Mayday! Mayday!

ilmapalloja - ballons

I'm a bit bemused by how excited everyone (i.e. Konna) is getting about Vappu (May Day to the rest of us) - celebrations for which start on Thursday (like all things Finnish they have to start the night before everyone else...) and seem to include 

• a statue having a hat put on it, 
  
• buying ballons, 
  
• ex-students wearing white hats, 
  
• needing to book a month in advance to get a restaurant table,
  
• having a day long picnic on Friday.  
  

Lots of people have asked if I have been here for Vappu before. When they learn I haven't they generally shake their heads and say 'oh well you'll find out' and start talking about picnics. Suspicions aroused by this a bit of lazy googling careful research throws up the enlightening quote:

Vappu without drinking is like Christmas without presents

Now I understand... 'Picnic' is Finnish shorthand for 'reliving your student years by getting steaming drunk on cheap champagne (or shampange as Konna calls it) while sitting in a park with ten thousand other people doing likewise'.  Oh great.

Laskiainen

Pikkan laskiainenpulla Porvoosta (manteli, ei hilo)

Tänään on laskiassunnuntai ja on seitseman viikkoa ennen pääsiästä (Easter). Myös tänään on kaksi päivää ennen laskiaistiistai - englanniksi Shrove Tuesday. Syödään laskiainen pulla (kanneli manteli tai hillo) suomessa. Englannissa tehdään pancakes (lettuja) laskiaistiistaina. Pidan lettuasta enemmän kuin laskiainenpullasta - ehkä minun täytyy tehdä niitä itse Konnalle ja Hiirille.

As well as eating those slightly strange cream and almond (or jam) buns, laskianen Sunday is traditionally celebrated with a 'sliding festival' of sledging and other winter sports - but don't ask me why!

Friends: The one where it isn't quite the same as St. Valentine's Day

Tänään on ystävän päivä - mutta 'Valentine' on erilainen...

If you are used to the British / American commercialised version of St. Valentine's day (selling the ideal of romantic anonymous gestures like flowers, chocolates, champange, of maybe a candlelit dinner for two, or a  surprise trip to Paris) you could be forgiven for thinking that Ystävän Päivä being today, 14th February, is just the Finnish version of that. Not quite.  

After Konna and I became a couple, the first time St. V's day came round* I had known her (and anything about Finland) less than a year. So I was a bit taken back when she got a number of cards and presents from Finland, and even more confused when they turned out to be from various mainly female friends; was there something I didn't know about her past!? Well of course there was (although not like that). In Finland Feb 14th is 'Friends Day' (no, not a celebration of the TV show) and is not so strongly connected with romance, and cards an presents are swapped by friends, although the Anglo-American version is encroaching... 

So Happy Friend's Day to all our hölynpöly friends...

*Actually there is another story about that same year - but Konna say's I can't tell everyone she fell asleep halfway through the fancy romantic candle-lit meal I made her on our first Valentine's...