At this time of year when the summer is already here, I see people smiling and being more friendly and open minded. I think the nature and weather makes us the kind of people we are. A long dark winter makes us quite tired and it feels bad to leave the apartment when it snows and the freezing wind is blowing. It´s like new beginning when trees get hint of green and birds come back from south. Temperatures start to be pleasant and you can even throw your extra thick winter coat away and start enjoying the warmth of the finnish summer that lasts like couple of days.
During these couple of days we celebrate by being social and talking with our neighbours. We celebrate also midnight sun, juhannus as we say it in finnish. It usually rains and sometimes even snows but we are used to that and it doesn´t matter. We celebrate it and that´s it. We Finns are quite stubborn but hey that´s us. We probably couldn´t manage living here if our ancestors would have given up when the harvest was a disaster and they had to eat dry and hard bark.
I think i might be typical Finn. I don´t know if i like it or not because some of these qualities we Finns seem to have are quite tragicomic. Like our personal space and that we feel uncomfortable when there´s too much people around us. And the awkward moment´s when you can´t decide do you say “Hi!” to someone you know but she/he isn´t really that close to you and more awkward it is when neither of you can decide and you end up to hide from this person because it would be the most awkward moment when you say “Hi!” but that person doesn´t greet you back and everybody else can see and hear. So hard to be Finn with “big” problems.
you can read more Finnish Nighmares from here: http://finnishnightmares.blogspot.fi/ (Sometimes I can relate them too much…)
And then we have of cource mämmi and other (very tasty) Finnish foods like salty liquors and rye bread. Sauna is also big part of our culture and it´s only place where Finns don´t care so much about personal space and you can talk about everything with your friends in the sauna. These are things that foreigners usually know about our culture and they ask if you really go to sauna with no clothes on and I say everytime that it´s true. Their look is usually a bit embarrassed because they thought that finns are so shy. Not in the sauna.
The image that comes to my mind when i think about Finnish summer.
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