What Finnish summer is all about

I feel like Finland is known as a winter wonderland, and it may be hard to believe, but we have a very nice summer as well! Finns have some traditions that they like to stick to, but summer is actually quite free and people just like to enjoy themselves...This year we have our summer holiday from the beginning of June until the middle of August.

Something very typical are summer cottages. In Finland there are about half a million of them. For most people it's a place to hide away from the hustle in the city. Summer cottages are most likely located on a lake or the sea and somewhere near a forest. There people can go fishing or swimming, row a boat or have barbecues with friends and family.

A special thing about our finnish summer is that it doesn't really get dark during the nights. Around the 20th June we have Juhannus, which is our midsummer celebration. Then, the sun doesn't set at all and it's usually the warmest time of the year. Many like to spend juhannus at their cottages and go to the sauna at night and swim, for example. On a sunny day it can be as hot as +30 degrees, but usually the temperature is lower than that.

A big part of summer, specially for young people are rock festivals. There are dozens of festivals all around Finland.There are different festivals for different kinds of music, the genres range from the metal music festival Tuska(Finnish word for agony) to jazz festival called Pori Jazz.  The one in Oulu is called Qstock. Festivals usually last for two or three days and are held in open-air places like parks. Students also like to have a summer job during the summer.

Many Finns travel abroad in summer, especially our neighbours Estonia and Sweden are popular tourist locations. You can go for example on a cruise from Helsinki to Tallinn, stay in Tallinn for few hours and come back to Helsinki on the same day. 

Finland has beautiful archipelago on the south coast and the biggest island group is the Åland islands. Åland belongs to Finland but it's people are Swedish-speaking. Åland is demilitarised and autonomous so it has its own laws compared to Finland, although they have to be in line with the Finnish ones. Becoming a resident of the Åland islands is very hard but luckily we can always visit this lovely island.

And yes, we do have some mosquitoes but we have our methods to live with them :)

All in all, Finnish people tend to relax during summertime and wait anxiously for the warm summer days during the cold months of winter. Even if one isn't going anywhere for a holiday the towns are full of terrace cafés and parks for people to enjoy and spend their time in. (Photo credits: Google)

Best regards,
Viola and Tarja

At first we didn't know what to write about so we decided to make some pulla and relax. While baking it hit us -lets write about that baked good which everyone loves!

So what actually is pulla? The story begins from 19th century when the wheat flours started to become general in Finland. First pulla was baked for feasts. It was highly appreciated because many people couldn't afford to eat it that often. Midsummer Eve and Christmas were normally the only occasions when pulla was offered.  Then it started to be served at home for guests with coffee on religious holidays.

Nowadays pulla is still very popular. People bake it a lot, partly because it's very simple and still absolutely delicious.

There are also different forms of pulla, for example braided pulla, cinnamon and pullas with different kinds of stuffings (e.g. raisins or butter). On February, before the fastings before the Easter, people eat "laskiaispulla". It's splitted into two parts and between them there's cream and jam or almond paste. But which one? There's a huge quarrel about that in Finland -others refuse to use jam whereas the others think that it's the one and only to put between the pulla.

So here's the recipe of pulla. Try it yourselves but be aware -you may get addicted to it!

- 5 dl milk
- 50 g yeast OR about 25 g dry yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 dl sugar
- 1 tbsp finely chopped cardamom
- 12-15 dl wheat flours
- 200 g butter or margarine

Dissolve yeast, salt, sugar and cardamom to hand temperature milk. Add about 8 dl flours and dry yeast if you use it. Mix the dough strongly.
Then add butter or margarine and  the rest of the flours and mix with your hands until the dough comes unstuck and it´s not attached to edges of the bowl. Let it "grow bigger" in  warm place covered with cloth until it´s twice of its original size.

Take the dough from the bowl and divide it into about 20-25 parts and start to roll them until they are round. Place them to baking trays and let them "grow bigger" again about 20 minutes if you want. After that lubricate them with egg. (You can also put e.g. some Sanding sugar on top of them as we did.)

Bake them in 200 ºC (or in 225 depending on your oven) 12-15 minutes or until they look good.

                      

            

                                     Single pulla -ready to be eaten! :)

The brave bakers:
Sonja and Eeva

Oldies Dances

007, lisence to dance!!

 Hi Everyone!!

We are a bit late, but hey, better late than never. As some of you guys who visited Finland may remember, we had our big ”Oldies dances” on the 18th of February! We were so exited, and it really was just as fun as we thought it would be, so now we are going to tell you some thing about it :)

The Oldies Dance Tradition

The Oldies Dance (Wanhojen tanssit in finnish) is an event, where the second-year-students celebrate the fact that the third year students have finished their schoolwork and  the second-year-students are the oldest in school now. The Oldies Dance can be considered as the finnish version of the prom dance, but as this more traditional and festive event.

The Oldies Dances has been celebrated all way from 1930s, but those times it was not as big event as nowadays. From 1950s oldies dances were celebrated all over Finland and the nature of the party was slighty different from today's Oldie's Dance. The Oldie's Dance was far more unformal from the beginning to 80s, where most student would just dress up in their grandparents old clothes and fool around the whole day. The Actual dances are a pretty new tradition, for example in Oulu only 25 years old.
The dances that are danced, are usually some pair dances, like the walz of the state of Wien and salon dances, like Pompadour.  

Dresscode
You may have some questions about the clothes that we wear on the day… Well, it can be a bit difficult: At the oldies dances, males mostly use a suit, a tuxido, a morning dress or a full coat. normally they are rented, but if one wants, they can also buy it and maybe use it again. (especially in our school, where there are more girls than boys, and most of the guys dance 2 or 3 times)

As can be guessed, the girls dresscode is more varying than boys. For girls the Oldies Day is the Princess 

Day (of course not forgetting your wedding day). We get to spend years and years dreaming of our dress. At the actual dances you will be able to see real ball gowns, elegant gala dresses and historical dresses on the ladys. As a rule, the dresses are really, really fancy. Some of the students also wear the finnish national costume, but that is very rare, since they aren’t so stylish nowadays.

Dance at the sports house :)

The Oldies Day
The Oldies day is held every year in the middle of February on a Friday. Before the big day, the second-year-students have practised the dances for approximately two or three months, for us who are in Lyseo. The preparations for the dances start in December for most of us as so: we have 75minute dancing lessons three times a week, for about 8 weeks, and on the last week before the dances we may train for 4 hours in a row some days. This year we learned 8 dances, which combined with all the fancy speaking in the actual preformance, lasted about an hour: once at the sportshouse and the other time with all the schools of Oulu.

For girls, the Oldies Day usually starts very early with the hairdresser and make-up. Some of the girls have to (get to :D) wake up even at three o'clock, and head for a hairdresser or beauty salon, where their hair is made and make up applied. After the beaty salons there is mostly photografing at the school (starting after 7): of course we want as many photos as possible to remind us of our unforgettable day :)

Dance at Ouluhalli :)

After these things, the actual dances can begin. In Lyseo, our school, we danced first for parents, teachers and other guests at a sportshall nearby. After the first dance we headed back to school for lunch. After lunch we were entertained by the freshmen of Lyseo. The tradition is that the freshmen will organize a Oldies Gala, where the old are given some.. hmm.. entertaining missions = we just fool around and have fun :)

           

After both of the dances we had an elegant reastaurant dinner, where we (of course) still had our fabulous dresses on. After the dinner the programm was much more easy-going. We went home and took off our formal clothes, and changed into a more relaxed party-mode ;) In the end of the whole day we had a disco where we partied in a more modern way, and as a sort of thank you for our hard work :) The memories are fantastic, and totally worth it!!

Greetings from the snowy, but sunny Finland!

Anna and Jossu :)

Just some words about holiday and exam...

Sun is shining outside, the sky is cloudless and temperature is perfect (-5°C) for finnish winter activities... 

And what am I doing? Well, I'm not outside enjoying the lovely weather. The whole week I have been studying for my matriculation exam, indoors. How sad is that?

”Hiihtoloma”, translated it would be something like ”skiing holiday”, suppose to be a fun holiday, when students can spend some time outside and refresh their minds. But nope, like many other second and third year students, I have spend my time studying at home in Ylikiiminki, which is faaaaaar away from civilisation. 

 As you can see, a really dead place. :--D 

Thought the holiday was all about studying and reading and all booring stuff, the good side of it was that I had a change to relax and be a moment away from school and city. I think that the part of the Finnish mentality is that sometimes we need some silence and peace to energize ourselves - and just be!

I think that was about that! I wish luck to everyone for their matriculation exams and also to other exams! :--)

- Anniina

The Kemi Snow Castle

This week it was my turn to update the Finnish Comenius blog so I thought I'd tell you about something that is very unique for Finland and the Nordic countries in general: the snow. The other countries do get snow as well but up here in the North we get it so much that we can make and build huge amounts of things of it. Few weeks ago I took a group of exchange students to visit a big snow castle in a city of Kemi in Northern Finland and next I will be telling you something about the castle.

The city of Kemi lies on the coast by the Baltic Sea so all the snow and ice used for this castle has been taken from the sea, in fact the snow has been made of the actual water of the sea. The water is taken from the sea and then with the help of snowguns turned into snow. The snowguns blow the snow into casts of a particular shape. After the snow has frozen to the shape of cast the casts are taken off and the castle is done. The whole process of making the snow and building the castle takes approximately six weeks.

In the castle they have a restaurant, a hotel, a chapel and all kinds of exhibitions that have different themes every year. This year's theme was comics and cartoon characters and in the exhibition and around the castle they had various theme-related ice sculptures, for example: Sponge Bob Squarepants, The Simpsons, Spiderman and the main characters of the Ice Age -movie.

Every year the ice hotel accommodates more than 1000 people from nearly 40 different countries. The temperature in the rooms is about -5 degrees and the quests are provided with a sleeping bag suitable for arctic conditions. There are 20 rooms and even a bridal suite in the hotel.

The snow chapel is very popular among the local people but also the tourists. The chapel  can be used for example for weddings and christenings. Tourists are especially keen to get married in the chapel and have an unforgettable wedding.

Hope this was something new and exotic and not too boring to read :)

xoxo Eira