Facts and observations, Finland edition

Summer in Finland is going by fast and I've been diligently collecting random observations and unusual bits of information about this country. The shared European background would dictate that I shouldn't be surprised by too many things in Finland, but then, this country is pretty far from everything else and they do speak a language that is unrelated to any other and stubbornly refuses to use even the basic Latin-derived principles. Anyways: Few noteworthy things that I've indulged in so far:

- 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

Finland

I'm spending much of the summer in Finland. Been here for several days now. Sure, the blog is called Taiwan adventures, but this can count as a European holiday in between my regular Taiwanese life. Therefore, while I don't expect to be very prolific in writing the blog during the summer, I might still put up some horrible stereotypes of this country every once in a while.

So far, I've been here in the North for 4 days. Of that, one day was spent in Stockholm (took an overnight ferry there from Turku). I can say that Finnish/Swedish summer (warm, sunny, pleasant) > Czech summer (cold, rainy) > Taiwanese summer (Scorching hot, humid & stormy).

Now for some stereotypes. Finnish and Swedish people are.. very blond. Who would have thought that? But less expected fact, an incredible amount of people has tattoos. Seriously, it's like there are visible tattoos on 50% of the population here. And not just some tiny ones, I'm talking about whole arms (and who knows what else) covered with tattoos. I guess they aren't aware of the fact that they will never be able to appear on Korean TV (apparently, people with tattoos are not allowed to appear on TV in Korea.)

Other than that, goatees are big among the Finnish men, as are goatee-braids. And of course, the metal looks. Swedish men, on the other hand, are best identified by long, slick hair. And the Swedish royal guards, guarding the royal palace in Stockholm, are total wussies.

Going back - Reverse culture shock

This is my first post from outside Taiwan. After three days back in the Czech Republic, I've obviously had time to drink a beer or two, but don't feel like doing that Taiwan reflection quite yet. Instead, I'll focus on my trip back and what the first days brought.

Probably the worst part of the trip from Taipei to Prague was trying to get to the Taipei airport. Even walking from home to the bus stop, and then from public bus stop to the airport bus, in the scorching Taiwanese heat, was rather demanding. Still, I guess I was lucky, as there was no thunderstorm and no crazy Taiwanese rain on that day, unlike all the other days last week.

I was a little scared of the flight itself, because KLM uses an old Boeing 747 on that route, which doesn't have the personal screen with audio/video on demand at each seat. What an outrage! I may have become a bit spoiled, but all the other intercontinental flights I've been on had that, even in economy class. What's more, I couldn't see properly even the 'communal' TV screen from my seat. That didn't matter, because the movies they showed were stupid anyways. But at the end, I didn't mind this lack of entertainment one bit. There were many eating and drinking opportunities during the flight, which took up a lot of time (I learned this trick during endless rides in trains in China. When done properly, eating can take up a lot of time, which passes rather quickly. Similarly, time passes faster with a bottle of wine or beer). I spent the rest of time asleep, half asleep or in a state of stupor.

The first thing I did at the Prague airport was try to address a lady at the information counter with 不好意思.. The I got out of the airport and attempted to flag down an approaching bus. I spent the trip to my Prague home observing the Czech people. I felt that I fit in rather well with the Czech men. I was wearing unmatching sports shoes together with a loose and not very pretty t-shirt (comfort during the flight was of utmost importance for me), I also didn't smell that well after 24 hours of traveling, and had not shaven for a few days. Fortunately, at least I wasn't sporting a large beer gut or a fanny pack (ledvinka), which appears to be the one accessory no Czech man leaves the home without. I may have just been lucky to only meet IT men though. Anyways, at least the girls in Prague looked very pretty, even without the mini skirts and very short shorts that I've become used to.

Also, people in general seemed very tall and it was a shock at first when the grandmas making small talk on the bus spoke Czech. I didn't need any Easycard to get on/off the bus, and the bus came exactly at the time that the schedule said. Weird.

Later that afternoon, I went to the center of the city, which was completely taken over by foreigners. The people in the cafes spoke Russian, the exchange offices were either Russian, Turkish or Arab and everyone else was a tourist. Then I accidentally ran into a friend at Václavské náměstí - a Turkish guy. It seemed that tattoos made up of Chinese characters are particularly popular this year. The characters usually seemed somehow weird or didn't make much sense. I even saw someone with a mirror-imaged Chinese character! I chuckled, but decided not to break the bad news for them.

However, arriving into my hometown of Jablonec nad Nisou later that afternoon, everything looked exactly the same as it was last year. As if I never went away. Except for the fact that a new Lidl supermarket is now around the corner from our house.

On to an unrelated topic. I wrote another short report for Zápisník zahraničních zpravodajů, this time on the topic of North Korea. You can find it here. It seems that I'm doing quite well with the voting for the competition so far, but please support me and send me a vote :) Maybe I can win a cup or something wonderful like that. It's in Czech only, but if any foreign readers want to give me a vote, then 1 means good, while 5 means bad. Therefore, I'd prefer the 1's. Thanks.

Speaking of North Korea, during the tour to the border, people were joking around and asking what would happen if they tried to cross the border and enter the land blessed with the genius of Our Dear Leader Kim Chong-Il. The story of the two American journalists sentenced to 12 years in labor camps for allegedly crossing the border from China gives a pretty good answer. At the time I went there in early May, North Korea seemed like a laughable country that doesn't need to be taken seriously. Just one week after my trip, they started playing around with the missiles and nuclear tests.. I guess they do want to repair their international reputation and be taken seriously after all.

Packing

The last few weeks have flown by and all of a sudden, I'm packing my bags, and tomorrow I'm flying Taipei - Bangkok - Amsterdam - Prague for the summer in Europe. I haven't even had a chance to think about that much, since all of June was dedicated pretty much only to writing papers and giving presentations. Last presentation is tomorrow morning, and in the afternoon i will already be on the way to the airport. It must seem that I'm dying to get out of Taiwan as soon as possible.. That's only partially true, the main reason was that at the time when I was buying my ticket, it was much cheaper when departing on June 17th at the latest.

At the same time, I have to admit that it just isn't very pleasant to be here at the moment, mainly due to the weather. It's been scorching hot & humid pretty much every day now, with huge thunderstorms and pouring rain coming out of nowhere in the afternoons. Just today, I had a nice sprint up the hill to where i live, because I already knew the "pouring buckets of water" type of rain was coming.

Speaking of weather, did you know that typhoons in Taiwan prevent large and destructive earthquakes from happening? Apparently that's what some scientists discovered. Here's an article about it (in Czech). 

Expect some summary of my year 1 in Taiwan, after I've had a bit of time to reflect on them (over Czech beer, of course :)

Discrepancies

I still remember one sentence in my bachelor's thesis, the topic of which was Taiwan. "The price level in Taiwan is higher than that of the Czech Republic." I never did any serious research about it, it usually seems pretty similar, although food and services tend to be generally cheaper in Taiwan.

Today, I went to buy contact lenses. I bought exactly the same brand, type and amount in the Czech Republic for 770 CZK (about 1300 NTD or 29 Euros). In Taiwan, it cost 380 NTD (about 220 CZK, or 8 Euros). And that was in a normal shop, while the Czech price is over the internet, i.e. that should be the cheaper option. How weird is that!?

Sweet Home Asia?

I've just realized that between the time I spent in Hong Kong, Taiwan and several other countries around here, I've been in Asia for over a year altogether, overtaking North America for second place in continents where I spent the longest (now that is a silly ranking..), even if in terms of countries, United States are still in second place (Taiwan will take over soon enough though).

One year sounds like a pretty long time already, and I'm not even sure where it came from. I don't consider myself a big Asia-phile. Don't have a particular interest for the Far Eastern cultures. Don't care about Buddhism, Confucianism and don't plan on spending several years searching for my soul in a monastery. While I've tried several types of martial arts before, i've not developed any particular passion for them, which would make me want to seek wisdom from the real masters (everyone knows that only an Asian guy can be a real kung-fu or karate master!). While I can appreciate the beauty of Taiwanese women, there is significant evidence that I didn't come here for the girls.

So really, I just kind of lucked into this. When deciding about the place of my semester abroad exchange 3 years ago, I thought that Europe is too close and safe, America sounded boring and Hong Kong was the only other option. I did kind of develop a passion for the Chinese language, although that has in recent months been shaken by a little frustration about the language. Strangely, in the first weeks and months of my studies, I thought it was really fun and easy to learn and speak. Now it seems that the more I learn, the more there is still to learn.

With all that said.. While I'm looking forward to my summer in Europe, I'm pretty sure that after 2 months there, I will be excited and ready for another year in this crazy island.

Dragon Boat Day

I always used to think the Czech holidays were pretty boring. Christian festivals, Saints' days, independence day, the guys who brought Christianity and Cyrillic alphabet into our pagan lands (though nowadays we don't use Cyrillic and most people are not Christian). Life abroad and having to explain some of my country's traditions made me revisit this a bit. One holiday is for Jan Hus, a guy who got tricked to travel to Germany 'for a little chat' and once there, got arrested and burnt. Mikuláš sounds extremely obscure from the Far East, with loads of angels, devils and old bearded men swarming the streets. I tend to avoid explaining our Easter traditions nowadays, because that inevitably freaks people out. Still, most of these days are welcome mostly because that means not having to go to school or work.

The Chinese, on the other hand, have cool sounding holidays. Lantern festival, Moon festival, Buddha's birthday, Dragon Boat Holiday, they all sound incredibly exotic, oriental and mystical. I wouldn't be surprised if they also meant not much more than a day off for the locals, but the foreigners love these festivals, thinking that they are really getting in touch with the local culture.



We just had the Dragon Boat holiday here last week. A background legend first:

Many centuries ago, a man named Qu Yuan lived in the Zhou dynasty. He worked as a minister. He was honest, just and smart, and the common people loved him. However, the other officials in the kingdom were jealous of this man, and somehow they managed to persuade the emperor to remove him from office and kick him out of the country. Qu Yuan went into exile and lived there for several years. Later, another empire invaded the Zhou dynasty and conquered it. Qu Yuan still loved his country and couldn't bear to watch it. So he jumped into a river and drowned himself. The people, who still remembered what a great man he was, jumped on boats and went on the river, where he drowned. They beat drums to scare the fish away, so that they wouldn't eat his body. They also threw rice cakes into the water, so that the fish would eat them, rather than the corpse.



During the Dragon Boat festival as it is today, hundreds of boat races are held throughout the Chinese world. All it really is is crews on long, narrow boats decorated with dragon motives racing against others over a distance to grab a flag at the end of the course. Each boat has a drum and a drummer, who is trying to make sure the paddling is synchronized. Pretty straightforward. Some crews were trying hard, some took it easy, some quit right after the start. There were really good ones, as well as really sloppy ones, who ignored their drummer and kept hitting others' paddles.



I went to see the races in Dajia park, close to Taipei's Grand Hotel (above). It was indeed an interesting cultural experience although one only has to see a handful of races to see it all. That comes from the position of a spectator, I'm sure it's much more thrilling to actually be on the boat. One thing that struck me was the huge amount of foreigners taking part in the races and in the audience. That proves my theory that the locals mostly don't care and are happy to have a day off, whereas the foreigners see this as an opportunity to really immerse in the local culture. Everyone I spoke to thought it was really worth the blood, sweat and tears of the hard, long practices. All I can say is my usual mantra: Maybe next year, I could do this too.