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I am on a plane. Under the wings a clear view of the Grand Canyon changes icy peaks of the Rocky Mountains. I am on the way to New York to catch a bigger plane, a Finnair MD-11, to take me to Scandinavia, where some friends and I have arranged to meet for eleven days of New Year festivities.

What are my expectations for this trip? It?s been a while for me that I have been out of my element. I expect to experience new things, to see the land I haven?t seen before, its people, learn how does it work in a strange country. I am also looking forward to see my friends again: Alex ? my childhood buddy; Inga ? his better half, who is of the rare breed of better halves that seem to get along just fine with the misfits of their husbands? acquaintances.

There is going to be a fourth person too, Svetlana, a financial expert from San Petersburg, whom I know little about; but any friend of my friends adventurous enough to join on one of these expeditions is bound to be all-right. That?s what I am thinking about, watching the scenery change outside the window, eating an unidentified meat sandwich purchased for $6 from the airline. Why does food taste better when eaten on plane high in the air? I swear they can serve potted meat and call it goose liver.

A change of planes, an eight-hour puddle jump, and I get off the plane in Helsinki airport. At the passport control the border agent asks me what the purpose of my visit is, I say ?Pleasure.? Then I walk through the green customs corridor, and meet my friends that are waiting for me with a car.

I turn my GPS on, and decide to give it a first task of finding a seafood restaurant. According to the GPS the closest such restaurant is near Kauppatorri, the Central Market Square area of Helsinki, we drive there. It is still pretty early in the day and the restaurant is closed. We drive around in the city for a bit and then go to the Hesburger Munkkiniemi near Pfizer building on Tietokuja.

Hesburger is Finland?s own fast food chain. With over 200 locations nationwide they serve a selection of hamburgers and pasta dishes, and also offer caf? menu with premium sandwiches.

Alex orders something called Mega-ateria, ? a large burger (Megahampurilainen), with fries (Ranskalaiset), and Sprite. The ladies get Patsa Carbonara and Pasta Bolognese. I get a salad with light house sauce and a goat cheese sandwich with grapes (Vuohenjuusto Ciapat). We all get coffee too, actually we just grab the communal coffee pot, but then we are politely asked to return it.

Now that we are well fed, we want to go to a supermarket and load up with groceries. While driving on the freeway 1, we see K-Supermarket Mankkaa off to the side. We try to get to it, but through a series of wrong turns and with cheerful encouragement from the GPS unit we end up at a dead-end on a frozen dirt road, surrounded with pine trees. No worries mate, she?ll be right. I?ve gotten lost going to supermarkets on numerous occasions, and I know how to get un-lost. Just a few minutes later we roll a shopping cart through the swing barriers of the supermarket entry.

I don?t know what I was expecting to see in a Finnish supermarket, perhaps rows and rows of smoked fish, maybe a selection of unusual milk products, some berries, and reindeer parts. Now, what is actually unrolling before my eyes upon entering the store is the same stuff you see in any supermarket in any civilized country: dates from California, beef from Brazil, and international brands on the shelves.

We fill up our shopping card with food. There is actually a very good selection of yogurts. Trying to identify butter, I ask for help from a shopper happened to be nearby. She says, ?what you?re holding in your hands is butter. ?Voi? ? means butter.? An even bigger challenge is finding mayonnaise.

Years of experience told me to look for mayonnaise near mustard, vegetable oils, and vinegars. I find those, but there is nothing resembling mayonnaise nearby. I decide to ask a store attendant for help, and he sends us to the refrigerated food section, where we find two varieties ? both in jars, one with green lids and one with orange lids. We pick up both kinds, but later find that they both are gross, nothing resembling the usual mayonnaise found elsewhere. Finnish mayonnaise remains for us one of the great mysteries. I must admit, however, that everything else we tried in Finland was very good.

After loading the groceries in the car we go to the express gas pumps off the east side of the supermarket building. The pumps have an automated payment machine, and at first we try feeding the machine our credit cards. This doesn?t work; the machine is refusing both Russian and American credit cards. The machine does take a 50-euro cash banknote, happily, and we pump our trusty Opel with gasoline.

While on the way to the supermarket we remember seeing an Alko sign. Alko is the chain of government controlled stores that sells liquor and higher alcohol content beers in Finland. We drive around to where we think we saw the sign and find a crowded parking lot. We park and walk into the store to realize that we just drove around on the other side of the building, and could have just as easily accessed the Alko from the supermarket foyer.

In the Alko we get three bottles of Pol Remy sparkling wine, a bottle of Martini Bianco, and a can of Nikolai beer. It is almost 1 PM now. Alex says that in Finland, it is legal for passengers to consume alcohol in a vehicle. Hurray to that, and I immediately start taking advantage of this freedom as we drive towards the cabin we rented.

Our cabin is on a lake about halfway between Helsinki, Finland?s capital and largest city, and Turku, Finland?s former capital and oldest city. In the cabin we have two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a family room with a wood burning fireplace, a veranda, a laundry room with a skink, a toilet, and a shower head, and a sauna. The car garage that doubles as firewood storage is separate. There is also a separate hut with walls arranged hexagonally, benches inside along those walls, and a barbeque pit in the middle.

While Inga and Svetlana start to conjure the dinner, Alex and I embark on a journey to find charcoal for the barbeque. We set the GPS navigation to the K-Supermarket H?rk?tie waypoint that I pre-programmed from Google Earth before the trip. In about 10 kilometers we arrive in Somero. Somero is a small city, the center of its municipality that thrives on offering urban-quality services close to rural communities. The supermarket is out of charcoal, but a friendly store attendant suggests we try the Shell gas station across the street.

The Shell gas station has everything we need: charcoal and lighting fluid. I immediately notice how light the charcoal bags are. This charcoal is very different from the pressed briquettes sold in the US. Charcoal sold in Finland is lump charcoal made directly from wood; it contains raw pieces of various shapes and sizes.

Back to the cabin Alex and I precede drinking beer and figuring out how to organize grilling. It is dark and there is no light inside the barbeque hut. We decide to just remove the barbeque from the hut and place it outside. We get that accomplished while getting a bit dirty in the process. Then we load the barbecue with charcoal, soak the charcoal with the lighting fluid, and fire everything up. I am very pleased to find out that the lighting fluid is very potent, not diluted as sold in some places.

On the barbeque we grill pork ribs and some marinated chicken legs. Combined with all the food that our ladies have prepared we got ourselves a feast. For me it was a great ending to the first day in Finland.