Finlandia: Rock Church and Soccer

Yesterday we got up early and started preparing for the trip to Estonia. And then we found out it was cancelled. Due to strong winds the ferries were stopped! After living on the islands I had thought ferries and high winds would no longer affect my life... I was wrong.

Instead we decided to rest all day, play a little soccer,  go to the Finland v. Hungary qualifying game for European Cup 2012. 

But before we had to make a cultural stop.

The Rock Church.

Yes, this is a church literally built into the rocks. It's pretty sweet.

The ceiling is a huge copper dome... it is definitely one of the most unique churches I've been in.

After that and some Finnish fast food we headed off to the game!

Some drunk students singing and riling up the crowd.

This is the line we stood in for a good 10 minutes or so right as we were getting in the gates we realized we were in the wrong line. Soooo we had to go to the back of the other line and wait another 20 minutes.

But the real troubles didn't start until we were attempting to find our seats.

We asked directions numerous times and each time we went to our seats the people already sitting there would say it was section B17 or B19... we were in B18 and apparently it was in some parallel universe. for 20 MINUTES we had to go back and forth between two staircases, asking people to move, asking the workers where we were supposed to sit and they always just kept saying the other section. It was beyond annoying that the workers wouldn't take the time to help us (although we saw them doing it for numerous other people) finally we just sat in some random empty seats... and it was hilarious. Drunk Finns (and a loud Irish man) was quite entertaining :)

The Hungarian section... complete with like 8 guards surrounding them.

Excited to be at our first *freezing* European soccer game!

Hungary scored first, and Finland was not doing anything too impressive... but at minute 86 they scored!

Hooray!

Everyone freaking out!

We were pretty pumped! It was looking like a tie game!

Then it went into stoppage time. It looked like the ref was going to call it at any time. And then this happened....

And literally five seconds after the kick-off they stopped the game.

It was such a disappointment! And truthfully it should've been a tie. 

But it was definitely a fun way to spend the evening!