- The trip to Stockholm, as mentioned previously. The way to go from Finland to Sweden is by ferry. Some of these ferries are the famous 'party boats', where alcohol-starved Northeners party all night. I've been told that every once in a while, somebody gets so drunk that they fall from the top deck of the ferry into the sea. This picture is slightly misleading, but the boat is huge and the fall must be long and painful.
Stockholm is a beautiful city though, especially in weather like this.
- I went to Ruisrock music festival, held every year in Ruissalo island in Turku. It is one of the oldest rock festivals in Europe. Noora has been playing Finnish music for me throughout the spring, so I actually recognized some of the bands who appeared there. Plus, several well-known, international bands appeared (Faith no More, Gogol Bordello).
Alcohol is notoriously expensive in Finland, and even more so in a music festival. Visitors are not allowed to bring their own booze from the outside (not surprisingly). However, they are allowed to bring unopened bottles of non-alcoholic drinks. That leads visitors to invent a number of ways to smuggle alcohol inside. The more extreme ones that i heard of include burying the bottles on the venue, before the event starts, and then digging them out. Girls also put plastic bags with alcohol in their bras. Our method was different. Buy a bottle of water, heat the cap with a hairdryer, so that it can be taken of without breaking. Then pour out the water, put in vodka and put the cap back on. It is easier said than done, but after several tries and failed attempts, it worked.
- The most famous Finnish invention is the sauna. Needless to say, I've been going to the sauna quite a lot. There are several other noteworthy inventions though: Juustohöylä (picture below) - a special knife for slicing cheese, which I have never seen anywhere else, but it is extremely useful and Finns can't live without it. Also, they have special dish-drying closets in the kitchen above the sink.
- While Kirkkonummi, the place I'm staying is officially a town of 35.000 inhabitants, it actually consists of a center with a church, several big supermarkets and a train station, surrounded by forests. The inhabitants live in houses scattered in the forests on a very large area (The house of Noora's family is like 12 kilometers from said center). Because of that, the front porch of the house is an ideal place to spot wild animals, that occassionally come on the adjacent field. I've been dying to see an elk, which i finally did several days ago. Deer come pretty often. It seems that every Finn has a story of hitting or nearly hitting an elk with a car, as they like to hang out on the roads after dark.
- Speaking of Noora's house, I found a Babeta (a wonderful Czechoslovak grandpa moped) in the basement of the house. We tried to get it running, but failed. It's been sitting there for too long. Here I am, riding the Babeta:
This picture shows that I was actually outrun by Noora's 3-years-old nephew. The field where the animals come is in the background.
- Several days ago, we went to a local large hypermarket. I wandered into the beer lane and couldn't believe what I saw there. The large selection of Czech beers wasn't surprising. Budvar, Pilsner Urquell and Velkopopovický Kozel were fully expected. However, to my shock they were selling jewels like Postřižinské pivo, Litovel, Samson, and my personal favorite, Skalák from Malý Rohozec u Turnova. It's my favorite because the brewery is quite close to where I come from, I went by the tiny brewery on a bike quite many times and occasionally also stopped for a beer there.. 0,5 liter bottle which the brewery sells for 8,50 Kč (like 30 Eurocents) cost 2,65 Euros here. Also, all these beers had a little sign there.. I don't know what it said obviously, but I imagine it was similar to the wine descriptions (light, crisp with fruity aromas, ideal with cheese, fish..). I'll get it translated next time, so that I finally know what's the best time to enjoy Postřižinské pivo (with the picture of Bohumil Hrabal on the bottle..)
I ended up grabbing Kozel, which was perfect for the sauna and a watergun fight with Noora's nephew.
- Speaking of beer, the prohibition here is ridiculous. As far as the prices go, simple math tells us that a bottle of Skalák costs almost 9 times more here than in the Czech Republic. Also, all alcoholic drinks which contain more than like 4,5% alcohol can only be sold in special, state-run shops and nowhere else. Also, alcohol can only be sold between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., and not at all on Sundays.
- There are slot machines in every supermarket, usually surrounded by grandmas and grandpas. They just go buy their bread, milk and cheese, and while there, do a bit of gambling..
- The national sport of Finland is Pesäpallo - Finnish baseball. It seems that someone with serious lack of imagination was trying to invent a new sport, so he took normal baseball and shuffled things up a bit, just to create some difference. So instead of pitching the ball in a normal way, it is pitched straight up, vertically. There are still 3 bases, just in different places (not a diamond, but a zigzag shape). When the batter hits the ball, they don't automatically have to run to first base, but can take another try. Catching a flyball is not an automatic out, and a player can somehow be 'wounded' (not literally).
- Finnish is a difficult and obscure language, similar only to Estonian and Hungarian, though the languages are not mutually intelligible. While I've been trying to learn at least the basics, the progress is slow. Fortunately, everyone speaks English.. So far, I've learned mostly through 'talking to' Noora's nephew and grandma, who don't speak English.
However, every now and then, an unexpected word pops out, that is like exactly the same in Czech and Finnish. Lighthouse = majak = majakka. Smetana (cream in Czech) means sour cream in Finnish. And a mind-blowing one: One particular verb works almost exactly the same in both languages.
kakáme = Kakkaamme
kakáte = Kakkaatte
kaká = Kakkaa
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