Finland

A visit home in July 2012.

Finnish summer

After a two week break from Berlin and from the internet, I'm excited to be home. Everyone who's lived abroad knows that a visit home is no vacation, it's work. You have to meet all the friends and family members you can, no one can be left out, because that would be unfair. You feel guilty and stressed a lot. Everyone also wants to offer coffee or a beer - either way, a lot of drinking is involved.

I shouldn't complain. Finland was so much fun and everyone showed us so much love! We got tons of birthday presents and we did a lot of fun stuff like go to the amusement park in Helsinki and chill out at A's family's summer house; swimming, boating, barbecuing, sauna-ing. I read two and a half books (two Swedish mystery novels and half of Harry Potter und der Gefangene von Askaban). We also made sure we ate an insane amount of new potatoes with butter, fresh smoked salmon and locally grown sweet peas. Nothing quite compares to summer at home!

 

 

 

 

 

Back in Berlin

We flew home on December 23rd and had to have all our presents with us.

Anticipating Christmas dinner.

There was a record amount of snow in Southern Finland: there's a plastic terrace table somewhere under there...

It made for beautiful scenery, if nothing else.

The Berlin-style brunch trend has now spread to Helsinki where all the hipsters find it the most important meal of the week. This was our New Year's brunch at Siltanen, a reasonable €12 including drinks and free refills of coffee, tea, juice and bread.

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Fine, we've been back for three days already... we landed in Berlin on Wednesday after spending almost two weeks in Finland. We are now very well fed, not-so-well rested, and slightly nostalgic about home. People who think expats get long, nice holidays when they visit their home countries are dead wrong; we run around trying to meet as many friends and family members as we can while we try to not offend anyone by not having enough time to see them. This leads to too many cups of coffee per day, too many missed phone calls and too many polite pieces of cake forced down. The only time we had to ourselves was in the evenings, and so we staid up until 4 or 5am most nights... But it's still all nice: these are the people we miss and wish we could see more, anyway.

It's nice to be back in Berlin, though, and back to reasonable prices for drinks :)

Back in snowy Berlin

Snowy Finland

Snowy Berlin

Back in Berlin.

It feels strange to come home to a place where you don't have a job or any commitments. At the airport i felt like we will arrive in Ireland, like we used to. When we landed, I felt like we ended up back in Finland. But we are indeed in Berlin. We will look for a job, we will practice our German, we will meet our friends and it will feel like home again.

Finland was quite cold and very snowy. The cold didn't feel as bad as I had expected, it was very manageable. The amount of snow fall often made driving a bit scary and we got sick of having to brush off the car and scrape the ice off the windows everytime we needed to go somewhere. It was great to get to hang out with our families so much and to see our friends. We had many nice meals, many drinks and even went so see a few bands play. Christmas was Christmas; too much food and great company – New Year's was the usual; going to a stiff Finnish house party and watching the fireworks at midnight.

What made me happy about coming back to Berlin? Oddly enough, the snow. Cheap sushi. Organic grocery shops. A bag of really tasty organic clementines cost €2,49. We met our breakfast club buddies and had a breakfast buffet for €2,95. To see happy dogs without leashes. That The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is finally in the cinema!

It is the season to be jolly

Now Christmas time has officially begun for me. We fought our hangovers today (the result of a very successful sushi dinner party) and went to the Finnish Christmas market in Kreuzberg. It was small and sweet, but expensive. We loosened our belts enough to buy Karelian pies (five for four euro) and a bag of salmiakki candy (€1.50). And because of the state we were in, we could not resist sharing a freshly smoked salmon on rye, either, which set us back a whopping five euro. It was an expensive trip to Finland :)

Finnish Christmas Market

Here's something to do when the sun shines on Saturday: visit the Finnish Christmas market in Kreuzberg! I will definitively go there on Saturday or Sunday to see if I can find some Finnish chocolate, salmiakki and Christmas goodies. And maybe something with a Moomin troll on it :) Speaking of which, did anyone else know they are doing a Moomin film? A former colleague sent me this link today. The weather forecast is amazing for Friday and Saturday, like +14°C and sun, so let's make the most of it!

Picture from Moomins and Midsummer Madness