Fifteen and falling?

Me and my girl...

No, this blog is not turning into the weather channel. I´m just quite excited about the experience of having a real winter after years of austerity. Seems that after this year´s absolutely exceptional and record breaking summer we´re striving for sensational readings on the other side of the meter. Minus 15 so far, ladies and gentlemen. Winter wonderland. I like it! Just got my first pairs of long johns since I was a child. So I´m well prepared to find out how low we can really go! Next couple of days should be a bit warmer though. Sunset starts about 3.30pm now. And all the time I have these lines of Turbonegro´s Are you ready for some darkness ringing in my head:

You want it, you got it... 
But do you have the guts?

SONGS FOR THE DAY:

Turbonegro - Are you ready for some darkness
Joy Division - Ice Age

Hyvää syntymäpäivää!

Life in Hel would like to wish all of its readers a happy birthday!
Regardless if it is your birthday today or not. I mean who knows if I can meet or contact you on that particular day? And maybe in YOUR case the great day has already passed, so let´s get it over with: Happy birthday to all of you!
I should actually like the Finnish way of honoring the very existence of their friends and loved ones. Finns are quite careless about the exact date, sometimes even about the whole thing itself. Since I´m a sucker when it comes to remembering birthdays it would suit me absolutely fine to disguise my disability as an attempt to adjust with the Finns and their habits.

But I can´t. My German genes kick in immediately. My long term memory might be as bad as it is but I still care about congratulating or being congratulated on the exact day. And I hate everytime I forget it. Don´t know if that marks me out as a German (other peoples might be as pedantic as us) but it definetely marks me out as not being a Finn.

Of course birthdays can be a big thing here, too. But that´s for either children or aged citizens. Kids are even the synttärisankari - the birthday hero! Then they must get weaned from this affection like from mother´s milk and by the time their 50th or 60th anniversary is celebrated they don´t even think it´s such a big deal anymore.

Just recently a Finnish friend of mine invited me to his birhday party on a Friday. When I asked him if this was his actual birthday he said: "No, that will be next week´s Wednesday. And the weekend after that I´m out of town so I will celebrate already this Friday." I´m already accustomed to this habit for a considerable time now but an unknowing German brain would read out of this information Syntax error!

To celebrate (days, hours, minutes, seconds) before your birthday is unthinkable for a German mind. We get spooked out and superstitious because - don´t you know? This brings bad luck! If someone suggest doing that to us we have to close our eyes and bite our lips not to scream:
"Witch, witch! Burn the evil one! Burn, burn!"

Back in Germany me and my girl once went to one of these parties where you celebrate "into" the birthday. That is a common habit over there: If your birthday is on - let´s say - a Sunday, you have your party on Saturday and EXACTLY at midnight the music is turned off, everybody goes ape and screams "Häääbbie Böörsdee tuu juu, häääbbie böörsdee tuu juu...!" Then you get your presents and you can open them. But this all has to happen after midnight and not a second before - it wouldn´t be your birthday yet, you see? This system luckily doesn´t take your actual time of birth in account, nobody would wait until...eehm, e.g. 04.37 or 23.41 or whenever you were born.
We´re not that mad. But it seems that the right timing is crucial on a German birthday party!

Obviously I hadn´t briefed my girlfriend about our tribal rites. When we went to the party and rang the bell, the birthday boy (40something) opened the door and my better half said: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" with a big smile on her face. The reply came muttured and without a smile: "Well, actually it´s tomorrow..." I felt bad because it would have been my responsibility to tell her that you can only congratulate after midnight. But how was I supposed to know that she didn´t know? We had just encountered a cultural difference, not for the first and not for the last time.

I have to admit that sometimes I feel a bit stupid about clinging to this unwritten birthday rule myself but at the same time I like it. What can I do, I am German and it´s in my system! Maybe here the old prejudice applies that Germans are always on time - Dienst ist Dienst und Schnaps ist Schnaps. Hhmm, I dunno...maybe. About this I can only say the following: I have played in bands where we had to tell certain members that we would rehearse half an hour earlier. If we showed up at the original time we would arrive with them around the same time at the room because these certain members would always be half an hour late, no matter what. Pathetic, but that system really worked!

To wrap up this post I hereby proclaim that I don´t intend at all to kiss my stupid habit goodbye! We can party but I congratulate when it´s due!
Hugh!

SONG FOR THE DAY:

The Smiths - Unhappy Birthday

Weather report

Nearby Klaukkala, 30 km from Helsinki

Please forget everything what I said about melting snow, too high temperatures and grey mess on the ground in my last post. That was guessing and I guessed wrong. In fact the snow hasn´t left since it came and according to the weather forecast the temperature will fall to -8 °C next week in the South of Finland. This starts to get interesting!

First snow!

Webcam picture from Ruoholahti, Helsinki

The view isn´t exactly pretty and it´s not exactly the first snow either. But for the first time this autumn it´s constantly snowing today in Helsinki and the whole town is covered by that white stuff. It won´t stay long, that´s for sure because it´s still not cold enough yet. Soon the ground might be as grey as the sky after the snow has melted into a dirty mess. This is the time many people like the least and everybody is happy when it´s getting real cold with lots of snow. The reason is quite simple:
Snow is white, white is bright and bright means light, something that we have less and less on a daily basis now.

Somebody must be fooling around with the dimmer...

Tour de Turku

Back from a very nice trip to Turku! We went there by bus to pay my gal´s cousin´s family a visit. I had been looking forward to this since my arrival to Finland, because due to several reasons (we´re living in busy times) we had not been able to make it happen sooner. In fact we hadn´t seen each other at all since I´m living in Helsinki. This had to change and last weekend the time had finally come.

They just moved earlier this year to their impressive and big house with lots of space for both kids and parents. The place was very nice and cosy and they were so hospitable that we actually stayed indoors most of the time and didn´t see that much of the town. So many things to do, you know? Exploring all corners of the house, chatting, enjoying delicious food, playing with the kids, going to sauna, kicking out the jams in the rehearsal room (cousin is a music maniac, too!), 1-2 beers / glasses of wine (I didn´t count)...Quality time!

I respect privacy so I don´t post any pictures except one, permitted by the man of the house. Thanks man, I just have to share this. Like said, the whole house was impressive, but here´s what impressed me the most:

A drummer´s dream come true and it really flushes! No interruptions anymore, just go with the flow!

On Sunday we shortly went on a small trip through the city and saw Finland´s oldest church, the Cathedral of Turku (or Turun tuomiokirkko), consecrated in 1300. Buildings this old are really rare in Finland which made it even more interesting to have a peep inside. Blockhead JottEff had forgotten his camera, so please don´t be led astray by the snow and the beautiful sky in the picture. I nicked it from the internet to be able to show it to you. We had quite bad weather, grey clouds and rain. Nothing unusual for this time of year though. More sightseeing included a car ride along the river Aurajoki, which devides the town in two parts, the harbor side with the Forum Marinum, a national marine and navy history museum and Turku Castle (Turun linna). They started to build the castle around the same time as the cathedral was built. Lots of alterations and augmentations have been made over the centuries, so it constantly grew. Today you can see all the different periods of time since groundbreaking carved into the stones of the largest surviving medieval castle in whole Scandinavia. Definitely worth a visit! By the way, again the net provided the picture (which only shows a small part of the building), next time I have to nail the camera to my forehead and take my own pictures. Sorry for the cheat and thanks to Wikipedia! Talking about thanks, visit and next time...

Dear turkulaiset, thanks a lot for your hospitality and the fun we had! I am already looking forward to the next time we´re visiting you. There are still so many things to do, you know?