Four days, 100 Euors, and Nowhere else to go but...FINLAND!!!

So I am on break of Toussaints (All Saints Day) that lasts for a week and I can't be at my host family's house the entire time. So presented with this fact, I decided to do a trip to Helsinki with a friend, then proceed on to visit my cousin in Germany. This post will detail my trip around Finland, then afterwards I will post about my trip in Germany.
So Finland was a crackpot idea between me and another american on study abroad in Clermont. We just said to eachother one afternoon, "hey want to go to Helsinki for break?" Then we just started planning, or some lack there of. We bought plane tickets out of Charles De Gaulle (Paris) and a guide book, and you'd think this would be an easy feat getting out of the country now that I have my Visa. But no, this is France.
1) I had to wake up at 5 am, to catch a bus to get to the trainstation in Clermont
2) Take the 6:30 am train into Paris
3) Take the RER (subway) blue for 1 stop
4) Take the RER Red all the way out to the airport
5) Take the CDG shuttle over to terminal 1
6) Determine which hall I was flying out of
7) Print tickets
8) Run through security
9) And finally make it ontime to the plane!
But barely. If the plane hadn't been delayed or the RER was late, the entire plan would have been foiled and I wouldn't have been able to see the motherland!
Anyway, after getting into Helsinki at 4 PM local time the next step of the journy was to:
1) Take the 615 bus into downtown Helsinki (which the busdriver was the perfect example of how people in Finland are different than France, I tried just giving him my money (ashamed not to know any Finnish) and he starts jokeing with me! and manages to get me quite embarressed in the mean time by his perfect English.)
2) Take the 4 Tram towards "Mannerheimintie" (try and say that 5 times fast)
3) Get off at "Katajanokka"
And this is where the plan FINALLY was foiled for the entire day. The stop of "Katajokka" doesn't exist, it was replaced by another stop name, so after I rode the Tram up and down 4 times and getting frustrated at just wanting to find the Hostel, we got off the tram in the general direction and started walking using the tiny map in the guide book. When a burly older gentleman started speaking to us in Finnish. We stared at him like deer in headlights and said "English?" He chuckled and in an accent that reminded me of the UP "What do you search for?" He was able to point us in the direction of the Hostel (Which was across the street from where we were) and we got checked in and we were able to sit down for a bit after the very long day.
Then came the next fun part, trying to find dinner without a plan or a guide book. We started wandering around attempting to find a semicheap restaurant that was non-american and not fast food. You have no idea how hard this is in a new city! We ended up settling for a Napalese restaurant near the train station. There I had delicious curry califlower and potatoes with naan. Afterwards we trudged home and fell asleep promptly and slept in the next day.
More to come...
Peace, Love, and Curry in Helsinki?