Being a student in Finland is an awfully nice thing. There are indeed so many benefits students are entitled to that naturally many want to extend their student years as much as they possibly can. Thus it’s not that uncommon to be a student in Finland even for the unthinkable 15 years or more … and being proud of it. Let’s take a look at what makes it so appealing.

You guessed it, this is all about money. OK, the profession of a student is even in Finland not really a profitable business. However the state gives out a lot of money to and for their students. Not only in form benefits like well organized and almost free health care, but also as hard cash straight into your bank account. So, being a student in Finland is a double benefit: Finland is said to have one of the best educational systems in Europe (and maybe even in the world) which is free for everyone, plus some get even paid to get that education. What more could you want? A lot more.

But there is a catch you should know about before you start packing your stuff, get the plane ticket and move to the land of milk and honey. The most lucrative benefits are reserved for Finnish citizens and residents, and neither of the two statuses are easily achievable for foreigners. Although I have met a few students here who have come from the US and have made it quite clear that by coming to Finland they will not only get a great life experience, but will also save tons of money they would otherwise spend on tuition. The education in Finland is free for everyone, period.

So how good do you have it if you happen to be entitled to all the benefits. Here comes the first surprise for the many. You are catered to already as a high schooler. Yes, the kids get a monthly allowance from the state already when they begin attending the high school. This simple (or not so simple) action shifts a whole range of parameters and immensely benefits the society as a whole. The money high schoolers receive is for many a sum enough to help them move away from their parents’ fridges and get a life. Which needless to say has many great advantages for young people as they do become more independent at much earlier age than, for instance, in countries like Slovenia where kids quite often move away from their parents well into their twenties.

And this does not turn Finnish kids into leeching slackers living on the behalf of the state. Quite the contrary: the money they receive is just a well placed incentive that prompts them to get that part-time job and learn how to earn enough money to make it on their own with the help of the state’s allowances. Think seed money rather than free ride mentality.

Once they leave the high school and enter into the higher education things change a bit, but they only get better. When attending the higher education, students first receive money for the 55 months–if they decide to take a leap year, they stop receiving benefits during that time, but can then pick up on everything as they left it once they decide to continue persuading their degrees again. Same goes for continuing education. If you get a BA and then decide to work towards the MA, you receive another 20 months of government support.

But getting a sum of money every month without any strings attached (as long as you study and pass courses) is not all. Students also get covered as much as 80% of their rent up to 252€ a month. Back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if renting a 250€ flat, a student receives 200€ for the flat on top of 260€ monthly allowance, which sums up to 460€ each month. Not bad.

That’s the hard cash part. But the benefits don’t end here for Finns and residents while they just begin for us foreigners. Every holder of the Finnish student card gets 50% discounts for all train and bus fares around the country. For instance, the regular price for the return train ticked from Jyväskylä to Helsinki costs 90€, while students pay only 45€ (the total distance of the trip is 724 km). All students are also entitled to subsidized meals in designated restaurants and cafeterias around the country where meals cost from 1€ to 2,35€. And technically speaking you can have as many as you want in a single day as there are no food quotas.

Then there’s the practically free health care as you only have to pay if you need to see a specialist, and even then it’s cheap. Also dental work costs, but then again prices are really low. Dentist charges around 6€ per filling, which is basically free in comparison to the regular dental prices which can be even ten times as much. So, it is not that uncommon for the students who are about to enter the working world to pay a visit to their dentist in exchange for peanuts, for the very last time.

As you can imagine student benefits do not end here. Students are entitled to discounted prices for all museums and exhibitions, cultural events like theater plays, classical music concerts, opera, then again unfortunately it is not usual that there would be student discounts for events like rock concerts, but as a student you do get substantial discounts for various newspaper and magazines subsscriptions, for instance, a 50% discount when subscribing to the superb daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.

Mladen

Just like in every culture, music has an important role in Finland too. But I don’t really intend to go into the details about how it all begun. First of all, I’ve no idea about it, and secondly, I don’t think you’d enjoy reading some dry history stuff. Let’s dig out the entertaining and funny tidbits instead.

There are very mixed feelings about Finnish music both around the globe, Europe and right here in Finland. Like, for instance, the annual Eurovision contest, which has due to terrible consecutive results of Finnish performers reached the level of being nothing less than a national trauma. Until, of course, this year when Finland won the contest with Lordi and surprised everyone, even itself.

And I think Lordi is a good example of how out of tune consensual Finnish musical taste is. When they won the national competition, everyone from broadsheet newspapers to yellow press and grandmas on the streets went ballistic about how Lordi will bring eternal shame to the country. Fast-forward a few months and they literally became national heroes being received by both president Tarja Halonen and prime minister Matti Vanhanen, having squares named after the band, statues erected, and on top of everything even getting their own bank card. From bitches to riches in an eye blink. And I cannot really imagine that the queen would hold a reception for the Sex Pistols at the height of their career. But then again, this is Finland after all.

OK, everyone knows Lordi and it ain’t really fun anymore now that they are swarmed with sexually explicit letters from their German fans. There’s much more to Finnish music than Lordi can offer.

Take, for example, the notorious former world-class ski jumper Matti Nykänen. His career in sports literally catapulted him (no pun intended) into everlasting bingeing, and along the way he became a stripper, a porn star and, yes, even a singer. And I’ve just scratched the surface here: he has said and done many admiringly stupid things. Even though many regard him to be a tragic character, he’s proud of it all. No, really, to do justice to Matti, I’d have to write a separate post. But I’ll stick to the topic and write about Matti some other time.

I’ve no idea why he’s so popular as a singer, but I sure noticed that sometimes it’s really hard to tell if people and media are laughing with Matti or at Matti. But at the same time, I don’t think he’s able to make a distinction either. I haven’t yet had a chance to see Matti perform live, but cannot wait for that moment to come.

So what does Matti cherish in his songs? He elaborates on V-style (jumping V-style with sexual connotations, that is), jumping and flying (in aptly named song Jump and Fly), on being Topless (I wonder which part of his career inspired this song), he confesses about a Night of surprises (I’m sure there have been many such nights during his long career) and Laps (lap as in lap dance - probably inspired by Topless). But he also touches on more ethereal topics in songs such as are Samurai, Markiisi De Sade (yes, that is Marquis de Sade), and about love and even life itself in the song meaningfully entitled Elämä on laiffi or Life is Life. ‘Nuff said, check them out and you’ll know what I mean. All those who went gung-ho about Matti here’s more. Amen.

Let’s stay on the infamous side for just a bit before we move on to hard science stuff. Are you also too young to remember why Finland sucked so bad in the Eurovision contests practically since its inception? I sure am, but that’s why I like the Internet so much as it brings back things some people would rather forget. What you are about to see is not really Eurovision material, but I cannot imagine it got much better than this. It is a music video of a song I Wanna Love You Tender performed by Finnish duet Armi and Danny that was labeled as the worst video ever. I know it was in the 80’s, but people, please. Just watch!

I’d like to know just one thing: what were these people thinking?

And now for something completely different. Even though it wasn’t really invented in Finland, air guitar is very popular around here. Actually, so popular that since the 1996 Air Guitar World Championships have been organized as part of the Oulu Music Video Festival. Pretty cool. “And just how is air guitar related to creating music?” I hear you grumble. Well, smart kids at the Helsinki University of Technology have as a part of their school project created an air guitar that you can actually play. Their Virtual Air Guitar records the movements of your hands as you do the air guitar and it transforms your gestures into sounds. Every drunk rocker’s dream just came true. Although I particularly like one kid’s honest reaction: “Look mom, magic gloves!”

The result is so cool indeed that you have to check out the videos for yourself. Especially make sure you check out the wannabe rocker professor video.

Rock on.

Mladen

I know it’s a bit unusual that I’ve been in Finland for more than a year now, but have so far barely mentioned anything regarding Finnish food in my posts. What’s on offer and how am I surviving on the poor Finnish diet are the most frequent questions asked. Poor diet? I don’t think so. But I see where that is coming from.

Most recently the reputation of Finnish food has been stumped by political leaders of two countries: France and Italy. After their visits to Finland Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi have been bashing food they ate in Finland. I’ve no idea what they were offered, but I do know that both gentleman are easily arrogant and insulting. Which makes me believe their statements have very little to do with the actual food. Constipated gentlemen take your own sandwiches with you next time.

Since the time when crops can grow is considerably shorter this far in the north, especially in comparison to Central and Southern Europe, one has to get creative with what can be grown (although admittedly technology has left an imprint on agriculture too). But there’s plenty of forest fruits, mushrooms and game that spice up Finnish cuisine. Of course, there are staple foods like bread, meat, potatoes which are practically the same as they are in other Western societies. But far more interesting is the weird stuff.

Talking about weird stuff, my favorite weird Finnish dish is mämmi. And I don’t think food gets more bizarre than mämmi around here. It is probably the most unique of all dishes in Finland; there’s nothing like it found anywhere else in the world (OK, a close relative in Iran, but I wonder how are they actually related and what that relative looks and tastes like).

Mämmi is a traditional Finnish Easter dessert Finns abominate and adore at the same time. Kids loath it because of its looks. And it really does look like a pile of shit, even on the serving suggestion photos embellishing the packaging containing mämmi where it really looks like shit floating in cream and covered with sugar. Mmmm! I understand kids. Polled adults also tend to grimace upon hearing the word mämmi or, even better, words mämmi and like in the same sentence or, god forbid, next to each other. But I don’t understand the adults as they are most likely the ones buying it. The stores are full of mämmi from January to April and during the peak consumption times it even runs out, making it hard to get. Which means that I had to check a few stores before finally getting my daily fix of mämmi.

To feed both your curiosity and to provide a spark for your imagination, check out at least the first few images and let me know what you think.

So, what is this mämmi? Mämmi is a dessert made out of rye flour, rye malt, water, sugar, salt and spices. Although it is fairly easy to make, the preparation is a time consuming process recommended for the patient only as it can easily take a whole day to make and is best when it is made in large quantities. Not for the faint hearted. The process involves several cycles of cooking rye flour and malt in water and cooling the mixture before finally sticking it into the oven for a few hour baking session. The baking part is traditionally done in birch bark baskets. The result is, well, peculiarly looking and incredibly tasty rye porridge hated on declaratory level, but obviously loved by most Finns.

Mämmi is served fresh, but must be chilled to fridge temperature and covered with cream and sugar just before eating (I like my mämmi with cream only). Of course, it tastes like rye (duh!), but considering that the amount of sugar used for making it is practically nil, it is surprisingly sweet, rye kind of sweet. I adore mämmi and based on my observations, I am sure many around me do too, but they are just not ready to get out of their mämmi closets yet.

Mämmi is just a beginning of a truly interesting excursion into the peculiarities of Finnish cuisine. Writing about all of them at once would do justice to none and some of you might even get bored. Thus, do come back and help yourself to seconds. One spoon at a time.

Mladen

How do you know that you’re visiting Linz during the time of Ars Electronica Festival? When half of the passengers on your plane to Linz are Japanese. What is otherwise a small sleepy city in the Upper Austria, annually becomes a bustling world center of electronic and digital art for a week in the beginning of September. And it was exactly the Ars Electronica festival that has put Linz on the world map.

I’ve been coming here for quite a few years now, and whenever I’ve visited I’ve never left disappointed. Quite the contrary, this is such an exciting place that I can easily forget to eat and sleep while being here. Might be a bit hard to understand, but those who are similarly passionate (no matter what your passion is) know what I mean. And I am not the only one. During the week long festival a lot of festival goers, artists, researchers and art lovers consume art and attend lectures during the day and party hard into the morning hours.

Every year the organizers assign a topic for the festival which is then discussed in the symposia, discussions and brought to life in a variety of workshops. The topic this year was simplicity. The discussion was at all times about how the striving for simplicity in our increasingly complex world, what to do to reach it and why is it so important. An interesting topic, which has spurred many an interesting presentation and discussion.

But lectures are just a forum where ideas are verbalized. The majority of attention falls on the exhibitions. And every year the festival program is richer as more venues and events where visitors can enjoy the works of digital contemporary artists are added to the list. But, speaking about quantities is not really that interesting. I’ll rather mention details that caught my attention and which I’ve enjoyed most.

Practically all art presented at the festival is divided into six categories: interactive art, digital musics, computer animation/visual effects, digital communities, net vision and u19 - freestyle computing. Although one cannot really measure progress in arts, it seems like a certain level of achievement satisfaction can be attributed to the computer animation/visual effects category.

The works presented in this category have clearly reached an incredible level of complexity. Less than ten years ago, one could see clever works, but they nevertheless resembled garage works. What one sees at Ars Electronica nowadays is outright incredible display of high quality art and technological prowess. The viewer doesn’t have to pretend anymore that they don’t see the patched up low-tech with a good plot and a nice twist. Practically all the works are polished to the very last detail. Not in the sense of Hollywood blockbusters (although there’s every year at least few of those who get some attention too), but rather in Hollywood superficial sense. Whereas works submitted by Hollywood received a lot of attention for years, the independent or school projects now kick their ass. Hollywood should learn from these people. Thus it comes as a no surprise that the award winners in this category this year supposedly already got lucrative job offers.

It is amazing to witness how the presence at the Festival pulls artists from obscurity and into the center of digital arts scene. At the Festival almost without exception receive a whole barrage of invitations and offers.

One of my favorites was indisputably Ryoichi Kurokawa and his intensive, visually striking and musically rich audio/video performance. His incredible skill of combining sounds with visuals almost drives you crazy. The piece he has performed was both technically perfected, as well as aesthetically complex yet balanced. In fact, it was so beautiful that putting it to words comes nowhere near to experiencing it in first person. Browse around his site and try to catch him play.

Another act that really impressed me was the Graffiti Research Lab group. The Lab was thought up by New Yorkers James Powderly and Evan Roth who tend to describe themselves as not gutsy enough to do the graffiti themselves, but admire all those phlegmatic graffiti artists who are responsible for enriching our urban landscapes. But they wanted to give them a hand and augment the paint bucket and spray can. The duo came up with several immensely clever albeit simple ways of doing this. And they excel at it and even NY cops love it.

GRL guys have won the hearts of the public with their throwies: a 1 buck, 20 second retrograde hi-tech graffiti solution. By strapping together a simple consumer LED light, battery and a strong magnet, they have started a whole craze around the net and on the streets. All of a sudden they became magnetic themselves as they were approached even by the Absolut marketing machine (cooperation with which they have blatantly - and rightfully so - refused). Their throwies stick to any ferromagnetic surface and thus far have adored everything from buildings, bridges and sculptures in New York, to, after their most recent action, Linz trams. Make sure you check the videos on their site.

At this years’ Ars Electronica I have also immensely enjoyed works by Zachary Lieberman. Besides the performance/lecture done in collaboration with artist/engineer Golan Levin and media archeologist and Finnish star professor Erkki Huhtamo, Zach had three of his works at Ars: drawn, The Manual Input Station and Messa di Voce (the latter two done in collaboration with Golan Levin). Although all these works are interactive and children love them, they are also ingenious visually elegant sound works. They all demand interaction from the audience and are great for jamming. But I have to say that seeing Zach and Golan perform with their creations was truly inspiring. Especially make sure you check out the videos on the sites of these projects, since it’s all in the interaction.

Then there were the nerd-retro Papierpixel and PingPongPixel; the unbelievably cool self-destructive (but also self-assembling) Robotic Chair; undeniably cool Khronos Projector and Hello World!. I think I could go on and on about all the projects I have liked. If you’ve never been to Ars Electronica, you should go. So far I have not met anyone who wouldn’t have fun there.

But Ars Electronica is also all about networking, partying and hanging around with the most creative people in the digital contemporary arts.

Later tonight I’ll update the gallery with a bunch of images from the festival. Make sure you check it out as there’s some pretty nifty stuff there too.

Mladen