People you meet on public transportation

Yesterday I was going home from Myyrmäki a bit after midnight, and three guys sat on the train next to me. They were drinking cider and trying not to get caught. I was reading and they were making too much noise, and then they started asking me about the book I was reading, which was Steven King's The Stand. I couldn't tell them much, having just read the first 150 pages out of 1400 or so. As it usually happens as soon as they heard my accent they wanted to hear the whole story of my life, althout the train trip was not long enough and they didn't have enough cider, so they got a strongly abbreviated version. Well, at least they didn't have the problem with the concept of Russian-American, as many Finns do. Unlike many drunk young Finns who switch to English after the third promille of blood alcohol content, one of them switched to Swedish, which did not contribute positively to the conversation. Other than that it was fun. They wanted to talk about politics, and we did. They tried to invite me to Baker's with them, but I figured that going to a bar with three smoking guys is not a very good idea for me.

This morning I saw a guy who looked like a haredi* on a bus: the hat, the beard and everything. I was a bit suprised, since there are no haredim that I know of in Finland and I didn't think haredi tourists ever come that far north. I thought he only looked like haredi but then I came closer and he was indeed reading Tora, or some other holy scripture (the text was in old Hebrew; my knowledge of old Hebrew is unsufficient for distinguishing between Tora, Tanach, Mishna, Talmud (is it even written in Hebrew? bugger if I know) and other holy and moderately holy books). I wanted to ask him what is a real live haredi doing on the bus 18 in Helsinki in the middle of the winter, but I think he might've understood me wrong if I did.

*For those who don't know what's a haredi: it's an Orthodox Jew in black coat and big black hat and big beard (except for women usually) who doesn't like modern Judaism, as opposed to an Orthodox Jew without a black coat and big black hat and with a smaller beard who also doesn't like modern Judaism. I don't know how you tell a Haredi woman from a non-haredi Orthodox Jewish woman, but I suppose Haredi women have longer skirts or something.