Finnish Christmas was awesome.  Our good friend Elina and her family did us the honor of inviting us to their house for Christmas Dinner (which in Finland traditionally takes place on Christmas Eve, as does the opening of presents).  We felt very lucky and happy to be there, since usually it's a family-only affair.

Dinner was two courses.  First was a fish course, featuring approximately every single type of fish ever.  There was cold smoked fish, hot smoked fish, raw fish, horseradish fish, cinnamon and tomato fish, lemon fish, cream cheese and dill fish, and probably several other kinds of fish that I'm either forgetting or got lost in the shuffle.  There was even fish that was not yet fish, in the form of salmon roe that you eat mixed up with sour cream, diced onions, and dill.  They pop when you chew them.  It's amazing.  The main course was turkey and ham along with several casseroles made from root vegetables.  I wish I had taken notes because I'm having a hard time remembering what exactly was in the casseroles.

This may be partially due to the fact that at no point in the night was I allowed to see the bottom of a glass.  There was red wine, white wine, beer, whiskey, brandy, mintuu, and homemade spicy mango vodka.  Mintuu is an amazing liquor that manages to be 40% alcohol while tasting like a candy cane.  At night it's the best thing ever; in the morning it's the worst thing ever.

And the presents!  We were completely surprised to be presented with gifts from the family that were either homemade or that had very clearly been carefully thought out and were pretty much perfect bulls-eyes.  I won't bother to list them all but they included a pair of knitted socks with the Finnish flag on the foot, handwarmers for Lyndsey made from baby alpaca wool, and an awesome old-school Batman t-shirt for me.

We had been talking about how it didn't really feel like Christmas, but being with the Kosonens on Christmas Eve is pretty much as close as you can get to a perfect Christmas without being with your own family.  They should open a business providing the Christmas experience to foreigners.  This being Helsinki, they could charge an arm and a leg.  Unlike a lot of expensive stuff, this would totally be worth it.

I suppose living in near-total darkness has some advantages.  If I ever wanted to become a cat burglar I could do it pretty much around the clock.  Getting drunk at 3 in the afternoon seems much more socially acceptable.  But other than these two things, I don't believe I am exaggerating TOO much when I say that it is a non-stop battle against a soul-crushing dreariness that is constantly threatening to worm its way into your mind and eat your happiness.

The Helsingin Sanomat recently published an article on its English-language website that I assume is aimed at us foreigners who are having trouble adapting to the Mordor-like qualities of the Finnish winter.  Although I'm sure the writer has nothing but good intentions, reading that "unnecessary complaining only adds to the gloom" makes me want to bloody that person's stiff upper lip.  Last month the same newspaper advised us to shine lights into our ears for relief from seasonal depression. Basically what I'm gleaning is that there is nothing to be done and I should just let the Finnish winter wash over me like a gently lapping tide that is slowly eroding my will to live.

Haha!  Only joking.  It's really not that bad.  There's actually plenty to do, especially if you are into Christmas markets. (WARNING:  This link contains an offensive amount of Comic Sans.  Probably NSFW if you are a graphic designer.)  They've also opened the Railway Square Ice Park, which is not fenced off and for some reason I never see any drunk people on when I go to catch the late bus home.

On a completely different subject, Google Statistics tells me that someone reached my blog this week by googling the term "ambassadog," which you may remember from a previous blog post is the term that the American ambassador to Finland uses to refer to his giant poodle.  So, to whoever is out there looking for information about that dog, his name is Deckard.  You're welcome, and be sure to check out the the comments where Deckard gets solicited by a pair of weirdos intent on harvesting Deckard's genes to increase the population of Labradoodles in Helsinki.

The last 4th of July that we celebrated in the United States featured bicycle jousting with Roman Candles, people setting off bottle rockets while holding them in their teeth, an attempt to blow up a bottle of Mountain Dew with Black Cats, and at least one near-death experience when a mortar tube tipped over and one of the shells hit me in the shoulder and blew up all around my head.  There were also, of course, many cheeseburgers and hot dogs.

Yesterday was Finland's Independence Day and it was a study in stark contrast.  Finland has only been independent since 1917, and immediately after this achievement it plunged into World War I and World War II, which they consider (correctly) to be two parts of the same conflict.  There are still people alive in Finland who participated in the defense of the country against the Russian effort to re-annex Finland.  After the war the Soviets wound up with approximately 10% of Finland's territory and its second largest city, and there was severe economic depression because, like many other countries, Finland also had to pay war reparations to the country that defeated it.  Unlike any other country on earth, they actually paid them in full and five years early.  So one can understand why Finland celebrates their independence in a bit more somber, dignified manner than most in the US (including myself).

The typical way to celebrate independence in Finland is a dinner around the table with family or friends and the lighting of a blue and white candle, followed by gathering around the television to watch the official gala at the Presidential Palace.  Our friends Elina and Maija invited us to their house, where Elina made an awesome dinner of salmon, vegetables, and champagne.  At her suggestion Lyndsey brought a pumpkin pie, and also Chili Cheddar Pinwheels.  Then we retired to the television set to pass judgement on the fashion sense of Finland's rich and powerful.  Maybe the craziest dress was the Angry Birds-themed getup that the wife of the Angry Birds guy wore (thanks to Jacqui for the link).  Our friend Lyndsey Hoh also made an appearance on national TV when she performed with an orchestra in Espoo that was broadcast live all over the country.

Lyndsey and I realized the other day that we only have like 8 more weekends in Finland.  Then a quick stop in Paris, then back to the States.  I can't quite believe it.

Usually I wouldn't blog again so soon after a recent post (creativity takes TIME people) but I thought I would follow up on last week's MMA cliffhanger.

Occasionally, I've been known to participate in backyard wrestling tournaments.  This usually happens after a night of boozing and watching a UFC pay-per-view and I get too wound up, like a seven-year-old who has just watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and has to burn off some extra energy by doing flying kicks onto the couch.  I've had some success against my equally boozed-up opponents, and I think that deep down, on some level, even though I knew it made no sense, this convinced me that I was still in something resembling shape.

MMA training rapidly disabused me of this notion.  It was 45 minutes of warm-up/cardio, followed by drills where we practiced blocking an opponent who is trying to kick you.  I summoned all the skills that I learned from the karate lessons I took in 5th grade and tried really hard not to look like a fool.  I only knocked myself down once, so I think I more or less succeeded.

Then the drills got a bit more realistic, and we were practicing takedowns (or something, I can't quite remember) and it involved a bit of light punching.  Everyone in the class was super nice and obviously recognized that I was a beginner, so they were very good about going my speed, but even when these dudes were playfully jabbing at me at about 5% punching power my brain had a really visceral reaction.  "WHAT IS HAPPENING.  THAT DUDE IS PUNCHING YOU IN YOUR FACE," it was saying.  Unless I'm not remembering something, I think that was the first time my face has ever been punched.  Guess I can cross that one off my bucket list.

Anyway after that there was full sparring, which I happily volunteered to sit out because there was an odd number of people and by this point I thought I was going to either have a heart attack or barf or possibly both and I thought that might make me look a bit silly.

So what did I learn from MMA training?  Keep your head up while trying to tackle a standing man, unless you want to get choked out.  Twist your hips when throwing a kick.  Getting punched in the face is by no means pleasant but is also not the end of the world.  And perhaps most importantly, unless I am prepared to do some serious exercising I should probably stick to wrestling people who are just as out of shape and drunk as I am.

We went to St. Petersburg last week.  Russia is a very, very different place than Finland.  In Finland, the societal pressure to follow all rules is so strong that if you don't take a number at the cashier in line at the department store EVEN THOUGH you are the next and only person in line, some ruthless old lady will come up and cut in front of you and not feel sorry about it because you're the idiot who didn't follow the rules to the letter.  In Russia, the rules are either ignored or absent entirely.  People were crossing the street in the middle, taking photos right in front of "NO CAMERA" signs in museums, parking three deep on the sidewalk (not kidding), and generally behaving like they didn't give a shit.  Which makes sense because, as far as I could tell, Russians don't give a shit.

People were openly drinking duty-free vodka at the customs checkpoint at 9 o'clock in the morning.  There were four booths open but none had lines; everyone seemed to think it was a better idea to push forward in an amorphous blob.  Once we were through, we rode the shuttle bus (read:  van with a paper sign in the windshield) to St. Isaac's in the touristy area of town.  St. Petersburg is a beautiful place and I enjoyed being there, but it really gives Terre Haute and Lafayette a run for their money in the competition for World's Smelliest City.  And in contrast to these cities in Indiana, I don't think the smell in St. Petersburg is due to any industry or factory, unless it is a factory that produces raw sewage.  We'd be walking down the street and suddenly it was like everyone in the whole city farted at the same time.

Anyway, on a more cultural note, we went to The Hermitage (not to be confused with The Hermitage) and followed the crowd through an entrance that was marked "exit."  We walked through an incredibly ornate entrance hall and some dude was vacuuming the carpet, patiently waiting for groups of tourists to move on so he could get the carpet beneath their feet.  The art was amazing, the building itself was amazing (it's a palace, after all), but the museum seemed to run according to what I was beginning to think was the typical Russian style of having rules for the simple pleasure of ignoring them.

The next day we had an American Thanksgiving party where we tried to show our Finnish friends the finer points of this excellent holiday.  Only one of them got a stomach ache by the end of the party, so I guess we mostly failed.  It was still fun, though.  There was pumpkin pie, chicken and dumplings, glögi (Finnish mulled wine), and all kinds of other awesome things that I will leave to the reader's imagination.


Tonight I am going to a mixed martial arts training session with my friend Tommi, which I agreed to do while apparently drunk.  He assures me that I "most certainly will not get kicked in the face."  I mostly believe him, since I have yet to meet a Finn who would be impolite enough to do such a thing.  Either way, I haven't had a black eye in quite awhile and I think even if I get beat up it'll make me feel like a bit of a badass.  My goal is to either knock someone out or get a visible injury that I can show off.


HOW will I fare against the most fearsome fighters that show up to beginner's MMA lessons on Tuesday nights in Helsinki???  WHERE on my body will my visible injury be???  WHAT was I thinking agreeing to do this???  Tune in next week for the exciting answers to these questions and more.

It's finally getting cold here in Finland.  For awhile I was starting to think that maybe Finns exaggerate their winters for the sake of storytelling, but no, they're not kidding.  It's plenty cold.

The sun is setting by about 3:30 in the afternoon these days.  The effect of the lack of sunlight is also something I thought maybe people were exaggerating, but this is also no joke (I think the common thread here is that I should start believing what I'm told instead of just thinking I'm smarter than everyone else).  My brain is telling me it's dinnertime by about 4 and time for pajamas at around 6.  By 8 o'clock my brain thinks it's midnight and by midnight I'm expecting the sun to come up any minute.  It's very disorienting.  Also unless the sky is perfectly clear during the day (which is rare) it never gets truly light outside, so it's basically either twilight or deep night around the clock.  Lyndsey and I are going to have to be super careful not to go all The Shining on each other.

Apparently it has now become expected by my friends and family that if they come to visit me in Helsinki that I'm going to embarrass them on this blog.  Only partially true!  If you come to visit Helsinki and you embarrass YOURSELF, then you will be embarrassed on this blog.  I consider myself only a reporter of facts. Far be it from me to stand between the people and what they want, which is humorous anecdotes that they can read at work and have a chuckle, telling themselves that should they find themselves in a foreign country there is no WAY that they would do one of the foolish things my friends and family seem to do regularly.

So, Dustin and Sofia, your fate is in your own hands.  If you, for example, fail to grasp the complex bus pass system used in Helsinki and have to have a Finn help you use the machine even though young children regularly ride the bus by themselves with no trouble, then you have no one to blame but yourself.  Or if, for example, you tell me that you think salmiakki tastes like "an old man" and I relate it here, I cannot be held responsible.

Tonight we are going to see Gogol Bordello and on Thursday we're going to St. Petersburg.  I've heard many times that Helsinki is a crossroads of western and eastern European cultures, and I think it's high time we started exploring the eastern parts.

Normally, if I get invited to dinner anywhere and the host asks me if I have any food allergies or if there's anything I don't like, I'll respond with something like "I like everything but mushrooms."  This is far from true, but it conveys the fact that if there is one thing I would be fine with never putting in my mouth ever again, it's mushrooms.  They're slimy and mushy and they grow in nasty places.  Blech.

So imagine my surprise when, after a successful afternoon of hunting yellow foot mushrooms near Vantaa, I not only tried but enjoyed a soup made by our friend Elina and her mother Tarja that prominently featured mushrooms.  It also featured butter, onions, cheese, cream, pepper, and some other ingredients I didn't catch, but to eat anything that can legitimately be described as "mushroom soup" was a huge step for me.

I've also begun to be a coffee drinker for the first time since we moved to Finland.  I never used to see the point of trying to drink a scalding hot cup of bitter liquid first thing in the morning, but I think I'm starting to get it.  (It's the caffeine, right?)  When I started setting up meetings with people related to my research project, so many of them would ask if I wanted to meet up for coffee that pretty soon it was just easier to acquiesce than to come up with a reason why not.  Lyndsey tells me that Finnish coffee is bitter and a bit weak, so I'm looking forward to trying American coffee when we get back and comparing them.  I feel so sophisticated.

But please do not think my personality is coming completely unmoored.  I assure you that even though I have a new appreciation for coffee, I still consider mushrooms to be mostly gross.  I have also not become so sophisticated that products like the Arizona-ateria are still powerfully appealing to me.  There are posters for this thing in bus stops all over Helsinki right now and I am considering suing the advertiser because I cannot stop thinking about this specialty cheeseburger long enough to get any work done and I consider this to be a disability for which they are responsible.  Sooner or later some evil genius is going to bring either Hesburger or Schnitzel Planet to the United States and bring the country to its diabetic knees.  Oh man, I wish I were in a Schnitzel Planet right now...

No!  I have to focus.  The public library policy of Finland isn't going to research itself.