Hiihtoloma Helsingissä (Skiing Vacation in Helsinki)

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.

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 29^th 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.

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.

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. 

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).

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.

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.