Helsinki, Pt. 5: Kärpät Hockey Game

Friday night was the whole reason for this trip. Well, it wasn't the WHOLE reason for the trip but it made a good excuse to go to Finland. My cousin, Johnny, plays hockey for Oulun Kärpät. I actually didn't even know he played for a Finnish team until this trip! (As you can tell I talk to my family a lot...). I'm not going to pretend I know anything about hockey, so I don't have much to say in this post. I am used to going to sporting events for the home team, and this game was an away game for my cousin. This might be why I had completely different experiences at this hockey game compared to the Salavat Yulaev game in Ufa. It wasn't bad, it was just different.


When we first got to the arena the woman tried scanning our tickets. They weren't working so we moved to the side to try to pull them up in an e-mail. My aunt was annoyed and mad, so she just told us to go in without scanning the tickets. So, that's what we did. I laughed, and she'll probably hate me for posting about it. :) We had legitimate tickets I just think the printer ink made it hard to scan. We wanted to get there early so we could watch the teams warming up, but we were kind of late. We saw my cousin, but he didn't see us. When they were finished we made our way up to our seats. They were pretty high up, but they weren't horrible seats.

It was a good game and I learned more about hockey than I ever knew. I've seen my cousin play before but I guess I just never really cared to ask questions. I have a lot of respect for hockey players. They have to wear huge padding and face masks while chasing around a small puck. I don't know how they do it. It was tiring me out just watching. Unfortunately, my cousin's team lost. I think I'm bad luck, or maybe I took the Cleveland curse with me. (It would explain how the Cavs won).

After the game we waited to see my cousin. Trying to get out was another adventure in itself. We were inside the arena, and we saw him knocking on the outside, but we couldn't figure out how to get out of the building because all the doors were locked. We kept asking people working how to get out and they would point in different directions. We eventually made it out and got to talk to him for a while. We all forgot to take a picture which was unfortunate. Guess that means we have to go back!