Boozy Baltic Buccaneers

Photos Added...!

Christmas Market in the square below the Cathedral, Helsinki.  No Snow!! It was a "Black" (aka green) Christmas in most of the southern part of Finland this year.

I met Scott in Helsinki on Thursday morning and we had a few days there to check out the big city, or pääkaupunki (literally "head city" aka capital city).  We spent most of the time wandering the streets, checking out the architecture and stopping in on a few shops.  There was a big Christmas market in the square at the base of the Helsinki Cathedral, so we spent some time there looking at what the stalls had to offer.  Lots and lots of knitted things, wooden things, woven things, home-baking, and of course the odd place with some very imported-looking goods.  I could be wrong, but it was sort of like the old "One of these things is not like the others" game.

Not the exact ship we sailed on, but pretty much identical.  There are passenger decks above (alcohol store, bars, shops, restaurants) and the middle decks have cabins (for consumption of purchased alcohol) and the lowest decks have cars.

After a couple of days in Helsinki, Scott and I set off on a quintessentially Finnish experience - the Estonian Booze Cruise.  Due to taxes, alcohol is significantly cheaper in Estonia than it is in Finland.  The obvious solution is to go to Estonia regularly to a) stock up and b) party.  Several ship lines run regular sailings each day between Helsinki and Tallinn that take about 2.5 hours each way.  These may be ferries, but they are nothing like the BC Ferries I am familiar with.  For starters...there are cabins.  Some of the sailings leave Helsinki in the evening and then overnight in Tallinn harbour.  This way people can party all evening, pass out in a cabin, then find themselves in the land of cheap liquor in the morning.  This sort of brings me to the second difference: the passenger decks don't really have seating areas. Instead.... there are bars, gambling areas, an enormous liquor store, a dance floor, cafés and restaurants, but no real areas to just be comfortable and wait out the 2.5 hour journey.  There are no real restrictions on these bars and gambling areas; children can be seen running across the dance floor at the bar or teetering on their tippie-toes to reach the buttons on a slot machine.  Ok, so, children aren't served in the bars, they are merely present and they may not have actually been playing the slot machines, just pressing the buttons. 

Old Tallinn street and graffiti

Our crossing had some pretty rough waters, so people were having trouble maintaing their balance as we rolled across the Baltic Sea.  However, I noticed that when we got to the calmer waters just outside the port of Tallinn, people still had trouble maintaining their balance....and wow...what A LOT of people.  We went on a Saturday at a popular sailing time and the boat was PACKED!!  I have never seen so many Finns get so close to each other as on that boat.  Never mind that old "personal space" cliché...we were just packed in there.  Especially as we queued to get on and off the ship.  It was most entertaining as we left the ship to go into Tallinn.  These were hundreds of the most...uh..."talkative" Finns I have ever met.  Some still had beer glasses in their hands, others swayed merrily with their suitcase in tow as we were herded down the gangplank...and disappeared into the horizontal sleet we had arrived to...

Orthodox Cathedral

Prayer at the cathedral steps

This is our second night in Tallinn and it's an interesting place.  Most of the city is pretty "normal,"  but there is a section called "Old Town" that is medieval.  Very neat old city wall, winding old streets, apartment blocks, aaaaaand.... churches, churches, churches.  The only thing that outnumbered the churches were souvenir shops (...and the tourists outnumbered those).  There was, of course, a Christmas market, cafés, restaurants, museums, embassies...all neatly contained within the old city walls...where they still exist.  If you ever have the chance to come to this Nordic/Baltic part of the world, I do recommend it...just hope for better weather than what we have found!  Snow would improve matters as would sunshine...

Christmas Market in the main square.  Rain...rain...wind....rain...

A forgotten corner of Old Town

Christmas is coming....

...the goose is getting fat?

Well, there aren't too many geese around at this time of year.  However, the stores are full of Christmas Hams, there are decorations on the streets, markets full of goodies are held regularly, and lots of other things indicating that the season is upon us.  Leading up to Christmas, friends, employers and student associations hold pikkujoulut ("Little Christmas") parties that usually involve lots of alcohol, food and other goodies.  Last week...or maybe the week before (I've missed a post)...I even hosted a pikkujoulut party.  Some friends made excellent ham (baked with mustard) and K-Market provided some side dishes.  April made a salad, and I did Gluvine and Ris A L'amande (both Danish).  I had a private sauna turn/time available in my building's sauna, so we took advantage of that.  Finally, we ended up in the city centre enjoying the fine local establishments...ahem.

More Christmas fun: In Finland, Santa's reindeer do not fly.  I have heard that some families will actually pay for 'Santa' to come make a special visit to their homes on Christmas.  Additionally, they pay to make sure that the same Santa will return year after year.  You can't have Santa changing a few suit sizes between visits!  Most families get christmas trees, or joulukuusi ("Christmas spruce").  I thought it was interesting that the species of tree is specified.  And, as most people of Scandinavian/Nordic heritage know, Norway spruce are the traditional Christmas tree.  These trees may be brought inside or simply decorated outside.  Another interesting name for a traditional Christmas plant is Joulutähti ("Christmas star"), which is in fact a pointsettia.  Joulutorttu are a delicious bit of Christmas baking that are eaten regularly as the days get shorter and shorter.  Puff pastry squares are cut and folded into the shape of 4-pointed stars and a dollop of plum/prune jam or apple-cinnamon jam is portioned into the centre.  After a few minutes of baking, the delicate stars may be sprinkled with icing sugar.  They are extremely easy to make as you can buy the pastry in the freezer section of any store and the jam also comes in ready-made tins.  I have made them.  twice now.

Joulutorttu (NOT my photo, but my tortut looked just like that! - ha!!)

So that should be enough Fun Finnish Facts for the past couple of weeks.  Other than that, I haven't really been doing anything exciting until quite recently.  I've had the end-of-semester crunch with assignments due in 3 courses and a couple of exams.  BUT...I am currently in Estonia.  With Scott.  Very cool....next post!

...Sorry for almost no pictures!

Hunting Holidays

The midday sun....**sigh**  I wish it would get just a bit higher in the sky!

Today is Suomen itsenäisyyspäivä, or Finland's Independence day.  Even google has a banner for it (at google.fi), which I thought was neat.  It's a national holiday and as a result, everything is closed.  like...EVERYTHING...If you didn't manage to get what you needed yesterday, you're just going to have to do without for the rest of the day.

Itsenäisyyspäivä Google

Looking at a calendar, Finland appears to have a lot of official holidays, which is true, but it's not as straightforward as that.  Not every holiday marked on the calendar is a day off, in fact most holidays work continues pretty much as usual.  These are called Flag Holidays and the only thing that really changes is that every flagpole in town flies the Finnish Flag.  That is another thing I found to be very interesting - there are only certain days that people fly the Finnish Flag. The rest of the time, the flagpoles are either bare, or hold flags of the institution (university, museum, region, hotel..etc) that owns the flagpole.  When you notice the flags, it certainly makes you stop and think about what is being recognized that day, something that is often missed on Canadian Holidays.  Another interesting fact about the flag (according to Wikipedia) is that the current flag was first used by a yacht club in Helsinki around 1861.

Finnish barn and countryside and weeds.  Thanks for the photo April!

The Finnish National Anthem is Maamme, or Our Land.  Translated, the words are about the natural beauty and splendor of the northern land of Finland.  It is a very positive, celebratory song (in my opinion) with no mention of conquoring or defending or how wonderful the peoples are or religion...just a song about joy of the natural landscape.  Ok, so that's probably enough facts for one day, but I could probably go on; moving to Finland is the first time I've really been interested in learning about history and culture.

The logyard / railyard by my house.  I thought the bunks for the logs on railway cars were pretty neat.   From here the logs go for processing at either of the mills or processing plants in town.

Last weekend I went to the city of Kuopio (actually nearby in Siilinjärvi) for another metsäterapiapäivä (forest therapy day) also know as a day of hunting.  April, Aku, and I set out for a weekend of wandering through the forest, having lunch fires, shooting guns, and watching wildlife...with the offchance that we may shoot something.  Well, we did.  Aku and I were walking paralell to each other and a hare (metsäjänis) shot out right between the two of us.  It was like a flash of white darting across the dull, brown and grey forest floor.  Well I was so busy pointing in surprise that I had hardly touched my shotgun, let alone taken the safety off, before Aku had it down.  Apparently I still have the "point and shout" reflex....not the "point and shoot" reflex.  Anyways, it all worked out well (for us, not the rabbit) and we took that one home at the end of the day.

Fuzzy Bunny...it was so soft!  They now have their winter fur on, but the snow has melted leaving them a little vulnerable to hunters and predators.  Thanks for the photo April!

Highlights of the weekend:
  - teaching April to shoot (I can't imagine learning with a 12ga.)
  - driving a car for the first time in 4 months
  - Sauna
  - homemade food
  - cutting down a christmas tree (actually 2)
  - spending a day outside with friends and actually having a successful hunt.

Practising!  Looking back on it, April is probably the fourth friend (from conservation mostly) who I have handed a firearm to for their first time shooting ever.  Notice she's still smiling...even though it's a bit of a nervous smile. 

I like to check out the weather around Finland and other places in the world on a fairly regular basis...It's just interesting.  So I was looking at the weather for Inari, the city I visited in Lapland a few moths ago. It's not that cold yet, but have a look at the weather forecast (click on the image to make it bigger):

Notice that the sunrise and sunset times...they have DATES on them.  The sun set on the 1st of December and will not rise again until the 11th of January.  How crazy is that?  I mean, I knew it happened, it's just really amazing (in my opinion) to see a sunset and sunrise that are weeks apart.  I imagine the opposite is true in the summer when there are weeks between the last sunrise and the first sunset.  

Thanks for the sweet hat Karina!  It sure kept me warm last weekend!

That's it for now...have a great week (or what's left of it)!!