Even though it is officially written as talviloma (winter
vacation) on my school calendar, hiihtoloma is the name of the week long break
that happens at the end of February/beginning of March. It literally means skiing vacation. During the week off of school I went with my host
family to spend some time in Helsinki, which is Finland’s
capital city.
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| This is the poster I have. |
On the Tuesday of hiihtoloma, I went with a group of friends
to see “Härmä” which is a movie (in Finnish). For your information, contained
in the Kauhava are the communities of Ylihärmä and Alahärmä (upper and lower
Härmä). The movie was filmed in my community and one of my friends and one of
my teachers were both extras. Anyways, the spoken language in the movie is in
thick local dialect. However, I have lived in this region of Finland for
more than seven months and I was able to understand it, for the most part. The
movie was really good; I’ll try to capture its essence in a few sentences. It’s
about a two brothers who live in this region of Finland. The younger brother the
nicer of the two and he is in love with his soon to be fiancé. The older
brother is cruel and calls himself the King, and he likes the same woman as his
brother. He has a gang who help him wreak havoc. When their father dies, he goes
against traditions by leaving the family estate to the younger son. Thus the
conflict emerges as to which brother will inherit the estate, represented by
the family’s puukko, a family heirloom knife. I like this film so much and now
I have its movie poster on the wall of my room. After the movie, my friends
came to my house for a palju ja sauna ilta (hot tub and sauna evening). I’m not
sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but my host family has a hot tub powered by a
wood stove.
February 29th comes around only once every four
years. How did I spend it? In a car next to a four year old girl who…wears her
emotions on her sleeve, to say the least. This was the day my host family drove
to Helsinki. I
recently borrowed the first Harry Potter book (in Finnish) from my friend so I
tried to read it. Between all the distractions of the drive, including
sleeping, I managed to read the whole first chapter without looking stuff up in
my dictionary too often. We stopped for food and a little shopping at Idea Park,
which is a pretty big mall on the outskirts of Tampere. We went to eat at subway where the
person behind the counter refused to say anything to me in Finnish; I in turn
refused to say anything to him in English. We got to Helsinki after night fall. We stayed with
Sanna’s aunt Hanna-Liisa and her husband Matti. They live on the top floor of an
apartment build right in the middle of downtown, just steps from the
waterfront.
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| Me under the Sibelius Monument. |
On the first of March, we went to Heuruka, the Finnish
Science Centre. It is a lot like Science World in Vancouver, but smaller. There was a
planetarium theatre, a simulated trip to the future 20X0, and a bunch of
demonstrations to show how cool science is. There was also a station where you
could make a coin with your head engraved on it. We spent a good couple of
hours at the science centre. Afterwards we drove to see the Sibelius monument.
If you don’t know who Jean Sibelius is, shame on you. He is the most well known
and celebrated Finnish composer of all time.
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| This is the Helsingin tuomiokirkko (Helsinki Cathedral) |
The next day Sanna and I had our own private tour of Helsinki by Matti, our
host and a native helsinkilainen. He is definitely a polyglot as he speaks and
reads Finnish, Swedish, Russian, English, French, German, and Chinese. Matti
brought us to the major sites in downtown Helsinki,
some of which included the two large cathedrals, the parliament house, the university
library, the esplanade, and the President’s palace.
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| All of the kids on the cannons |
After lunch we all caught a
ferry to Suomenlinna (Finland’s
Castle), which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a sea fortress in the harbour of Helsinki. It was very windy, hence it
was quite cold, but it was good. After the Suomenlinna I walked to the Rock Church
with Matti, unfortunately it had already closed for the evening. Helsinki is a nice city;
I need to go back when it is summer, as I’m sure the general hustle and bustle
will change quite a bit. I have concluded that I don’t really like being a
tourist when it is winter at the place I’m visiting; the ground was snowy and
slushy and my feet got wet and cold (normally if I travel during winter it is
to somewhere hot).
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| On the ferry ride back from Suomenlinna. |
On Saturday morning before heading home I went with Sanna,
Hanna-Liisa, and Matti back to the rock church, which is a church built into the
rock. The walls are, for the most part, bedrock and the ceiling is a large glass
dome. Luckily it was a sunny morning so the whole church was we lit with rays
of the sun. After we went back to the apartment and ate something, we got ready
to head home. The drive home was pretty much the same as the drive to Helsinki; I managed to read the entire second
chapter of my book. Our stop this time was at the IKEA in Tampere. At home in Canada, when we
go to IKEA, we just brush off all of the crazy names of stuff because it is
some weird foreign language (Swedish). As Swedish is an official language in Finland it has
a very strong presence, including in the IKEA. The item names no longer looked
too foreign. The signs for items said their Swedish name, then explained the
item in Finnish, then explained the item in Swedish. While in the store, I
looked for a cheese slicer to buy and take home to Canada. In Finland
everyone has these really handy tools in the kitchen that they use to slice
cheese and it is so much easier than using a knife.
That evening, almost as soon as I got home, I raced to my
computer to phone my mom and wish her a very happy birthday. I love you Mom! I
hope you had a wonderful trip to Hawai’i.
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| Trying to catch a fish. |
The last day of hiihtoloma, my both my host families went
out to lunch to celebrate my host-grandmother’s birthday. Even though I have
had two host families here in Finland,
she is the grandmother of both of the families. She is the mother of Jarmo and
Petri, my two host fathers. After the birthday meal, I went ice fishing.
Sanna’s entire family (her parents, her two brothers, and their families) was
spending the afternoon on a frozen lake. Although I’ve had opportunities to do
so before coming to Finland,
this was the first time I’d ever gone ice fishing. Within my first 5 minutes I
caught two little perch. I didn’t catch anything else the entire afternoon.
There was a dog in the family who went around and ate all of the unprotected
fish that had been caught. There was a fire just off of the ice so we all had
warm makkara and something to drink. In the end, we brought two little fish home
to feed to my host cat Viiru.
To finish off the
day, I went to Kalle’s house to make some of Grandma’s delicious peanut butter
chocolate chip cookies.
