How to bathe or not to?

Friday, was a Friday the 13^th, I was trying to blog but had computer trouble all day, and as a matter of fact almost the whole weekend went to getting it working again. I really don’t know what was a miss, but that is life from time to time, so here I am now, pretending this is last Friday, and blogging about the things that I was on about.

The Sauna world championship was held for the 12^th time in Heinola during the first weekend of August. The competition ended in tragic, both finalists crashed in the sauna and were rushed into hospital, one of the seriously injured, the other one dying.

The city of Heinola announced on its’ website that this will be the end of the Sauna World Championships, but just days after the statement a known Finnish merchant announced his intentions to arrange it next year. From the beginning the police did not suspect any foul play, but now they are investigating the case closer.

I like it steaming hot, the sauna I mean, but I stay only for short periods of time, go out for a while, cool down having a cool drink followed by a dip in the lake, or a roll in the snow during the winter, when given the occasion. Even with hot temps, my time spent in the sauna is never long but still, for me it is a place to relax so I think it is a stupid thing to compete about. I know people who spend hours and hours in the sauna, but then the temperature must be quite modest, for one to endure. Actually, I have noticed that spending time in the sauna on a hot summer day makes you think the hot weather is cooler than it really is when you come out. Sounds strange, but it really works!

Anyway, the kindergarten next door opened after the summer vacations, the kids outdoors blocked the noise so I did not even notice the first sign of fall, the swallows disappearing all of a sudden. The swallows moved despite the fact that we still had hot weather here in southern Finland during the weekend. I still wonder about what makes them disappear and re-appear every year.

I am back!

Dear readers, after along looong silence, I am back.

Having been ill since end of March and having major surgery with it the following convalescence, I have not been much around, just trying to cope with every day life for a long time.

Then the heat wave in July mustered the rest of life out of me, and I was trying to cope with accelerating risk of dehydration. My main job seemed to be to intake as much fluid as possible, and trying to vary the flavours not to get bored drinking. And I assure you, this was just non-alcoholic beverages.

On top of it having had a hacked e-mail account forced me to change my e-mail address, thus forgetting to change it on Blogspot, I never knew about all the nice comments posted in my Blog until now when checking up on it the other day.

Thank you dear readers, you have made my day full of sunshine! As though we have not had plenty of it lately…

This summer has been exceptionally warm, the heat record of all times in Finland was broken several times, the current now being +37, 2 degrees Celsius!

Every over cast day was a celebration, as it doesn’t feel as hot as the same temperature in the sunshine. Only one day in July the temperature went below +20 degrees here in southern Finland, and the warm weather of around 25 degrees we currently are having seems like cold, especially when it is accompanied with some rain.

So now with the weather improving, that is to cool down, and here I am merely subjective, I might get some brilliant ideas to blog about.

No blueberry-pie

Finally the summer vacations are over and done with, off-spring is back to school and I am able to get down to normal business!

This summer was more hectic than ever and all plans got turned up-side down countless times and therefore the lack posts in my blog these past three months. The summer has been quite unusual in many aspects as the weather has changed between heat wave in early summer and cold periods so there has been no blueberry pie this year as previous years. The blueberry blossomed at the time of unusual night frosts so hardly any blueberries at all are to be found in the neighbouring woods. Also the chanterelles are later than usual and today for the first time dear spouse of mine has gone to see if there is any to pick, so if we’re lucky we will have some for dinner tonight.

At least there is some hope for mushrooms as lately the rain has been pouring down intermittently.

End of arctic night

Today the sun was above the horizon for the first time since November in Utsjoki, the northern most city in Finland.

The sun was up for almost an hour breaking the arctic winter night that had been going on there for over two months time. The length of the day in southern Finland is just a little bit short of 7 hours getting longer all the time as the spring is returning but with this murky weather it does not seem like spring is closing in on us. The wet weather just seeps all the light into itself making the countryside look blurred and grey, not the time for any walks with the camera either as some wet snow also has been falling from the sky.

Hot cocoa could have done the trick, making me not feel as blue as I do, but sometimes you just get too blue to remember even the most basic things, hot cocoa. Chocolate is good for you when you are feeling low.

A sauna is not a bad thing either so I guess I will be heating it up a bit later in order to get this cold out of my system.

Optional food

The day was again spent on an expedition out in the woods picking mushrooms, this time baskets full of Suppilovahvero, Cantharellus tubiformis, a kind of tube formed chanterelle that is brown on top and yellow underneath like the ordinary chanterelle.

The catch was big even though the season for them mushrooms is not quite yet with the recent warmer than usual weather, so I expect to be going out again later on when the weather has cooled down a bit, just before the winter hits with snow is normally the best time as night frosts do no harm to this species.

We also found surprisingly many ordinary Chanterelles, Cantharellus cibarius, which is quite unusual for this time of the year, but that must be due to the lack of night frost. As the day’s catch was fairly big dear spouse of mine had the good idea of going for a second walk into the woods looking for a third species of Chanterelles, the black tube form chanterelle, Cratellus cornucopoides, but fortunately he found none as he would once again have overdone it. We already, that means me, had loads of mushrooms to clean, some for drying which is where the sauna comes in handy, and the rest to cook with a portion to be indigested right away at dinner time and the rest to be stored in the freezer for future culinary experiences. Just after having put the rest of the tube formed Chanterelles away I read a recipe for mushroom pie I feel an obligation to try so I am looking forward to the next trip to the woods.

Surprisingly many elk flies were still around, but as I now know they do no harm to humans, they are easier to deal with than on our last mushroom expedition when I had not yet googled it.

It is strange how the offspring whom used to be so fond of food in their childhood and now with having grown up and heard the opinions and theories of their friends’ opinions on certain foods, their taste has deteriorated. Some foods that used to be considered as happily savoured are now turned down. Like blue mould cheese, Stilton, Roquefort and Gorgonzola for instance used to be a favourite and now it is over the line detested.

At some point I had to keep in mind a list of fish, that were concerned as “white fish” and there for edible, the same went with mushrooms, some were digestible and others were disgusting, and still very much remains so they are the food optionals, the ones we could do without according to the offspring that is. One thing though that has strangely enough not changed over the years is that broccoli is edible and that is rare, most children hate their veggies and especially broccoli. At one point the offspring even planned to build a house inside a huge broccoli to live in when older, and a second one made out of a huge tomato. Must have been some odd advertisement seen at the time.

Anyway, our palate change over the time and I am not anymore fond of the same things as I earlier used to be, learning new foods is an exciting part of life, at least of mine that is. And here in Finland I never cease to find surprisingly new and innovative ways to cook food.

Three months vacation

Yesterday the Finnish Parliament met for its first autumn session after a summer break of nearly three months that is even a longer vacation than the school kids get every year. Quite a long vacation I gather so I really hope they all are well rested by now and ready for some action and have lots of improvements and changes in store for all of us living in here Finland. I guess we all could do with a three month vacation a year.

The Finnish ice-hockey championships also began yesterday for this season with a match between HIFK and HPK with a 3-2 win to HIFK. I don’t even know for sure whether the championships are held annually but I guess so as there always seems to be some hockey game broadcasted instead of one or other of my accustomed TV shows. I wonder how long vacations the ice-hockey players get?

Being totally ignorant in sports, except my newly discovered interest in the fun art of swamp football, or swamp soccer as it also is called, I got curious and checked out both hockey teams’ homepages.

And surprise, surprise, only one team told what their real name is on their pages, what their abbreviation stands for. I still don’t know what HIFK means, but from the advertisements on their pages I guess they come from Helsinki which means that the H stands for Helsinki but what the rest is I have no idea if it is in Finnish. If the IFK is in English I do know it. HPK actually told their name on their homepages, Hämeenlinnan Pallokerho so there I am wiser today than I was yesterday.

One thing that bothers me over and over again here in Finland is this corner-patriotism that exists, that everybody is expected to be aware of certain things like where cities, places, businesses and shops are. In advertising their products the Finns leave out mentioning the address of their business and their phone numbers as everybody is to be aware of who and where they are and the advertising doesn’t really change from one media to another, it’s the same missing info in the papers, TV and radio. At least one can always google things but that takes time and effort and I bet they loose a lot of business through that and not all companies have as yet bothered to get their own homepages with more info than just the address and phone number and me being curious I would like to know more.

The creeps

Yesterday was spent on an ex tempore mushroom picking trip into the woods. The picking was quite fun as there were so many different species for gathering and the challenge was to keep them separate as they need to be prepared in differing ways. Some to be cooked in salted water, some to be fried separately according t species and some to be dried in the sauna. As we do have a sauna I use it for drying mushrooms and some herbs as it is a space readily available and mostly empty unless when heated up for having a bath and it was not Saturday yesterday which is the traditional day for having a sauna.

Our trip was great fun and I got some smashing photos of the mushrooms collected, some berries and other stuff growing in the wilderness and the collectors picking mushrooms as well. The day was spent in splendid sunshine with none of promised rain showers in sight although it has cooled down a bit from previous days.

There was one thing that really did annoy me in the woods, I mean spiders there are anywhere so them I just have to cope with but this nuisance is fairly new here in Finland, the elk fly. Much has been told about them in the media and they most certainly have arrived from the east and have now spread all the way to the Åland archipelago but I had not quite understood what they were about until googling them after arriving home yesterday. The elk fly is a species of flies that suck only the blood of elks and lay their eggs into the hide of the elks, although some stories have been told about them possibly also be interested in reindeers as well, but this I have not got confirmed as yet.

I thought they did bite humans as well sucking our blood and was weary about having them crawling around on my person. The elk fly land on elks or in this case humans and, loose their wings and begin to crawl around to find a place to suck blood and lay their eggs. They are quite flexible even though they have a hard shell like most insects, and they are almost impossible to squish to death, they just keep on crawling on you over and over again after you think that you surely by now have killed them.

After yesterday having googled the elk fly I found out that they hardly ever bite humans and are in no way harmless to us unless you happened to be allergic to them and they accidentally bite you. I really do no understand why people buy special hats to avoid the elk fly bites as they do not bite and why there would need to be an elk fly repellent. What’s the point of having a repellent if it does no harm to you?

As it happens, the elk fly is a master of hiding and still hours after quitting the woods we still found some crawling around in our clothes and hair back at home even though we thoroughly went through all our clothes when leaving. It still gives me the creeps just thinking about an elk fly crawling around on me!

I am quite with the Internet; having the information needed, freely available ready at hand when needed; now there are just annoying mosquitoes, elk flies, spiders and ticks to mind when out in the woods just annoying but nothing dangerous. Well one occasional and nowadays quite rare poisonous viper. You hardly ever come across anyway as they tend to avoid us humans, we just accidentally step onto their territory or on top of them in the worst case.

Anyway, I am quite pleased with yesterday’s catch of mushroom now we are stocked up with most mushrooms we are able to eat in one year. Maybe we should do one more trip as you never know if there next year will be any mushrooms, as some years have been exceptionally dry summers, like last year.

One thing right

A new study that has followed children since the 1980’s a third of all juvenile crimes are committed by adolescents that are either bullied themselves or bully their school mates. The research also suggests these same children also have had a troublesome childhood in addition to be bullying and it is suggested that these troubled adolescents should be helped before their problems grow too big.

Most citizens nowadays have their own mobile phones here in Finland and the stationary telephones are getting more expensive all the time and as we have not been using ours we just cancelled ours. The problem is now that the phone company promised to disconnect our number on July 30^th and it still is working today!

So if we now were moving, were we now to pay the phone bill for the next owners?!? I know it is summer but I think there is no excuse for such misconduct, an agreement ends on the date you have agreed upon and not when it is more convenient for the second part to end it and as it is today more a matter of computer programming than to actually disconnect the cables by hand, it should have been easy enough to have been done on the agreed date.

School begins already today in some parts of Finland and for some tomorrow as most do not begin their studies until next week and the offspring is off to the beach to celebrate this as they do not begin until next week. The weather is smashing, still to might turn out a bit too warm to spend all day in the sun but fortunately the water bottles have been early planted into the mind, no beach if no water brought with from home. Suntan lotion is another thing that I have always been reminding about and now has begun to show. Suntan lotion was already packed when mummy asked about it! So I guess this must be the other thing I have got right.

Speeding

There are several ongoing sports events in southern Finland, the Kalevan kisat which is the annual Finnish sport championships, a trotting event and the Finnish Neste Oil rally world championship race causing problems in the traffic as people are getting to and from the different locations. The strangest thing is that always when it is the time for the Finnish Neste Oil race more people than the average day get caught speeding.

And to tell you the truth jokes have been made already for years that there is a Mika Häkkinen, or Marcus Grönholm for that matter, living in every single Finnish man and this seems to be one of the times he steps out and takes control of the driving.

So far this weekend, and the race is still not over which probably means more are to speed today, at least 200 drivers got caught getting tickets for speeding with dozens of drivers having their licenses confiscated for having driven almost 100 kms more than the allowed speed limit on 100 kms.

The rally has also given the environmentalist something to do as yesterday demonstrators barricaded a street in the city of Jyväskylä to protest against the ongoing rally, even though the race itself was not even near the city at the time.

Now is also the beginning of the high season of mushroom picking and quite a lot of mushrooms exported to Italy as the Italians are very fond of their Porcini mushrooms, as I think they are called, and truck loads of them are actually picked in Finland and shipped to Italy to be sold and eaten there. So husband already went off to see about the Chanterelles so I probably have some mushroom cleaning to do later in the afternoon. And by the look in the woods yesterday when walking aournd the lake I want to get out and get some of these Porcinis as they are also delicious but for the time being our car is staying put parked.

TV diet

I was surprised to find out that there were about 2000 cases of malaria during the years 1941-1945 in Finland during the II world war when the summers were extremely warm. Most of the malaria cases appeared on the Carelian peninsula which then was a part of Finland. Wow, with the summer heating up more and more every year we might be getting malaria back, together with other so far unusual diseases here in the Nordic countries.

Strange how many ads on the TV are for either something edible or potable which makes it hard to try to diet. Have you ever been on a diet and all the ads seem to be just what you are craving badly in that instant?!? Junk food, ice-cream, sweets and candy, frozen pizzas ready to heat up in the microwave, crisps, cookies, cider and beer, crisps…and it just goes on and on until you just give in and empty the fridge of all its’ content. Or completely surrender to your cravings by you getting into your car to drive to the nearest drive-thru to eat loads of junk food. Watching TV is no good when on a diet! I better get on with fixing breakfast now, before it is too late and I am off in my car.

The wrong time

Summer savings time was introduced in 1981 in Finland to “save electricity”; well the cows still had to be milked when they feel it is their time so I wonder where it was useful, if at all, to change the time. The only thing I have noticed about changing the clocks is that it takes about a week for your body to adjust to the new earlier time when changing the clock to an hour earlier, and adjusting into having changed the time one hour later is much easier, even though it is more depressing to suddenly find out that it is darker than it used to.

I just found out the Finnish winter time is not the correct time either. When it is noon, 12 am here in the summer the correct time is about 13.30 am, so the Finns have been thinking about changing their time to the CET that is the European Central Time, as it would be nearer the “real” Finnish time. So then the rest of Europe is on the wrong time too!

Anyway, Madonna has been around now for decades and still is going strong. Now she is once again featuring in an ad for H&M, and this time even has designed some items for them. And a lot of the world famous artists have been touring in little Finland lately. This summer is going to be full again with the usual, annual various festivals and also big rock concerts. Aerosmith is coming again; Iron Maiden just was here, as well as Uriah Heep, (who even remembers them anymore?) George Michael comes this summer and so does Black Sabbath and David Bowie were here a couple of years ago. And not too many years ago no big artist had ever been touring in Finland before, the nearest was Sweden or Denmark.

Wonder why? And has Madonna been here yet?

More fishing

About 4000 people in Finland are retired early because of depression and most of them live in the northern parts of the country. And no wonder in this, as the winter up north goes on for months without the sun rising above the horizon, which I would get depressed about. In the same way as it does not set at all for months in the summer, living up there I would not be able to sleep at all. No wonder people get depressed, not having a normal routine of day with darkness to sleep and sunshine to wake up to. Gets all your daily routines mixed up.

Well, at least they can still fish on the ice up north; guess there will be no greater risk on the lakes there yet. This over-enthusiastic friend of my spouse’s that wants to go fishing next weekend to finish off the season, I just heard that he even bought himself a new set of winter underwear to use. According to the weather forecast it will not be as warm during the weekend as it has been earlier this week, but I guess he will not need his underwear with 10 degrees either.

Unless he is planning to go swimming, wearing his new, warm underwear?!?

Thank God there still is time for his wife to think some good excuse for him to have to go fishing, some family dinner or something, as you can not plan fishing looking at the dates, weather has to be taken into concern as well.

Just hope he doesn't come down with a major depression about this!

Spring is here!

Amazing, this thing with the changes of the year. Today is the spring equinox and the night is as long as the day, and tomorrow the days will already be longer than the nights. Which means this is spring, no matter what the weather says!

And we are now closer to summer than before, it feels just like yesterday it was nearing Christmas with the nights just getting longer and darker, and the light is returning. I am glad I do not live in the region with daylight around the clock; I need some darkness to be able to sleep. I have been up there, where the sun never sets in the summer and I did not get too much sleep, and all the mosquitoes biting you when fishing in the sunset that goes on for hours, and the itching after their bites that does not end, not even when you scratch yourself until you bleed…

Anyway, on Sunday we are changing our clocks to summer savings time here in Finland, which normally means that everybody has an excuse to be late. Twice a year it works and you are sort of “allowed to be late”, the two days when the time is changed one hour forward, like on Sunday and in the autumn when it is changed back to “normal” or winter time again. That day you can sleep an extra hour, sad it always is on a Sunday. So I always avoid having anything on these days as much as possible, as it always goes wrong in one way or another.

Hottest summer ever?

The weather has been extremely hot lately here in Finland. Every day on the they say the summer has been drier than ever adding the time up for three decades, 37 years, 40 years and now soon a drier summer than ever since they have kept records of it. Some areas even have restrictions on usage of water and forest fires have been a pestilence this year with smoke drifting around in the air. So this year’s bar season has been a huge success! Everybody has been sitting sipping on a nice cool drink on some outdoor terrace as often as possible…

Finally there now is promise of some rain after this coming weekend.
So maybe this is the end of the summer season?

Poor Midsummer poetry

The Midsummer was celebrated during this weekend.
Most businesses like banks, shops and restaurants closed for the weekend by mid-Friday, and even the public transports were standing still until Midsummer Day’s afternoon when they traffic like it is Sunday. No shops are open until Sunday after the holidays. Many tourists wondered about the phenomenon visiting Helsinki during the weekend as most Finns had deserted the capital.

So what do the Finns do for their Midsummer celebration then?

No matter if you go to camping, boating or to your lodge, you just have to vanished somewhere out of town, outdoors into the great wilderness to enjoy the summer’s biggest festivity. At least the weather Gods were favourable and for first time in years the Midsummer festivities were celebrated in a warm, sunny weather in most parts of Finland.

Well, of course good food and drink are always a must, beer, pickled herring, fresh potatoes, barbequeing, fresh strawberries and then you are ready for some more serious celebrations.

The Midsummer bonfire. An old pagan custom that has survived into the modern day-living here in Finland.

The Midsummer bonfire is traditionally lit in the evening, preferably near the lakeside, in the never setting sunset to celebrate the season of light and also fertility. Midsummer night is also the night for the youngsters to pick seven flowers to keep under their pillows to dream about their future spouse…Whether this really works I do not know.

But in many places dances are also kept in the vicinity of the bonfires so you can enjoy the festivities even more to your own suiting, either join the dancers or just watch them go…collect your own flowers and sweet dreams.
Anyway, remarkably many babies are born in the month of March.

“A young maiden dancing with flowers in her hair,
with the handsome and rich young heir,
a Midsummer bonfire lit in the near,
March a new-born child will bear…”

I was never any good at writing poetry anyway...

The heat is on!

The celebrations of the annual graduations and schools finishing their work for the summer took place in hardly summery weather in beginning of June, and now the happy youngsters are granted sunny and hot weather up to round 30 degrees C. The Government are planning to establish a special office for warning of exceptionally hot weather. I wonder what good that will do?!?

I mean talking about heat-wave warnings, maybe a good idea but what good will it do in this country, where they hold the hottest world-championship competition in the world?!?

Can you already guess what I am talking about here?
Of course not.

Imagine, sauna, hot-hot-hot. Summer heat-wave hot-hot-hot.
And then you combine them together and there you go!

The World championships in sauna-bathing!

There actually is an annual World championship competition in sauna-bathing. It takes place here in Finland, of course, and takes place in the summer, of course. This year they are holding the 8th world-championships in beginning of august. I mean, this is taking things to the extremes again, sitting as long as possible in a very hot sauna in the summer…people are completely steaming hot and red when they come out!

Okay, here’s the funny part, it is actually not as stupid as it sounds, well maybe sitting for hours in the sauna to see who sits longest and stands most heat is, but having a steaming hot sauna-bath when it is hot is not such a stupid idea after all. I mean, you are in hotter air in the sauna than outside, so you feel like it is cooler when coming out of the sauna because of the heat you were in!
Same thing as having hot drinks in the sun actually makes you feel cooler, instead of drinking something icy cold and feeling even more hot and awkward afterwards.

So hey, the heat is on. We go sauna-bathing…You should try it too!