Wednesday, May 23, 2007

23 May 2007

Where to even begin? I don’t think the extra-long weekend in Helsinki and St. Petersburg will fit in one entry, so it will have to be at least a two-part special. Let’s start with Helsinki, since that’s where we went first. We stayed at a Finnish friend’s apartment, and arrived there late at night. We opened the door to her apartment, which led to… another door, about 18 inches in from the first door. This door-in-a-door thing seemed odd, but it showed up in our hotel in St. Petersburg, as well, so maybe it’s a regional quirk, intended for storing wet shoes, umbrellas, or sleds (which is what our friend’s subletter was keeping in the inter-door space).

We closed the curtains to keep out the light (very important, since at this time of year in Helsinki, it’s light past 11 p.m. and it gets light again at 4 a.m., and summer solstice is still a month away), and went to sleep. We got up the next morning to find our way to a salon (haircuts rank high on the list of things to do outside of Switzerland, due to the astronomical cost and high probability of getting a charming mullet at Swiss salons), and as we made our way there, we noticed that the vast majority of the population in Helsinki is blond. Naturally blond.

This observation was confirmed by our hair stylist, who told me that my dark hair was very exotic and unusual (tell that to the billions of people with black or brown hair, and to the millions of them who dye their “exotic” hair blond). After we left the salon, we noticed that many people in Helsinki had “backwards” roots – their hair was dyed brown or black, and the roots were coming in blond. I spent the remaining time in Finland feeling very special and unique, indeed, until we reached Russia, where, as in the other places I’ve been, blondes supposedly have more fun.

Finnish is apparently one of the most difficult languages in the world – they have all sorts of declensions and conjugations, and they use so many umlauts and repeated letters that it seems like they’re just trying to make it more impenetrable to the rest of the world. A sample phrase in Finnish will show you what I mean: “ja käyttää saatuja tuloksia tukena päätettäessä ravintolakilpailutuksesta.”

Finland’s population is well under six million, so all Finns learn additional languages in order to communicate with the rest of the non-Finnish world. The first foreign language that they learn (which is also used on all of their signs, underneath the Finnish) is Swedish, a very judicious choice, seeing as Sweden has a population of over nine million, meaning that a Swedish-speaking Finn can communicate with almost fifteen million people, about a quarter of a percent of the world’s population! To be fair, Sweden and Finland are neighbors, so I suppose Swedish is quite useful for many Finns. After Swedish, most Finns learn English, which allows them to talk to a larger percentage of the world’s non-blond population.

One of my favorite things to do in a new country is to browse for unusual products. The tourist bureau had brochures advertising a necklace that was commissioned to commemorate the historic win of Finland’s heavy metal monster group Lordi in Eurovision 2006. Have you seen Lordi? The three best products for sale in the Finnish grocery store we went to were Lordi gummy candy, instant strawberry soup (just add hot water) and canned braised reindeer. We later saw canned bear and canned elk, as well. Our Finnish friend says that such unconventional (by American norms) meats are standard fare – her family freezes half of a reindeer or half of an elk every year to eat during the winter months.

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