VeggieTales

Thanks for all the check-in and “where are you and your blog update?” emails. No, I have not fallen off the face of the planet. Thankfully, the world turned out to be round or I probably would have at this point! I had a couple very rough weeks (and weekends!) with work and then got sick on top of it but have recovered from both by now. I am still living in the frozen tundra also known as Suomi (Finland) and am amusing myself by counting how many near miss falls I have on the ice on the way to and from work. Today is the record so far at 11 – yikes!

I have now gotten to the point where I am missing things, random things. I am missing good power yoga classes, country radio (although I did hear two Tim McGraw songs while in Stockmann’s the other day – I felt like the city had finally adopted me!), walking to the Golden Gate with friends, walking anywhere without freezing and slipping for that matter, and spinach. Yes, funnily enough one of the things I miss most about the states is spinach! (Yes, I know, I’m SUPER fun.) Finnish food leaves something to be desired, at least the Finnish food you can afford. I have had an amazing lunch of deer, perfect garlic mashed potatoes, and beets (another favorite) with goat cheese. Unfortunately, that cost around 60€ (roughly $90) so is not something I have done often, or even again. However, the big meal of the day in Finland is lunch and everyone, and I really mean everyone, goes out to lunch every day so I have had the opportunity to try many different Helsinki restaurants for lunch. I have found the food to be mediocre at best and usually around $15 which is thought to be a steal. (I can see my dad, the self-proclaimed cheapest man alive, cringing as he reads this.) It is often pasta with some strange sauce the color and contents of which I have yet to figure out (is it yellow? orange? cheese? tomato? nobody knows…), a “burger” which means a slab of any type of meat on bread (chicken, lamb, pork, beef) with potatoes (fries, wedges, mashed, whipped, roasted), or a salad consisting of iceberg lettuce (I know, I didn’t know anyone still ate this either!), a couple tomato slices, and your choice of four random toppings (pick from the following - anemic chicken, salmon, meatballs, asparagus, olives, artichokes, seeds – no idea what kind, mozzarella balls, feta, fried onions) drowned in chili-cilantro, ranch, or what looks like thousand island dressing. Eck.

The one thing there is here is an over abundance of is fish, primarily salmon, halibut, and herring. (Make sure you check out the pictures of the farmer’s market, Hakaniemi.) Now I really like fish and especially salmon and halibut, but there is really only so much you can take. There is some kind of salmon spread (butter? cream cheese? don’t really know…) in the fridge at work that everyone eats, there is salmon in the pasta dishes and the sandwiches, there are jars of pickled fish slices all over the grocery store, there are more jars of little herring and anchovies eyeballing me as I avoid the pickled ones, there are four cases of fish in the meat department but no chicken to be found in the whole place, and I bought pork the other day and it tasted like really fishy fish when I cooked it. I actually had to throw it away because I was so grossed out by the fish-pork combo! I started getting desperate for something other than fish when I ran into the Mexican aisle at the grocery store the other day…I have never been so happy to see Old El Paso in my life! I made beef tacos for dinner and was in heaven. They were just about perfect except for the fact that I could not find the regular cheddar cheese so after 20 minutes of looking I finally gave up and went with applewood smoked cheddar. It was not exactly “classic” Mexican but it got the job done. More importantly, nothing on my plate tasted or looked like fish of any kind.

Thankfully, the produce here is quite good actually so I have been eating some great mangoes (which I love), clementines, pears, grape tomatoes, and lots of broccoli. Given the abovementioned lunches though I have been constantly craving vegetables, spinach and brussels sprouts specifically. One of the guys at work told me that he missed having spinach too…on his sandwiches from Subway (he had done a case in the US where he had it)! He said that spinach does not grow in Finland so the people have not developed a taste for it but that I might find some dried spinach for sprinkling in soup if I went to one of the big supermarkets. I was so sad! He also told me that corn does not grow here and it is so expensive to import that nobody eats it. (It was $7 for two small ears at the grocery store today – ouch!) It was a good food day today though because I went to the grocery store and there was a new arrival – brussels sprouts! I doubt anyone has been as giddy about brussels sprouts as I was tonight. They were pretty pitiful, small and turning brown, but I bought two big containers and just had a roasted brussels sprouts feast. Deprivation does weird things to people…

The other big difference here is that the produce goes bad so quickly compared to in the US. Fruit starts going bad in about four days here whereas in the US I could buy a pear and it would probably be good 3 weeks later. Now my bananas are brown mush by day four, my clementines need to be eaten by day five latest, my meat needs to be cooked within three days or it starts tasting like fish, my mangoes might have four days before they go brown; it’s a job in itself just making sure I eat everything on time. (The fact that I pay an arm and a leg and then have to carry the food home from the grocery store in the icy cold has made me very focused on buying only what I need and then ensuring that I eat it!) My move here and observations about the produce coincide quite unfortunately with my reading of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I am now very freaked out about what kinds of pheromones they are piping into the produce trucks in the US which hold off the natural ripening process! I am ashamed to say that I am not sure that I even know what is “normal” at this point but if Finland represents the unadulterated ripening process then we should be very afraid in the US! The difference is really striking. (Funny side point about The Omnivore’s Dilemma and my reading it right now - I am at the point in the book which addresses the morality, or immorality, of eating meat and it is falling completely flat with me given my aversion towards fish this week. Bring on the steaks! Grass-fed only, thank you. ;)

I took a little break from the arctic last weekend and spent four days in London which was wonderful! I met up with my friend Ken for the weekend and then interviewed at London Business School for BCG. Being in London made me realize how different Helsinki really is…I had more people acknowledge me in my four days there than I have had in 5 weeks in Helsinki! The Finnish culture of being quiet, private, and reserved had not bothered me at all until I was back in a culture more like that of the US. London is an amazing city and I had great food (and LOTS of spinach – thank you, Ken!), discovered a newfound appreciation for being able to run outside, and enjoyed being in a place with so much diversity and action. Ken shared his local friends with me and I met Ali living in Dubai (via Denmark?), Paulo from Monaco (but Italian), Marina from St. Petersburg, Skye from Australia, David from St. Louis, Gavin and his wife Claire from the London suburbs, Esperanza the Colombian / Israeli, and Brian from Lake Tahoe. Then add Ming Teck from Singapore, a new friend at BCG, Bhav from Tanzania, Pasi from Finland (Ali called in his one Finnish friend to say hello to the new Helsinki transplant), and Mario from Italy (plus Andrea from Idaho) and you have quite a weekend collection! I made some new friends, some of whom I hope see in Helsinki this year, and got some good travel advice on the side. I was talking about visiting St. Petersburg soon and was told that when (not if) I get stopped by the Russian police for some imaginary infraction I should reply with, “Yes, officer, I realize I have committed some crime. Can you please tell me what the penalty is?” at which point I should then be ready to hand over 20€ before hightailing it out of there. Good to know.

Finland is a really homogenous country, I think the statistic I read somewhere was that the country was 96% Finnish, and it really jumped out at me after this weekend. I had already gotten so used to the Anniinas, Anttis, Tatus, Saaras, Annukkas, Ilkkas, Pekkas, Tuukkas, Jussis, Jattas, and Satus that I had not though about the Alis, Marios, Marinas, Bhavs, Ming Tecks, or even Davids of the world – it was refreshing! (Incidentally, I am thinking of changing my name to Andrekka or, better yet, Andreekka, to better fit in. Can you believe all these double letters and double K’s? I do love Finnish names!) It was a great break from the winter wonderland but, I have to admit, I was also happy to come home to Helsinki. I have already found a bit of comfort here which is nice, especially for the homebody that I am. I must fit in pretty well too because the flight attendants both to and from London last weekend spoke English to the guy next to me and Finnish to me. I suppose Anndrekka it is.

I am off to Cologne, Germany next week for the Cologne carnival, and then to Frankfurt later on in the week for a practice area conference with BCG. I unfortunately forgot to take my camera to London but have more pictures up on the blog, of the Hakaniemi market and of my flat (by popular demand - all my whining must have made people curious!). Stay tuned next week for what I hope are some good carnival stories heavily influenced by German beer!