Last week I wrote mostly about what’s it like to be in central Finland in winter. But when I re-read the post after publishing it, it gave me this scary feeling of: “Don’t you dare to come to this ninth circuit of hell (when it’s hellish, anyway)!” So, now you’ll have a chance to read about how cool it is during the early December to late April winters.

Yes, there are plenty of winter joys one can indulge in during the long winters here (even if you don’t feel like playing football). Think about this: What do you get when you combine a country with no more no less than 187.888 lakes, 1.250 km of shoreline and damn cold weather? Well, what? A gigantic skating rink. And that’s exactly what Finland is right now. Practically any larger populated area has a decent public natural skating rink on the nearest lake(s). These usually provide at least a few kilometers of clean skating ice and an area for playing various winter games (curling being the hit of this winter). The largest one I’ve skated on was a 25 km rink on Kallavesi in Kuopio, while Jyväskylä has only a measly 3 km rink. And I still cannot really get it out of my head that they have figured out the turn-lake-into-a-rink thing no more than just a decade ago.

But once they have figured out it has become the nation’s second most popular winter recreational activity (right after the cross-country skiing). Meaning that practically everyone does it and that during the winter months even the national newspapers are running stories about the longest, the coolest and the baddest of skating places around Finland featuring kids, grandmas and everyone in between doing it. However, half of it (my rough estimate) is not really skating as it is known in the rest of the world, but rather retkiluistelu or tour skating. You put on your skates, preferably take the cross-country or walking sticks for propulsion, warm cocoa and something to eat with you and go on a few hour long skating tour. It makes perfect sense … and it’s absolutely fantastic. The air is fresh, the nature is beautiful and the ice is thick enough. These trips can vary from less than 10 km all the way to more than 100 km which can take you a whole day. During longer skating trips there are publicly maintained resting spots with fire places by the lake where people stop and take a break, roast a sausagge on fire and have a sip of koskenkorva. Thus besides being a great Finnish recreational pastime, it’s also very touristy.

For those who plan a skating holiday in Finland go and check out the Suomen retkiluistelijat home page. While I still recommend that the real skating enthusiasts should plan their trip in time for Finland Ice Marathon. The enormous Gluteus maximus skaters gather annually in the city of Kuopio in the Finnish Savo region where they compete in races of up to 200 km. What really amazes me is not just the distance these skaters cover during their competitions, but also the speeds: the fastest in the 200 km race reach the average speeds of almost 40 km/h. And that’s actually how lake skating came to Finland in the first place. When the Dutch who invented long distance skating on their channels had several misfortunate winters in their home land, they were looking for a substitute. They first went to Canada and then to Norway and finally discovered this small town of Kuopio in the middle of Finland in 1984. After that it didn’t take many smarts to spread the idea to other places around Finland and organize skating on lakes when ice gets thicker than 5 centimeters.

As you see, I really got excited about this skating thing this winter. I mean, I haven’t put skates on my feet in more than ten years, until a few months ago. And there’s a reason for that too as I never really liked the measly skating rinks that are usually on offer in European or North American cities. The problem with those is that every few kicks you have to make a turn. Which eventually becomes extremely boring. So Finnish frozen lakes really do provide an unbelievably liberating experience: it’s as close to running as it gets.

Glide on.

Mladen

PS: Check the gallery for some new skating images. And do drop me a line and tell me how you like your skating to be served.

Whoever knows where Finland is (meaning that they can put a finger on the globe) knows that it must be quite cold that far up north. But just how cold is cold? Well, read on to find out about that and how Finns have developed clever strategies to enjoy the cold. Aha, you’ve just stumbled upon problem number one: do Finns even like their cold weather? Good question. And the answer is two-fold: if you ask them, the most likely answer will be a reassuring YES, but if you don’t ask, then you might even hear them murmuring and complaining how DAMN cold it is and that they are sick of it. It’s interesting to see how they have developed a myth about them liking all this harsh environment; they do and they don’t, but mostly they don’t like it. Although Finns do have a name for a wussy winter, indeed; they call it eurotalvi or European winter. No comment on that one.

But let’s get a bit more scientific and tangible for a moment. The all-time lowest temperature record in Finland was measured on January 28th 1999 in a northern Finnish town of Kittilä when the temperature was -51,5°C. Does that look to you too that it would almost be feel warmer if it was expressed in Kelvin temperature scale: 221,65°K. There you go, much cozier. Serious business, so let’s not joke about it. Anyway, so this year the lowest measured temperature was again in Kittilä, but this time only -43,6°C. Cold place this Kittilä. While in Jyväskylä we had nothing like that as it was a tropical -33°C one morning when I was cycling to school. Just one more statistical tidbit: this February the average temperature in Jyväskylä was -12°C and not a single say the temperature has risen above 0°C. It takes much more than non-sensitivity to cold in order to enjoy this.

Yeah, since the average temperatures are well below 0°C for 3 or 4 months a year, not very much changes around here because of the winter itself. It’s actually no surprise to see even construction and road work to continue as normal. OK, if there are really some things guys want to dig in the morning with shovels, they simply set up one of the diesel heaters and cover with it the area they want to keep warm. As easy as that. Actually the only thing that broke down this winter (and I was told it happens every winter) were Italian Pendolino trains which were either dead in their tracks or the doors would not open and as a consequence no passengers could enter the train. And in a land where everything not only works but is also punctual to the atomic clock, no matter what, you can imagine there was a lot of fuss raised about the south European train manufacturer.

There are more interesting quirks on the way. It doesn’t take much smarts to figure that when it’s cold it also snows. And boy, it snows … a lot. It’s really nice to see how they deal with all that snow and keep the traffic running without any holdups. They don’t try to melt the snow on the roads or pedestrian/cycling paths with salt which is a common, myopic and futile practice in Slovenia (and I believe many other countries). It’s obvious that all that salt pollutes the environment, thus they use it only in some parts of larger cities and on the highways. Otherwise plain gravel is sprinkled for traction. And it works fine; I’ve been riding my bike whole winter long courtesy of gravel on ice and snow. In addition both bike and car owners use spiked tires, but you can do just fine without spikes (at least on bike tires) too. And at least to get a driver’s license in Finland you need to complete a special driving exercise on ice.

What at first I found to be a tad bit more exotic were the almost obligatory electric outlets on the parking spots which are used for keeping cars’ engines warm. Each owner of the parking spot has a key to a small gray box from which they pull out an electric cable and attach it in front of their car: the electric heater below the car’s hood keeps the vital parts warm. Think wool socks for your car. I don’t have a car, so I don’t know, but I suspect that they add the cost to your electricity bill. The whole heating thing gets a bit weirder. The most frequented streets in cities around Finland have underground heating installed and are heated during the winter (to see this and other quirks in color, check out the gallery). But things do become really obnoxious too as it seems like in every city there is at least one football stadium where, now sit down, the grass is heated so that boys and girls can play football in -30°C. Let’s see, they were probably thinking: “It seems like we can get far too much money than we really need from the state/EU … how should we waste it?”

All this leads me to think (no, you’re not the only one to think that) does spring ever come to this land? It seems it does folks. In fact today was the first day in roughly 8 weeks that the temperature rised above 0°C: to a whopping 1,2°C. Of course, there’s a lot more to Finnish winter joys, but I will dissect those in the next edition of Suomessa.

Mladen

Although I have touched a bit on the subject of the alcohol-nation relation in previous posts, believe me, I have barely touched the subject at all. And it is definitely a topic which I cannot cover in a single post. But since I’ve just yesterday experienced one of the holy grails of this relation, I thought, well, I have to begin somewhere.

The experience in question is a two day ferry trip between Helsinki and Stockholm (which actually spans three days). You might have noticed something peculiar in the previous sentence: a ferry trip between. At first I saw those daily cruises from Helsinki to Stockholm as a cool way to travel to Sweden, but boy was I wrong. For 99% of the travelers the trip has absolutely nothing to do with reaching the geographical, but rather a mental destination. People get on these ships not to travel, but, well, you’ve guessed already, to drink … and buy cheap booze (courtesy of exploiting the international waters’ taxation policies).

I can hear you saying already: “What the heck, what can a simple cruise change in people’s relation to the capital A?” But there are at least a few things you need to understand before you can put these cruises into the correct perspective. One of them is that ships do not leave only from Helsinki, but at least from Turku (the former Finnish capital) as well. Another thing is that two ships leave from Helsinki each day. Yep, no matter what, sun or hail storm, calm summer seas or frozen Baltic sea, two ships embark on this roughly 19 hour trip each day. And on top of that these ships are huge. The one I was on can accommodate more than 2500 people (which is the number of beds on the ships, thus the number of passangers gets much higher especially in the summertime when people sleep, or rather, party on the ship’s decks) and is 11 stories high. And the ship I took is not the largest one either. And above all the transportation is dirt cheap: if you make a reservation in advance the trip can cost even as little as 17 euros (that’s how much it costed me). Of course, they don’t really make money off of fares (as you’ve probably figured out already); it’s the on board shopping that brings in the most dough.

What in the world is sold on such a shopping craze that can make these trips profitable for the cruise companies? As is extensively advertised in the on board catalogues and is quite obvious from the passanger behavior indeed, you can save as much as 72% on booze if you buy it on board: anything from regular beer to wine costing 130 euros per bottle, and needless to say, everything in between. No, it doesn’t look like booze department of a duty free shop, it looks like a booze fair. And that’s exactly what people do. In fact I am sure that they would buy much more then they do as there are restrictions on how much each passanger can carry away with them. And what are the restrictions? One liter of booze, two liters of wine, 16 liters of beer - and these are one way restrictions! If you are wondering who the hell buys this much, well enough passengers that the on board stores sell even the olutkärry, or the beer carriages where you can strap on all your newly acquired booze and pull it to your doorstep. Of course, the cruise companies make sure that you don’t regret your amazing opportunity by reminding you on the back of the ticket: “Kannattaa ostaa suurin sallittu määrä!” (”It’s worthwhile buying your full allowance!”, allowance of booze of course).

True, a lot of that booze gets to go home with passengers, but you can imagine that huge amounts don’t get to see the home fridge at all. You probably still remember that I’ve emphasized the word between at the beginning of this post. And the between for a lot of passengers means just that - they get so wasted that they don’t even get to see any of the Stockholm, heck they probably don’t even get to see the harbor at all. But those that do, well, it’s no wonder that those Finns can be heard singing on the streets of Stockholm to the children’s Christmas tune “helvetin kova krapula” (”a hell of a hard hangover”) during the day.

Alcohol is one form of income on the cruises, the other being peliautomatti (the coin gambling machines). These follow you on your every step in Finland, but their population density on the ferries is much higher than the average. People mindlessly throw in tons of coins and banknotes, blinded by the fact that those machines are made for them to loose and for the owners to gain. Quite a site. People gather, sometimes several at a machine and cheaply sell their hopes. It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to connect the dots between booze and mesmerizing sounds of gambling machines. You get the picture.

Let that be all for now. However, this is just the first part of my first hand experience of the floating booze relationship between booze and Finns. Today in the afternoon I’m leaving for Tallinn to experience the second part. Stay tuned.

Cheers!

Mladen