30/9/09 - Aku Ankka

Aku Ankka is what they call Donald Duck in Finland, and here he is a big deal. For about 50 years comics about him have been coming out, and yearly annuals are collected in the same way some of us in Scotland collect the Broons or Oor Wullie. It was only at the checkout of the supermarket we went to that I realised how differently we regarded him, however. I'd never imagined seeing Donald Duck with a gun.

As for the supermarket, it was pretty much the same as what we have over here.

For most of the day Tuomo and I went for a walk to the coastal area south of where he lives. Seeing as there was the possibilty of running into an apparently annoying type of fly we were completely geared up to repel them including wearing ridiculous netted jackets. As it turned out the cold must have killed all the flies as we ran into none of them. I'm glad we realised this before anyone saw us. With the jackets off I could see much better. We didn't stay too long at the coast because it was bloody freezing, but we were there long enough to confirm that Finland seems to lack sand beaches.

In the evening we watched a film called Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. It is a Finnish film created by amateurs over about 6 years and is a parody of Star Trek and Babalon 5. I'm not entirely sure if it is legal to use all of those ships, but if you ever wanted to see the ships from both series in a massive battle against each other you should check it out. It has quite a few funny moments, one on my favourite being Mr Dwarf's line, "I guess it is a passable day to die." What Tuomo seemed to find most amusing about the film was how toned down the swearing was in the english subtitles as opposed to what was being said in Finish.