Hot Air

Viivi ja Wagner © Juba via Helsingin Sanomat

Did I mention Konna keeps saying (about ten times a day now) that it would be ihana if I bought her an ilmapallon for Vappu? Cue skywards eye roll. 

I wonder if I can get a turtle shaped one...

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.

Veteraanipäivä

Tonttu ei pida huodasta, mutta: MISSÄ ON LIPPU?!

Joka aikaa he unohtavat sen... perkelet!

Can you see the wood for the trees?

Näetkö sinä metsän puilta?

As my other half previously proudly reported: 'The training for TdH has begun'... Still for a friend, an aquintance, a family member or to an ex-colleague far far away it can be a somewhat difficult task to understand how exactly has his rigorous training started... Well, as a closely observing supporter - I can enlighten you on this matter:

Sat 25.04.09 at
17:00 Dress up & find lights, pack the bag & fill the water bottle
17:16 Pump up back tyre as it is flat again, unlock bike
17:30 Saddle up and head towards the gravel road behind the house
17:45 Go under 'KEHÄ I' (=ring road I) and turn left at the 'kuplahalli' (=bouble hall... for ice hockey) to realise that the path is cut off by a big bulldozer... Turn back & go around 'kuplahalli' & climbe up 45deg/50m clay slope & realise that the road is cut of there too... Figure out a new route towards 'Viikki'.
18:30 Arrive in the destination via 'R-Kioski' as shops are already closed - buy a cider/beer & sausages
18:40 Sit down, enjoy a cold beer with friends


18:45 Eat a sausage with mustard:


19:00 Have shampagne from a shoe:


19:15 Have an other sausage, a little bit white bread & brie, throw in some crisps... and sweeties
20:30 Realise you have to go before the dark (as you never found the lights)
20:35 Go to toilet & fill up the water bottles & get kissed by a dog
20:40 Saddle up
21:30 Get lost (again)
22:00 Arrive home... just when it's getting properly dark
22:05 Lock up the bike
22:10 Have a shower
22:30 Fall asleep

Sun 26.04.09
- Can't walk as legs ache
- Can't sit... you probably understand why

Mon 27.04.09
- Have to lie down as back aches (at least cannot work...)

Yes - the training has begun. How much time did he have?

Do you like needles?

Marienhamn harbour at midnight, July 2006.

Ahvenamaa or Åland (as the locals prefer to call it, or rather them) is a bit of a historical geo-political oddity.  An archipelago of more than 6000 islands and skerries, although only 35 inhabited, it is inhabited around 26,ooo Swedish speaking people in an autonomous Finnish kunta (Commune). The Swedish Krona freely circulates (although the Euro is the official currency), they have their own flag and the Finnish defence forces are forbidden (it was made a demilitarised zone after the first world war).  Lying between Turku and Stockholm, handily for the locals all the big ferries stop at it's capital Marienhamn (Maarianhamina) albeit in the middle of the night, in order to take advantage of it being outside the EU-customs zone; but in the process adding an annoying couple of extra hours to the Helsinki-Stockholm journey time (unless you're just on the boat for the booze, fags and karaoke, in which case who cares). It has probably the best summer weather in Finland, (but the worst winter weather if you like skiing) and some beautiful archipelagic scenery. And, to get a bit closer to the point of this post, it's also reputed as a great place for cycling and camping holidays.

So as you might guess we are planning a cycling/camping holiday in Åland (I'm going to use the local names for everything from now on as I am writing in English and to annoy Konna who insists on using the Finnish versions), for a week this summer and as well as the usual logistical issues of transport, equipment, food, routes and accommodation to resolve (as we are not doing a pre-packaged deal) we also need to think about something I associate with visiting exotic destinations like Africa or the far east father than cartographical inksplashes in the Baltic. Vaccinations.

Now to get right up close and personal with the point of the post, Åland also is home to something other than a bunch of people with a long standing identity crisis (Finns, Swedes, Ålanders...). Ixodes ricinus ticks. Yum, look tasty don't they? Unfortunately as well as being as fugly as hell, and liking to latch on to wayfarers and do impressions of blood-filled coffee beans, punkki are tricky to remove.  Then you discover they potentially carry two even more unwanted guests: the bacterium Borrelia burghdor feri, which causes Lyme disease; and even worse, the virus for Tick Borne Encephalitis (TBE) in 1:200 to 1:1000 ticks.  Åland is considered endemic for TBE in Finland (although maybe not according to UK NaTHNaC), which is un-curable after contracting it, and it has a 1-2% fatality rate. For this reason the advice seems to be that at-risks groups (which include cyclists and campers you-know-where) should consider having the vaccination course. 

So that's three shots at €40 a shot; €120 each to add to what was supposed to be a cheap holiday. Money well spent? Well it's hard to judge the risks on this sort of thing (just ask Ben Goldacre if you don't believe me) - trying to put it in perspective even taking the worst case: say 1 in 200 x 2% x say 50% chance of getting bitten/latched onto by a tick in a week (that last is a complete guess by the way) = 1 in 20,000 chance of death.  Which compares to something like a 1 in 94,000 chance of dying cycling in the first place. [A direct comparison of those figures is statistically completely wrong, as different things were being measured in each case - so please don't imagine that means 5x more likely!!!] 

Maybe we will end up going to the punkkibussi after all, too much knowledge is a worrying thing for Konna at least ... or am I being complacent when we can fix it with a needle or three?

Now what have I let myself in for

Well I look the part I suppose, although I'm not actually moving you'll notice...

Following on somewhat tardily from my post last month pondering it, I've finally signed up for the 'Tour de Helsinki' (TdH) - a 140 km (86 miles for the fossils/Yanks) cycle ride in September.  Once-upon-a-time this wouldn't have been such a big deal (as I mentioned before), but since I can probably count the number of times I've cycled more than 10 km in the last year on the fingers of one hand with two fingers cut off I figure I have a bit of training to do.  

We've already been trying to do an hour of sauvakävely (Nordic walking) each day (with about a 30% success rate if truth be told) this month, and we managed a 20 km ride (semi off-road) on Sunday, although it did take about 2 hours, or 10 km/h ... since I want to do the TdH in less than 7 hours (and preferably less than six) I will need to average more than 20 km/h (23.33 for the 6 hour target). I guess I will need to get a bit of training in by then, so pottering around Åland in the summer will help a bit, and work up to 80 km rides by September... 

As it happens 20 km/h is also the slowest of the seven organised groups; the fastest being 35 km/h - a speed I can probably only manage down-hill with a following wind, which unfortunately is a bit tricky to organise on a circular course.

Well it seemed a good idea at the time.  I'll keep you posted on how my saddle sores develop.

I don't think I quite got that...

actually I didn't: from Kiasma swag

If you're going to be late in Finland, it is good to have a good reason as lateness is, to put it mildly, somewhat frowned upon - and as excuses go 'I had to wait for Tarja Halonen to get out of my way' is not bad when being (almost) late for something. That's Finland's President Halonen if you didn't realise.

You might have read my post last month about me being one of the winners in the Ola Kolehmainen / Kiasma / Nokia Ovi valokuvakilpailu (photography competition).  As their site says, Ola chose 14 photos by 11 people (3 of which were mine - Zinc Slash Tree, Finlandia and Curves) from the 96 entrants.  Well on Friday I got my prize (luckily I wasn't too held up by a certain important person in reception) - a workshop with Ola on our efforts and tour of the show with him, which was also photographed for posterity.

 

Ola explains all... do I look like I get it?

If you look carefully at this picture you can see Ola commenting on some of my photographs. (He was interested in how these pictures went from 'documentary' to 'half documentary/half abstract' (crop out the sky...), to totally abstract; the difficulty on using a culturally, and meaning loaded building like the Berlin Jewish museum as a subject for 'abstract' photography; and also why I had chosen those pictures/subjects).  He also was extremely conversant with the buildings and architects themselves, which was interesting to me (as the only architect in the room) but perhaps over the heads of some of the others.  

Or perhaps not... Unfortunately the ten minutes while we discussed them was the only time spent speaking English for almost three hours - so it was hard to tell.  While what little I followed seemed interesting, you'll understand why I'm looking a bit blank in the photos.  I think he was discussing how naming the pictures changed them (eg. the picture of the reflection of Mies' Barcelona Pavillion 'Less Less Is Is More More' becomes a discourse on minimalism), and also how chance and accidents in the darkroom can totally change a picture even when carefully pre-planned and considered (a white building becomes vivid yellow; a magpie lands on a window ledge; a tiny weed grows unseen from behind a metal disc...), amongst other things, but... He was however kind enough to say he hoped I got something out of it at the end - probably noticing my glazed look!

We did also get a swag-bag from Kiasma (contents pictured below for authentic anal-retentive micro-blogging) - including a very apt t-shirt and pad of post-it notes considering my struggles... but my foolish dreams of shiny Nokia kit or photography books were dashed. Never mind - a fascinating day in any case.