finland

http://www.iltalehti.fi/iltvurheilu/2012031603165506_v9.shtml

According to the text that video is from a Norwegian horse race, it was just reported in a Finnish newspaper.

Anyway, this is the proper thread for Finnish curiosities, I think:

Could someone please explain Finland to me?

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/138455

perkele!

Laulan, tanssin, soiton soitan,
revin riemun näistä teistä,
näistä teistä, elämästä
täällä Pohjantähen päässä .
Tääl' on miun kotopaikka,
tää on reissun päätepiste,
heposeni tallipaikka,
liinaharjan syntysija

hey can someone (tuomas) change these from first-person singular to first-person plural for me?

Laulamme, tanssimme, soiton soitamme,
revimme riemun näistä teistä,
näistä teistä, elämästä
täällä Pohjantähen päässä.
Tääl' on meiän kotopaikka,
tää on reissun päätepiste,
heposemme tallipaikka,
liinaharjan syntysija

but what does it all mean?

thanks, tuomas!

Hey, I'm going to Helsinki from like July 7 to teh 14th, but might spend an extra week since several people reached out on CouchSurfing to offer their hospitality. Hooray for kindly Finns! So, if anything is happening around Finland at this time LMK. Also wondering if I should venture out of Helsinki someplace.

davey you should definitely kick it with tuomas

Hi Gr80. I would love to kick it with mr. Tuomas if he's down to kick it with an ilx noob. he seems like a cool dude at least based on this thread. Yes, super stoked to see Finland... Tuomas if I see you I'll buy ya a round, just holler!

Hi, unfortunately I'm in New York from July 6th to 15th, so I won't be in Helsinki when you're there. But if you need any tips on what to do in Helsinki, I can certainly help.

As for venturing outside Helsinki, there are a few places I could recommend, but it depends on what you'd want to do. What I can tell you is Turku and Tampere, the two largest cities in Finland outside the Helsinki metro area, are both within a 2 hour train/bus trip, so a day trip to either city is certainly feasible. Tampere is generally nicer than Turku (it's more cozy and working-class, and less posh), but Turku might be nicer to visit in July... The river that goes right through the city centre has plenty of restaurant and pub boats, and there are more historical sites to see than in Tampere (Turku is the former capital of Finland). Anyway, either city is worth a visit, I'd say, and since July is the main summer holiday month in here, there'll probably be some cultural activities available in both of them.

Hey Tuomas. I'm staying in helsinki a while longer than first expected. I'll be here til wednesday the 25th, although I might take a day trip to Tallinn, and an overnight to Turku for the Turku Modern festival. I'm liking it here a lot so far. But anyway, what's up? LMK if you'll be out on the town or if there's something cool to do. Maybe we could chill, after all, as that would be neat. Cheers.

By the way if anyone visits Helsinki, do go to Fafa's restaurant in the Erottaja area. Best falafel I've had in my LIFE, and I hear the shawarma is also excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZphHGHiQ5w

Looks like I will be spending all of December in the country about 40km away from Tampere.

Please tell me everything you know.

About Tampere?

About anything relevant I guess.

I will have access to a car and a bicycle. Will it be snowy? I understand almost everyone can speak English? How expensive is a decent bottle of booze (say 700ml in Euros)? Interest geographical/historical etc. sites around or further afield. What should I do for Christmas and (possibly) New Years?

It's not always that snowy in December, it's not always that snowy n December. There'll probably be snowfall during the month, but it might melt away within a few days. Though Tampere probably gets permanent snow earlier than Helsinki (where I live), since it's further north and inland.

Almost everyone in their 40s or younger will speak English, yes, since practically all kids have learned it at elementary school since the 1980s. Most older folks know at least some basic phrases too, having picked them up from the TV and movies. So if you're doing shopping and other errands like that, you can do that in English, at least in bigger cities like Tampere.

A quarter litre bottle of decent vodka will cost you around 25 Euros. Due to Finland's heavy regulation of alcohol sales, you can buy wines and booze only at Alko, the state-owned chain of liquor stores. (The Finnish alcohol law is quite similar to Sweden, if you're ever been there.) Grocery stores and supermarkets can only sell beer, cider, and other drinks with no more than 5 % alcohol. If you're a youngish-looking feller, be prepared to show your ID, people get carded quite often when buying booze. (It still occasionally happens to me, even though I'm 34 and have a full beard.)

I'm a bit busy now, but I'll write more about Christmas and New Year later on when I have some time.

Whoops, the first sentence there was formatted badly, it should've read:

It's not always that snowy in December, it depends on the year.

A quarter litre bottle of decent vodka will cost you around 25 Euros

i presume 'decent' here means 'not toxic or disgusting' rather than some premium brand thing? because that is extortionate

That is why cruises / bus trips to Estonia and Russia are so popular, I guess.

sex tourism too

i presume 'decent' here means 'not toxic or disgusting' rather than some premium brand thing? because that is extortionate

Yep. The Finnish alcohol policy has been for decades that alcohol should be heavily taxed; the high price is thought to hinder excessive alcohol consumption, and the tax money is also seen as a way of covering the costs of alcoholism to society (since we have a universal health care and social security system, to which alcoholics are a burden).

And Sharivari is correct, the number one reason locals take the day ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn is to get some cheap booze from there. (Though ever since Estonia joined the EU the price difference hasn't been as high anymore as it used to be, and nowadays people do more general shopping in Tallinn as well, as there are many more Western stores and chains there as there were in the 90s.)

Basically the stereotypical idea of Finnish alcohol consumption is that Finns drink as much booze as they can get their hands on. And as a response to this, the stereotypical idea of Finnish alcohol policy is that the state should try to make it as hard as possible for them to get any booze. Things have become more liberal ever since Finland joined the EU, but I think it still has the second tightest state control on alcohol in the whole of Europe, only Sweden is even tighter in this regard.

"As drunk as a Finn" or variation on that theme is a common phrase in Russia. A lot of young people get trashed when they arrive in St Petersburg and realise a double vodka costs about a Euro.

Thanks for the info... Something may have been confused in translation though

--- A quarter litre bottle of decent vodka will cost you around 25 Euros ---

do you mean a quarter of a liter - ie. 250ml - will cost 25Eu? THAT IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE THING I HAVE EVER HEARD

OR

a 'quart' as Yanks would say - 946ml (almost a litre) - will cost 25Eu? Pretty much comparable to Australia.

Planning on being in Helsinki for the last week of November to get acclimatised. How cold will it be roughly?

Whoops, sorry, I just realiced my typo there. The 25 euros is for three quarter bottle (0.70 litres) of good vodka, which is the common bottle size for vodka in here. So it's still expensive, but not as expensive as it may have seemed in my initial post. The cheapest available vodka in Alko seems to cost 16.98 euros for 0.7 litres.

What is the favored local Finnish liquor?

And I guess I should point out that even the cheapest vodka still tastes okay, none of the ultra-cheap Russian stuff is sold here, except on the black market.

Salmiakki is worth trying at least once.

What is the favored local Finnish liquor?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koskenkorva

Back in the 1990s there was a very popular flavoured liquor, where some salty liquorice was added to Koskenkorva; I guess that's about as Finnish as an alcoholic beverage can get. Then it was banned for some years, because there were fears that the "candy-like" taste made it popular among minors (the Finnish alcohol policy strikes again). Nowadays it's sold again, but it isn't as popular as it was in its heyday.

Is it legal to make beer and wine at home in Finland? I image those prices would encourage that greatly.

It is, and during the 1990s recession a lot lof people got into making their own beer and wine. I remember when my dad was unemployed back then, he was often brewing some homemade beer. Don't know if the current recession has brung this thing back in style, though.

"Brung"? Brought!

what would be the finnish equivalent of john or jane smith or jean(ne) martin or whatever, the most generic name

The Finns use then terms "Matti Meikäläinen" (for men) and "Maija Meikäläinen" (for men) for that purpose. Matti and Maija are very common first names, but Meikäläinen isn't a real Finnish surname, though it sounds like one... "Meikäläinen" translates to "one of us", so I guess "Matti Meikäläinen" is closer to John Q. Public ("a common man") than to John Doe ("an anonymous man"), though it can be used to signify the latter too.

that's somewhat more communitarian than the english ones then

http://i.imgur.com/u18KKvV.jpg

what is happening here?

It appears to be some kind of an union paper from 1897. The title of the poem is "The Downtrodden Are Fishing", and the poem below the pic says it's a bunch of public school teachers hoping for a raise in their wages and pension from the parliament.

I featured Finland on one of my blogs. Kinda got infatuated reading about the Sami indigenous people and how they're fighting to save their culture.

And then when I saw what these indigenous people looked like, my head about exploded.

I've never felt more part of a mixing pot or salad bowl or some weird macadam wall where some of the stones have been crushing some of the other stones for centuries. This is a culture thing, Tuomas, so I'm not trying to rag you or anything. I'm just not used to seeing oppressed indigenous people who are not only very white, but look pretty much the same (to me) as the rest of the damn country.

what did you expect them to look like?

I know, right? Maybe like the Inuvit? No, there's no landbridge or close vicinity to Asia. I just never thought about it too much.

Feel free to make me an embroidered pillow with that last sentence stenciled across it. I'll keep it in the den.

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/1750/lappish2pi5.jpg

x-p
When I was in Turku a few years ago I did notice about every third man was named Matti.

when i was toying with the idea of minoring in Swedish in college, i had a professor try real hard to talk me in to a semester-long study abroad program that was basically a 400 mile reindeer herding trip, led by Sami educators

What's a nice place to stay in Helsinki for the last week of November?

Do you mean like hotels? I've lived in Helsinki all my life, so I've never stayed at a hotel in here... Maybe some ILXors who've visited Helsinki can recommend something?

In general, if you prefer to hang out in an area with loads of nightlife and cultural activity,the Kallio district is pretty cool, it's full of artists and punk rockers and other bohemian types. It's kinda like the Williamsburg of Helsinki. (And like with Williamsburg, it's been accused of being a hipster den, which I guess it is, but if you want to get into "alternative" Helsinki, there's no other area like it.)

If Kallio sounds like something you'd enjoy, I guess I could recommend this hotel for you. It's in the district of Hakaniemi, which is right next to Kallio, but it's also within a walking distance of the city center. So you could walk both to the pubs and clubs in Kallio and the museums and historical cites of the center. There's also a tram and metro stop right next to the hotel. But I haven't stayed at the actual hotel, so I've no idea what it's like. It's part of a large hotel chain, so it shouldn't be too shabby at least.

Thanks for the tip. Will definitely be spending some time in Kallio then. Found a much cheaper hotel that still looks nice with a kitchenette a bit further south next to Katajanokan puisto tram stop.

If I'm going to be there for over a month, what's the recommendation on buying a phone sim card? Will largely be in remote/regional areas, but I presume there are some decent plans, I mean, I have to drive through the town of Nokia.