As always in life, "soon" comes much later than the worst expectations.

Things changed again, a new semester started and eventually I found it was time to write.

Part 1 - Verschiedenheit

Vaasa is a nice city - at least it appear

s so when covered with snow. It is much more heimlich than Lahti to me, I like the happier accent they have, rather different from the dull etelä suomi accent. I loved the casheer that greets you with a "hej då".

Same goes with the university; a very small university as student number, though with the services and location of a prestigeous university (for italian standards). Freed

om of subjects and lots of entertaining activities for students. And how much is the fee? 0.00€

Now some trivia that non-finnish reader may find interesting - if there are any!

Cold related trivia:

- your nose: when temperature sinks below -10, you will feel it. Or actually you won't feel at all. With such temperatures, I experienced l

oss of sensitivity and, after longer exposition, a little pain in the exposed parts. Moreover, the steam naturally produced by breathing needs shorter time to get liquid. Actually, after some time outside, I found water coming down my nose all the time.

 

- The ghosts: smog produced my vehicles, for some reason, doesn't fly away, but remains for quite some time close to the ground, between 0 and 30 cm approx. These small cl

ouds move close to the ground, and move as other cars approach; they stirred my immagination and to me they look like smoke ghosts.

- The day when the snow melted in Vaasa I f

elt as if everything had changed. Roads looked different, and people felt "closer".

- There is an entire road in Vaasa city centre which is warmed, so that snow never covers it. 

Non-cold-related trivia:

- Not only Finnish students love to drink and

 sing ominous songs while they do it: they also wear overalls in such occasions. I know that students are sometimes called "the workers of knowledge", but isn't this a too lit

eral interpretation?

Part 2 - Ma maison c'est la meilleur, car elle a une porte e des fenetres...

A new semester has come. Study again, lectures, and some of them are even pleasant. My last semester it appears to be... for the time being; of the future I do not know!

I started writing a short essay called "Pride is Prejudice" which by the way has nothing to do with Jane Austin. We had another D&D session and we are waiting everybody to be back, for the "incredibly funny thing" the master has promised us weeks ago.

The world is sinking down at hyper-speed; world economy is crumbling as a dead golem.

I don't like to boast, but I said it. Who has

 known me for some time knows that since when I was 14 I am expecting a world catastrophe, showing the crazyness of the whole system we built. Social Darwinism is the exc

use european (and therefore also american) race* has used for a long time to justify aggression and violence towards other people, and now it seems we europans have totally failed with this economic system. Schade. Perhaps people will learn how to "feed on dry tubers" or perhaps not. Nothing in the universe is stubborn as a human being.

Myself, I find much pleasure in books, lectures and games. Useless things are the greatest creation of human mind. Nobody but us could create the Beowulf or Blackgammon.

And now, to pamper your eyes, a random picture.

Destination -20

Finland, again.

As a zealot pilgrim I reach the airport very early. 3AM.

Airports feel like home. Tired people, farewells, hopes. Check-in, security controls. I am not afraid of security controls, when I am not violating rules: on the contrary, I almost feel proud of being searched personally, of being looked at, asked to take off my belt, and checked. After all, they are caring for our safety, right?

Finnish people start queuing already 45 minutes before the gate opens, and scared italians follow, at safe distance, the pale tall people.

A flight like many others. I know that every single flight has a little wonder, be it for good or bad: a particular landscape, a fire dawn, or just a peculiar hostess. This one had its own.

And Finland again. The refreshing snow, the -3 degrees, the white. Italians on a bus, totally bewildered, with a finnish girl acting as a guide: this is my first company.

The bus eventually leaves me at the usual destination: Tampere. The bridge, the square.

Good old people for a totally new Silvester. It is my first time that I spend my second most hated holiday (the first being carnival) abroad. What does "abroad" mean anyway...

Languages give our characters consistency, depth. A man who speak Danish must then be Danish, so that Denmark is the only place where he can be. If we would all speak the same language, our identities would melt much more easily.

Back to Finland. More weird finnish food - I love it! - and more experiences.

A- The cold. How many pakkasta (below zero) degrees can a foreigner survive? With decent gear - which means, I didn't go shopping at "North Pole TM", just wise winter clothes - I  pushed my way through -11 totally fine. I can't breathe deeply though: the air causes me to cough. Humidity created by the breathing process quickly turn into real water inside your nose. At extremes temperatures, exposed body part don't feel cold; they only loose sensitivity.

B- Skiing. Not downhill skiing, but hiihtää, on borrowed sukset. I never tried before, and of course, I sucked; I never fell though, and this made me decently proud.

C- Ice Skating. What could be more crazy for an outlander than sliding on two long bars with the help of stick? Sliding on the ice on two thin blades without any other help. Ice skating for me is as safe as a holiday in Iraq. Nonetheless I bravely managed to circle several times the track. And it was total fun!

That came before moving. Before taking a whole room and life possession, pile them in a truck, wake up at 5AM, travel 6 hrs on the said truck and bring out the worldy possessions inside a second floor apartment.

And that came before surviving, only for a couple of minutes, the -20.

Now I am in Vaasa, and of this, I shall write more soon...

Munnin.

Many days after: about Finland

Here we go with more written memories from months ago:

Few days before 14-06-08 - Weather:COLD!

Ireland today voted NO to Lisbon treaty. They changed history. Barely a million of votig Irishmen.

Now EU is on a crisis they say. Europe, where shall you go? Incapable yet of taking decisive action, strong decisions that we may need. Politics is nasty.

Yesterday I've been to Näsijärvi, which is a local lake surrounded by a forest (tottakai!).

 We went there between 10-11PM and it was bright. This finnish summer is incredible; and cold, right now. It has been raining every day since my arrival, after a "hot spell". It was awesome. The lake is very wide, the forest looks pretty much a Alpine forest, though with taller birches and wider landscape. This country is still weird though. With Ireland it was a matter of days and people. After I explored Dublin a bit everything became familiar. I could understand people speaking. Now everything is so foreign it looks like another planet. Time goes by. If the warm weather comes back...

14-6-08 | Weather: Warm

Most of Finns live in unattractive block of flats, usually grey; from the inside though, the houses are of the highest comfort.

Finnish breakfast is weird. The custom often mixes typical products - cheese, smoked ham... - with more exotic stuff such as tropical fruit, youghurt, cucumbers.

There is no way to stop the night sun to enter the room, so I had to get used to sleep with light outside and inside. Nonetheless, I love the never-ending days, in which the time of the day almost doesn't matter. Take a walk at 9AM or 10PM, it's the same.

20-6-08 Weather: warm/rain

Today I biked to the Vesijärvi lake. It means "waterlake" for no other word could reflect its brightness and clean water... in past times. Now it's black.

It's a nice spot though. Biking here is easier than in Italy, and nicer. Yesterday it was "normaali suomen kesä" (I beg your pardon if I made grammar mistakes) i.e. rain all day. We went to the shop to pile a few goods for Juhannus. Tomorrow happens to be midsummer: the longest day of the year. I find it a funny day to celebrate and be happy: after tomorrow, every day will be shorter. Besides, many people's Juhannus ends with little happiness: a bulk of guys die throughout Dinland for drowning, often by boating right after drinking.

Two milions kgs of sausages are bought by Finns only for midsummer, and there are only 5.4 millions people in the whole country. Make your own "average pro-capite meat" calculations. 

Tomorrow is a special day.

To be continued.

Now I hope somebody notice the nice "envelope pattern" in my latest posts

Munin says Hi.

The travels of Munniver

I' sorry for all the (imaginary) readers of this blog, for not having time - or means - to share my extreme experiences in the country that recently won the "most eccentric country" award: Finland.

I've been here for... several weeks, lots of time and yet not enough. My knowledge of finnish advances very slowly, partly for lack of time, but mostly for the characteristic of the language itself. Every time I learn a new word, or grammar feature, I find out later that I was mistaken, or the word is right, but it has 7 other more often used synonyms. Learning a language has seldom been more frustrating.

The other habits still surprise me, or I surprise them; for example, Jaakko was amazed, impressed and disgusted when he saw me putting salt on salad.

Salt and oil, is there anything more basic for a salad?

And there is a lot more. What about, for example, the silence? It seems to be a law in here, that I actually don't dislike - and as every rule is often broken by teenagers. I could spend hours describing the perfectly hygenic lack of hygene; no matter what they do, finns are always healthy - except for lactose allergies.

I should post a few pictures, but, well, they are on the other account now. I suggest to everybody who has a facebook account to check them there.

All the time I've been moving. After Lappeenranta I came back to lahti for one single day to leave again for Helsinki. There, after 2 days I departed for Turku, where the Ferry to Mariehamn, Åland, was. Together with Jaakko we went on a short trip with the motto "Knights & Dragons". Don't ask me why.

After enjoying tax free shopping, wonderful scenery from the sundeck, terrible wind on the sundeck, we reached the glorious capital of... Åland.

The city is tiny but quite pretty, a weird little island, in which finns can fell "half-foreigners".

There's not too much in Åland, but beaches, bird poo, ships and tiny forests should keep you busy for some time.

Then we faced another too early departure, this time towards the capital of... Sweden!

I have to say - finns, forgive me -  I loved Stockholm. There is so much to see and to do; the capital seems massive, its city centre comfortable and huge: looking from the channel, you can see a wide wide city, or so it seems. Don't think of New York, that's way to  big, but in Stockholm, there's free air - except in the small tourist venues of the Old city - everywhere. There is room for people. And toilets are expensive.

There is an entire small island for museums and a park, a Tourist could spend weeks in it. We only had tim to visit the Vasa museum and it was great.

By chance, we had the two sunniest day of the summer... so that the city looked even happier and warmer - Helsinki feels quite the opposite.

So, long story short, I ran out of time. I'll try to write again soon....

BWOOOOOUU - INAPPROPRIATE!!!!

History loves to get stuck in linguistic facts

"Real history loves to get stuck in linguistic facts"

Munin hails you from the far north... "so near to the north pole" as grandma said.

Actually I'm still far far away from the northpole. I can't surprise you with 'Vönderful pictürs vrom Vinlant' because I don't have the cable to download them on this laptop. They'll come soon.

I'm in Lappeenranta - which is NOT in Lapland, and it is NOT snowing - suffering from early awakenings caused by the "midnight sun" which happens to be at 4AM and there's no curtain to stop it. It's true: finnish houses are great to bear the cold dark winter but completely unfit to the summer - which is, as you may not believe, just wonderful.

Finnish summer is not just warmer but the antithesis of the winter. The days are warm (not lately... but in general they are) but not too hot, which allows you to stay in, out, wherever you want. Sometimes in Italy it's so hot that you can't really go out or at least not enjoy it.

If the day is not warm enough for you, you can just stay in sauna, which hot temperatures and incredible moist would please the pickiest tropical reptile.

The sun shines almost all the time, giving you freedom of performing any activity at any time of the day - except sleeping.

Lappeenrant (Willmannstrand) happens to be on the biggest lake of Finland - or so they say - which continues, through an artificial channel, straight to Russia. The border is only at 30 km from here; for this reasons, the city, even though very small, is packed with russians, and pretty much everything is written both in finnish and russian - no swedish. The buildings and the city are small but prettier than most of the finnish cities. It's a nice place.

Lakes are very pretty and always accompanied by tiny foresty islands. The weather is completely crazy, alternating thunderstorms with sunshine, but I heard that it's the same in all europe. And what about the food crisis? It is giving me the creeps, aren't they exaggerating? First it was a bad year for agriculture and now all the prices - even dairy, meat, chocolate, drinks - is overpriced.

Well anyway, I came to think about houses.

What are our houses really for? Are they a place for fitting human beings, feed them and make them sleep in warm beds or something else, a temple to some pagan deity?

I'm thinking of all the rooms locked, left there "for some special event" or "so that I don't have to clean them everyday". Are our houses some temple of self-worship, of esteem-wanking, to show ourselves our little amount of glory and wealth, not to show or to use? Are they some complex political instrument to promote our image? Are they a den of vanity, furniture and appearance, or a safe place for people, steady or traveling, a shelter for friends, to offer them a bed and a warm soup in the time of need?

Take care, Munin.

Vinlant!

I'm in Finland right now and I've been here for 4 days now. I wish to speak a bit about it, but i'm given no time at the right moment. I'll surprise you with a few pictures though...

Wonderful sunset on lake Näsijärvi. 11PM approx.

Hedgehog (Siili) in Tampere.