Checking out the Czechs

I got a lot of shocked reactions to my story about hitchhiking in the Arctic Circle and I can understand why. You take your life into your hands if you hitchhike in the US (or so we have all been taught to believe anyway – I would be quite comfortable hitchhiking in Idaho or Montana if it just wasn’t so embarrassing and inconvenient!) and on top of that I am on the extreme end of the cautious scale. What was I thinking?! Well, I can tell you what I was thinking…“It’s Finland.” If there was ever a country in which you could safely hitchhike it is definitely this one. A friend of mine left in a hurry from the office last Friday for a weekend trip and inadvertently left his computer which he only realized when he got to the airport which is a 30 minute drive from the office. He had already left dangerously late so coming back for his laptop was not an option and he had at least a day’s worth of work to do over the weekend. His solution? He called the office and asked one of the assistants to send it to him in a cab. She promptly ran the laptop down to the street, handed it over to the first available cab driver without hesitation (and without taking down a license plate number, name, or even asking for an, “I promise I won’t steal this laptop.”), and gave instructions to get to terminal 1 as soon as possible. My friend got his computer 25 minutes later and made his flight (although he realized when he landed that he had also forgotten shirts – oops!). Where else would you feel comfortable doing such a thing?

The Finns also have some cultural quirks, one of which being their promptness and almost militant enforcement of it on others. Another friend of mine had been working 16 hour days for weeks, running from meeting to meeting at his client all day long without time to even eat. He made the mistake of trying to squeeze a frantic 10 minute lunch in between meetings after several days without lunch and ended up showing up to one of 30 recent meetings 5 minutes late (he was on time for all the others)…and got admonished by the CFO later that week (who, by the way, was not even one of the participants in the meeting in which my friend was late) with a, “You’re acting like you’re on holiday!” Yikes. I’ve also been running from meeting to meeting at my client and have been a few minutes late a few times after getting held up in the prior meeting. If the meeting is scheduled to begin at 2:00pm I usually get called promptly at exactly 2:00pm on my cell phone. When they decide to cut me some slack I might get called as late as 2:03pm for a 2:00pm meeting. I heard that one Finnish manager consistently employs the tactic of ensuring that there is one less chair in the room than is needed so that the last person in, even if on time, has to stand. I have also been scolded by a client for not getting to my meetings early. Don’t mess with the Finns and their meeting times!

Another source of amusement for me over the past few months has been learning Finnish translations of English expressions and vice versa. Some of them are just translation issues but can really change the way the expression comes across like, “Get your ducks in a row.” I heard here said as, “Get your ducks aligned.” which just doesn’t have the same zing and sounds a little bit too much like an engineer’s version. Then there are the expressions which are just hilarious translated from Finnish to English. Similar to the expression, “Put yourself in his shoes.” there is a Finnish expression with the same meaning which translates to English as, “Get in his pants.” (Yes, seriously.) The English expression, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” has been given a Finnish twist with, “He sings the song of the man who gives him bread.” And, finally, my personal favorite is, “When the cat is away the mice will play!” which in Finnish is, “When the cat is away the mice will jump on the table!” LOVE that one. I’m cracking myself up just writing it.

I am also a lot happier these days because lo and behold the weather has FINALLY gotten better and I’m pretty sure we’re out of the snow zone (crossing my fingers anyway). When I left for Italy in mid May the trees were still completely bare and the ground was brown. I got back four days later and the trees were covered in tiny green leaves, the grass had sprung from the ground, and even flowers were finally showing their faces in Finland. The turnaround was nothing short of miraculous. After 7-8 months of winter even the trees are going crazy! The trees all sprouted on the first really warm day and, I swear, every Finn in Helsinki got sunburned. There were a lot of red faces that Monday at work! (I shouldn’t talk as I also got embarrassingly sunburned in Italy.) I have never seen so many bare legs, arms, and shoulders in 60°F weather either! To be fair though, it is literally 80 degrees warmer than when I arrived in January so 60°F feels pretty amazing!

The craziest thing though is length of the days at this point. I think the sun rises around 4:30am and it is still light, not bright sunshine but still light nonetheless, at 11pm. It is pretty great to have dinner in the sun on a terrace at 9:30pm but it is also messing me up. I never realized how much daylight acts as a guide for the body…I never know what time it is in the evening (and have been off by up to 3 hours when I try to guess) and am eating and leaving work at weird times because the sky never signals me that the end of the work day had already come and gone (or should have, at least). We forget how far north Europe is compared to the US so even London has really long summer days and relatively little sunlight in the winter. I now understand why Europeans value their summer months and long holidays so much! The continent really comes alive.

I got to enjoy the long days a couple weeks ago in Prague where I went for another quick weekend trip with my friend Heidi. Prague is apparently Europe’s hottest tourist destination now (not sure how that is measured but I’m guessing by fastest growth and not numbers of visitors) and had been on my “must see” list since I got here. The city is known for its beauty and for its nightlife. I had considered going in the winter to see the castle in the snow which I had seen pictures of and was totally gorgeous but the trip ended up being in May because of cheaper airfare and I’m so happy I went when the weather was nice! The city really is unique and beautiful with sculptures and statues popping up everywhere amid the primarily gothic and art deco architecture. What made the visit so nice was that we were able to spend most of our two days there outside enjoying and exploring the city. It reminded me a lot of Krakow with another beautiful “old town” square but Prague is much bigger than Krakow and, as a result, is more cosmopolitan which definitely has some benefits (although I loved the quaintness of Krakow!).

We spent the first day checking out the very famous Charles Bridge with its stunning statues and then explored the castle area for several hours. We ran into a road race of people running in gorilla masks on our way to the castle…not sure what that was about but it was pretty funny to be walking up the stone castle walls in Prague and nearly get trampled by a bunch of runners in gorilla masks! (Which, by the way, sounds like a terrible way to run – so hot and claustrophobic!) We climbed one of the old city towers (part of what used to be the city walls) and got one of the most amazing city views I have seen yet. Heidi had read a review of the “most classic Czech pub” in the city and we shared goulash with potato dumplings and fried cheese for lunch. The goulash and dumplings were amazing and the fried cheese was just that, a big chunk of fried cheese. That was less impressive (but still pretty good).

We happened to be in Prague during the ice hockey world championship finals and were in the pub with about a hundred crazed Czech hockey fans for their semi-final game against Sweden. I am still not exactly sure what happened but I think the Czech Republic came from being two goals behind in the 3rd period to win the game and move on to the finals. The whole place went crazy and then I saw the game replayed on at least two enormous outdoor TV screens in different parts of the city for the rest of the day. Heidi and I relaxed in one of the squares by drinking mojitos and eating fist-size pretzels (we stopped eating them when we realized that they were 2.50 Euros each – yikes!) at a café with the replay on in the background. The weather and spirit in the city was amazing (I’m sure the mojitos didn’t hurt things either) – it seemed that everyone in Prague was out with friends enjoying the day.

We spent that evening in old town and actually ended up back there the next afternoon (after going to a museum of Czech artist Mucha’s work – I am a new fan!) where there was an outdoor concert leading up to the ice hockey final game which was also to be projected onto a huge screen in the square – what a great way to watch the game, particularly when your country makes it to the finals! There was a live band of old Czech men with long gray hair rocking out on stage to both Czech and American cover songs which provided a hilariously horrible soundtrack for the afternoon. It was such a beautiful day in such a gorgeous and fun city though that the bad music didn’t matter.

Unfortunately, Heidi and I had to fly out before the actual game and the Czechs ended up beating the Russians to win the title! I read that the celebration which followed in Prague’s old town square was crazy – so sad that we missed it by just a few hours! My only regret for the weekend was not having had more time to enjoy Prague so I may have to go back sometime soon…but given that I am sitting in the Munich airport on the way to Barcelona and then Paris later this week, before a stopover in Iceland the next weekend on my way to Montana (of course it is on the way!), I may need to take a bit of a breather before coming back! I’m loving all the travel but I think I might be burning the candle at both ends – I’m exhausted! (Not to mention I am two trips behind on blog updates...get ready for the Norwegian fjords and Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein Castle coming up. Until then…)