Napapiiri

Here's our second and last video installment from Rovaniemi, this one from Santa's Village, where we did cross Napapiiri (the Arctic Circle) which you'll see as a line of blue lights strung across the plaza. Again, pardon my amateur filming, and we are experiencing some technical difficulties so these video entries may not appear too often! Technology is our friend - let's repeat that several times and it may become true. Any way - hope you enjoy these too.

A walk in Rovaniemi

First try here to load video - and it didn't want a merged version so here are separate, very amateur videos of our walk in Rovaniemi. It's my first attempt to use the camera and to film in Finland so sorry for the lack of polish, but I hope you enjoy actually following us around in Lapland.

Happy Holidays! Christmas peace has just been declared for all of Finland via a broadcast from the cathedral in Turku, and so we send along wishes of peace to everyone. We just returned from a short trip to Rovaniemi to experience the solstice up past the Arctic Circle where though the sun does not rise, light does bend up over the horizon in the atmosphere. Just over a hour north by air. So it wasn't completely dark as you can see in the picture from our hotel window at around 3pm, but it was a half hour later in the main square. We enjoyed dinner the first night in a Lapp Kota - a tent made of reindeer hides (inside the restaurant), and we did eat reindeer too - it's very nutritious meat and a vital industry for the Sami. (And it does not taste like chicken!) Odd that the temperatures were between 25-33F in the Arctic, while most of the northern US was frigid, but it was warmer than average, though with a noticeably deeper chill than in Helsinki. Two pages of pictures follow.

Here's Gerald at the wonderful Arktikum museum of Lapland science and art which we thoroughly enjoyed, me putting my hand into an elfin ice sculpture handprint, me waiting for the bus - next stop Arctic Circle! - and the Arctic Circle signpost in Santa's Village with a blue neon line running above the plaza along the circle.

Rovaniemi

Here are some pictures from our first visit to Rovaniemi and the Arctic Circle - Napapiiri. Street decor, Gerald at the Rovaniemi airport Arctic Circle signpost, and flying back toward the sun at around 3:30pm on our return.

Hybird Holidays

Red Apples
by Finnish Artist Helene Schjerfbeck

We combined our delayed Thanksgiving with the observance of Finland's Independence Day on December 6th and we have the leftovers to prove it. We had Gerald's American coworker join us, but I was a bit disappointed not to provide her with pumpkin pie. I had found one can of Libby's pumpkin last year but no luck this year. Oh well, Gerald's turkey was delicious, we were overwhelmed by various potato dishes, and a pear/lingonberry pie with plum ice cream did an admirable job as stand in for dessert. We once again watched the President's Ball on TV like most here do, so our hybrid-hybird holidays merged well enough. And the turkey pasta tonight wasn't horrible either.


Next up, we're having a short Finnish get-away just before Christmas, so I hope to have something unique to share afterward. Stay tuned!

A trip home

An unplanned trip home at the end of October proved to be a necessary balm after learning that we lost my sister, Mary Jo, at what seems such a young age of 55. So I did see family in Michigan and also her family in California. This allowed me to visit Claire at her new school in northern California and to drive through the redwoods for the first time - an amazing part of the country. My niece shared that my sister always wanted to drive through a redwood tree when Claire and I told her we stopped at that tourist trap after our visit, and as I had never considered such a thing before, maybe we had some 'guidance'?? Then I was able to go to class with Claire one morning and I can attest that she is working very hard in her program. They do acrobatics on a springy floor that was wonderful to bounce on, and the teachers are very focused and skilled. It is a physical theater program - so she will soon be very strong. Such a beautiful area too, for such intense study.

So yes, a trip home, sometimes sad, but not in sum. Here's a memory - my dad built this lounge chair when I was four and Mary Jo six years old, and when the paint was finally dry enough we sunbathed in our sunsuits. I can still sense the happiness of that summer day, on this snowy Helsinki afternoon.

Winter Time

Here is a picture of the Crusell bridge that is being built just outside our windows, named after a Swedish clarinetist/composer (not a string player?). We have all kinds of big machines, dredges, barges or other unidentified objects appearing at any given time as they prep the canal for the bridge. Now that it is officially winter time, meaning we put our clocks back one hour tonight, I think we'll be okay for the noise that comes along with the machinery, as our double windows really block much of the sound. But it has been hard to have to close windows on nice days due to noise. This is the way it is around Helsinki - they are building everywhere. Once the bridge is built, I can walk right over to my office directly across the canal, if it's up while we are still here. I imagine one day they will ferry in the roadbed, and I'd like to see that engineered into place. Once done, this will be quite a beautiful structure.

With all the machines coming and going, though, the swans are keeping scarce, so I haven't had updates on them. I have seen one family with ten (!) cygnets a few months ago, and more recently one with two, but I imagine they'll find another spot to overwinter. And we are rapidly losing our daylight, already noticeably shorter but luckily the fall really stretched out nicely and was so colorful. Now we're feeling the winter nip in the air and the winds are picking up too.

Tomorrow Finland holds its municipal elections and there are posters everywhere with the candidates' pictures and numbers. Here they just plug in numbers to place votes, and there are about 39,000 candidates for all of Finland so they also have a candidate finder program, where you can use a computer program to find your choices. I did a unit for my students with some US election terms, like mudslinger and lame duck! They are all very curious about the US election, and I showed them a copy of part of my absentee ballot too. It's nice to find a current events lesson of such interest, and of course they are voting adults too. I have a new class on Business Writing starting next week, so I'm back with the marine engineers again, and they do need my help. My other classes are mostly in corporate offices.

Gerald returned from his 2+ weeks in the US for work, but was able to see Kaliecia the last weekend and they had a fabulous time seeing the Blue Man Group in Vegas. The night before he left for the US, we tried to get to bed early before his dawn departure, but then a helicopter started some kind of dragnet operation along the canal right outside along with a police boat in the water. Both were scanning the area with spotlights and I thought there was some international invasion of some kind or maybe someone's yacht got stolen - something really serious. Well, here's what Google translate gave me, from what I cut and pasted from the paper:

"Drunken man caused extensive searches Ruoholahti in Helsinki late Friday evening. Events began when the guard found the shore, heavily intoxicated man's wet clothes just before midnight. The man said he is being friends with the water resource. He however could not tell humalatilan, where or how the accident had occurred."

I guess the guy had a few and decided to go for a swim. Humalatilan is some conjugation of drunk. The limits of Google Translate!! I am glad they finally added Finnish this year though. I have to work around what is produced to find meaning, as you can see, and it gives you some idea what we are up against in trying to learn Finnish - the structure is just so totally different. I am in Finnish class again, a perk provided by my job, but it's still quite a struggle. I'm sure the Google site works great for other languages though. It's quite a useful tool.

Now, as we fall back, I'll just have to rework what time it is where everyone is - a constant challenge. Happy Halloween soon! Have some candy corn for me.

First Nobel Peace Prize for Finland

The announcement was just made that the former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari has won the first Nobel Peace Prize for the country. This brings recognition to the way Finland has steadily worked to bring greater peace to the world. Ahtisaari has acted as a peace negotiator in several conflicts around the world for the past three decades, and just last week he was also awarded the UNESCO Peace Prize. It's a good day for this deserving country.

Peace and love!

We took the overnight ferry to Stockholm and then a train down south. Växjö is a wonderful small town - sort of a cross between Dexter and Ann Arbor - and most bizarrely, we ended up staying in a hotel that was sited exactly where my grandfather lived until emigrating to Canada at age 4.5! My great grandfather was a foreman at a match company that housed its employees too. It was torn down in 1926 and later our hotel was built on the same location. We were able to go as far back as the 1820s in the one day spent at the institute, learning that my great-great grandfather was a wall-builder/bricklayer - working independently; my other great-great grandfather made rope for the navy in Karlskrona, in the longest wood building in Sweden, which still stands. We found out my grandfather Gunnar was born with a different name - Uno - and probably renamed as a tribute to a brother who died young, and that threw off the research for a short while. And Claire had the insight to ask about the ship register at the end of our long day, when I was getting overwhelmed with details, and we found it.

Växjö

Växjö is the town in southern Sweden where my grandfather was born and I have always been curious about those roots, especially as he died young and I never knew him. So being just next door in Finland made a research trip finally possible. There happens to be an emigrant institute right in Växjö, so I planned a trip there with Claire in July. The researcher found a picture of the exact ship for us - the Romeo that my grandfather sailed on. Sweden keeps such good records that I'm sure we could have found out much more, had we had the time. But in just this one trip, we discovered so much. My great-grandmother, Clara Sofia, traveled from Sweden initially without my great-grandfather, Frans Wilhelm, and brought along her seven surviving children. The youngest, Lilly, was still nursing, and an older female cousin accompanied them. She sounds like a very strong and courageous woman to me. Claire was not actually named for Clara, but it's nice to have the coincidence. After our research and a few days in Växjö, Claire and I then returned to Stockholm and were able to tour the Old Town/Gamla Stan, the next day and here's a costume shop we found and Claire goofing off at the Nobel Museum cafe. That evening we ferried back to Helsinki. The trip was more fulfilling than I could ever have imagined. I'm really grateful for Claire's help, as she hadn't been sure she could manage the trip, now that she's on her way to grad school in northern California -- literally - just now in a car, just about half way there, due at Kaliecia's in two days. And I'm back to teaching now so blogs will be a bit less frequent, but classes are noticeably easier this year. Happy Autumn, everyone!

Tallinn to begin Year 2

We have just entered Year 2 of our adventure and we did so in Tallinn, Estonia. It's so close, just 1.5 hours by fast ferry across the Gulf of Finland. We stayed one night so we saw a good amount but are looking forward to returning since it's such an awe-inspiring town. It has been very well preserved for centuries, and just out of Russian rule since 1991, under which it was somewhat ignored for years, hence not modernized nor bombed as other European cities have been. Here are a few pictures of the city walls and towers which you can climb into, for a real taste of the past. We highly recommend a trip to Tallinn.


This trip brings our mileage to the following totals for this past year:
Laurie - 41,620 miles (66,966 kilometers) and Gerald 59,864 miles (96,330 kilometers).
Whew!

Sights of Tallinn

Here are the newer orthodox church, buildings in the main square, and a xylophone concert we happened upon - they played the Flintstones theme song, and Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys - you just never know what you'll hear!

My roots are showing!

Gerald's coworker, Mikko, kindly invited us down to the Central Market Friday evening for a once-a-month (in summer) car show. He's full of details about any vintage vehicle and was the perfect guide. People cruise around the market area and park where the market vendors are usually found, and it was packed. Being from Detroit, I felt it my duty to share with you the coolest rides, and that turned out to be several pages (small picture format, so click on them for better detail). There were odd Russian cars, the 3-wheeled Messerschmitts, a rare Opal, so many cool vintage American cars, including one with the air-conditioner still entact, a Buick like Chris K. and I used to cruise around in, and a Challenger just like the one in which I learned to drive, and a truck BBQ for the requisite Finnish sausages. We couldn't believe we were all the way over here in Finland. Enjoy the show...

A Helsinki Car Show