then we departed for a place called Hvittrask and I couldn't begin to pronounce that for you. It's the place where the extremely famous designer Eero Saarinen grew up and his father, Eliel designed and built it, along with 2 other architects. I'm almost done, I promise. The rest of the night was spent hanging out around downtown, as this was our last night together on the study tour. This was also the last day our study tour guide, Ole, was going to be with us. He had to go back to his family in one of his 5 houses around Sweden. Day 8: Last day: We had to wake up early and be on the bus at 8 a.m. sharp. Our plane departed at 10 and we arrived in Copenhagen at around 10:40 (there's an hour time difference between Finland and Denmark). I was a little worried at the airport at first. DIS arranged all transportation to and from everywhere, but for some reason, they put me on a different reservation for this flight. I didn't have one. I had to wait until everyone boarded the plain to get my seat. I was counting on that to get back to Copenhagen. That didn't sit very well with me. It turns out that I got to sit in the BUSINESS CLASS section and I even got a really good salmon lunch with awesome potato salad and a delicious dessert. Haha... I need to learn to be more of an optomist at times like this. Sooooooo, I tried regurgitating all of this crazyness in a few hundred million words. Sorry for the length, I hope it won't have to happen again. I'll leave you with this funny picture of Mark hugging the abnormally-sized hollow ceramic vase in the yard of Steninge Slott. He's a goofball.
Thanks for reading! Hope I didn't bore you too much :) As they say in Denmark for good-bye: Hei-hei! (That doesn't really make sense to me). So bye-bye!