2 posts tagged “foreign exchange”

Disclaimer:
This is all a lie.

Today I bring you two more unrelated episodes.  I might, at the conclusion, try to relate them, but it'll be stretching my powers of palaver.

Finnish Humor.
    While in Finland, I've had surprisingly little insight into Finnish humor.  A lot of of the time what my friends find funny here, "Americans" find funny.  I can say that when I tell my host sister something I find funny, oftentimes she sees nothing amusing. Much of the time this happens when Swedish words or place names resemble something completely different in English.  KKK Supermarket and the resemblance of the Swedish word for cross "korset" and the English "corset" hold no humor for her.  (Red Cross, Röd Korset)
    Friday night I received another ingredient for the recipe for Finnish humor.  This, I was told, is "like a classic joke here in Finland."

    What's giant, red and eats rocks?
       - The Giant Red Rock Eater
   
    If you dug a hole all the way through the Earth to the opposite side, and dropped a rock down it, how far would the     rock fall?
       - 1.5 Meters.  Then the Giant Red Rock Eat would get it.

    Terrible jokes.  However, it's really quite funny at 1 am, I can assure you.  Possible, it could have been the accent of the guy who told it too me, but that would be rude.
    I think I've heard this in the US, but no one I know would dub it a classic.  It could have originated here.  Last night several people in various states of intoxication told me that the "Chicken Dance" originated from a Finnish contestant in the Eurovision song contest.  Who knew? 
    It surprised me that he considered this a classic, as I thought the Finnish are too serious to find such really stupid humor finny, sorry, funny.  (silly typo!)

I'm only going to take 15 minutes to talk about the next topic for today's discussion:

Parties! Puking!

    Last night, my sister hosted a Halloween party, (even though it's now November, but she was too busy to organise it on Halloween).  I tried wrapping myself in toilet paper.  3 1/2 rolls.  The first attempt failed, but once I figured out that the paper needed to be taped up quite frequently, I rolled out a possible impression of a mummy, complete with bright red socks.  Danella pulled on one of her mother's old dresses.  The skirt part was comprised of three layers of shimmery blackish fabric with silver hem, and the top was this kind of velvety number with a patten straight from the 80s.  Poofy sleeves completed the effect.  Several pirates, two hippies, a convict, zombie, Indiana Jones, a hunter, priest, leather-clad something, fairy, someone impersonating another guy at the school, and a cowgirl all attended the party. 
    So did booze.  Beer.  Tequila.  Bacardi.  Crappy wine.  Glögg (a spiced wine-type drink, served hot).
    The house, however, stayed intact.  So did everyone else.  I think Indiana Jones got the worst of it by letting any girl with a will to try to bull-whip his booty.  Some achieved audible success.  And how the Mariachi Singer came running past me butt naked from outside, I'm not sure I'll ever know. 
      How did I fare?  Soberly.  I justified having a beer and some Glögg as I thought Maria was hiding downstairs in the TV room.  Parent present.  I had the ok. When I discovered hours later that she had left.  I finish my beer, and didn't drink till she came back around 1, along with Magnus.  I had another beer.  
    Some of you might have noticed that parent-approval is implied by my last paragraph.  That is true.  A parent sanctioned party.  Magnus takes the position that drinking is acceptable,  but that there exists such a thing as being too drunk.  I have to my surprise discovered that there are different levels of smashed-ness.  It hadn't occurred to me before.
     So now an analysis of the Finnish drinking ethic.  The consensus is that Finns drink to talk, to overcome their shyness.  They also say that they wish they could talk without booze.  In addition, it's clear, paradoxically, that they drink to forget what they've done that night, like many Americans.  So if they drink so they can talk, and also drink to forget, what exactly are they trying to forget?  Do they want to forget that they can actually talk, because it reminds them they're kind of ashamed that they need this drug to overcome their unnecessary inhibitions.  Or are they trying to forget that they can talk because it violates some funny deep value the Finnish place on shyness.  Maybe they place on careful speech?  The second seems more likely.  That would then mean that what I regard as perfectly acceptable conversational topics, they regard as immature.  That means they think I'm immature! 
    I'm confused now.  Ahhhhh.  I'm going to work on this at a later time.

Hey-do

Disclaimer: This is all a lie. 

     Tuesday did its' worst to drag out, but 3 o'clock, and the end of school, eventually ticked by.  I left the building to meet the waiting car and family , Peugeot, Mia and Danella (Magnus waited in Helsinki).  The clouds crowded the sky, but at least the rain didn't drop by for a visit.  Grey was the day, but we were going to Sweden.  
    Most Finns, or so they tell me, go to Sweden to buy cheap tax-free booze.  It's certainly true that booze motivates many, but the Finnish (or maybe everyone, really) tend to exaggerate their self-bestowed stereo-type.  They really do like Stockholm, too.  Don't listen to them if they say otherwise. 
    Our boat sailed as part of the Silja line of cruse ships.  12 decks.  To me, for my first cruse, this boat seemed huge. We arrived together only to quickly disperse into our rooms,  Magnus and I taking one, Danella and Mia filling the other with their stuff.  Right away, I went off to explore the boat.  2 stories of cabins rose around a central "Promenade" floor.  The floor boasted a perfume shop, a store labeled "Fashion," (whatever that means), a small arcade, a pub, cafe-like place, wine bar, kid's play area, a mini casino, a restaurant serving mostly meat, a seafood place, and a fancy French joint swaggeringly cognominated "Bon Vivant."   The Promenade also featured frequent "light-shows" accompanied by generic-type tunes.  Downstairs, a tax-free store and a "Bistro."  On the top deck were bar, night-club, spa/sauna, and "Chill," a "cool" place to "hang-out" (read: play video games).  The cleaning staff kept the boat nicely. 
    After I had finished leaving my footprints throughout the strained carpets of the ship, I happened to pass the family at the wine bar.  I gladly joined them, and we spent the next hour our so talking and passing the 4 distinctive glasses around.  Magnus ordered a glass of Beringer, a Shiraz, an Amarone, and something else.  My favorite was the 10 yr. old Beringer.  Oakey...and...well...mughhhh.  [As some readers seem to think, I was not intoxicated.] Yes, as I was saying,  we enjoyed ourselves very much.   We dined at the seafood restaurant, where I consumed 4 oysters and and prawn tails in a thai shrimp sauce.
    The next day we left ship around 10 am local time and proceeded by cab to tour the city.  Our cab driver was 10 or more years a veteran and offered to give us the tour.  He took us around through the north, west and east sides of the city.  We saw city hall, which is where the Nobel Peace Prize is presented, and the Royal palace, and all the beautiful architecture.  The City hall square rises up around a grassy square and raised stone platform.  Similar to a castle, but maybe with a few hundred more years of education.  I understood a suprising amount of our Cabbie's Swedish.  When the tour finished our cabbie dropped us off in front of NK, a very large Swedish department store.  Magnus and I wandered around the "home" section for a while, looking at knives (knives!) and such.  After a while we the girls came back and after and meeting which I didn't understand, we broke up.  Magnus and I headed towards the Gammal Stad (Old Town), and the girls continued their moderate and restricted shopping. 
    The Irish were in town that day for the Ireland-Sweden Football (Soccer, duh!) match, so to add to the interesting mix already there, the noisy Irish tumbled in showing off white and green pants, shirts, faces, hair-doos, and what ever else could be colored.  Stockholm's crowds weren't as eclectic as NYC's, but they certainly did their best.  The majority were affluent-looking Asians, Swedes, and generic white peoples mixed with a healthy dose of punks and goths.  Mostly punks.  I even spotted a punk doll, which is a first. 
    Magnus and I almost exclusively window-shopped, except for the occasional bookstore or gadget shop or, by his choice, clothing place where he picked up a new sports jacket.  I also purchased a royal post-card from the royal gift shop. We ate at pleasant café.  Finally satisfied that I'd seen enough of the old town, (how this could be, considering its size and 600 yr. old age, I don't know), I asked Magnus if there was anything really Swedish and Stockholm that I must see before leaving.  Well, it turns out that a ship, the Vasa, which the king  built in the 1600s, still stood.  Why say no?
    When I say "stood," there's a catch.  The king built the ship so large and so extravagantly that the 2nd gust of wind on its first day out keeled the ship so much that she took water in through the gun-ports and sank.  Right there. In the harbor, 1628. The crown was so embarrassed they really didn't do much beside salvaging its big brass cannons.  In the 1961 an archaeologist directed a project over months to salvage the huge ship after 300 years of storage in Davy Jones' Locker.  Then the government built a museum around it.  That was where we headed. 
    The ship was huge.  With 226 ft. long, a draft of 15.7 feet, 1,275 sq. ft. of sail, originally weighing around 1,200 tons,  64 guns, King Gustavus Adolphus made sure his ship could have pounded anything it might have the displeasure of encountering.  300 hundred or so years of being sunk didn't improve its' looks, however, and the ship has been preserved, not restored.  Much of the interior is gone, whole decks missing,  the outside is not painted, the rigging and some of the masts gone.  It now stands a wrecked and rotted fraction of its former naval terror. 
    Magnus and I taxied back to the boat , where a book and beer awaited me.  Magnus hunkered down with a laptop and beer.  One of the unfortunate results of the laptop is that it allows your work to follow you around.  No taking your carpentry tools with you to Sweden, or your desktop brick to Hawaii.
    That night, after dinner, we took our nightly dosage of wine in Magnus and I's cabin.  The girls went to the midnight show.  I would have gone, but, I was still out walking when they went and my cell didn't work so I couldn't contact them and oh well. 
    We left the boat 'round ten the next morning.  So ended the Finnish style vacation.  Short, and indulgent.