I ate Rudolph, and he tasted like Nemo. I’m so sorry, Christmas lovers! But when in Finland, do as the Finnish do. This past weekend I was blessed enough to be able to stay with an actual Finnish family who made us a bunch of Finnish food. Jaana even has her own farm so we got homemade apple juice and her own snow peas. Besides that we got to try cloudberries, a Christmas carrot gratin dish, and baked cheese with jam. They also made us a Finnish Christmas drink called Glögi, which in Vienna is called Glühwein. It’s a drink that appears around Christmas time in all the street markets. It’s a warm, mulled wine drink with spices and I got to have my first taste of it in Finland! All in all I had a very adventurous food weekend. I may have also eaten Bambi and a Rudolph Pizza, which were both delicious. Sorry, Santa!
Not only was the food amazing but also the culture is so different from anything I had ever experienced before. As I was on my way to Helsinki I had to change plans in Oslo, Norway. I landed at 3:45 and I noticed that the sky was really pretty, almost like it was sunset. Well, turns out it was sunset. I couldn’t believe it because when I took off at 4:30 the sun was down and it was dark. That was something I struggled with the whole trip because the sun also wouldn’t rise until around 9:00 in the morning. We would be off doing things and at 11:00am we would realize we only had three or four more hours before the sun went down! It also completely screwed with our sense of time because it would be 8:00pm and we would already feel like it was 11:00pm.
But arriving into the city itself was also an adventure because I realized that I only had a phone number and a vague “meet at the hotel on the right when you exit.” Well that would have been fine if there hadn’t been three exits. It was as I was sitting at the hotel that I realized how much trust I had put into my friend who I was planning to meet. I kept waiting for a: Just kidding! I’m not coming to Finland, text from my friend. Luckily, it never arrived, and she and her relatives greeted me at the airport.
The weekend flew by and I never wanted it to Finnish (puns like that were made the WHOLE weekend). The first night, we got to experience our first ever Finnish sauna, which is in every house. The family we were staying with had one in their country home, their farm home, their summer cabin and their city house. Saunas are everywhere! And it’s really nice during the winter because you sit in the sauna and get really hot and then either run outside and roll in the snow or jump in a lake.
Since we weren’t close enough to any water and there wasn’t snow my friend and I settled for just walking into an outdoor room to experience the chill. Which let me tell you was extreme. Already in November the weather can get to below freezing at night and in the 30’s during the day. Let’s just say this trip is making me reevaluate my planned trip to Sweden in January. Actually, I think it would be gorgeous, but I was already wearing all my winter clothes and layers and I was cold!
We also spent the majority of our time out in the country in a small town called Kokemäki. On our second night there we went to this nearby club called Live Club where we got to see a Finnish band called Kuningasidea, roughly translated as the King of Ideas. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying and was slightly afraid it could be a Ylvis “What Does the Fox Say” kind of band. I mean, who knows!? They’re speaking Finnish! But they were really good and I was told that their lyrics were real.
We didn’t head into Helsinki until our last day when we got to walk around the town for a bit.
We also ended up on a rooftop bar with balconies on either side, used mostly in the summer, and glass walls. It had a gorgeous view of Helsinki. Then that night we ended up going to a Finnish concert where a bunch of famous Finnish people performed. The performers were Idols (the Finnish version of American Idol) winners, famous singers, politicians and the band Frankie Says Relax. I had actually heard about the band Frankie Says Relax from my roommate last year, Frankie, who has a shirt with their name on it and we had listened to their music before.
So needless to say I was extremely surprised when they started playing. I had completely forgotten they were from Finland! Besides that, my friend ended up randomly meeting Finnish relatives (the long-lost kind she didn’t even know about) at the concert. The population of Finland is around 5.5 million (so it’s not that big), but it’s still crazy that she ran into more relatives of hers and I stumbled into a concert with a Finnish band I knew!