Today we shall drink

A woman here told me yesterday, “Just when you have completely given up, just when you think the sun will never shine again, just when you believe spring is just a figment of your imagination, yes, that is when spring will come.” My question is does spring come when she has given up or when I have given up…because I think I am already there!!! But, enough about the weather….

I had what I feel is my first truly Finnish experience this past weekend at a ski resort called Ruka in Lapland (northern Finland in the Arctic Circle). We had our local office outing there and spent Friday in teams of colleagues competing in events like ice sculpting, fire building, tug of war in 3 feet of snow, and snow football (European football!) also in 3 feet of snow. (I was told that they also have “swamp football” here where you play in deep mud pits – these people are loco! I’m hoping they haven’t come up with these crazy activities because they just never see normal grass.) The activities were a blast – you would be shocked at what a novice can sculpt from a chunk of ice! They were also absolutely exhausting. I thought the tug of war might kill me! My entire team ended up laid out on the snow, still holding on to the rope, entirely beaten and ultimately just getting dragged around. I forgot to mention that we were also tasked with dressing up in 80’s gear for this event. Have you ever seen an 80’s rock band big hair wig paired with a one piece woman’s ski outfit which is mauve with panels of hideous flowers (think dentist office wallpaper flowers – yikes!)…on a man?! It wasn’t pretty but it was definitely hilarious.

Naturally, after being outside in the cold for several hours, one must enjoy the sauna and most especially when in Finland! I had read before I came here that there is a sauna in Finland for every 2.5 people and, at this point, I think that sounds like too few! There is a sauna in my gym, at my client’s headquarters, in my apartment building (to reserve), and in every (or nearly every) Finnish home. One of the consultants on my case is building a house and she was showing me the floor plans the other day – a big sauna was featured prominently. In fact, they had removed part of the originally planned bathroom and one of the closets to make their sauna bigger. (I like saunas but don’t think I could deal with giving up the closet space – valuable real estate for more shoes!) The sauna was great, especially after being partially frozen for four hours of activities in the snow, and it was made even better by bringing a beer (cider for me) along. I learned the hard way that I better drink it fast though…those glass bottles will literally burn your lips after 10 minutes in the sauna at 90°C (194°F)! The things that never cross your mind…

After a lovely sauna we all went to dinner for a very traditional Finnish meal of mushroom soup, reindeer with ligonberry sauce over potatoes, and a dessert of some kind of fried sweet cheese (sounds horrible but was really good!)…and, in true Finnish form, copious amounts of alcohol. I had been warned about Finnish drinking habits but had not really witnessed it first hand until this weekend.

Stereotype 1: The Finns can drink every other nation of people under the table.
The verdict: TRUE (although Germans give them a good run for their money!)

Stereotype 2: Finns are quiet and keep to themselves until they start drinking in which case they are loud, outgoing, and crazy drunks.
The verdict: TRUE The guys who have been walking by me eyes-straight-ahead in the office for more than two months, rarely acknowledging and thoroughly confused by my chirpy “Good morning!” which is seen as annoyingly American (as my client said this week, “Why do you need to ask ‘How are you?’ when you see someone at work? It just wastes time.”), just needed a little (or a lot for some, as it turned out) vodka to open the floodgates. I got more conversation in an hour with a vodka bottle on the table than I’ve had in the last several weeks in the office!

Stereotype 3: Finns drink Finlandia vodka, preferably with a horrible anise (licorice) flavor.
The verdict: FALSE Finns don’t drink Finlandia – I was informed that the name is just a silly marketing and branding tool used around the world for those who don’t know any better. A true Finn drinks only Koskenkorva vodka. Clearly. They love this vodka so much that they have multiple traditional drinking songs calling this specific vodka out by name. (You don’t want to mess this up in Finland. I mean, Finlandia vodka? Really? Are you crazy?!)

What I had not been warned about or prepared for were the Finnish drinking songs. We were eating our very civilized dinner of reindeer and ligonberries, behaving well and sipping wine, when one person stood up and began to sing. We had about 40 people with us and everyone immediately stopped eating and joined in. While I obviously didn’t know the song I was smart enough to know that a vodka shot was coming up (tipped off by the wait staff jumping up when the song began to pour a round – context clues!) so I was able to participate correctly at the end of the very first song by taking my shot with the group. However, I noticed the guy next to me only sipped his shot (considered bad form in Finland as I was told by all the others). Turns out he knew what was coming….this was the first of what I think was easily 1o+ songs over the course of two hours, most of which involving some banging of the table during the singing part and at the end of which you are supposed to drink (preferably a vodka shot). Thankfully, I had an excellent translator sitting next to me and, after the third or fourth song (each sung by someone new in the group standing up at random times and just belting it out), a theme emerged…”…tobacco, whiskey, and wild women…,” “…It’s great to be really, really, really, really drunk!,” “Koskenkorva!,” “Tomorrow will be one hell of a hangover” The crazy thing was that everyone knew every song. Finns are also known for being very efficient and I can certainly vouch for that here. Many people made significant “progress” over those two hours…the group’s collective social skills probably improved 10X!

Tänään otetaan
Tänään otetaan, tänään otetaan,
helvetin paljon viinaa
Huomenna on, huomenna on,
helvetin kova krapula

I dag ska vi ta, i dag ska vi ta,
helvete mycket brännvin
I morgon ska vi ha, i morgon ska vi ha,
helvete kova krapula

Today we shall drink (sung first in Finnish, then in Swedish)
Today we shall drink, today we shall drink
A hell of a lot of booze
Tomorrow will be, tomorrow will be
One hell of a hangover

Elomme päivät epäselvät
Elomme päivät epäselvät,
kohtalo kovan suonut on.
Kun eilen tulin tänään kotia
ja tänään tulen huomenna.
HUOMENTA!

The date is unclear (about coming home each morning after a big night out)
The days of our life are unclear,
brought us an unfortunate fate.
Yesterday I came home today
and today I'll come tomorrow
GOOD MORNING!

Koskenkorva
Nostakaamme malja koskenkorvaa on.
Väljähtyköön kalja mallaskelvoton.
Riemuella suo, siispä Veikko juo.
Riemuella suo, siispä Veikko juo.

Kalja voimallansa meitä innostaa.
Koskenkorvan kanssa mielet nostattaa.
Lohdutusta suo, siispä Veikko juo.
Lohdutusta suo, siispä Veikko juo.

Koskenkorva
Let's raise a toast of Koskenkorva
Bad quality beer can stay in the glass
It brings us happiness, so Buddy drinks
It brings us happiness, so Buddy drinks

Beer inspires us with its strength
Koskenkorva arouses our minds
It brings us consolation, so Buddy drinks
It brings us consolation, so Buddy drinks

After dinner we went to a concert of one of Finland’s more famous bands, a pair of girls singing some sort of pop / punk music. First of all, we arrived at this club and the DJ was playing The Bangles' “Eternal Flame.” I like that song but thought it a little strange at a club. The next song was something by Michael Jackson and the next was one of the songs from Grease! Interesting choices but the Finns were going crazy and loving it. Finns are apparently very in to 80’s music. Then the band came out. I don’t want to be rude but they were absolutely terrible! It was described to me (by a Finn who also was not impressed) as “the equivalent of a pair of Bjorks but without the talent.” Ouch. One of their most famous songs had some line in it which was translated to me as, “Even swans get their legs frozen in the lake sometimes.” Only in Finland, my friends, only in Finland.

In the midst of the cacophony that was the famous band, an older man approached me speaking Finnish. I gave my standard, “I’m sorry. I only speak English.” He said, “Oh! You are from California!” I said, “Wow – you are good! Yes, I just moved to Helsinki.” He said, “I used to live in New York. You have a slight San Francisco accent.” “WOW. That is quite amazing! I don’t think an American could tell that!” He looked at me and replied, “Yes…I saw you on the plane this morning….” OK, starting to get creeped out now! I skedaddled out of that conversation only to get caught in up in another one, this time with a younger guy. I can only loosely refer to it as a conversation as he spoke almost no English which, to a sober person, would be a major deterrent. Lucky for me, this guy was not remotely near sober so he was happy as a clam to exhaust his few English phrases and questions over and over again, “You are 25.” Um, not quite, but I’ll take it! “Where you from?” “How long you in Helsinki?” “Maybe I see you tonight?” “How long you in Helsinki?” “Where you from?” “You from US.” “You from US?” Add this kind of stimulating conversation to the fact that the entire club was swaying in drunken unison (and, seemingly, leaning or stepping on me) and this guy was trying to hold my hand with the Finnish alternachicks screaming the soundtrack in the background…I had had enough!

Thankfully, I had been smart enough not to drink too much the night before because I had really wanted to go cross-country skiing on Saturday. Given how things turned out – this was a very lucky decision the night before! I set out with a couple women from the office and we made our way to the lodge to rent equipment. Cross-country skiing in Finland is a bit more sophisticated than what I had done before in Idaho. There is “traditional” cross-country skiing which is the type I was familiar with, leisurely skiing through the mostly flat forest. There is also “freestyle” cross-country skiing which is very popular here and basically looks like skating on skis, which they do both up and down quite steep hills. In fact, fairly steep hills are part of all cross-country skiing here which was something new to me (great workout going up but scary speed coming down!).

Freestyle takes a bit of finesse and time to learn so we all opted to go traditional. We got outfitted with our equipment and set off to do a 16 km “easy” loop meaning that it had relatively few hills. I had just gone cross-country skiing the previous weekend in Sweden at the Ice Hotel and it was a relaxing and refreshing experience. There was nobody else around and the weather had been perfect – it was great! The weather in Ruka was also perfect and sunny but the calm of the remote forest in northern Sweden was replaced with “advanced” ski paths of many expert-level skiers who routinely passed me climbing up the hills (quite steep so had to duck-walk up) as well as coming down them. I, by no stretch an expert cross-country skier on flat courses let alone the hills common to these, was struggling with my newly waxed skis (if you don’t walk enough like a duck you start sliding back down the mountain!) and getting comfortable going down the steep hills all the while Finnish senior citizens were putting me to shame and passing me like I was standing still. My problem with skiing in general is that I get nervous going too fast but in regular downhill skiing I just add additional turns to slow myself down to feel comfortable. This time I was strapped to skis pointing straight down a mountain in groomed, very smooth and very fast tracks without any good way to slow down or deviate from the “fast track.” I took a couple spills not because I lost my balance but because I got scared of going so fast and decided that crashing into a snow bank seemed like the preferred option!

I did get my downhill / cross-country skiing legs after a bit and once we were away from the ski lodge the number of other people sharing the path really subsided. I stopped briefly to look at the map with Emma and Satu and we found our loop and set out. I didn’t pay much attention to the map because I couldn’t read anything (and, somewhat baffling, because none of the ski routes matched anything printed on the map – very frustrating for a non-Finnish reader!) but I figured that I didn’t really need to because Emma and Satu were leading and we would be moving together. Besides, the tracks are groomed – how can you really get lost on groomed, well-marked trails?

We took off and about 10 minutes later, because of the hills, were fairly spread out from one another by about 50-100m. I got to a fork in the road and hurried right after a group of people I could see in front of me. I skied for about 20 minutes but had not yet caught up to Emma or Satu, despite having turned it up a bit to try to catch up after a long hill climb up. We had seen a coffee hut on the map about 40 minutes out so I figured that they would at least wait for me there if I wasn’t able to catch up by then. About 40 minutes later I arrived at an igloo with a couple doors in it (guarded by a gigantic snowman, bigger than the igloo) but no one was around. Was this the coffee hut which just didn’t happen to be open? I looked around a bit but figured that the girls had just passed by since it wasn’t open and I took off again, really turning up the speed this time. Stupidly, I hadn’t brought my phone with me because, again, why would I need one if I was with two others who had theirs? At some point I realized that I had taken the wrong turn at the fork but the paths are all “one-way” (you can go the other way but get ready for Finnish death stares) and so were almost all loops. I decided that I would just stay on my loop to avoid going against traffic. It was a bummer that I was on my own but I was on a well-marked path which surely looped back to where I had taken the wrong turn. I figured things would be fine if not optimal.

We had roughly calculated that it was taking us about 10 minutes per kilometer so we should be done with the loop and back at the lodge in about 2.5 hours. I happily skied and skied away for the next couple hours. Unfortunately, I had nothing to eat and only half of a Coke Zero in my coat pocket to drink as I had been counting on the warming hut for some coffee and lunch. After a couple hours, I was hungry and could have used a bathroom but there was literally not a single place to stop along the way and, if I did stop to take a break, my fingers would begin to freeze. It was better to just keep going to stay warm. The route was beautiful – weaving in and out of the woods and over a frozen lake – and I felt comfortable because the path was so well groomed and I saw markers periodically along the way. I came to another fork in the path but one side was blocked off with a big yellow and red road-barrier with a Finnish sign posted on it. I obviously couldn’t read the sign but the barrier itself carried a pretty obvious message so I continued on along the other path. After hour 3 I began to get a little worried but I kept skiing on. I mean, this was a one-way loop. It must come back around, right? I finally got to what seemed to be a highway crossing and, as it was getting later on in the day and I was getting more nervous about getting back, I waited until another skier came along to confirm that I was heading in the right direction. “Hi! Is this the way to Ruka?” “Ruka? No, no. Kuusamo! Ruka is other way.” I stood there silently as he crossed the highway on his way to Kuusamo. Kuusamo is the city we flew into…and then took a 30 minute bus ride from to get to the resort. ! Apparently, I had somehow chosen the one non-loop option available and was on a straight track to Kuusamo! I turned around and started heading back, going a few kilometers before I thought about what I was doing. It had taken me nearly 4 hours to get to this point. There was no way I could make it back before dark and I was already pretty tired and had twisted my knee somewhere along the way so wasn’t as efficient as I should have been. I turned back around and re-skied the few kilometers back to the highway. I had seen a couple bus stop signs there and it was the best place to catch a fellow skier. My plan was to ask one of them when they stopped to cross the highway (you had to take off your skis to do this) if they had a cell phone and could help call me a taxi. In the meantime, I could stand at the bus stop and wait for a bus to come around. I had just seen some the last time I was at the intersection.

I got to the highway and tried to stop several skiers…only to find out that I had somehow crossed the line from Finland to rural Finland in the last 4 hours and now no one spoke English, and I mean none. My plan to borrow a phone was quickly becoming less and less likely. I stood at the bus stop but my hands were going numb and while I didn’t know what time it was (no watch either) I did notice that the sun was going down. It was already cold enough to hurt if I wasn’t moving and it was easily -20°C or colder when the sun went down. I was definitely up a creek now. For someone who is always well or over-prepared I must have had a brain freeze that morning and was in trouble this time – I had left the house with half a Coke Zero, a credit card, and two lip glosses for the day! What a dummy! I didn’t know where I was, I couldn’t speak to the few people that passed by, I was already freezing and the sun was going down, and I was exhausted, hungry, and had hurt my knee. It was then that I remembered the guys telling me the night before about the bears and wolves in the area. Yikes! What an incredible dummy I was!

The only bus that came by didn’t stop at the sign and I started to weigh my options. Do I go flag someone down on the highway? I had seen a couple police cars earlier. Do I just keep taking my chances with the other skiers? Do I suck it up and ski my way all the back? None of these options seemed that great but desperate times call for desperate measures….

So, I decided to hitchhike. The highway intersected with another road which I knew was heading back to Ruka. I stood at the bus stop (really just a bus sign on the road) and tried to get myself psyched up to hitchhike and hoping a bus would come along in the next 5 minutes so I wouldn’t have to. I had two issues to overcome. First, everybody knows that hitchhikers are all serial killers which, at the time that I was a hitchhiker, I somehow twisted into that it was actually the people picking up the hitchhikers who were the maniacs. However, I told myself, you are in Lapland of all places! You can leave your purse on the street in Helsinki (I still wouldn’t do it but I have seen it done!) without fear of it being stolen so you can definitely hitch a ride in the middle of nowhere Finland and be ok. Secondly, hitchhiking is embarrassing. I was mortified standing out on some random road in my pink coat with my skis on my shoulder and my thumb in the air. I felt totally rejected when a car would pass by me. “Why don’t they like me? Don’t they think I look safe? What’s wrong with me?” After a couple rejections, I was so discouraged that I just couldn’t make myself try for the next car. My ego was too bruised. (Why didn’t they pick me up? I would pick me up! Ok, honestly, I probably wouldn’t pick anyone up!) I decided that a bruised ego would just leave me as a popsicle at the end of the night and that I better get a strategy and suck it up already. My strategy was to target vehicles with single men (single as in only one, not single as in available). I reasoned that the families typically wouldn’t have room in their vehicles and few parents would pick up a stranger and sit him / her next to their children (let alone teach their kids that picking up hitchhikers is ok!). Women driving alone are just less likely to pick up hitchhikers in general, I decided. A single male driver is the hitchhiking sweet spot.

I put my thumb in the air and threw my arm out in front of the next single male driver I saw and, to my great relief and surprise, he immediately slowed down and pulled over. He put his window down and I said, “Thank you! Do you speak English?” He said shyly, “No, no…no.” This could be interesting. I said, “I need to go to Ruka. Ruka?” He replied, “Ruka? *pause* OK!” then jumped out of his van, took my skis and poles, loaded them in the back, removed some things from the passenger seat, and welcomed me in. This guy was probably around 45, was pretty weathered from working outside (I assume, we obviously didn’t talk about it), and was missing some teeth but I could have kissed him. We rode to Ruka in complete silence (the Finnish “no need for small talk” thing is actually very helpful in certain situations) and after about 10 minutes or so he pulled right up to the ski lodge, looked at me for the first time the whole trip and said, “Ok?” I nodded yes and he jumped out to unload my skis. He handed them to me and I said, “Kiitos, kiitos, kiitos!!! Thank you!” (“Kiitos” means “thank you” in Finnish.) He smiled and drove away. Again, I could have kissed him.

I started walking back to our cabin, knowing that people would be worried at this point, and ran into some people from the office. They said that Emma was quite worried and had already been calling around asking if certain rangers had seen me. The plan was to send out the dogs (or snowmobiles, in this case) to find me around 4pm. I think I got back around 3:30pm and everyone was very relieved. Nobody wanted to make the, “San Francisco, we have a problem.” phone call! Emma was worried that I would be angry and traumatized and I said, “How can I be angry when I am the one who took the wrong turn and only brought lip gloss?!” One of the guys told me, “Well, at least you didn’t ski over the Russian border – then you’d really be in trouble!” (We were actually quite close to Russia – yikes!) I got some good laughs about having to hitchhike home too. Definitely never thought I’d do that in this life!

We pulled out the map and figured out that the path which had been blocked off was the loop back to the lodge and the sign said in Finnish that it was closed to snowmobiles. The cross-country skiers (who knew where they were going!) just went around the barricade and continued on back the lodge. Because I had gone straight instead of turning off here, I was on a bee-line to Kuusamo with the locals - no loop and no English. Emma and Satu had actually seen me take the first wrong turn and tried to catch up to me but got slowed down a few times and, ultimately, turned around when they couldn’t catch me (at the same time I had assumed they were in front of me so was really pushing it). All in all, we calculated that I skied about 30 kilometers, nearly double what we had planned on when we set out for the day. I had wanted a good workout and I think I got more than I bargained for this time!

Not easily discouraged, I went back out the next day (although no one would go with me this time – Emma and Satu were gone and everyone else was scared!). I paid close attention to the map and brought my phone along this time, in addition to the lip glosses. I got just under 20 kilometers in that day and was only lost for about 3 of them – somehow I got messed up on the final track home from the loop. One of the Finns told me that he also was having problems with the route maps which made me feel a lot better! So, several shots of vodka, a few rounds of sauna, 50 km of cross-country skiing, and one desperate hitchhike later, my very Finnish weekend was over. I am going to need some time, and maybe survival skills training, before the next one!