Yes, to much surprise it’s about booze again. One would think that after living in the Nordic countries for almost two years now, I’d finally get used to all those things about alcohol consumption and everything that follows suit. Alas, I have not. Far from it. I still find the relationship between locals and booze too fascinating to be able to let go.

Alcohol consumption has a special status in the Nordic countries. Its consumption is not a taboo like it is in many other places. Quite the contrary, the media are usually relatively expressive about this or that problem related to drinking too much hooch and advising people not to guzzle as much as they do. Even though according to statistics inhabitants of many other European countries consume a lot more alcohol per year than inhabitants in the Nordics do, it is considered to be a big problem, at least in Finland.

Why then do alcoholic beverages have such notorious reputation around here?

My wild guess would be: the prohibition is to blame for everything. In what is today Finland, already in 1866 the state banned home distilling and begun regulating the sales of alcoholic beverages. I haven’t been able to find any statistical data (and even if I did, it would probably be quite biased as it would have to justify the ban), but I think that they did it just because the state thought their people were having too much fun. Because we are people, whatever you ban us from becomes our curiosity. So after 1866 things only continued going downhill.

First, in 1914 the state prohibited distribution of alcoholic beverages, only to completely ban production, transportation, sale and storage of alcohol in 1919. In plain man’s talk, everything containing alcohol was completely outlawed. The only approved use of alcohol was for the medical, technical and scientific purposes. All of a sudden everyone wanted to work in the medical, technical and scientific fields. One thing led to another, and that’s how alcohol kick-started the birth of Finnish high-tech society.

But for the rest of the population the next 13 or so years weren’t a walk in the park. It was only in 1932 that the ban was lifted and in the same year the population witnessed the introduction of state owned and operated company which was granted an exclusive monopoly on the import, export, manufacture and sale of everything containing alcohol. Believe it or not, but 75 years later Finland still uses the same system. They did rename it from Alkoholiliike to Alko (to make it easier on the pronunciation), made an amendment here and there, put up a trendy Web site, but three-quarters of a century later it is still state owned alcohol monopoly and one of the few state monopolies in the EU today. That’s what I call being true to the tradition. And Finland is as high-tech as high-tech can be.

The two wars that were devastating for the Finnish soon came into picture and were seen as a good reason to further curb the consumption of booze so the nation witnessed a slew of restrictions. But then in the following decade when things laxed down a little bit, we also get the first official national alcohol consumption statistic: 1,41 liters of pure alcohol per head. No, that’s not 14,1 or even 141, it is 1,41 liters per person, as in slightly less than one and a half liter. I know, you’re also wondering what was all that fuss about.

I see only four options here. The prohibition either straightened up the nation, or it never was as bad as they wanted us to believe, or these statistics are complete bollocks and the state had absolutely no idea how much fun their people actually had or they knew but just wanted to believe that they had everything under control. But wait, there’s more. According to the official record, it took a whopping 16 years for this official figure to double.

Let’s be smart alecky for a moment here. If we take this as a constant trend and consider that the consumption of alcohol doubles every 16 years or so, then today the consumption would be a little bit over 17 liters per person of pure alcohol per year. Which is, in other words, a lot more than in Luxembourg that is with around 15 liters the current reigning champion in the world of alcohol consumption. Despair or rejoice not. Currently Finns consume just a tad bit over 10 liters and again according to the officials the amount is in decline. This doesn’t only mean that they have not been keeping up, but are actually backing out all the time.

I sign-off now to make myself a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater to celebrate.

Kippis!

Mladen

I cannot really claim that I have ever in my life experienced a situation when I was exposed to any particularly perilous situation. Nevertheless, I could affirm that Finland is probably one of the safest places in the world. There are no natural disasters, no threats of war, famine, political upheaval or any kind of revolutions. If this place is ever dangerous it is around this day, add or take a day or two.

Why just now, I hear you saying? It’s summer, the weather is nice and relatively warm, so what could make this time of year particularly dangerous. Well, it might be exactly the weather that’s causing all the danger. Let me explain.

This coming Saturday Finns are celebrating what is probably the biggest party of the year for the whole nation. It is the midsummer or Juhannus as it is known around here. Even though midsummer should astronomically be the exact day of the summer solstice, no matter which day of the week it is, Finns celebrate it every year on a different date as long as it is a Saturday between June 20th and 26th. Which really is no surprise at all as they again prove just how flexible they are. But then again, seriously, who really cares whether it is the 20th or the 26th if the biggest party of the year is about to take place.

In Finland and in all of the other Nordic and Baltic countries Juhannus is one of the craziest parties of the year. Since it coincides with the longest day of the year this really means that the sky in most of Scandinavia will stay bright all night, if the sun sets at all. And after a dark, cold and all-night winter days who wouldn’t go crazy when it’s time for the sun to shine all the time.

Long, unusually warm days and short but very bright nights make people go nuts. I am pretty sure that every single village in Finland hosts at least four different festivals at the same time all of which are packed with people who have already been to sixteen other festivals in previous four villages they have visited on the same day. There is this urge within the nation at this time of the year to be outdoors as much as possible. As I stay sometimes all day inside reading or working on something, I have already developed a sense of guilt for not doing the same. And seriously, whoever survives the long, dark and cold winters around here has a difficult time understanding why someone would not want to come out when the ice melts. Maybe it’s that I haven’t seen enough of such winters yet. Who knows.

In the beginning I mentioned that if ever, it is around this time of year that being in Finland can actually be dangerous. Well, I already wrote on these pages about a sort of a Finnish national specialty of drowning with their zippers wide open. Although I have to say that this act is still a mystery to me. How can it be possible, especially since everyone, I mean, everyone is aware of the consequences they possibly face if they combine booze, boats and the urge to urinate. And, on top of everything, there is plenty of all sorts of direct and indirect warnings issued in the media asking people to try and avoid combining water with intoxication. But to no avail. Last year seven people drowned during Juhannus alone.

Alright, but that’s self-inflicted peril. With a tiny bit of smarts it can be easily avoided. What is a bit more unpredictable are assaults with a knife. You see, that is another Finnish speciality. Not particularly related to Juhannus, but to every season and time of the year. I don’t remember when was the last time that I did not see the news in the daily papers about someone being stabbed, usually several times. In fact, stabbing is so common that it amounts to about a third of all physical assaults. Which maybe even isn’t that surprising considering that one of the national icons is a handy dagger puukko. A useful tool, but add a little alcohol to the mixture and you might make the news either as assaulter or assaulted.

And speaking of booze, a friend of mine already pointed out in one of his comments that Finns really do not consume that much alcohol per person per year. True, but when they do, they consume a lot. Right after Christmas Juhannus is the second busiest time of the year for alcohol consumption. The state wine and liquor monopoly Alko expects to sell around 4 million liters of alcohol during this week alone. That is almost a liter per inhabitant. Which makes it a lot less surprising that Ukon juhla (as Juhannus used to be called during the pagan times) is at the same time a celebration of love, short-lived but passionate.

Mladen

The first strip of the train trip ahead was long. After leaving Göteborg the train went through Skövde, Örebrö, Stockholm, Uppsala, Gävle, Ågne, Sundsvall, Umeå to Luleå. Checking the map before the trip and just thinking about getting the chance to see all this Swedish landscape as it changes from south to north got me quite excited. In fact, I got so excited that when booking the tickets I did not even for a moment doubt that I’d want to shut my eyes on this 24 hour train ride; all I had in mind was a romantic view of the forests and lakes as they rush by.

Sure enough there was plenty of trees and lakes, but booking regular seats instead of the sleeping car bunk beds was a mistake. It proved to be difficult enough to sleep in the middle seat with nothing to lean on, but on top of this the train was packed and having a kid with growing pains sitting right opposite of you is not exactly exhilarating circumstance either. And then again, as it turned out, the landscape was rather monotonous too: 1800 km of forests, lakes and occasionally a house flew by here and there.

One thing to keep in mind if wanting to travel fairly cheap around Sweden is that railroad passenger transportation is privatized here. As such it much more resembles air than land travel. Not in the sense that you need to be worried about your luggage being placed on the train to Berlin as you left towards Kiruna. Luckily the only resemblance is the ticket pricing methods: the earlier you buy, the better deal you get. And if you buy them a month or so in advance, prices can be almost as ridiculous as flying for one euro from London to Bangalore, if the company doesn’t declare bankruptcy before take off, that is. Anyway, the good thing is that you can buy tickets on the net and then collect them from any ticket machine located on every train station in the country.

Almost exactly 24 hours after we left Göteborg we reach the twin cities of Haparanda and Tornio. The former being in Sweden, the latter in Finland they resemble a little Nova Gorica and Gorizia in Slovenia and Italy. But that is just about all these four cities have in common. While Gorica and Gorizia actually have someone living there, Haparanda and Tornio are like ghost towns. We were there on a Friday night and it seemed like someone has rised the threat of a terrorist attack or some other similarly stupid modern-day threat. Besides the operating bus that brought us there, two cars driving by and three intoxicates, we were the only living beings.

Besides, both towns definitely had a rather peculiar feel to them as they both looked like a time capsule sealed off in the 1950s. Or maybe people did leave fifty years ago. Not that I have ever lived in the 1950s, mind you, but I do come from a place where everything from the stores to the cars in the 1980s still resembled the 1950s. The only two cars in Haparanda-Tornio we saw confirmed our assumption, while the bus was in mint condition despite the age and was aptly decorated with washed-out red seats and outfitted with a coffee machine that probably broke down at least 20 years ago. Quite nifty and nostalgic, I must say.

Even the huge IKEA shopping center was not too assuring of towns’ inhabitants presence. I just couldn’t think of anything else but propaganda when reading about the millionth shopper at the very same IKEA who was supposedly there a week earlier and what the place looked like during our short visit. Things somehow just didn’t add up.

It is only after traveling this far north that I have fully realized what the locals have in mind when they grumble about their exceptional welfare they enjoy over here. Although it is true that somehow it has been exactly in this part of the world where the density of social states has probably reached higher density than anywhere else. I finaly begun understanding why these states definitely need to pamper their citizens if they want to prevent their fleeing to some place cozier. Although the attempt in Haparanda-Tornio didn’t seem to have succeeded after all.

But then again, after more than 2300 kilometers and almost countless hours of sitting in the train (OK, three days, so not really countless), I was quite exhausted and as a consequence content by the time we reached Kuopio, a tiny town in the middle of Finnish lakeland. Home sweet home, or more aptly, bed sweet bed.

Mladen

Last week Finnish artist Kaisa Salmi outfitted the Finnish Parliament staircase with about 60.000 gerbera flowers in an attempt to show that this very same place could be the natural habitat of these tropical plants if the climate change continues in the direction of global warming.

The artist explains that seen from a distance her environmental piece of art also reveals a double rainbow. Possibly, although I tried approaching the work from various distances and no such thing as a rainbow revealed to me.

It is not only a great idea, but also a strong political statement. Especially since climate change has been a hot topic in Finnish media and politics for more than a year now. Reversing the current trend of global warming should also be one of politicians and citizens top priorities.

Already upon setting up the work Kaisa Salmi announced that people can come and collect the flowers once the exhibition was over. Even though the announced collection time and date were Saturday, June 9th at 9 o’clock in the morning, first flower snatchers appeared already during the night as they were returning home from clubs. Anyway, there was still enough flowers as more than thousand people came to collect them on Saturday. They emptied the monumental staircase in just a couple of hours. The work was on display for exactly a week.

It was nice to see flowers instead of manure, eggs or rotten tomatoes in front of a parliament.

Mladen

What you see above is one of the best recent additions to passenger transportation in Helsinki. Beginning with this spring these riders will take you on their bike rickshaws anywhere within the Helsinki city center. I have seen them in front of the main railway station in Helsinki and it seems that that’s where their main base is.

I think that both idea and realization are fantastic, but it seems that people in Helsinki still have to catch up with with it. Just a few meters away from where I have taken this picture at Helsinki main railways station was a 30 meter long regular car cab queue.

One of my first thoughts was that even though this manual cab is a payable service, I would still most likely have a feeling that I am exploiting the bicycle rider. I guess because one can immediately see the result of someone’s manual labor.

Nevertheless, these bicycle rickshaws are an excellent solution for the modern city. As far as I know, there are only five operating in Helsinki at the moment, but if there were more, they could definitely contribute to decreasing the downtown short-range traffic. Environment and citizen friendly mode of transportation. Whoever is behind this idea just needs to grab the opportunity here in Helsinki where for more than a year now there has been a serious shortage of car cab drivers.

Mladen