New Year with a bang

In time for the New Year's celebrations the law concerning firecrackers and fireworks here in Finland was revised, well actually slimmed down.

Earlier you could bang your works and crackers (and excuse me if anyone got the wrong idea, this was absolutely not intentional) from 6 PM all night long until 6 AM the next morning. This New Year's Eve it was only from 6 PM until 2 in the morning. Selling fireworks is also from now on prohibited for under 18 years old and minors are not to handle them and wearing safety goggles are compulsory to wear when lighting the works.

With these new rules in work I was very much interested in seeing how the festivities actually would take place in practice.

On the day itself I woke up at 2.30 AM in the morning of two loud bangs in the yard, so the hours allowed did not work out as they should have. In the evening at midnight the neighbours muted their loud festive music in turn moving out onto their balconies to advise their minors lighting the fireworks. None I saw wearing any goggles, not even the adults safely on their balconies risking the limbs and eyes of their offspring.

The lights in the yard went out for several hours as someone hit the light switch with a firecracker or something, and the pub across the street had their own fireworks worth to see. Men standing on their knees in the freezing snow without any goggles, they shot them off. Some up into the night sky but most of them along on the street, that is in the end once they got them lit, which seemed oddly hard a thing to achieve.

Anyway, about 4 AM on New Years Day morning the glass of the front door downstairs was kicked in as someone who apparently did not live in this building wanted to get in, into the wrong house, as they had lost their keys. At least that is what the shouting downstairs was about.

The result of the festivities is full of strange stories, an acquintance of a friend of mine celebrated in high heel shoes, out in severe sub zero temperatures a night out in town and was hospitalized with frozen toes with an amputation of several toes as a result...the offspring of a friend spending the night in jail..and a couple of friends found themselves in another city their were supposed to be spending the night in.

So ladies, beware of your vanity, use sensible shoes when it is freezing out! And carry indoors shoes with you instead of risking your feet and toes.

New flagging day

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius was born on the 8th December in 1865, and from the year 2011 this will be a national flagging day to commemorate his birth.

Sibelius composed many music pieces inspired by the Finnish national epic Kalevala, as many of the artist of his time. His most famous work is Finlandia which by many Finns is considered to be the real Finnish anthem. Finlandia was apparently from the beginning called "Finland awakens" and strangely enough, it seems to even have been the national anthem of some African nation for some time in the late 1960's, or so I have heard.

Well so the celebrations of the Independence Day are over and done with, the TV repeatedly runs clips of the reception and media still relishes on who did what, and wore what yesterday, the same annual discussion and procedure as every year.

Surreal awakening

I woke up this morning dreaming of an acquaintance of mine that had been murdered and was being sawed and severed into bits and pieces for better disposal of the carcass. No hold on; do not analyze this dream as yet as there is a perfectly sane explanation to it I’m just about getting to it.

The thing is that I really woke up to the sounds of sawing, serious sawing went on in some neighbour’s apartment early in the morning and now thinking about it, it must’ve been someone getting rid of their Xmas tree, sawing it to bits in order to get it out in more reasonably easy. As for the part about my murdered acquaintance, it is also simple, as such one exists, a woman I knew years ago, though not very closely, was actually murdered and dismembered. The case in question was quite sensational and made the papers, at least in northern Europe. The offspring knew her better as she used to occasionally babysit, though probably they have no what so ever recollection of it today.

Anyway, having had this dream with real sawing sound effects looking out the window really got me hair standing. Since we moved here the view out of the bedroom window has always looked the same but today I wondered what UFO, or in the next moment of drunken sleepiness what a car had its’ headlights straight on the huge old fir trees outside. Only realize that this was the first time in over a month with an overcast sky I have seen the blue sky and the sun is shining.

Xmas always brings back memories of our childhood in a nice, comforting way as well as in a not so nice way, as in bad memories. For me Xmas always has been a lot about food, and having periodically had tendencies for compulsory overeating, not as in bulimia and throwing it up, but eating more than enough and getting over stuffed, I have after years of work got my eating in order. I eat when I’m hungry, and don’t over do it anymore, only Xmas seems to bring me back a compulsory urge to over eat. But as the delicacies I prepare for the season only gets served in this household once a year, I guess you have to make best use of them, and this morning’s surreal moment when waking up seems to be an effect of eating more than supposed to in addition to the offspring keeping me awake until the early hours of morning, resulting in way too few hours of sleep. And according to the Norse tradition, you were supposed to stuff yourself at midwinter time in order to preserve the good fortune for the year to follow suite.

Still the fir trees are a funny shade I am not used to, as in their normal colour, but I guess I can live with a little sunshine for a change. And yes, this Christmas was a white Christmas!

Missing addresses

Today is the last day to send off the Xmas cards with the postage of 60 cents per card, if you want to have them delivered in time before the holidays.

The cards will still be delivered in time before Xmas if you send them later, but then you have to spend 90 cents on each card instead.

As many people want to send their Xmas cards off today, it has been the busiest day of the year of the phone companies with numerous phonecalls about missing addresses as stating the wrong address on the card will definitively delay it, if not even make it go entirely missing.

And Finns do move houses quite a lot according to recently published statistics, Finns move 13 times in their life time.

Having just recently moved house myself it got me thinking as I have been through my fair share of moving houses. 18 times already to this day, most of them when still in school and living at home, and only 8 of them after having left the nest.

Anyway, the most tiresome thing about moving, and now especially just before the holliday season, is the seemingly never ending cleaning and washing that all gathers up and has to be done, getting things in order for Xmas to take them down in just a few weeks.

Still, there is no Xmas without all the decorations and trinkets, so I have worked hard to get things ready for all the decorations to go up and better get in gear for some serious cooking that needs to be done.

One thing is still not yet to be determined, whether this will be the third black Xmas in a row or not. But that you never know until Xmas itself.

First frost night

Today is the Swedish Day and it is celebrated among the Swedish-Finns in this country.

Swedish Day is actually older than the national day itself, as it was first celebrated in the year 1908.

Anyway, with the ongoing decline of world economy, stock exchanges globally plunging on and off, I find it most annoying to watch the large amount of TV-programs about selling and buying property. Redecorate and make it up slightly, then you will get a better price for it. Fat chance!

Fact is that there is a decline in real estate here in Finland as seems to be globally, at least in the so called western part of the world, and people are less prone to take longterm loans with current mortgages.

Ah, time for a brisk walk. The sun is shining from a clear blue sky, and the air is crisp from the first night frost of the winter.

Nouveau traditions

Since moving to Finland our family has acquired some new traditions, some are quite nice and others come out of the necessity to stay sane.

One more annoying one is the ringing early in the morning on Palmsunday, at lest according to the offspring. Some of our neighbourhood's kids are quite early risers and that annoys the most our offspring who would like to stay in bed late. Currently the new tradition is to remember to remove the doorbells cover in order to avoid it from making the ringing noise it produces with the cover on before entering bed early in the morning, or late in the night, depending on how you look at it.

I guess this would normally mean no harm, we would just have less kids ringing on the door, but it does not erase the knocks on the door which I find more annoying. Palmsunday, which is the Sunday before Easter and was last Sunday, is the day for kids to go out and collect sweets going from door to door the neighbourhood all day long and doing a few re-rounds if only possible to the good places they got the best treats.

This particular Sunday it causes us a bit of discomfort with the doorbell out of function as we had some friends coming over for dinner, and them having left home without a mobile phone in order to stay out of touch in order to be off duty we did not know they were behind the door ringing the dysfunctional doorbell. Took a while for them to come to think of the old fashioned but for so many centuries functional way of knocking on the door instead of the ringing wonders of the modern world. Or maybe they were just hungry?

Anyway, today is long Friday, actually not the longest day of the year, that is midsummer’s night this year, right on the dot in the almanac where it should be. Today is the other day of the year when the day and night are equally long. So up from this day there should be a difference to the days really getting longer and longer.

And that not just in the biblical sense.

Cold Valentine’s

The celebration of the last school day for the soon to be graduates from upper secondary schools in Finland celebrated with their traditional parades on around the country in more cold weather than we have been accustomed to this winter.

Hard wind gusts were blowing straight across the arctic from the North Pole but this had none what so ever effect on the traditional celebrations for the students parading from the back of lorries throwing sweets at the spectators and people passing by. A very cold Valentine’s Day is celebrated today.

This year more than 40.000 students are taking their final exams beginning in a month’s time. This is the day the second year students become eldest in their schools, which is traditionally celebrated by having a formal dress ball tomorrow night in each upper secondary school in the country.

This means there might be some problems concerning how to dress and behave to deal in the near future, as well as someone in the house studying, or at least pretending to be studying. Fortunately there have already been discussions about having ambulating study sessions at several school mates’ homes, which might be a good idea at least from my point of view.

A cake is always a cake

Finland is no more covered entirely in snow as the thin layer disappeared a couple of weeks ago, down here in the south the snow has now melted and we only have sweet memories of the cold winter to cling to.

Luckily I did get some photos of the snow, rare as it seems to be this year, just to remember how it should be at this time, the darkest and coldest time of the winter. It all looks like autumn to me. Must be the longest autumn I have so far seen living in Finland.

Today is the 100^th anniversary of my grandfather, deceased already over twenty years ago, but I still in good memory as my grandmother died only a couple of years ago. I used to take good care that I was able to either visit my grandmother on her husband’s birthday, or have her come and visit us at this time of the year knowing it to be the hardest day for her to be alone. Even their wedding anniversary was nothing compared to this it, neither was her own birthday.

My grandparents shared more than fifty years together and believe me, the times were not only sweet back then, even though as the years went by even my grandmother’s memory only remembered the sunnier side of their life.
In half a century there is lots of room for better and worse but strangely enough only the better sticks to your memory in the end.

In today’s modern society it is sometimes hard to imagine that people used to get married and stay married for the rest of their lives like my grandparents did. Splitting up and getting a divorce was out of the question back then, not like today when pressing the toothpaste wrong or leaving the toilet-seat up might end up in divorce.

Decades of sharing a life together, having children, watch them growing up, go to school, begin their professional lives and careers, leaving the nest moving away from home and seeing them getting married and having children. And if you’re lucky enough see your own grandchildren have children.

So I better get going with the cake baking, no need to disrupt any annual traditions that have upheld and approved of for so many years now.

A cake is always a cake, no matter the original reason it’s baked for.

Just passed by

An asteroid today passed by the planet earth at close range.

There was never any danger of an impact of the 250 meters wide asteroid called TU 24 and it was closest to planet earth at a distance of 534.000 kms at 10.34 AM Finnish time, way past and outside the moons’ orbit. So we were never in any danger of facing Armageddon this time. What is close in astronomy seems far away for the non initiate layman.

Armageddon today and next the one is not expected until in the year of 2027.

But then you can never be sure, things happen and it is hard to predict anything really and almost hand in hand with astronomy is astrology that is read from the planets surrounding us in space. They even say you can predict things by it.

In Finland, as in many other countries, you are often asked about what star sign you are born in, with the questioner then seeming a bit wiser, nodding the head and saying “Oh, you’re an Aries”. We all tend to know what sign we were born in, and at least I do, we do read our horoscope in the newspapers, and make a joke about the accuracy of them.

There more inaugurated persons have their personal birth- and year horoscopes made by a professional but seem no wiser for it. At least it did not tell me anything I was not already aware of having mine done but no one ever confesses being addicted to reading their horoscope every day, and surely there must be horoscope addicts as well as any other addicts in addition to my long ago deceased great grandmother who could not even leave the house before checking her stars.

Anyway, me being her true descendant I was surprised as nothing of special importance was predicted to take place today on any of the horoscope sites I checked this morning. Why is no attention paid to asteroids in this so accurate calculative way to divine the future that, as in this case, pass by us at a close range, and accordingly should be able to affect us more from closer?

I wonder if any cults had plans for the day about being p0icked up by aliens in a space ship that we will not divine until later on like when the comet Hale-Bopp passed by more than a decade ago.

Honestly, I was hoping that my 365^th posting would have made more sense than this on now does, but I guess it must be the fever talking in me. Imagine, now you can read a new posting every day of the year with more to come all the time!

End of festivities

Finally the hollidays come to an end, even though Christmas really still keep on going on until Epiphany, the thirteenth day of Xmas when it really ends.

Not having posted anything for almost a week does not necessarily mean that I have not had anything to write about, I have just neither had the opportunity nor the time to post, all the Xmas preparations and activities to cope with, you know, and so many people hanging around doing nothing, just surfing the Net in order to avoid death of total boredom totally ignorant of my great displeasure about my disrupted morning routines, not being able to blog.

A great many ideas passed through my mind and many of them were even written down on paper at the time, some even got as far as getting typed into the PC but none got posted in the hurry.

Just the other day I was thinking about what Xmas really is, what does Xmas consist of?

And I guess there is no right answer there, just as many answers as there are people. At least for me much of the joy comes from the preparation of the festivities, the cooking and planning ahead of time on order to get the show on the road when it is time. A lot of my Xmas consists of food, not always the eating but the cooking of it, the smells of the cooking, and the scent of hyacinths, gingerbread and mulled wine and the Xmas music.

Xmas can actually be faked like we had to some years ago out of practical reasons. We had to postpone our Xmas until December 28^th and it all went well, even the offspring did not notice we swapped dates and we were even successfully able to conveniently swap daddies as Santa’s with our neighbours without disturbing either families Xmas activities as it normally would have done.

By the way, I am very pleased with our family doctor, the care and treatment he is providing- the very first in Finland to really have been bothered to care even in his spare time, interested enough to occasionally drop in to read my Blog. During my visits at his surgery it has become apparent for me that we do share many ideas as well as have differing opinions on many issues so I would be thrilled having a discussion with him in private, and as he lives nearby, just down the road (of course I have googled him!) it is not such an impossible thought that we might bump into each other, in private so to speak. But I guess it would not be really ethical; being a social acquaintance of your family doctors’ would it?

Okay, I better get going to the supermarket in order to get something else but Xmas food for dinner tonight.

Xmas preparations

If you have been reading my Blog for some time you know I am a sucker for this Christmas calendar lottery ticket that you scratch every day and on Xmas Eve see if you have won. This year there is also an additional 100.000 Euros to be won on TV and with one ticket you might have three different wins between 10 and 25.000 Euros.

I have been used to having a Christmas Calendar show running from December 1^st to Christmas Eve for the children and the ones broadcasted here in Finland each year has not been quite up to the standards I was used to when growing up. Nothing bad, just different cultures, but this year I was surprised to find out that there actually is one for grown ups. It is a Xmas calendar show on TV every single day from December 1^st to December 24^th with tips and hints on making Xmas.

The program includes food recipes which wchihc are perfomed in front of the camera so you can see how it is to be done, tips and hints for making your own Xmas decorations and on decorating your home for the Holliday season. And the best of all, you can find the tpis on Internet, so you don’t have to sit there with open ready in hand in order to get it all right the first time. They even give you some tips on presents to give away.

Which is nice if you run out of ideas, and making decorations with your kids is nice as you can keep the decorations and hang them in the tree when your offspring have their own children.

Turkey feast

I was always a bit envious of the Americans who have their turkey at Thanksgiving as I come from a traditional Christmas ham eating family, and I was desperately looking for a date to have our turkey dinner for years but not until arriving in Finland I got the perfect date, the Finnish Independence day on December 6^th.

And so it was yesterday time for out annual turkey feast once again. This year I had decided to document the cooking and the dinner preparations normally going on from the day before the Independence Day, but once again found out I had forgotten about it. It was not until the turkey was carved and most of it eaten I came to think about getting my precious dear camera into the shrine of cooking, which was too late of course. Now there is only the left overs to photograph, but they can sometimes be more thrilling to work with as you have to be creative in more than just the one single way.

Anyway, by the time the turkey was ready to be taken out of the oven and to be carved it was all too dark to take any photos in nature’s own light anyway so I will seriously have to consider acquiring additional lights in order to be able to shoot the photos I want of food, at least this time of the year, until it once again turns into lighter on December 21^st. Being very disappointed about forgetting to take my photos I was very pleased with the outcome of the bird though, it was delicious. But so it has been every year, and this time I had a different stuffing with the gravy turning out absolutely superb. I could have spooned just gravy all day so nothing would have been left until dinner time!

Cranberry sauce is one thing we only serve with the annual Independence Day turkey, and with the recipe I have it turns a really dark fuchsia colour. The cranberry sauce served with orange carrots, roasted potatoes, orange sweet potato gratin, brown gravy, white turkey meat and either green peas or haricots verts is a colour clash screaming at you on your plate when eating it, but tastes delicious.

Anyway, I feel bad for the citizens of the town of Nokia with no potable water in their taps, must have been quite a sad way to celebrate the 90^th Independence Day with the army been called to help distribute fresh drinking water for the town inhabitants to collect. Now there has even been found Salmonella together with other as virulent bacteria in the water.

Even more sad for the person who opened a valve thus poisoning the whole town doing so by mistake, what feelings of guilt and regret. The Finnish Criminal Police are investigating the incident and it seems that the possibility of polluted waste water getting into fresh cleaned tap water is supposed to be impossible as a safety precaution and a faulty construction is suspected. Now all municipalities are encouraged to see over their water facilities in order to avoid other such incidents.

90th Independence Day

Today is the 90^th anniversary of the Independence in Finland, and it is traditionally celebrated already yesterday.

Okay, here is what I am saying; you begin celebrations the festivities on the day before the Independence day and sleep off the aftermath of the celebrations on the day itself. So here is one mum waiting for the offspring to come home from the celebrations that begun yesterday and will shortly end as the home coming time is nearing...

And finally I can go to bed as well.

Average Finnish citizen

The average Finnish man is 39 years old, he marries when he is 32 years old, earns 2300 Euros per month and he has beer about once a week whilst the average Finnish woman is 42 years old , she marries at 32, has 1,8 children. She earns an average of 2000 Euros a month and has beer less often the average Finnish man and both are overweight.

Anyway, now most of my time goes for getting our turkey in order for tomorrow’s celebrations of the Finnish Independence Day.

Wonder what weather it will celebrated in, I have heard from someone old enough that was there the first time that the weather was ever so cold. And tomorrow there will be the traditional reception at the President’s residence, more commonly referred to as “the Castle”, where Finnish citizens that have made their name know in one way or other are invited to. Women usually spend a fortune in having a new gown sewn, professional make-up done and hair done by a professional as the whole event is televised from the first entry of the guest until the last ones arrives in a before hand determined order. The show is broadcasted on one channel in Swedish and a second one in Finnish. Some guests are interviewed after having greeted the President Halonen and her husband. Some of the after parties are also seen so we all will know how the rich and famous look on this day.

When I first arrived in Finland there was only coffee, tea and soft drinks served but it seems now that wine has been introduced to celebrations to the festivities as well.

And if you did not receive an invitation, maybe you are lucky next year to receive one as they are posted well in advance during the fall.

Specs trouble

A tradition that dates back centuries, the traditional herring market opened for this year in Helsinki this weekend. There are quite a few fish markets around the country and most of them have their market days twice a year, one weekend is normally in the fall and the other in the spring and there are large amounts of delicacies to try on place or to buy home apart from the smoked herring I am so fond of eating on rye bread. Dear husband of mine has his preferences of many of the pickled herring varieties and I think he has tried it in any way they pickle it in addition to the many recipes I have tried out here at home. Some with great success, others to great disappointment of the hungry ones and the offspring unwilling and reluctant to even try.

Anyway, with age most of us get poor eyesight and in time we have to get ourselves an aid to be able to cope with daily chores, simple things like reading. For me this already occurred years ago in my teens and I have since then had many glasses and now it was time to get new ones again.

One thing I do dislike is being obliged to change opticians as it always turns bad in the end and so this time once again to no surprise, at least to me now afterwards but I tend to forget about it during the years it works out as it should with the “old and familiar” optician.

Out of some peculiar reason the new opticians never really listen to what I say about my eyes being able to adjust and pretend to see, if you know what I mean. My eyes are for a short period of time, able to make the impossible, that is to pretend almost perfect eyesight and that is just about the time it takes to make the test and after a while it all becomes a blur again and happily the optician prescribes the wrong glasses for me. So this time and here I now am with new specs that are completely useless to me as I can not read with them, not to mention being able to judge if the photos I take are good or bad.

Another thing that went wrong this time is that my eyes do not have the same prescription, as I have poorer sight on my left than on my right and as I have always been farsighted I very much doubt my sight ever improves as these new specs would suggest as they are not strong enough for me to be able to read. And these new ones are the same strength both of them. The thing I hate most about this is not getting the wrong glasses but it is to go back and tell someone whom I am absolutely sure did their best but still failed, it’s the having to “question their professional skills” part that I hate. We all make mistakes but like most people in general neither the Finns do like to be told they are wrong, and as paying customer I am entitled to have what I am paying them for and that is new specs I can see with instead of such I could have used years ago. Guess this is a time I should not be trying out any new, untried food recipes as I might get it all wrong as I might not see what it says in the recipes.

A new tradition

Warmest midsummer was in the year 1999, well that heat record was not broken this year but the weather still was nice and warm for the celebrations and according to the latest news only 10 people were killed during the weekend, less than last year.

I am much for traditions and try to keep them up, the ones from my own childhood home but I am always looking for new ones, additions to our family traditions and well, and this Midsummer I was lucky to get a new one.

There is so called black bread coming from Finlands' Swedish speaking coastal areas, a very dark, musty bread made with rye and molasses and now I have found a new variety that stands for months without any preservatives in it, that is if there is anything left of it to stand.

Normally gravilohi as it is called here in Finland but internationally more often known as Gravlax is salmon cured with sugar, salt and dill but adding a hint of ground coriander seeds to it gives it new, delicious dimensions. You take a slice of this musty, dark bread, lace it with Gravlax, and pouring ringlets of Hovmästarsås on top of it, (that is a mustard-sauce with dill in it), decorate it with a twig of dill and enjoy your open Midsummer salmon sandwich.

That is my favourite this Midsummer, unfortunately we are running out of the bread soon!

Name difficulties

It seems to be difficult to determine your own name and your own but someone else’s name seems to be a common issue here in Finland if you have a name preceding your “first” name, the name you are called by.

In my case there is no way to confuse the names as Mona is my first name, but this friend of mine I already told you about earlier with the same name as her rich cousin, well this time she had trouble with a doctor. Let’s just presume her name is Sandra Jane Doe to clarify what I mean in this case.

Being called on to the doctor by her “first” but wrong followed family name (Sandra Doe) she presented herself by her right name (Jane Doe) followed by her family name and the doctor being literate, answered by that your name is Sandra Doe! Jane explained that she has a cousin with the same name and as she is called Jane and not Sandra, but that the name is first in her name but not her “first” name. Well, this doctor got really annoyed about her having the wrong name and explained that in their computer system you are called what you are called and that is always the FIRST name.

Anyway, she thought it was not an issue of great importance to pursue to the bitter end and got down to the business she was seeing the doctor for. By the time they had got to the part when the doctor begins to fill in the prescription for her, and quite unusually for health care in Finland, the prescription was not printed out but filled in by hand, fist the wrong first name appeared on the form, and with a short reflection on behalf of the doctor, it was changed into the correct Jane Doe instead of Sandra Doe but the making of a mistake was never spoken out a loud.

Finally a new hat

The summertime is always a time of festivities graduations and also in the Finnish Lutheran church with all the weddings and also the confirmations for the adolescents that turn 15 during the same year are celebrated.

When it is time for confirmation in many places around the country you are going away for a week’s confirmation camp and have the confirmation itself some time later. The previous winter has normally already been full with church visits and Sunday masses and weekly gatherings with the vicar for the requested amount of education.

The difficult thing with all this is not catering for all the relatives and friends attending your home for the celebrations, nor to house your guests for the night. No the real problem lies in what to get the youngsters.

Flowers with a single rose to give away is one among the most common ones, also a nice tradition, jewellery in various looks and to everybody’s taste is also usual, but many times you just have no idea of what to get them as they today have “everything”. Nowadays a gift voucher has become more and more acceptable and also in many cases handy for the giver to get, even by a late date, and is appreciated by the receiver as they can get many vouchers from the same place and get to buy more and bigger, more expensive things of their own choice.

I remember that we used to have a list of things we wished that our parents kept for birthdays and graduations. Everybody who was invited to these occasions was told about the list and nobody got doubles as book was kept on what was going to be bought, kind of similar to a wedding list. I have done the same thing with the off-spring as has my sister as well during the years with great success.

Now I just have to decide whether to be original and inventive, and get something for the confirmed in forth nights time or just be plain, old and boring and give away another gift-voucher and a single rose as everybody else.

Finally an excellent reason for me to get a new hat!

Vappu balloons

The weather is awful. Even though the sun is shining from an almost clear blue sky the wind is blowing from north and it is cold and many households were cut off from their electricity suppliers due to falling trees in the countryside.

Well, guess this is not going to prevent the Finns from celebrating the arrival of spring with Vappu.

This is the day spring begins according to the Finns and that is literally according to the almanac and no concern to the weather. I can remember one Vappu’s Eve when it was freezing cold and snowing and the people in town were still dressed in their summer clothes for the first time of the year.

Anyway, today the student’s, both the graduating ones and the ones who graduated log ago celebrate their achievements. Customary champagne breakfast pick-nicks take place and the traditional white hat of graduates is worn.

Vappu is also celebrated among the whole population with the customary drink Sima, or mead and doughnuts and Tippaleipä, “Drop-bread” (you can read about it in the Socialguide in the food section if you are interested). Homes are decorated with serpentines and garlands and almost everyone buys them selves a Vappu-balloon. Well, it is compulsory to buy a balloon for the kids at least or to your cat like we have to now with the off-spring not wanting balloons any longer. It is kind of funny, this tradition Vappu we now have with the balloon for our cat.

He is ever so happy when the balloon arrives and he hangs on the rope at all times, playing with it happily hopping around after the rope when it bounces up to the ceiling pulling it down again. He even sleeps holding the balloon a couple of inches from the ceiling and he is ever so sad when the balloon begins to sag and no longer bounces up to the ceiling. It is thrilling to see how long this years’ balloon will hold, the record has so far been a couple days short of a month.

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?