10/10/09 - Finland

Today Tuomo and Anni were out for most of the day at a friend's child's baptism. Seeing as the weather has improved again I went for a walk around Kirkkonummi, the municipality where they live. From the picture you can begin to see what I mean by having forrests all around the houses.

I thought I'd also take some time to mention some of the notable (although I guess minor) differences in Finland from Scotland.

In Finland all signs and writing on packaging is written in both Finnish and Swedish (during the war they had Russian as well) making them very intimidating to someone who can understand neither.

Locks on doors all turn the opposite way to those back home so I spent the first couple of days here looking like a complete tool every time I tried to go through a door. They also always have double doors leading outside to help prevent losing heat when it is cold (October to February).

Houses don't have a standard design here. A few close by can be built in a similar fashion but in general all the houses look very different and have completely different room plans. I haven't been in two houses with the same layout.

New houses, including Tuomo and Anni's, don't have landlines, instead everyone uses their mobiles.

This next one is not exclusive to Finland but seeing as we don't have this in my house I thought I'd mention it;

Heated. Tile.Flooring.

The difference made when going into a tiled bathroom on a cold morning and having the floor warmer than your feet is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Back home going from the sanctuary of a warm bed to a freezing floor, then from the sanctuary of a warm shower to a freezing floor is one of the worst things about winter...

Moving swiftly onwards.

Salmiakki. This is liquorice with ammonium chloride added to give a spicey flavour. I personally can't stand the stuff but everyone here seems to love it. They can't get enough of it. The picture below is just what I found lying around the kitchen. This is their national sweet. The box in the middle says "Sisu" using old stlye capital and lower case versions of the letter "s".