What's up everybody, welcome back to Vagabrothers and welcome back to Helsinki, where we've
been speaking at the Nordic Bloggers' Exchange.
It's been a crazy week meeting up with some other travel bloggers as well as some of our
Finnish friends and fans. So here's the story
[Intro sounds]
Making a travel show on the internet is weird and wonderful thing. Although we're from California,
our biggest audience after the USA is right here in Finland.
That's because last year, we spent two weeks traveling from Lapland to Helsinki, and getting
our first taste of Finland. We loved what we discovered and we tried to share that with
you through this channel.
Enter a Finnish YouTuber named Miisa, who discovered our videos on Finland and shared
them with her subscribers, bringing the average latitude of our viewers way far north.
So when we were invited to Helsinki to speak about travel video at the Nordic Blogger's
Exchange, we saw it as a great opportunity to meet some of fans and new friends from
the internet, starting with Miisa.
So we're in Helsinki and we're on our way to go meet up with our Finnish friend, Miisa.
Should be cool. We only know her in Internet-Land so it will be fun to see her in person.
And get a coffee. Because it's, as you can see, snowing.
And Finns like coffee so it's a good place to get coffee.
Guys, look who we found - it's Miisa!
And Tuomas! How are you guys doing today?
Supposedly this is warm weather. Is this warm?
This is very warm.
It was great to finally meet Miisa in person and we hope to do some more adventures with
her soon. We warmed up over coffee, snapped a quick photo, and then rolled back to the
hotel to meet some of our Finnish fans.
Three, two, one...
"Welcome to Finland"
So after that, we headed to the welcoming part for the Nordic Bloggers' Exchange, which
brought together Finnish bloggers and other travel bloggers from around the world.
Hey, cheers!
Cheers!
The next day, the conference organized a fun challenge - a scavenger hunt across Helsinki.
Alright, so it's like nine in the morning in Helsinki Finland...
...and we're going on a scavenger hunt with the rest of the other bloggers from the trip,
so...
It's called the Amazing Race
Should be pretty fun, so let's go
Inside, we were split into teams and given a bag of wooden puzzle pieces, that, when
assembled, were miniatures of Helsinki landmarks.
The goal: correctly assemble pieces, identify the landmarks, and then snap a selfie in front
of each one. First team team finished wins.
Keith is really smart and he figured out a good idea.
So I googled this - Helsinki Design Capital building blocks
And in the meantime I've taken a photo of the pieces and tweeted it out on Twitter so
hopefully our Finnish fans will help us find out what this is about.
Luckily, our tweet was spotted by another Finnish YouTuber, Timo Wilderness, who tweeted
us the answers we needed to start the race.
Ready, set, go!
Alright, so we've been at if for five minutes and we've already got two out of, I think,
six landmarks. So if we keep up this pace, we just might win this thing.
So the Amazing Race continues, we've got about half of the clues already, and now we're showing
up to the Helsinki Senate [Square] to get one of the last few so we're doing well, hopefully
we're going to win this one.
But even though we felt we knew the city well, we didn't know all the landmarks so we asked
a local for help
We are now here... right, oh yeah.
You gotta love it, the locals here are so friendly
Can I help you? Yeah!
Just stop somebody on the street, take ten minutes of there time asking - where are we?
We wanna go here, we wanna go there. But gotta love Helsinki.
The scavenger hunt took onwards to Parliament, the long bridge, and finally to the Olympic
Stadium where the race finished.
Well, we just finished the scavenger hunt, I think we got all of them.
I don't think we did...
Thanks to all the people who helped us on Twitter. Now we're going into the conference,
where we're going to be talking on video blogging and travel. It should be fun.
It was the first time we'd given a talk on how to do travel video, and it was really
cool to share the experiences and knowledge we've got over the last two years.
We are at the NBE Nordic Bloggers Exchange conference and we're teaching this whole class
right here about vlogging and travel video so I'm now giving them a demonstration on
how to vlog.
So what do you guys think? You learning things? You ready to make travel videos? So hopefully
they will make some good channels, and if we find some of these good channels we'll
send them to you guys too.
We even got 40 people vlogging for the first time, at the same time, all in one room. Hectic!
Alright, so our Vlogging 101 class is going well. Sebastian, what's up? What's your channel?
My channel is Sebastian Canaves, with a C
Alright, we'll link it in the info box. If you sprechen sie Deutsch you should check
it out because he's a German daily vlogger.
In the evening after the conference, our Finnish hosts told us they'd organized a special treat
just outside of Helsinki.
Ok so the conference is over for the day, Alex went home early because he's waking up
to shoot some cool photography tomorrow with one of our buddies, but I'm here with the
rest of the bloggers and we're going to learn a few things about the Finnish sauna experience.
Ok to clarify, Finns go in saunas naked but there's absolutely nothing sexual about it.
Either way though, everyone's from other countries and so our Finnish hosts suggested that we
keep our clothes on.
I spent a couple hours going in and out of the different saunas, but no sauna is complete
without an icy swim.
So we're on the edge of this dock, the lake is frozen, and according to the old dudes
from the Finnish Sauna Society, this the only way to counter a hot time in the steam room.
Don't look down here, don't film down here.
How do you feel that? That after sauna feeling
It feels like sex, like after sex.
Sex is better... sex is worse than this!
And sex in the sauna - double good!
But if you can do both...
...that's perfect!
The next morning, I woke up and met up with Kontsa Punkka, a talented Finnish wildlife
photographer who I've been following on Instagram for a while.
Alright guys so I just met up with my friend Konsta Punkka
Hello!
If you haven't checked out his Instagram, it's Kpunkka... we'll link it in the bottom.
He's the squirrel whisperer and today he's going to show us how he does his thing.
Alright, so we've just arrived. Where are we?
We're in Seurasaari Island
Ok, it's like 15 minutes outside of Helsinki. It's super quiet, no?
Yeah, it's mid-week, so no people around.
But lots of bird and squirrel friends?
Yeah, lots of those.
How did you start doing this?
I was here running, and I heard that there are a few birds and squirrels that are pretty
tame, so I started to come here and take my camera with me and started giving them some
peanuts and they got really used to me, and that's how it goes. By accident.
Well that was quick. Wow!
Konsta is going to show us...maybe if we're lucky we can get a fox, we've already gotten
a couple of birds, but we still need to get a squirrel. So let's do it.
God, you guys, this is so somesome.
These are super delicious nuts, I can see why the birds and squirrels like you so much.
I'm starting to like you too, man. Thanks for these snacks!
Oh my god, this is awesome!
Nice!
Dude, that was so much fun!
Thanks for taking me out here.
Yeah, that was a fun time.
So if you guys want to check out more of Konsta's work go onto Instagram - Kpunkka. That's it.
So check out the photos we shot together and check out the photos we shot on Instagram.
It was a fun week here in Helsinki, meeting other creators, other travel bloggers and
of course meeting you guys.
We really love Finland, we want to come back and we want to explore more of the Nordic
region in general, so tell us where you want us to go, leave us your comments, and we'll
try to plan our trip around your tips.
As always, if you've enjoyed the video make sure you give it a thumbs up, share it with
your friends and subscribe for new travel videos every Tuesdayy.
And don't forget, this trip is going all around Europe this winter by train so follow us on
the new app Storie, download it and add "Vagabrothers"
Next stop: Pilsen, Czech Republic
Moi Moi!
Let's go!