My roommate Tommi and I looking at the Kansas City skyline from the Liberty Memorial.
Tommi Uusimäki proudly shows off his plate of barbeque at Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbeque in downtown Kansas City.
"Like everything else you have here in the states, it was massive."
Coming from a country the same size as Montana, Tommi Uusimäki of Finland was astonished by how big Kansas City's Union Station during his first visit to the city on an overcast Saturday afternoon.
Uusimäki is an exchange student at Northwest Missouri State studying geography and is my roommate. He came to America at the beginning of the year where he visited New York City, before coming to Maryville for school.
At the beginning of the semester I told my new roommate that I would take him to Kansas City and show him around my home town. A few weeks ago we made the trip, as we visited some of the well known areas and sights of the city.
"I remember that there was one suburb before getting to Kansas City and I thought, okay it's like this, the whole city, but then I saw the sky scrapers and said, okay this is a big city just like all the cities in the United States," Uusimäki said.
As we continued to drive into downtown Kansas City, we drove across the Paseo Bridge where I pointed out the Missouri River to him. He was surprised when he saw it.
"I thought…what, this is Missouri River? It's not so wide," Uusimäki said. "In Finland we have bigger, and we wouldn't say this is a river."
Passing the Sprint Center in Kansas City's Power and Light entertainment district we pulled behind a Metro bus and Tommi joked about actually seeing some kind of public transportation in America, since it is much more common everywhere in Finland.
"It's a bit weird…you don't have public transit from one city to another between big cities, but I've noticed the country has been made for big cars with the highways," Uusimäki said. "Highways in Finland aren't as good."
Our first stop was Union Station and the Liberty Memorial with the National World War I Museum. Tommi continued to be impressed with how big everything was as we visited the two city landmarks.
"It was a big surprise to see because I didn't understand there was a railroad," Uusimäki said. "Once I saw the railway I said, oh, this is an old railway station. It was quite a huge building from the inside and it was really cool that everything was renovated recently."
I wanted to give Tommi a good view of the entire city, so we crossed the street from Union Station and climbed up the long gradual sloping hill to the Liberty Memorial where we could get the best view. He continued to be impressed with all the large buildings in the Kansas City skyline.
"You have lived here all of your life, so you don't think skyscrapers are so amazing and great, but it is something we don't have and I haven't seen," Uusimäki said. "Thirty floors in Finland is massive."
The next stop on our trip was The Plaza, a famous high-end shopping district on the south side of downtown. There we stopped for some coffee and looked around at some of the shops. The architecture of the buildings reminded him of an old-west comic book he read in Finland and has been around since the 1950's.
"It was a really nice place and old looking, giving memories of the Tex Willer magazine," Uusimäki said. "There is a Mexican street from Tex Willer, that's what came to my mind. The type of building construction reminded me of it."
I decided to take a quick detour before dinner to stop and say hi to my Uncle Bill who doesn't live far from The Plaza. It gave my uncle a chance to meet my new friend as well as gave Tommi a chance to visit a normal residence in America.
"It was also nice to see a normal American house," Uusimäki said.
Our dinner plans were simply to get some authentic Kansas City barbeque, which the city is famous for, and we did so by visiting Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbeque in an old renovated freight house behind Union Station. This was probably the highlight of the whole trip.
"The barbeque was so great," Uusimäki said. "It was so so cheap compared to Finish prices."
Tommi had never had barbeque like what we had at dinner, as we both got the beef and pork meat with sides of cheese corn bake and baked beans. Tommi talked about what kind of barbeque they make in Finland.
"We usually have pork, moose or reindeer because they are local animals," Uusimäki said. "We don't have many cows. It is not a custom to eat beef in our family, usually just moose and reindeer."
The final stop of the night after eating dinner was the Power and Light District, where we met some friends from school at a piano bar called Howl at the Moon. It was interesting to see the door men at the bar looking at Tommi's driver's license and trying to figure out how old he was, since it was so different from an American driver's license.
"It is nice to see their face when the look at it," Uusimäki said.
Tommi was impressed with the bar, as we stayed there until early the next morning, before going back to my house in Lee's Summit.
"It was not so bad to pay compared to seeing a band, and I thought the band was amazing. It was a huge experience," Uusimäki said. "Live music is hard to find now days in Finland."
With so many things different in Kansas City compared to his homeland, Uusimäki was glad he made the trip and plans on sharing experiences with his friends back in Finland.