Travel report 8 - finlandization

Recounting my swedish train experience has been so traumatic for me that it took me nearly two weeks before I could take keyboard (pen) and monitor (paper) in hand again. I have had to resort to extreme measures, recommended only in extraordinary cases of physical, psychological and emotional hardship in order to regain my inner balance. Mainly those measures consisted of running around Vienna with Philipp taking in the sites, and eating as much deliciousnes as humanly possible. I am officially becoming a gluton, at least when it comes to eurotrashy foods, the consequences of which (diabities, lovehandles, etc) remaining only somewhat malpronounced as one needs to walk from one bloody museum to the next café, to the next emperor's summer residence, on to the purveyor of heart attacks in the form of Austrian Käsekrainer Hotdogs. You could say I am trading one pain for the other, but I disagree heartily, yes even gluttoninly (spelling?). In this case at least I am dying of and at my own pleasure, whereas the former raison de malaise was Swedish conartistry. I think we can all agree that cultural and cullinary gluttony is the preferable way to take the trip across the great pond and say Howdy to good old Manitou.

Random not so fun fact 1: Global Investors are pulling their assets out of stock markets like there is no tomorrow.

Excuse me, before I continue I need to dunk my butter/nutella/jam/peanut butter croissant into my morning coffee laced with real rich austrian cream. My teeth have been falling out from all the sugary pastries I have been wolfing, so now I need to soften even this poor croissant.

Funnily enough my Finlandization starts in Sweden. I am at the airport, completely out of whack, from the trainride if you haven't realized that yet, so I want to eat a bite before boarding the plane to Helsinki. I roll into this airport food place and grab the first sandwich and drink that I see.

In retrospect I realize this probably wasn't my luckiest choice. Coke and Green Tea must be very healthy (NOT) as it tastes disgusting, and a sandwich with mayonaise and little canned shrimp and veggies just screams "Don't eat me". I actually threw some of it away, and how often have you seen me do that? I mean I always eat all my food. Its a WW2 and guilt over starving african babies thing.




Random not so fun fact 2: This global investment stampede is headed straight for the US bond market and its perceived safety.

Nevertheless I would judge my visit to Sweden a resounding success, mostly because I loved seeing Lisa again after so many years. She really has done well for herself. And as soon as I stepped on the plane I forgot about the sandwich and bad coca cola diversification attempt, however not the train ride, and started to look forward to a similar experience in Finland. Where I was to visit my old, old girlfriend Minna. She is not old at all, actually she is the same as always, but it was a LONG time ago. However, she does have two wonderful little troublemakers and one equally cool husband, all of whom I could not wait to meet. She picked me up at the airport (this was ok, but I would have felt horrible if Lisa would have come out to get me on that Blain the train) with her very happy 5 month old son Pepe Antero. I prepared myself for another family adventure as we rode out to her place, which is right around the corner from the northern most tram station in the whole bloody world!

Are you kidding me? How cool is a vacation if you have friends that randomly live in places like that?






And how asocial is Finland if they make benches in parks such as this one? Finnish city planer (who I still prefer over his Phoenix equivalent) says "What do you mean I need to make space for more than one pensioneer on this park bench? Finnish geriatrics do not talk to each other. Everybody knows that. Voi Satana!"

The Finns are a not an emotionally cold people. Their nation is one marked by loyalty to the poor and the weak. Imagine surviving next to Hudson Bay climate and on the border to a mean old bear like Russia for hundreds of years, and you will understand the level of social cohesion that is required to thrive in a place like this. This is the reason why it is unthinkable for a Finn to cross a red light, even though he might stand at an intersection on the polar circle during the third month of that particular night, with no cars in sight for the last 72 hours. People here have rules that they follow in order to survive 40 degree celcius below freezing. It also explains why Finns asume that Germans think outside the box and are a somewhat unruly, yet funloving people. Apart from the Scandinavian's design prowess this furthermore is the reason why the people of the land of the rising sun share a brotherly bond with the people of the land of no sun for six month. Climate and geography apparently trump physiological and olfactory antipathy.

Random not so fun fact 3: The US government pumps USD 300 Billion into the stock market in order to saveguard money market accounts, prop up a free-falling Dow Jones and buy some time to figure out how to effectively spin the message to the world that it is headed for a replay of the great depression.

How can you not love these intractable people? They offer their home and saunas (Which I am happy to tell you yet again, is a Finnish invention, as are ice swimming, Adidas and Glühwein) to you, yet do not know how to handle a Romany beggar lady because that sort of thing has never been done in Finish society before.

Their modern art is so modern that it questions the way we sit on park benches. And I am not talking about those single white old female park benches.































They like to think up designs that overthrow conventional wisdom with gusto:














And they really do not appreciate the pitfalls of our modern sense of beauty:

All the important body parts and faces in these images at the design museum are grotesquely fake.






However they are lucky to exhibit for the first time outside of Japan this amazing collection of woodcuts from the 18th century by Hokusai and Hiroshige. If this exhibit visits your town at some point over the next couple of years I highly recommend seeing it. Unless you have some sort of Yakuza connection to the Yasusaburo Hara Collection in Tokyo you will not have another chance to see it.

Random not so fun fact 4: 100 of the 300 Billion USD that the US Govt pumps into the market are generated by the sale of new bonds to that same market.

This is the Great Wave of Kanagawa, probably the most famous of these prints. You have seen a reprint of it somewhere. I was really fascinated by this. Not so much by the quality of the woodcuts (what do I know about it?), but by the insights into Japanese life in those days, and by the fact that I lived on top of what used to be one of The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido Road when I was in Tokyo. Crazy, eh? If you care to look it up, it was the third station on the road from Tokyo.

Finland not only invented the Sauna, the Alvar Alto vase and untold other design wonders, they also claim Santa Claus, even though their Santa Claus originated as Joulupukki in the cold wastelands of nothern Finland instead of the Northpole. I think its somewhere close to VW's prooving grounds. Here is a picture to prove that first of all Santa is Finnish, if not finished, and secondly that not only my dear American compatriots fall victim to horrendously gaudy commercializations of the most time-honored customs:

I must at this point finally acknowledge that we humans all seem to have a yen for taking the prettiest customs, the most majestic natural vistas, the nicest little seaside towns, the most exhalted sounds that musical geniuses produced hundreds of years ago and making them available to the most amount of people for the quickest buck possible. This is just another in a long line of qualitities that truly exemplify that we are all created equal. Equally greedy, equally tasteless and equally cheesy.

I know I am annoying you with my ideological bent, so this is my last rant about commercialism, capitalism and there just being too many people around. At least until I am in Angkor Watt.

Random fun fact conclusion: A perfect if not sensemaking circle has been drawn. Joe Smith takes his money out of stocks and puts them into bonds. These bonds are sold to him by the govt in order to finance the propping up of the stock market which fell through the floor because Joe Smith took his money out of it. Brilliant!

In conclusion here are a couple of nice picture of me relaxing from all the Joulupukki and Museum running stress in front of Minna's and Sampsa's home.

This is probably the last nice day of the year in Helsinki








Minna, Otto and me








Pepe Antero and me. I promise I am holding the baby, not crushing it. Look how happy he is! Can't you tell?







PS: In case you were wondering what Finlandization really is: