Kevät tulee!

Kevät on tulossa Helsinkiin - Spring is on it's way in Helsinki

Usually Easter marks the start for the spring in my mind. I remember the feeling approaching Helsinki after Easter when coming back seeing my gran in middle Finland (Savo) when I was a kid - not much snow on the ground and much warmer than 5-6h before...

This year we are spending Easter in Helsinki - the snow is going fast and the weather is varied - from sunny spells to foggy wet mornings (similar than at the beginning of the film Silence of the Lambs when Clarise is running in the misty wintry forest - when her breath is clearly visible from mile away and the bare tree branches set against an oppressive grey sky, meeting somewhere between impressionism and expressionism...)... Yes we have started our morning nordic stick walks in 'Mustavuori' (=Black Mountain... a hilly forest area really)...

Lumi sulaa ja linnut muuttaa takaisin... Snow is melting and the birds are returning...

Yes, the morning alarm sound is not like bird song to our ears, but we'll get up and face the nature - less snow and more twiit-twiit-twiit every morning (+weirdly dressed bird watchers in noisy multi-colour shell suits). I guess soon we should lower the boats into the water and so on...

Kunnes jäät sulavat... - Until all the ice melts...
['tämä on vene' (=this is a boat)]

Mämmiä - kiitos!

nam nam...

'Mämmi' is a traditional Finnish Easter time dessert made from rye flour and malt. It has a brown and sticky appearance (yes, it does look like...) and as far as mämmi is concerned there are two types of people: those who love it; and those who hate it. There's no middle ground.

'Mämmi' can be bought ready-made from a shop during Easter in a variety of boxes and sizes. Making mämmi isn't hard either; it just takes quite a lot of time... As you might not get this delicacy elsewhere than in Finland - you might wish to prepare it yourself (we strongly advise against this!): 5 bowls made out of birch bark (?), 3.5 litres of water, 1kg of rye flour, 1/4kg of malt (preferably rye malts), 2 tablespoons of syrup, 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 tablespoons of orange peel. 'Mämmi' is usually eaten with cream or milk & sugar. And apparently it will take you approx. 30mins of nordic stick walking to burn a small bowl of this stuff - so perhaps you don't eat it at all...

Mikael Agrikolan päivä - suomen kielen päivä

Ship's Flag: From Stockholm trip 03/09

Oh-ho.  The flag outside has just been taken down and we haven't said anything about it being Finnish Language day & Michael Agricola's day - expect a tirade from that tonttu thing at any moment... 

Hang on a minute - I'm supposed to write this one in Finnish. Oh-ho...

Hauskaa Pääsiäistä!

Tipuja rairuohossa

'Rairuoho' (= Easter grass) is growing fast and is ready for the Easter and some local chicks have already found it as their home... Hmmm... How is your rairuoho doing - esp. peops I sent the seeds to? Is it as green and dense as the one above? Let us know! Any wildlife there yet (yes - the chock eggs are counted as wildlife in this case). Happy Easter time to everyone!

Red tape & Perunoita

Perunoita

Potato planting has begun: I had to smile when I saw this headline featured on YLE's english news web page. Maybe it was a slow news day, but at least it suggests that (along with the fact that the ground is no longer obscured with a thick layer of white stuff) that spring has finally sprung in Finland. Those of you who think it is almost summer where they are (in toasty northern Britain for example) for can sod off and read another blog. Anyway maybe people pay more attention to seasonal food in Finland than in UK?

I also thought my brain was turning into mashed potato at one point today (well actually I didn't but I'm trying to stretch a link between two unrelated pseudo-news items).  This was because we have had several brushes with Finnish 'red tape' (punaisen nauha?) this week as we needed to get copies of our passport certified (€30+ at British Consulate; €6 from Notary Public at the Maistratti - although I'm glad to say the consulate did tell me when I was enquiring), and have been trying to figure out how to get the payments for 'workforce training'. This 'training' (studying Finnish in my case) support payment is €8 per day as long as you do less than 20hrs a week (otherwise it is considered a full-time course in which case you can't be unemployed) which the EURES Työvoimatoimisto (employment office) adviser said I could get when I signed on. With me so far?  I knew two more things: Kela pays; the course has to be approved by them before it is booked or paid for.  Except it turns out neither of those things is strictly true. 

First we hunted through the Kela and Mol.fi websites without much success.  I did work out that time spent on the course had to be logged on the same form as used for unemployment benefit claims - but there didn't seem to be a form for applying for permission to take a course. After a brief argument dicussion with Konna we decided to go to the local Kela office and ask (luckily realising that Kontula doesn't have one before we went there so head off to Itäkeskus). Arrive. Take ticket - oh look, 25 people in queue for 5 desks... 

Wait. Time passes (and if you know Konna you can imagine how much she enjoyed that).

One hour later... Get as far as introducing myself suomeksi before handing over to Konna to explain. Discover Kela needs instruction from työvoimatoimisto to make payments, but usually it is for their own courses... oh and have I got my E301 from UK yet? (Luckily yes!)

Okay so now we need to go to Hakaniemi.  Arrive and marvel at lack of security or clear signs,but  eventually find 'immigration' section. Take ticket - ooh only 12 people in this queue, but only 2 desks. 

Time passes... bing-bong 749 flashes up - our turn.

Hei, olen Emmdee.  Tämä on minun kela-kortti; ja passi jos tarvitset. Olen rekisteröidänyt työtön, ja haluisin mennä suomen kielen kurssi...

[They don't have any courses, I have to find one first...]* 

*in Finnish - hey, someone spoke to me in Finnish! 

That's okay I already have found one - and have the details. How do I get permission to take it and get the payments?

[Okay, I've noted you have asked on the system.  Now you need to get a certificate from the course organiser to say you are enrolled. Then we will tell the Kela they can make the payments when you do the course]

So no forms?! And do we have to come back here again! No - luckily it can be posted, but now a trip to the Helsingin Seudun Kesäyliopiston toimisto (luckily only 10mins away) is needed... trudge to the Open Summer University office; enroll; pay; get certificate. Phew. Saga over.

Elvis spotted in Helsinki

Elvis is in the building...

While I'm waiting to set up the new Guardian Twitter feed by doing this quiz, I thought I would post this picture proving Elvis is alive and well and partying in Helsinki.  

It's also a little known fact that today is the only day that it is actually illegal to fly the Finnish flag - as they say here (very quickly) "Aprillia, aprillia, syö silliä ja juo kuravettä päälle!"

This is Not Architecture

Zinc Slash Tree: From this is not architecture

At Helsinki's Kiasma art gallery until 24th April is an exhibition of Finnish photographer Ola Kolemainen's abstracted pictures of buildings, entitled 'A Building is Not A Building' - perhaps in a nod to the surrealist Magritte's famous 'The Treachery of Images' caption 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe'. Then again the title is also literally true as, in the case of his carefully cropped and oversized works, none of the pictures are really of the buildings featured as such but of effects encountered when looking at them.

Now as you may know by now this is just my sort of thing - combining architecture with finding details and patterns from architecture and nature with my camera - so when I found out there was a photograph competition (sponsored by Nokia's Ovi picture sharing service) to get a tour of the exhibition with the photographer I thought 'why not?' (or to be exact Konna said 'you should enter that') and picked out a few of my old pics, cropped them as needed to give them a more abstracted look, and - voila!

      

red arcs, grooves, jupiter, light wave, finlandia - but can anyone identify the six buildings featured on this page?

There were apparently about 100 entrants, so I was quite pleased to hear today I was selected as one of the winners... although it's not clear which of my pictures I was selected for - I think 'red arcs' is most like his work, although 'zinc slash tree' is my favourite. I'll give the architects in the room a few days to work out which buildings (some quite famous) are featured.

I think that is probably the first thing I have won since getting second place in the javelin competition on a school sports day many moons ago so this is quite a novelty.  I just hope that it's not all explained in Finnish! (And wouldn't it be nice if it turned out there was a Nokia goodie bag...)