I am from Finland
And although I live nearly 35 years abroad I still feel like Finnish. I guess it never ends.
Living abroad has it good points. One of them is to understand how differently we behave, and yet we are pretty much the same.
If you have thought to go to Finland there are few ideas you might like to follow.
1. Finland offers huge amount of nature.
2. Beer and wine are expensive
3. Finnish seem extremely shy
4. Summer can be hot and short
5. There are lots of mosquitoes.
As Finland is called a country of thousands of lakes we must like to eat fish, right?
In some occasions yes.
Finnish people are mainly meat eaters, but in the summer when fishing is possible and woods offer plenty of berries and mushrooms, we change our diet. Fried lake fish called "muikku" is to get nearly at everywhere, even in the main market at Helsinki. They are fried in butter and we eat the whole fish, head included. If you thought we eat salmon day in day out, it is not true. Finnish prefer sausage in the summer, among other grilled meat.
Many Finnish like to grow their own vegetable and fruit in the garden, like plums, apples, peers, cherries and strawberries among other berries known as superfood. We believe that our northern strawberries have better taste than those grown in the southern Europe or in glass serre, because the berries collect the right amount of water and sunshine that is a lot; nearly 24 hours.
So if you are planning a vacation in Finland one of the few things you might like to do is to go to woods with a 10 litre emmer, watertight boots, and a repeller to mosquitoes. And start picking blueberries in July lingon berries in august and mushrooms in august and September.
If you have booked a rented house or a flat, it is easy to dry mushrooms in the oven, and make jam out of the berries and bring these delicate souvenirs back home. Most woods are free to go to pick berries and mushrooms.
Finland is so rich of nature that you must love silence and the eco of it if you travel to Finland
It is possible that regarding your vacation period the temperatures aren't as you expected. Officially finnish summer starts at Midsummer, but I have experienced snow fall even near Helsinki, like in the summer of 2014. We had +3°C and it was snowing. The lake water temperature was only +14°C and yet I took out my "winter fur" as we use to call our first swim. But in the very next week the temperature rises above +28°C and it lasted nearly 6 weeks. In the summer 2002 the warm summer lasted until october. But it is more unique than rare. Usually we have a short warm period in the spring, in may, but it turns back cold and sometimes rainy too. You might ask at this point how we grow our fruits and vegetables? We put the seeds in a pot and keep them inside until the temperature allow us to plant them in the garden.
And although I live nearly 35 years abroad I still feel like Finnish. I guess it never ends.
Living abroad has it good points. One of them is to understand how differently we behave, and yet we are pretty much the same.
If you have thought to go to Finland there are few ideas you might like to follow.
1. Finland offers huge amount of nature.
2. Beer and wine are expensive
3. Finnish seem extremely shy
4. Summer can be hot and short
5. There are lots of mosquitoes.
As Finland is called a country of thousands of lakes we must like to eat fish, right?
In some occasions yes.
Finnish people are mainly meat eaters, but in the summer when fishing is possible and woods offer plenty of berries and mushrooms, we change our diet. Fried lake fish called "muikku" is to get nearly at everywhere, even in the main market at Helsinki. They are fried in butter and we eat the whole fish, head included. If you thought we eat salmon day in day out, it is not true. Finnish prefer sausage in the summer, among other grilled meat.
Many Finnish like to grow their own vegetable and fruit in the garden, like plums, apples, peers, cherries and strawberries among other berries known as superfood. We believe that our northern strawberries have better taste than those grown in the southern Europe or in glass serre, because the berries collect the right amount of water and sunshine that is a lot; nearly 24 hours.
So if you are planning a vacation in Finland one of the few things you might like to do is to go to woods with a 10 litre emmer, watertight boots, and a repeller to mosquitoes. And start picking blueberries in July lingon berries in august and mushrooms in august and September.
If you have booked a rented house or a flat, it is easy to dry mushrooms in the oven, and make jam out of the berries and bring these delicate souvenirs back home. Most woods are free to go to pick berries and mushrooms.
Finland is so rich of nature that you must love silence and the eco of it if you travel to Finland
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| photo from Pinterest |
The economical standard and the monopoly of the Finnish state has made alcohol expensive. If you come from a country where a beer costs 1€ in the supermarket, In Finland add 2 more. Red and white wines in your country would costs 5€ but at Finnish Alko they sell the same brand with 100% profit if not more. Alko orders wine in a barrels mostly and then handles the bottling so that it looks unrecognisable to most wine tenders. To save few euros we even buy wine in 5 lt. box, that for the visitors out of wine countries looks awful. I know. We drink usually only during the weekends and then we don't spit in the glass. If you are invited to a party on Sunday it is possible that there is no wine at all, because Monday is a working day and no one wants a hangover to start the week.
If we go to a restaurant, we usually drink ice water, that is free of charge or perhaps a beer. Ordering a wine bottle is like adding one meal if not more. As I live in Italy and I usually order a bottle that is overcharged by 200% in Finland I have to calculate the Alko profit that is 100% and the restaurant profit. A €5 wine turns out at Alko €10 and in the restaurant I might turn out paying nearly €50. It makes a lots of difference to my budget so instead of drinking in a restaurant we have this "drink after diner" instead. Cider made out of peer or apple is pretty common among women, while men prefers beer. It is again a question of money: if one beer or cider costs €6 but has double amount comparing to wine, that in the other hand makes drunk faster, you have your choice.
Meals are normally around €20 since we have just one main plate that includes proteins, carbohydrates, such as potatoes/rise/pasta and vegetables. Add an other €8 to a dessert.
It is not a common use to have sandwich for lunch, but it is common to have a huge breakfast and an early dinner. In Finland children have free meal at school and in the summer time local parks might offer a meal for a mid day, but only to children that need to bring their own plate, drinks and fork&knife/spoon. When I was a child, just in my back yard we had this huge park with kids swimming pool and we got each weekday a warm soup for free.
You might like to experiment with Finnish Pizza: We add ananas to ham and our most well known pizza has reindeer If you turn out to find a Pizza Bolognese, it wont mean that it has this mortadella sausage in it. It is a pasta meat sauce in a pizza topping.
If you are invited to a grill party, you don't need to bring a bottle of wine, but it is appreciated to show off with six packs to adults and ice cream to kids. But if you go to a visit with a nice bottle of wine and it is not opened do not get upset. It is considered as a personal gift and drank in some other occasion.
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Finnish people different from other Scandinavians in many ways. First of all, we look totally different. Most Finnish people have tatar ancestors and we have our eyes a bit like amandels pointing upwards from rear end. Our nose is called a "potato nose", since it has a large top just above the narice. And if you are in Finland you may notice most people do not wear high heels and elderly people walk a bit like pinquins or ducks. It is generally transmitted habit I guess.
We also appear shy. It is not that we leek confidence, but we leak trust towards unknown. We don't dear to ask, we make our own suggestions and ideas believing them to be true. Only after one or two beers/glass of wine we start to socialise Most people would like to learn to know all of you, and even if we don't make many questions we pay attention to every move of yours.
But there is one place where we are not shy at all, and that is in Sauna. You must go to Sauna with real Finnish people. In most public swimming pools we have separate Sauna to males and to females and it is not allowed to wear a swimsuit. Just a towel under out butt. There is nothing to be ashamed in a naked human body we believe and we need to clean it properly. If you are invited to go to someones summer house, it is possible that after a Sauna you are expected to go for a skinny dive.
And about Sauna we don't mean a hot room where we sit and chat. It is hot like in hell there and you run to a lake to cool down. After witch one ice cold beer or cider (typically peer or apple) taste like heaven.
The other place where we are not shy is traffic. Not that we yell like latin drivers, but we just don't think anyone should pass without any good reason and that could be a police or fire department. To mistake a line, because you are a tourist or I am living abroad and we don't know the new traffic rules, might turn out a long queue with frustrated drivers behind us.
The main rule in Finland to apply is that around each person there is a bubble large as where the hands end and it is not allowed to enter without permission. Forget the kiss and handshake unless it's official. Just a high rising your hand to hello from a distance would do. And do not get upset if we don't remember or pronounce correctly your name. English Jack could be associated to Finnish name Jari, or Jennifer to Jenni.
Comparing to Latinos we Finnish like solitude, and silence. We hide in to our summer cottages for a month to cut wood or grow vegetable And we might stay there one full month with not talking to anyone. Our spouses need to read minds to figure out when it is time to warm sauna, put on the bbq and have supper.
It is not common in Finland to take a seat next to someone unknown in a bus, or sit in the next table in the restaurant. In a public beach we look the most distanced edge to put our towel to sit on it.
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We don't have deep waters, not in the sea nor in the lakes and that helps water rise or lower temperature easily. Just one warm week and it is possible to swim in a lake/sea. But in the winter we have 30 cm thick ice and it is possible to drive with a car over it.
You may also notice that our boats are build differently. It is because of the wave length. We do not have long waves so that the head of the boat is shorter than you would see in the boats at the Mediterranean.
Most lakes have mud bottom and it might feel uncomfortable to your toes. It's only mud and good for the skin. Use it; it's free.
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In that short warm period we experience the first mosquitoes. But it is in July when they turn out billions and they are all hungry. Just put lotion and wear long leaves in the nigh. It is nearly impossible to survive Finnish summer with no mosquito bites.
You seem to be ready to your Finnish vacation. All you need now is to book the trip.
Any further questions to your next Finnish vacation, please feel free to comment.
If you are up to north to see the endless sunshine, and perhaps pick up some cloudberries, the northern delicatessen to add to your ice cream, you need special suit that is a mosquito hat and thick clothes not to let mosquitos to bite you. These small mosquito bites are really itchy. An other bite that is annoying is the elk fly. That is a long skinny fly and it enters everywhere if it finds a naked skin area. The only way to get rid of those flies is a hot sauna and a help of a good Finnish friend who can detach them.
And as in Mediterranean countries we also have meat fly; in Finland it bites also humans.
The best outfit to Finnish summers and in the woods is the one in the below, but in a normal day life also t-shirts and shorts with sandals do just fine. And in Finland; wear white tennis socks with sandals not to be recognised as a tourist.
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| http://ostajanonni.verkkokauppaan.fi |
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