Entries tagged with “dancing” from kotaraindustries.com, the helsinki branch

If you're American, when you think of Estonia you think, "Oh, that is where Dave and Stoney told everyone that the caveman Linkovich Chomofsky is from in Encino Man."

If you're Finnish, when you think of Estonia you think, "The ferry costs 20€ roundtrip, and if I bring back 10 cases of beer then the trip pays for itself 5 times over in beer savings.  Also, I might as well get drunk on the ferry over, but that should NOT count against my beer cost-savings formula."

If you're Halee, when you think of Estonia, you think of the magical / fun / retarded birthday weekend you spent in Tallinn in 2010 with your favoritest girlfriends Tanja and Sinttu....


The Ferry

We boarded the ferry around 8am on Saturday.  Once onboard, I quickly realized that we were already hours behind schedule on beer consumption compared to all the other passengers.  Pretty much everyone at breakfast was enjoying an alcoholic beverage.  And I'm not talking light and breakfasty mimosas and bloody marys, I'm talking BEER.

After our breakfast, we decided to head up to the entertainment deck where the air was already soaked with the smell of booze, the live band was already rocking out, the karaoke was under way, rockabilly dudes were everywhere, and the power kept going out.  It was loud and obnoxious and ridiculous and awesome.  At one point the band and/or DJ was playing KISS's "I Was Made For Loving You (Baby)", and all the grannies were out on the dance floor rocking out.  The troubadour in the other room quickly switched from blues riffs to Metallica.  Shit got real, fast.  Reminder, IT WAS 9AM.  IN THE MORNING.  We only made it to about 9:30 before we started drinking, too.

        


Old Town

The ferry pulled into the dock around noontime, and all the tipsy folks (including us) started stumbling their way to old town in Tallinn.  If you don't know much about Tallinn, know this:  it is old.  Medieval-old.  It still has the old wall with all the towers surrounding the central part of the city.  The streets are covered in huge cobblestones (which doesn't seem to deter the women from walking around in 5 inch stilettos).  There are tons of amazing old-ass buildings to look at, including the ol' Kiek in de Kök.  It's all very quaint and scenic.

     

      


Miscellaneous Beers Drunken About Town

We spent the day walking around seeing the sights, and stopping every 30 minutes or so at a nice open air pub for a drink.  We drank at:

• Estonian pubs where we were not hit on at all
  
• Greek pubs where we were not hit on at all
  
• Texas pubs (!?) where we were hit on by Norwegians - We found a place called Cantina Texas and I waltzed in and declared my citizenship, and rated the authenticity of everything hanging on the walls.  Shockingly, they had Lone Star on tap. 
• Depeche Mode pubs (!?) where we were hit on by Russians - Apparently we missed the David Gahan birthday celebration by just a few days.

     


Miscellaneous Characters Seen About Town

Random people we saw around town included, but were not limited to:

1. Many, many maids and wenches and servants in tights
   
2. Russian transvestites
3. Men dressed in cheerleading uniforms
4. Pirates making off with a treasure chest
5. An executioner in a red hood offering to execute us
6. Evil dancing bunnies running through the street
7. The Blues Brothers lost and asking for directions!?

            



Dinner at Olde Hansa

The best part of the whole trip was our fancy medieval dinner at a place called Olde Hansa.  It's like going to Medieval Times, only you get to sit at an actual table, you get to use silverware, there is no jousting, and you have your choice of honey or cinnamon beer.  All the waiters and waitresses dress as wenches and serfs, and accept "with everlasting gratitude any squirrel skins or ducats" as tips.  Everything is lit by candle light, all the tableware is clay, and each dish is served with spelt.  Tanja and Sinttu both had leg of pork, while I finally...excitedly...after wanted to try it for months...ate bear!  It was prepared in the favorite style of Waldmar II, meaning it had been generously marinated in wine and was covered with berries.  Amazingly delicious.

      


After dinner we bar hopped a bit, and then dragged our tired feet back to our hotel and quickly passed out.  (17 hours of drinking is hard work.)  At 6:30am the next morning we were woken up by a mystery blast of Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69".  We still don't know where it came from.  Was it from a passing car?  Another hotel room?  A Bryan Adams bar (a rival to the Depeche Mode bar) which opens at 6:30am and is only open until 6:35am until it finishes playing that one song?  We'll never know...unless we can get access to those secret KGB surveillance rooms at the Sokos hotel nearby.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend and a birthday I will never forget.  Thanks, Tanjela and Sinttu Ellen!!  The only thing that would have made it 100% perfect would have been if this pony sweater had been available in my size:

Last night was Christmas party 1 of 3.  This one was at the agency with all the Wundergirls and Wunderboys.  Party 2 will be just a small affair with me and the three guys on my immediate team.  Party 3 will be the big huge corporate Christmas party thrown by the client, so big that I actually have to pay money to attend.  These early Christmas parties are called "Little Christmas" or "Pikkujoulu."

We started last night's fun at the office, where we had drinks (including glögi, the traditional hot wine drink), catered dinner, and a presentation on why selling bottled water is as stupid as selling bags of air.  Then we just hung out, dancing and playing Beatles Rock Band and decorating gingerbread cookies.  Like these:




Then they handed out a lyrics sheet (all in Finnish of course) to a song called "Tonttujen Jouluyö."  We all sang the song and acted out what was happening in the lyrics, which was cute but there was one problem...I had no idea what I was singing.  So I just confusedly did what everyone else did, but a few seconds behind.  We started on the ground and had to dramatically stand up, then dance around squaredancing-style, then pretend to eat, and then walk around all hunched over.  I was offered two explanations of what the song was about:

1. It was a children's song about little Christmas elves who sneak out of their holes and tip-toe around, go into people's houses, eat their food, dance, play, and then pick up their messes and sneak off on tip-toes back to their elf holes.
   
   
2. It was a song for the annual ritual where we reaffirm our allegiance to Satan.  As a first-time participant, I was Satan's newest bride.  The part at the end where we hunched over was our descent back into the fiery pit of hell.
   

In either case, I very much liked the line "Tip-tap, tip-tap, tipe-tipe, tip-tap, tip, tip, tap!" Someone shot a video of our song and dance and will be posting it on youtube so we can send it out as a company Christmas card, and of course I will share that as soon as I get the link.

Shortly after we headed to a fancy cocktail bar, where we had yummy berry-based cocktails and broke approximately 40 champagne glasses because everyone was pretty wasted.  It was really nice because the music wasn't too too loud so you could actually talk and joke around with everyone.  Apparently I talked and laughed a lot, because my voice is totally hoarse today.  While we were at the cocktail lounge, one of the Wundergirls told me about a bar next door, which is one of Helsinki's best rock bars so we went to check that out.  There's an upstairs bar part and a downstairs venue, and lots of rocker types hanging around.  It is the Finnish Gatti's!!  Yay, a potential candidate for my bar...in that sense becoming the Finnish Tin Hat!

After that, a few of us went and got some pizza.  While eating my pizza, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 5am.  The party started at 4pm.  This was a THIRTEEN HOUR PARTY.  Realizing it was so late/early made me suddenly very tired, so I called it a night.  Another one of the Wundergirls shared a cab with me, and I managed to get all the way home without vomiting in my mouth OR on my knee!  I consider that a success, although I think all my Finnish friends would probably be a little disappointed.

Colleen told me about a noble effort by the zombies of planet Earth to break a Guinness Book World record of the most simultaneous people to ever do the Thriller Dance.  A zombie squad had aligned themselves in Seattle.  Unfortunately I found out too late to give me a chance to get bitten by a zombie, become undead, and learn the choreography.  (However, if you're interested in learning the dance yourself, a nice girl named Ines has gone to the trouble of breaking the dance down into digestible [gnawable?] pieces in 40 short instructional youtube clips.)

Even though I couldn't walk amongst the zombies (even though I sorta did on accident, more on that in a moment)...I did snoop on their correspondence to find out when/where they were descending upon the living to attack us with their dance moves.

I went downtown and quickly found them, mostly because one zombie was holding up a huge "PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ZOMBIES" picket sign.  At that point they were just milling around a common area.  A Jesus man quickly came over with his big sign, trying to capitalize off the captive audience...and the zombies soon began to attack him and try to eat his brain.  This went on for some time as I wandered around trying to take pictures of the various zombies, like this one voraciously eating...a cupcake?:

The head zombie was setting up the sound system, and when I heard the first few bars of the Thriller intro, I hurried to jockey myself for a good position for picture taking.  Everyone was pushing their way to the center of the plaza for a good view...or so I thought.  Actually, "everyone" was the zombies, and they were pushing their way to the center of the plaza to start the dance!  Shit!  For one moment it was like I really WAS getting attacked by zombies and had to sneak my way out of the situation.

The dancing was funny, though you could tell they were all getting tired because after the first 30 seconds or so they quit making growling/burping/hissing noises.  Go check out my flickr photoset ... if you dare!!

So, I was bragging about all the cool stuff I was planning to do last week, and then didn't do half of it.

Square dancing didn't work out.  The girl I was supposed to meet there backed out, and I got too shy to go square-dancing by myself.  But it's okay...they have it once a month, which will give me time to find that puffy underskirt stuff for maximized twirling.

The Riverboat Gamblers didn't work out.  My other friends backed out on me there too, and I was going to go by myself...but started watching "Damien: Omen II" and then fell asleep on the sofa.

I did manage to accomplish the following:

• watch about 8 consecutive episodes of "How It's Made"
• went out to Kandice's for a personal BBQ
• saw Superbad
• got a Seattle library card
  and...
• got Washington license plates for my car, meaning I'm pretty official now

Now for this week:

• first tennis lesson tomorrow
• the Puyallup Fair, which looks like it will be a more than adequate replacement for the Texas State Fair.  Let me put it this way: Devo is playing Friday night!?  (Apparently the fair has a dedicated theme song, available at the official fair website in both the regular AND gospel versions.)