Suomi

Thanks to research I was able to visit to Finland, something particularly difficult in normal circumstances. Yes, sometimes research takes you to places where you wouldn't go otherwise. I spent around five days, first in Turku/Abo (the city in which the workshop was held) and then in Helsinki. Here are a few (unstructured) remarks regarding this very brief trip to Finland.

I learned that what is nowadays known as Finland was first a part of Sweden, then part of Russia, and since 1917 an independent republic. As a result, Swedish is one of the official languages of Finland and there is a certain animosity against Russia. Swedish is used by only around 6% of the population, though. The language talked by most of the population is suomi, a word that denotes both the name "Finland" and the language itself, something I find very cool. I didn't know about this bilingualism in Finland: I discovered it while having problems finding my hotel in Google maps. I would look for, say,"Eriksgatan" (swedish) and Google maps would show me "Eerikinkaku" (suomi). Everything is written in both languages, often there is an English translation. Sometimes there is a Russian translation, too. Russia is very close, just in case you haven't done the effort of placing Finland in your mental world map.  In the central train station in Helsinki, where I bought the ticket for Turku, you can also buy tickets for Moscow and St Petersburg. Russians are the largest immigrant population, but there are also many Chinese. Other nationalities can be detected, pretty much as everywhere in Europe.

It is so wonderful to get to know many different countries, especially when those countries are so different from yours. Not only this enriches your perspective of the world, but somehow it also reaffirms who you are.  You can learn a lot about yourself when you understand how different others are from you. I like to look people's faces, and to try get an idea of what Finns look like. Once you've spent sometime in a country you get to understand this kind of things. By know, I know what Colombians, Italians, French, Portuguese look like... Finns are so different from anything I had seen before. So cool. In comparison to what I had seen in Denmark, in Finland you see way less blond people. This probably applies to other scandinavian countries. Finns have very very dark hair and eyes, and their skin is so pale; the contrast is quite impressive. One thing that I found curious is that the English pronunciation of most Finns is quite hard to follow. Their accent is so strong. I somehow expected a better accent. This is not a generalizable trend, though (and I am not a native speaker, anyway.)

I was told that November is the month of the year with worst weather, and I am still wondering why they decided to organize the workshop in this period. The dates of academic events somehow end up becoming a tradition, and changing traditions is not easy. Not even for Finns. Even if the coldest month of the year is usually March, they say that November is not good because is as cold as December but there is no snow. And snow reflects light, which is quite something in a dark country. I had never thought about this advantage of snow. Winters are dark and days are short. While I was here, the day would begin around 8am and end around 4pm. Often less than 8 hours. Such 8 hours of day is what you would commonly call an "awful, gray day" in Cali or Lisbon. Or pretty much anywhere else in the world. When it is not cloudy, the day would come in a blue version, and you get to see some sort of  blue light, something a bit difficult to explain in words but quite beautiful to see. While coming here in November might sound as a terrible idea, I like to think that it was also useful to see how Finns live and behave in "normal conditions". Let me explain: if you'd come here during the summer, most likely you'll have a great time, and most people would be doing "unordinary things", because most of the year is dark and cold. So in some sense, even if coming here in November can be harsh because of the cold (and the rain, and the snow), it is enlightening to do so, to discover how Finland behaves most of the year.

I spent one and a half days in Helsinki (Helsingfors, in swedish). November is definitely not the right period to visit the city. There are nice things to see, museums to visit, and streets to walk. I would certainly like to return here in a different period, perhaps September. The city is quite large, even if it doesn't seem so. The airport is quite far from the city; it is located in Vantaa, and it takes about 40 minutes to reach the city from there. Inside the city you usually move around using the tram system and buses.  There is also a metro line (the most northern metro system in the world) but it seems to be less useful for touristic purposes. I had heard stories about transport systems in Finland being extremely punctual (because this is really important if it's really cold outside) but it seemed quite normal to me. In Turku there were some small delays. Perhaps this period is still "warm" so as to be extremely punctual. In Turku there were only buses, divided in several private companies, so buses don't look all the same. This was interesting to see, as I had the idea that the fact that public transportation is owned and managed by the State was key to its efficiency. (In Colombia one would claim that transport is a mess partly because the State has little control the private companies that run the services.) Tickets for buses in both Turku and Helsinki are very expensive. Of course, they looked particularly expensive to me, being used already to prices in Portugal, where everything is relatively cheap. So you would pay 2,50€ for a single ticket for two hours. Somewhere I read that single tickets have a high price with the goal of  encouraging people to buy day and monthly tickets. This could be true when you consider that a day ticket costs 6.80€.

In general, Finland is an expensive country. This is already noticeable for eating outside. Indeed, even if you eat at McDonalds, you would pay around 10€. This was the case when I ate at "Hesburger", the McDonalds of baltic countries. I payed a little less eating chicken at SFC, which stands for "Southern Fried Chicken" and not for "Suomi Fried Chicken", which was my first thought and is certainly funnier.

The thing I will remember the most about this trip to Finland is Sibelius. Jean Sibelius is the most famous Finnish composer of all times. His name was actually Johan, but at some point in the past it was cool to make your name sound like a French name. He composed Finlandia, the most remarkable national song.  I visited Sibelius's museum in Turku, a very nice experience. Learned a lot about Sibelius, his life and art. Young Sibelius had a very nice, crazy hair cut; the old Sibelius died bald. He deserves respect also for that. I also visited the Sibelius monument in Helsinki, even if it was a bit away from the city center. Quite nice. Now I am listening to a Sibelius's album of "greatest hits", a souvenir that the lady at the museum convinced me to buy. So far I like the Karelia Suite very much: I warmly recommend it.