Snowed In

Bad news for my American readers. Old Man Winter has requested I stay a little bit longer in Finland. Yeah, Europe is facing one of the most extreme winters in recent years and it is causing havoc in every air traffic control tower this side of the Atlantic.

I was meant to fly to the east coast via Frankfurt, and it only adds insult to injury that both Helsinki and Frankfurt airports were open. The culprit to blame is London's Heathrow airport. It closed down and thus all flights due to land in the U.K. were rerouted. Our pilot politely gave us the bad news saying that, "there are no more parking spots in Frankfurt". We were told to stand in line at the transit desk to change our routing. I waited in line for 4 hours and finally my routing was changed...to Tuesday.

While most of the other passengers, who were flying within europe, expressed glee when they were given new tickets for flights later that day, I hung my head with flickers of fear that my confirmed seat on Tuesday's flight was not by any means confirmed in the eyes of mother nature. Seems unfair that one country's lack of preparation for snow fucks a ton of people in a country well equipped to handle such conditions. I suppose it is karma because Finns are known to scoff when major cities like London or Paris completely shut down with only a few centimeters of snow. Sometimes comments come back to bite us in ass.

Well I got a lunch voucher and they promised to pay my taxi fare home and then back to the airport on Tuesday. I collected my bags and ordered a cab. The driver approached me and said, "Are you Mr. Brock?" and he helped me with my bags to the trunk.

On the ride home, the driver and I discussed the pros and cons of this kind of weather and that with a few exceptions, like traffic problems, a white Christmas is better than a grey muddy one.

The conversation lulled and I began to collect my thoughts. As we pulled into town, I could hear Dean Martin's voice faintly from the radio, mocking me with every word.

"Since we've got no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow..."

Durian Grey

Merry Christmas from me...

Ladies and gentlemen. I would like to present to you my "debut" "ep" Durian Grey. These are songs I have spent much of free time in the past year writing, recording and vocally butchering...just for fun. And what good is music that people can't hear? It's no good if there is no audience, so you can download this for the low low price of $0.00 right here on your favorite american in finland blog. Just click the link below. Should download automatically.

Durian Grey EP (2010)

Track List:

1. Astrological Love Triangle 2010

2. Day Dream

3. Fish Out of Water

4. Black Hole (cover of a Urinals song)

5. Perfectly Perfunctory

6. Allegory

I would like to thank Elise Malmivirta for the wonderful cover art. We had great fun with the photo shoot and she is a trooper dealing with my bizarre requests. Check out more of her photos from her blog.

So give it a listen. At best I could be your new favorite band. At worst, you can finally know what it is I do on these cold dark nights.

PS. I mixed this on headphones, so it will sound best like that...

The Worst Seat In The House

Today at work we had our department's annual Christmas lunch. Since there are no Jews in Finland we can call it a "Christmas Lunch" and not a "Holiday Lunch". I hurried to get all my work done before noon so that we would only be moderately late for the festivities and none of my coworkers minded leaving a bit later to accommodate my schedule.

Finally it was time to leave and we dressed in our winter gear and ventured off to find the party. We got there and began hanging up our coats and one of the hostesses said that we ought to hurry since tables were filling up quickly. We ran up stairs to find a full banquet hall. There seemed to be some empty tables in the back and we hurried through the crowd to find that many of the empty seats were "reserved" requiring us to split up the party into two groups: Everyone else and me. So I took the lone seat at a table which would soon be filled with the unknowns whose friend's had reserved them seats.

Now, I have heard work parties described as being awkward, but get a load of this. Not only was I sitting an aisle's length away from my party, but the seat across from me was filled by the one professor whom I had developed quite a distaste for. The one who would rather yell across the building at people, disturbing the otherwise tranquil atmosphere, than get up and participate in proper indoor discourse. The one who types so loud on her computer that I have contemplated calling the police accusing her of domestic abuse. The one who, without fail, finds it necessary to drag a meeting on much longer than it needs to be by adding trivial comments apropos of nothing, yeah that one.

Oh, and that's not all! Sitting not more than a table's length away was a girl who set me up on a blind date with her friend, the friend eventually making it clear she was not interested in hearing from me anymore. And, while there are two sides to every story, she has probably only heard one. Now, to be honest I am not 100% sure it was her. The only reason I doubt was that as we exchanged glances, the 1st time, there didn't seem to be any sense of recognition. But I got the haunting feeling that there was a sense of deliberateness with each subsequent glance, a deliberateness that sent chills through my bones.

Oh, and that still wasn't it. Sitting across the table and two seats over, and I am not making this up, was, none other than the girl who took one look at me on that one faithful night and turned around and sat next to the bus driver. I could not believe it. It was the most awkward distance ever. It was too far away to allow me to introduce myself as a human being with thoughts and feelings and too close to be outside of the realm of behavioral influence.

So I sat there, not talking to anyone and just giggling nervously to myself about the odds of having the worst seat in the house, feeling the creepiness stats rise exponentially.

I did what any person in this situation would do and said, "I think I'll have another glass of wine".

Rare Exports

Everyone knows that Santa Claus comes from Finland, or at least they should. But the real story behind father christmas may shock you. The Finnish word for Santa is "Joulupukki" which literally translates to "Christmas Goat". Yes, that sounds weird, but any Finn will tell you that Joulupukki wears a goat skin, I mean it gets pretty cold here. What you are less likely to hear is that "Joulupukki", which is basically the same thing we got in the States, is not the whole story.

From my understanding, before there was Joulupukki, there was Nuuttipukki. Nuuttipukki is an elderly figure associated with Christmas, but long story short, he is basically the opposite of Joulupukki. Instead of awarding good children with presents and candy, he punishes naughty children, and from some accounts, with violence.

If you investigate further you may find that the Norse God Puki is a, "supernatural being of evil power". Could it be that the original Father Christmas was a Finnishized version this evil spirit, the proverbial boogie-man, that parents told their children about in an effort to scare them straight? Could it be that to hide this sinister version of Christmas the gentler kinder Santa we are all familiar was adopted from the Coca-Cola company?

I don't know and to be honest I have heard different accounts of who or what this Nuuttipukki is. Any Finns reading this, feel free to add your thoughts. For the rest of you, here are a few documentary films to educate you.

Rare Exports Inc. from Woodpecker Film on Vimeo.

Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions from Woodpecker Film on Vimeo.

And here is the trailer for the feature length which is already out in the USA, though on limited release.

Merry Christmas from AWIF...

Tallinn is to Helsink as...

...Tijuana is to San Diego.

Well, not exactly but it is the best of all possible answers. But the atmosphere surrounding us on our voyage across the gulf of Finland was slightly reminiscent to the one felt when crossing the border into Mexico. I think it was the lower prices and the promise of copious amounts of cheap booze that did it really.

While I had been to Tallinn once about ten years ago, those memories are all but forgotten and the ones that remain are hidden behind a thick veil of intoxication. That is kind of what happens there. Regardless, a trip to Tallinn, Helsinki's sister city and the capital of Estonia, is almost a rite of passage here in Finland and when my friends said they were planning to spend a day there for a "pikku-joulu" celebration, I jumped on the opportunity. I was desperately wanting to replace those old fuzzy memories of being an underage kid in a country that didn't care about checking IDs with brand new fuzzy memories.

But for a moment lets get back into the relationship between Helsinki and Tallinn and I think this photo sums it up.

75% of the passengers are hauling these roller bags to Tallinn, and here is the kicker, they are all empty. The now empty space in these bags will soon fill up with beer and liquor the likes of which yee probably have seen before, but at half the price. See, the Finnish government, in an attempt to curb the perpetual drunkenness that intoxicates the country, has levied steep sin taxes on hooch. But, the god of alcohol (Ike Turner?) had an ace up his sleeve. Once Estonia became a member of the EU and unregulated movement between EU countries became rampant, the previous restrictions were replaced with the "as much booze as you can carry" policy. And that my friends, is the story of the 1st Tallinn booze run. Oh, Eastern Europe...give a Finn 100 euros in a former soviet block country, and he'll need a liver transplant by dinner time.

Well we got on the boat just in time for the 10:30 am "buy 2 drinks, get the 3rd free" happy hour deal. So we celebrated with champagne, as you do. This was not mere, "yeah, it's a bloody mary kind of morning". This was AM drinking that, with the exception of the light outside and the aftertaste of my breakfast still lingering on my taste buds, rivaled any friday night in town. What had I gotten myself into.

Just like in Tijuana, we walked around a bit drinking and looking at tacky merchandise, though it was mulled wine and wool socks in the place of margaritas and sombreros. But it didn't take us too long to find a cafe to get out of the cold and add another liquid blanket to the growing drink count.

The party split ways, one group went off to the modern art museum and the other decided to find the seventh strangest bar in the world...and have another drink. Guess which party I belonged to.

Yes, according to Lonely Plant, the Depeche Mode bar in Tallinn is the 7th strangest bar in the world. A bar with photos, posters, ticket stubs, basically any product with "Depeche Mode" written on it could be found taped or bolted to the walls. Then there was the music, which was, you guessed it, 24/7 Depeche Mode. It was quirky, I'll give it that, but if this was the 7th strangest bar in the world, then I've seen the top 6 also.

The night led us to a semi-fancy restaurant. The food was alright, I had a smoked-cheese puree soup and a beef fillet. The remarkable thing was that I had an appetizer (the soup), the beef, a beer, a coffee and a glass of Laphroig single malt whiskey all for less money than what the main course would have cost alone in Helsinki. Decent food and wonderful company.

But time was of the essence and we needed to get back to the harbor t0 catch our ferry back to Helsinki, where the buy 2 drinks get 1 free deal was still painfully in affect. Then it was off to our continuation party at a club in Helsinki.

Se oli hauska reissu.