Due North
When the merchandise options are a snood, fleece and woolly hat, something has to have gone wrong with the tour planning, hasn’t it? Not exactly. We are off to Finland and Estonia and the weather’s not exactly balmy at this time of the year. Best be prepared. Why no one suggested Quokka umbrellas, I do not know.
As per usual, we spent a large part of the trip `rehydrating’, so may have missed some of Helsinki and Tallin’s highlights. There was a lack of the usual tour literature that outlines these, so I’ll fill you in now. Helsinki has the cleanest tap water of any big city. Finns are the unquestioned champions of sauna, with over 3 million of them. If you stay with a Finnish family, it wouldn’t be surprising to find more than one sauna in the home. Why? Why not? Finnish is extremely difficult to learn, with lots of compounded words. Here’s one of them lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, although unless you are a non-commissioned student officer mechanic for airplane auxiliary jet engines, you probably won’t need to use it. Other than the Northern lights, the entertainment highlight is the Wife Carrying Championships. Milk is considered the national drink, but other popular tipples are sima, a low alcohol mead, Salmiakki Koskenkorva, a liquorish flavoured liquor and aloviina, which is a brandy cut with a grain spirit. Kippis.
