Mary Beth Stowe's Website
CABC Scandinavia Choir Tour
Days 1-3: Arrival and Ministry in Helsinki
(Please note: captions marked with an * are beneath photos taken by my fellow alto Susie Danielson)
My friend and fellow choir member Susie Danielson and her husband John picked me up, and we made it fine to the airport along with everyone else! It was a good plan to get there early, as the line for Alaska Airlines was a million miles long, so we got checked in in plenty of time. That gave us a lot of time in between flights to just walk around or chat; Susie and I had a great time doing just that! I also worked on getting a testimony put together, just in case, as I had volunteered to give one during the course of the trip. Susie even taught me how to play canasta, so that was fun!
I was very impressed with SAS, the Scandinavian airline! They had an interactive menu on the back of each seat from which you could watch external cameras, a GPS map, movies, play games, or whatever! It was neat to watch the plane take off and land from the pilot’s point of view (and my sardonic side added, "so you watch yourself crash...")! I didn’t figure out how to use the remote until the return flight, so I skipped the games and the movies and just vegged on music the whole flight over. When I was coherent I chatted with the lady next to me who was from Stockholm, so I told her about our concerts, hoping she would come!
Once in Copenhagen we were warned before we left that we had been split up into two different flights, so I ended up on the later flight, which was fine. I got a lot of time to get to know some of the other choir members (our choir is over 100 strong, although only 60-something of us went on this trip). I never sat with any of our crew on any of the flights up till now, but this time I sat with Richard Schindler, who was videoing everything in sight, including the Hooded Crow out the window (my first "endemic" bird of the trip; officially the first one was Rock Pigeon...) Customs was non-existent in Helsinki (the advantage of being in a group, I guess), and on the way to the hotel picked up several native birds that I really didn’t count on so early in the game: Common Swift, Jackdaw, and a great look at an adult and first-year Common Gull!
We all made it to the hotel, and while the others were eating, I opted to wait for my bags so I could take a shower (as I wasn’t hungry anyway; they feed you pretty good on those planes). The next morning, since we were too far away from good habitat to walk to, I slept in, had QT, and then got dressed for the services and went with Susie down to breakfast. As in all the places on the tour, they served a huge buffet of traditional Scandinavian meats, cheeses, and breads, plus various cereal, fruit, yogurt, eggs, and sausages. I still wasn’t terribly hungry so just had cereal and some tasty potatoes and bratwurst. Our guide, Fatima, was sitting by herself so I invited her to come and sit with us, which she seemed very happy to do! Learned she was from India originally (although she’s a Danish citizen now, married to a Dane); she was also fluent in Portuguese (having also lived in Brazil for some time) and teaches language during the off season, since no one in their right mind (except snow sports nuts) comes to Scandinavia in the winter!
Singing at the Helsinki Baptist Church* Trying to keep cool!*
From there we headed to this little church (Helsinki Baptist) where we took up one third of the whole place; in fact, we were worried whether anyone was gonna come! Gradually people did trickle in, however, and we sang quite a few numbers; the biggest challenge was positioning yourself where you could see Rob (our director), as we were utilizing pews instead of risers. It was unseasonably hot as well, and while it didn’t feel any worse to me than Michigan in the middle of summer (southern Michigan, anyway), many of the folks were dying!
While there were only a handful of people there, the preacher preached in both Swedish and English! (Yes, that’s Swedish and not Finnish; don’t ask me why...) The people seemed very appreciative, but we didn’t have time to sit and chat: from there we went immediately to the Rock Church, where our other guide Eiro (have no idea whether I’m spelling that right; he pronounces it "EE-roe") handed out sandwiches and drinks which we took to the little park across the street, which was not much more than a strip of green with some benches in the middle of the boulevard! But we had fun fellowshipping.
Interior of the Rock Church, literally hewn out of a rock! On lunch break before the service
The service at The Rock (aka the International Evangelical Church) was a little more formal, where we got to sit in a loft this time. People were still dying of the heat, but since most everyone in the congregation was fanning themselves, we didn’t feel guilty about doing it, either! They had a great Presbyterian preacher from a big church in New York (whose name escapes me), and he preached a good sermon, but I guess jet lag was catching up with me cuz I found it hard to stay awake (in fact, I did hallucinate a little during the prayer), but as I said, at least this time we were in a loft where we could actually see Rob!
Singing from the loft!* Our tour organizer, Doug Pearson, Even the US Ambassador (the very
poses with the pastor* elegant-looking lady) came!*
We all noticed a very elegant lady sitting near the front chatting with both the local pastor and the Presbyterian minister, and found out later that she was the U.S. Ambassador to Finland! And after the service, she was so impressed that she invited us all over to the reception she had planned for the visiting preacher! Security was extremely tight: not only could we not take our cameras in, but Fatima had to give them a detailed group list, and we could only go in in packs of five, showing our passports as we did so. It was really too bad we couldn’t take cameras, cuz the grounds were glorious, right on the water! The buildings were quite something, too; the ambassador was very congenial was also from one of the Carolinas and had the accent to match (and I’m sure that’s where her elegant charm came from, too)! The spread was wonderful (we felt sorry for the cooks, though, suddenly having to prepare for 60+ additional people!), and it worked out perfectly, because I was famished (I didn’t eat any lunch cuz I was still full from breakfast)! Of course we couldn‘t get away with not singing anything, so we did a couple of a cappella numbers (both outside and inside the building; the inside one was as we got waylaid trying to get back to the busses), and that was really special; it was obvious that both the ambassador and her mom were strong Christians, and I was pondering the fact that we were possibly ministering to people from all over the world who were there out of respect for the visiting pastor but weren‘t necessarily believers themselves.
Crashing at the ferry terminal
We finally made it to the ferry terminal and changed clothes there (well, most of us did: the ladies’ room was a frenzy!), and I’m sure the gang had fun with me as that was the first time they’d ever seen me decked out in complete birding gear (one of them told me later that he could tell I’d been doing it for awhile by the way I was handling the bins)! Got nice shots of (now European) Herring and Common Gulls out the window (I’m surprised the pictures came out as clearly as they did), and I’m glad I did cuz there wasn’t much out on deck except a lot of spray!
European Herring Gull Common Gull Sunset from the ferry
We finally arrived in Tallinn, but then they claimed the Canadians in our group (which included our director and his family) needed visas, so they were waylaid ("arrested" may have been the more accurate term) until about eleven; they sent us on ahead to the hotel where dinner was waiting. Thankfully the authorities let them go shortly without having to pay any "bribe money", but it was a late night for everyone.
Some of our crowd waiting for the Canadians to get through customs (I'm on the far right, the only one with bins... ☺)*
