Spring in the air

Waking up this morning I was surprised to see that the flag was hoisted outside my window and I began to wonder what the reason for the flagging was.

To my awe I found out it was not printed in neither one of my calendars, and I do have two printed Finnish calendars, so turning to the news made me wiser. Today is an optional flagging day, that means it is only recommended to flag and not compulsory, and this was to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the ending of the winter war. I still get a bit confused about all the endings of wars as the way of counting is not the same as in the rest of Europe, just the one second World War. Here in Finland there is the Winter War and the continuing or Sequel War and in both of them the Finns fought against the Russians in the east.<

The weather has been absolutely fantastic, the sun has been shining a lot lately and lots of the piled up snow has melted away. Today, despite it being Saturday, lots of the snow, was gathered off the streets by the city workers and transported elsewhere making it easier to get around walking. It is always cheerful to see the black asphalt come to day from below the snow in the beginning of spring and hear the birds twitter in the trees even with the eventual set backs of snow falling.

Finally it really feels like spring again!

Happy meal

The President held a dinner on Tuesday for the diplomatic corps at the residency or “the Castle” as it is called here in Finland and at the dinner there was served a soup of wild asparagus, how wild can an asparagus get? And quails with morils.

Who knows that morils actually are poisonous and if they are not prepared correctly you can actually die eating them?

Anyway, dyed morils are commonly used as a cheaper substitute for truffles in food and a couple of years ago natural truffles was found growing in the ground here in Finland. And if I do not recall it incorrectly, the truffle specie found was one of the most expensive and rarest one, black truffles, and now there is research done to investigate if growing truffles would be possible in Finland in a larger scale.

According to recently published research the Finns are the second happiest people in Europe only second to the Danish.

So are the Finns happier only because they never know when they are going to die, if the chef does not know he, or she, is doing?

I guess it was a happy meal at the residency, as there has been no reports of dying diplomats, and the chefs were real professionals and knew what they did.

Double wages

Imagine, today it is the 50^th anniversary of the European Union and celebrations will be held tonight in the German capital Berlin, as Germany is presiding the EU as chairman until end of June. According to the latest Gallup’s done in Finland, only 25% of the population want the EU to have more say in their affairs and the same trend seems to be the same in most of the 27 member countries.

Anyway, here in Finland the elections are still not done, discussion about what went wrong? Who is to form a coalition government with who seem to go on and on, and endlessly written about and broadcasted in the Media.

One thing is sure though, the members of the Finnish parliament who also have seats in their home city councils at the same time, they have done well. Two well paid jobs and only half done job possible as you can not be in two places at the same time. And does this apply to the EU as well? Is it possible to hold two jobs, one in the home country’s parliament or government and hold one job in the EU council as well, get double wages even though you can not be in two places at the same time? No wonder nothing gets done and we get no value for what we are paying.

Happy 60th Birthday Mr Bowie!

Wow, imagine, today David Bowie is turning 60 years old.

I have been a great fan of Bowie for so long now, and I sure hope he will continue to make as good music for a long, long time. And I still am not sure which of his albums is my favourite, but I sure find some of his music to fit my of my moods.

I really wonder where I would be today, if not for his music?!?

Well, if you’d ask my off-spring, they probably would tell you I would be even more bonkers than I am, and my husband would probably think the same but wisely enough not say it out loud.

89th anniversary

Finnish independence of 89 years was celebrated yesterday.

MTV Finland has been around for about a year, and this Independence Day the 6th of December they had Finland versus Occupants, which means what?!?

As far as I know Finland never has been occupied by anyone, it belonged to Sweden for several hundred years, then was lost to the Russians in 1809 and was an autonomic, self-governed part of the Russian empire to become independent in 1917.

So anyway, who occupied Finland or which country did Finland occupy? As the songs played on this list were Finnish, Swedish, German and Russian.

The annual Independence Day festivities always culminate later in the evening in the reception at the President’s residency, The Castle, as it is more commonly called. This year the Eurovision song-contest winners the hard-rock band Lordi was invited to it. Well, no masked monsters in row to be seen to shake hands in TV with the President, so guess they were not able to attend. Anyway, this is the time when you get together to comment on people’s clothes as it the reception is broadcasted on TV. And the tastes vary very much from side to side.

Finnish Parliament Centennial celebrations

The Finnish Parliament celebrated its’ centennial yesterday. Finland was the first country in the world to give both women and men equal right to vote for their representatives to the Parliament a hundred years ago. Yesterday the television was full of broadcasts of the celebrations. We were shown the Celebration session from the House of Parliament, the celebrations at the Opera and the festive buffet afterwards.

In the very first Finnish Parliament there were 19 women, how is that for equality between the sexes?!?

There is a female President in Finland, and she was re-elected in the last Presidential elections, and there are now 76 women in the Parliament.

And quite a progressive Parliament one century ago it indeed was, taken in concern that Finland by then was governed as an autonome part of the Russian Empire, to declare its’ independence at the time of the Russian Revolution in December 1917. Before that Finland was a part of the Swedish Kingdom for several hundreds of years until the war against Russia in 1809.

Now with almost a century of independence, I think the freedom has taken a few steps back since the Sufragettes straining for the right to vote with joining the EU. EU is growing too rapidly and has become too big a machinery to be a quick enough to keep up with the pace of modern life with all legislations and regulations to be carried out. Only good thing I have seen so far is when travelling abroad and not having to change the money into new currencies all the time.

Anyway, great turbulence was yesterday stirred up by one of the female members of Parliament by addressing her speech against the regressive politics in Russia and claiming that the Russian Duma has regressed back to the days of the Emperor. No reaction has yet been seen from the Russians but I expect it will come soon.

And maybe Lordi for President would not be such a bad idea after all?!?