22.2.2010

Last week was Shrove Tuesday, aka Fat Tuesday, aka Shrovetide, aka the last day of Mardi Gras, aka the last day before lent begins. It's a pretty big holiday in Finland. People usually take the day off and go sledding. The idea is the farther your sled goes, the taller your flax will grow that year. You're also supposed to wear your hair down (long hair = long flax), eat pea soup and pancakes (which you're also supposed to do every Thursday. I guess you just can't get enough of them), and eat shrovetide buns. I did all these things, so look out flax 2010!

Shrovetide bun for breakfast

Pancakes for dinner. The Finn's make their pancakes really eggy and bake them in a pan (imagine that) in the oven. Then you cut them into squares and eat them with jam. It's sure easier than standing at the stove and flipping. 

Preparing to go down the huge sledding hill. 

Success! 

I've been amusing myself all week at the bus stop by trying to get a good video of the buses sliding to a stop on the ice. So far no luck, but here are some of my failed attempts: 

Random Finnish thing: In the "hypermart" there is an entire aisle devoted to sauna supplies:

On Saturday I went to see Josh Ritter (one of my top three favorite musicians) and The Swell Season (made famous in the movie Once) perform at the Kulttuuritalo. It was really good. But I kind of felt like I was annoying the people next to me just by tapping my foot. I was sitting near the back and I could look out over the whole crowd and not see a single head moving to the music. Finn's aren't the most expressive folk in the world. But it was still really good.

The theater

Josh Ritter

The Swell Season

Somehow, over the years, I've developed this tradition where I have get a vanilla milkshake at McDonald's in every country I visit. It's definitely not the best tradition in the world, and if I had a chance to do it over I won't pick that again, but since I've been doing it since I was 14 and went to Panama, I kind of have to keep it up. [Although I JUST realized I forgot to do it when I had that day trip to Austria on my way here... That means I'm going to have to go back to Austria..] Anyway, I went ahead and got my Finland McDonald's milkshake out of the way:

They actually display the nutritional information.

Thank you!

Lapland 4

Lapland photo album:

Lapland album

Last day in Lapland. After breakfast, we had a little bit of free time in the morning before we had to start cleaning up to leave. I went skiing again. Then it was off to visit the real Santa Claus in the Santa Claus village.

This was maybe a little bit better than the Corn Palace in South Dakota, but only just a little. The best part was that you could mail a letter from Santa's official post office postmarked "Arctic Circle" (it seems they have forgotten that Santa is supposed to live at the North Pole, not 1723 km south of it). But the rest of it was just gift shops and things to take photos next to.


Then it was time for our photo op with the big guy himself. This was really bizarre. To get to Santa you have to walk through this thing that could only really be described as a haunted house. I have no idea what they were trying to go for, unless it was "the land of the naughty list," but it was really dark like an underground tunnel, and you had to walk over something that looked like lava, and there were creepy sound effects of gears turning and birds screeching. At one point you have to walk through this home movie style montage of Santa greeting little children and putting presents under trees projected onto a wall of dry ice. Very strange. The entire group of 50 got their picture taken with Santa in one huge shot. Then he told us how he had heard we've been very good this year and he would be coming to visit us in 10 months. He was very nice and spoke a few different languages, but I must say, his beard didn't even come close to looking real. Then they tried to get us to pay €250 for a copy of the picture. Since they try to make money off of you with the photos, they make it forbidden to take pictures inside Santa's house. But I couldn't help sneaking this one on the way out:

This is the Christmas tree you see as you're leaving the "meet Santa" area. Are you kidding me? Is this really the best they could do?

After Santa Land, the bus dropped us off at the train station in Rovaniemi. We still had 3 hours before our train left, so the plan was to leave our luggage in some of the lockers at the train station, and then go explore Rovaniemi. I had to go find change for the locker, and by the time I had gotten my bag in, everyone else had already left.
So I went to explore Rovaniemi on my own, which was fine with me. I really wanted to check out this museum of arctic science and culture called Arktikum, but it turned out to be closed on Mondays. So instead I went to some second hand shops hoping to find some Laplandish items, and generally wandered around the city. I saw the northernmost McDonald's in the world, which was pretty exciting.

The train back to Helsinki left at 6:00. Everyone was really tired, and I spent most of my waking time catching up on homework. At one point we stopped at a station that had freight cars full of wood and lumber. Because of my love for All-Things-Tree, I opened the curtain of the window to look around and take some pictures. All of a sudden I saw a bright green streak cross the sky, then branch out into a few long dancing arms. The Aurora Borealis! People who had gone out on the platform to smoke saw it too, and pretty soon the whole train had erupted with excitement. It only lasted for a minute or two before the clouds closed in again, but what a great way to end the trip!

Lapland 3

Lapland photo album:

Lapland album

This morning I got up before dawn to watch the sun rise. I went up the sight incline to the highest point on the property, but it still wasn't high enough to get a good view. So I climbed one of the Scots pine trees which would have been hard in any condition (tons of whorled branches, none of them wider than a carrot), but was even more challenging with all the snow. However, the view was more than worth it.

After breakfast we took a bus to Pyhä ski resort and National Park. It was really beautiful with tall spruce completely covered with snow as far as you could see.

When we first got there it was also really sunny, which was a pleasant change. Some people went skiing and snowboarding, but I went to the nature center and watched a video presentation about the area and got some information on trails. Then I set off for a gorge with a group of about 20 people, but after some disagreements about the directions, this was reduced to three people.

The amount of snow made it pretty rough going, and it was really windy down at the bottom and began to snow. The lady at the nature center said that she didn't know what kind of condition the trail would be in and she didn't advise going down. And when someone in Finland says something like that, you know they really mean it, and they're not just worried about liabilities. So we didn't go all the way. But it was still quite a trek (which my hip handled beautifully).

After another fire and dinner (reindeer this time) I decided to skip sauna in exchange for another attempt at a night hike. This one was much more successful. Most of the time it was pretty cloudy, but the sky did clear for a while, and I saw something I'm PRETTY sure was the northern lights. It was almost like the sun was just setting in one part of the sky, and there was a slight lightness and an orange/greenish color to it. But it was anything but spectacular.

Lapland 2

Lapland photo album:

Lapland album

The morning started off with breakfast in the restaurant. It was a typical Finnish breakfast with cheese, vegetables, and cold cuts for open face sandwiches, pickled herring, and cereal with yogurt.
 
This day was called our free day. Just like summer camp, we could pick whichever activity we wanted for the morning and afternoon period. I did cross-country skiing and ice fishing. I never realized that my years of marginal skiing in Paulington Va would make me a pretty proficient skier in ideal conditions. I soon got bored with waiting in the traffic jam of skiers and did exactly what they told us not to do and went off on my own. Much better!

Next up was ice fishing. After a quick lesson from the mother, we set off with our rucksack to drill some holes. This took FOREVER.

Then you lower your line until it hits the bottom, pull it up about a foot, and wait. And that's all you do. There's no casting, no moving to a different spot, no trying different lures. You can't even see anything! The only thing you can do is scoop the ice out of your hole with a spoon every now and then.

We soon realized that this would take at least a bottle of wine and a few beers. We lasted about an hour and a half before we got so cold we had to stop. Needless to say, I didn't catch anything. I don't think I'll be in too much of a hurry to try ice fishing again.

After that we sat around the fireplace in the cabin drinking wine, eating chocolate, and knitting. A lovely way to spend Valentine's Day!






Dinner that evening was salmon with potatoes and cheese, green beans, homemade pickles, bread, and salad.

And dessert was a berry crumble kind of thing.

After the now routine sauna and ice swimming, I hung out for a little while in the "party room" of the sauna house, listening to bad pop songs recorded in Finnish and feeling slightly like I was on an episode of The Real World Finland.

Lapland 1

Lapland photo album:

Lapland album

First day in Lapland! I left Helsinki at 10:30 pm on an overnight train to Rovaniemi. We stayed in small sleeping cabins that had three beds each, a tiny sink, and nowhere to put your luggage (I had to share my bed with mine). I slept amazingly well on the train. It was very noisy (not just the steady chug-chug, but really loud rattling and squeaking) and very bumpy, but I liked the motion. It was like falling asleep in a car, but instead of not being able to stretch out your legs and trying to rest your head against the window, you actually get to lay down in a bed. I fell asleep to the white noise of my two Austrian bunkmates talking.

It was strange to fall asleep in one place and then wake up the next morning it a totally different one.
Lapland was snowy, sunny, and uninhabited. We arrived in Rovaniemi around 10:00 am, transfered over to a tour bus, and were taken to the grocery store to get supplies for the rest of the weekend. Then we went back on the bus and out to Korvala where we would be staying.

The place was amazing! It was run by a family who's ancestors had been on the land for centuries. They run a campground in the summer, a restaurant for the guests, cabins, huskies, and they had three cute little kids. First we got an introduction to the place by the mother, then we went to our cabins to unpack. I had some really great roommates: Outi, our "trip leader" who is Finnish, Gwen from Bavaria, Anna from Italy, and Fotini from Greece.
The cabins where so neat! The father had built them all himself, and they had the nicest little fire place and porch and were extremely well isolated (I actually had a really hard time sleeping because I was so hot). I want one.

After we got settled in we went for our "Reindeer driving lesson." There were three reindeer harnessed up to sleighs and we each got a turn "driving" them. It was kind of crazy. Reindeer don't seem to be very trainable, and although they would mostly just run around the loop through the woods on their own, they definitely had little moments of totally freaking out. And the reindeer owner was having us just jump on the sleds and see how fast we could get them to go. But for the most part, it was the equivalent of being pulled by a cow. But I now have an official "Reindeer Driver's License."



The next activity was dog sledding. That was really fun. The family owns about 40 huskies and they were all really sweet and LOVED to run. That one we didn't drive on our own, thank god. I couldn't believe how fast they could go! It was an exhilarating experience. I can see how working with your own dogs and being able to drive (and balance, that seemed like the hardest part) a sled would be incredible. I would like to try it again sometime.



By the time all that was over, I was the coldest I'd been in Finland yet. When we had been at the grocery store at noon it was -24 C, so when the sun started to go down, and the wind picked up, it was REALLY cold. Plus just standing around waiting for your turn at these activities didn't really warm you up much. By the time I went in that evening, I was seriously thinking "how am I going to be able to survive this weekend? I can't handle this!" But I made a fire when I got back (being the only one who knew how to built a fire, I became the official fire maker of our cabin) and before long it was time for dinner. The "restaurant" was an old farmhouse (or whatever it would be called in Lapland) style house/museum, with a long table that held all the food buffet style, and then two candle lit dinning rooms. All the food was made by the father with local ingredients. And it was SO GOOD!

That first night we had: meatballs, lingonberries, mashed potatoes, peas and corn, and salad (with homemade dressing) and bread. And for dessert: berry soup with vanilla cream.

After dinner I went on a little night hike, with the intent of seeing the northern lights. I was discourage by the fact that 1) the "Aurora Forecast" predicted the chance of seeing the lights as "minimal," the family had said that maybe if we were really really lucky we might see them, and 3) Outi, who's family owns a vacation house in Lapland, had only seen them twice in her life, and said even those times, she wasn't really sure if she saw them or not. The night was really clear and I started out by walking across the frozen lake. But this started to freak me out because I kept thinking about all that deep, dark water underneath me. So then I went back onto the ground and into the woods. This was good for awhile, until I realized I had no idea what kinds of ferocious creatures live in the boreal forest, and how it might not be smart to go wandering around in the dark in a place I am unfamiliar with. And then I started thinking about panthers and decided to head back.
I ended the night with a sauna and ice swimming. That's right: swimming in a hole cut in the ice. Not only did I not hate it, I actually loved it so much I went in three times. You just have to wear socks so the skin on you feet doesn't freeze to the ice when you get out.

Keskiviikko (Wednesday)

I really should not be writing this right now, seeing that I have a gigantic lab report due in the morning. But there is nothing like a bit of pending homework to really increase your productivity in every other aspect of life! 

As I write this I am eating an incredibly Scandinavian snack:

Caviar paste, hardboiled eggs, and butter on rye crisp bread

It's SO good!

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Lapland for 5 days! Overnight train in a sleeping car to Rovaniemi, the official home of Santa Claus. It's just like the Polar Express! I'm going on a trip that's organized through the international department at school. I usually hate group trips, but this was a really, really good deal. Plus, it seems like it will be fun. We're staying in cabins and have free use of snowshoes, skis, ice fishing equipment, and saunas (now that I love saunas and all). And we get to go dog sledding, reindeer sledding, meet Santa Claus, and ice swimming above the arctic circle! And although the aurora borealis forecast is "low," I am bond and determined to see some northern lights!

The day that I get back is Shrove Tuesday which is a huge holiday in Finland, and then the next day I got some free ferry tickets to go to Estonia for the day. Fun times!

Look at the cute little snowplow out my window:

I was walking home from the bus tonight (dark, about 2 degrees Fahrenheit), when I saw (and heard) the last thing in the world you would expect to see in those conditions: An ice cream truck! And it was just like your ordinary ice cream truck too. It was driving all over the neighborhood, playing loud annoying music up and down the street. It was so bizarre. Granted, I didn't see anyone coming out to buy any ice cream.

Random fact about Finland: It's the law (although about as strictly enforced as jaywalking) that as a pedestrian you have to have a reflector attached to you. These are the guidelines on the back of the package:

"Attach reflector knee-height on the right side of your body. The reflector must hang freely and be seen from back and front. Change a badly scratched or damaged reflector to a new one. Reflector must be used in the dark - also in built-up areas."

And here is the picture they have. Notice how not one of these people are wearing their reflectors in the proper way:

Here is the one on my backpack:

And on my jackets (hanging freely at knee-height on the right side):

Okay! Time to knock out a lab report, sleep, and head up to the arctic circle tomorrow!

Maanantai (Monday)

This is what I made at school today:

In case it's not readily apparent, that's a process based growth model using the McMurtrie and Wolf equation showing carbon allocation between fine roots, stem, and foliage within a forest stand as a function of time.

I also learned today that we've been eating in the "uncool" cafeteria up until now. Apparently, all the other forestry students eat in a certain cafeteria. I'm glad I found this out while there is still time. Hopefully I didn't ruin my chances of being one of the cool kids.

I had my first Finnish sauna today! Finland loves its saunas. There are over 2 million; an average of one per household. I didn't enjoy it too much at the time. It was REALLY hot - 200 degrees Fahrenheit!  I made the mistake of leaving my earrings in and they started to burn my ears. And I got really bored and didn't have anything to distract me from thinking about how hot I was. But, after I got out and stood under a cold shower for a while, I felt AMAZING. And even now, 4 hours later, I don't think I've ever been so aware of my body feeling relaxed. It was that good.

Now for some random Finland pictures that didn't fit in anywhere else.

Hauling away the snow:

I was really hoping the word on the top of this advertisement was the Finnish version of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (which, now that I think about it, would have to be at least 200 letters long to even seem like a long word in Finnish). But I translated it, and it just means favorite.

At least this word is recognizable:

The beautiful stem of a Norway spruce:

What happens when you go off the trail to take a picture of a tree:

A cheerful construction barrior:

Feb 6th

This morning began with a traditional Finnish breakfast: Rosehip and boysenberry soup, leipäjuusto (bread cheese), and rye bread with butter.

Once I was fortified, I went exploring. I started out in my neighborhood of Koskela (blue bubble):


View Koskela in a larger map

This is what all the streets that have been "cleared" look like:

And some houses in the area:

I had heard about a "mountain" near my flat where you could see the whole city. I think I would call it more of a good sledding hill. There was some old fort type thing on the top, which was cool. And some people having a picnic, which looked cold:

It would probably be a really good view if it wasn't so dark and cloudy out all the time. I could even see the water tower (hydropillar) that I love so much! It's kind of hard to make out in the picture (okay, impossible), but believe me, it's there:

I bet this will be a nice place to sit and watch the sun set over the ocean (when it's not covered with snow, and  when there is actually a sun you can see to set):

A nice cross-country ski trail:

I think the White Witch had been here:

Next I went into the city to the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, home of the 1952 Summer Olympics (originally built for the 1940 Olympics, but that one was canceled because of WWII). The stadium tower is one of the tallest buildings in Helsinki (240 ft) and you can go up it for only 2€.

This was a rather strange experience; I paid the guy at the door, and he pointed me down a hallway to an elevator and told me to take it to the eleventh floor. It looked like a service elevator and it let me off at a little cement staircase that lead to fire escape style stairs that lead to the roof. There was definitely NO ONE else around.

I totally pictured myself getting locked up there and not being found for days. But luckily, that didn't happen.

The Finnair stadium, and some kids playing soccer on mysteriously snow free grass:

 
Can you spot the hydropillar in this one?

Well, I made it safely back down to the ground, but I can't actually say the ground is that safe around here.
This is the treacherous sidewalk: A solid layer of ice with just enough snow on top to completely fill in the tread of your boots and make them nice and slick.

 

Going up these stairs required the exact same technique as walking up a slide:

Next I went to the amazing (and amazingly free) Winter Garden (Talvipuutarhaanin in Finnish, and Vinter Trädgård in good ol' Swedish).

It was built as a public conservatory over 100 years ago, and it still contains some of the original plants. It was small, but this gave it a very intimate feel. Like if you went there often enough you could actually get to know all the plants.

 

One wing was all succulents:

This jade plant was over 100 years old:

And the other wing was more tropical:

 

I'm going to try to go there regularly.

Next I went searching for Sibelius Park to see the monument dedicated to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. It was spectacular. I can now say I have a favorite sculpture.

I suggest listening to his Valse Triste as you continue through the rest of the pictures. I guarantee it will improve your day.

At this point it was time to warm up again, so I went back into the city center to get some coffee. All the trees in Esplanadi Park have lights painstakingly wrapped around each branch:

I went into a cafe in the park:

I got coffee and a pulla bun, which is so far my favorite Finnish pastry. It's a sweet yeast bun with big chunks of cardamom seeds mixed into the dough, and a lump of something in the middle that tastes exactly like the "cream together the butter and sugar" part of cookie dough. And since I started this post with a picture of food, I might as well end with one too.  :)