In Finland we are used to eating ruisleipä (=rye bread), salmiakki (=salty liquorice) and lakritsi (=liquorice). We have our own famous chocolate factory called Fazer and Fazerin sininen, “Fazer’s blue one” is the most famous one. Basically it’s just normal milk chocolate but it is so good!! Nowadays Fazer has and is all the time developing more and more flavours though. In Finland we enjoy going to avanto and sauna, both such Finnish words and actually sauna is maybe the only Finnish word that doesn’t have an English version and that’s why it’s known worldwide. Except Sweden, for some reason they’ve had to translate it as “bastu”. But let’s forget Swedish and get back to Finland. Avanto is basically a hole in an frozen lake. I’m a Finnish person but I’ve never liked the cold really which might sound weird regarding of spending almost all of my life in Finland. Nowadays I do enjoy going to avanto, because I’ve got used to it and I love how it makes me feel so good in my body and mind, such a refreshing and mind calming experience. When you learn to balance your breathing in the water and when you step from the water you feel such a warmness in your body. What else I like to do in Finland in winter time is skiing and snowboarding, sometimes I also iceskate but I don’t do that so often.
Finland is also known for Santa Claus which comes from Finland and lives in Rovaniemi. In every Christmas all the children and also adults watch Joulupukin kuumalinja which is Santa Claus’s hotline, but it might sound wrong straight translated to English. Besides Santa Claus, Moomin is also a famous Finnish character, known from the Moomin books and tv-program which is made based on the books written by Tove Jansson, the author and mother of Moomins. I like especially Pikku Myy which is small but spunky and has a red dress. She also has a little crush on Nuuskamuikkunen, Snuffy, which my boyfriend very much likes and resembles. So I think we might make a good match in that way too!
Finland is called a land of thousands of lakes since we actually have around 57 000 lakes that are over 10 000 m2 and with the size of under 10 000 m2 there are altogether around 168 000 lakes and ponds. It’s a fun fact that Finnish lakes cover 10% of our country’s surface and altogether they would cover the whole surface of Belgium! In Finland it’s very popular to have a summer cottage at a lake or have a wedding festivities at some place next to a lake, so we do love our lakes! I think Finnish lakes and in the north some hills are the most beautiful landscapes of Finnish nature. And of course also the forest with birches and spruces. The more north you go the more spruce forests you’ll find. The spruces also becomes smaller and look a little different in the Lapland than in the southern Finland. We have migratory birds which leave Finland for the winter time and come back in the spring. We even have a poem for those different species of birds and in which month they will show up again. In this part I have to mention one more place of Finland which is my favourite singular place in Finland: Puolanka. It’s kind of in the middle of the Finland if you look from south to north and from west to east. My mother’s family is from there and I used to spend two week’s of every summer in my childhood there. I still love that place, I think part of my soul belongs to there. There are lots of spruce forests, beautiful hilly landscape and a wonderful waterfall called Hepoköngäs which was also the main picture of this blog post. And guess what: I have even swimmed on that waterfall and climbed on that a bit too! (I won’t recommend to try since it was quite slippery). I love trying and experiencing everything little crazy and extreme and challenge myself whenever I can. It’s also very easy to provoke me to do something extreme sometimes maybe even stupid, but at least I’m still alive! 😀
In Finland we or at least I love the summer! I feel like everyone wakes up alive again every spring when the sun comes back. In Finland the autumn and the winter are quite long and also dark and cold. Luckily we usually have snow in the winter time so it makes it all a little brighter. Unfortunately because of the climate change there has been years that we haven’t had snow at the Christmas. That’s awful since that’s the thing to have a snowy Christmas in Finland! We even have a song that how can Santa Claus come to visit us without snow and I’ve been thinking of the same since I grew up and had to experience some Christmasses in my home town in southern Finland without snow. I needed to spend some Christmas in Lapland since at least there’s yet snow during the whole winter. It’s very usual in my home town that we only have snow since January maybe to the end of February as it has been snowy from November to the February as I was a child. During this winter it has even been plus degrees in Tampere in January.
Tampere is my hometown which is located more of the southern part of Finland, approximately 2 hours away from the capital Helsinki. I love my hometown Tampere and my Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) where I study social services in Finland. Tampere is easy to love: it’s not too big nor too small and has everything needed. I think I will enjoy my time here in Kortrijk: since now that I’ve been here for three days I’ve fallen in love with the old buildings and that everything is quite close to each other so I can walk almost everywhere in the city. To compare Kortrijk is a little but smaller than Tampere, but I kind of like it as well: in Tampere we have over 260 000 citizens and in Kortrijk there are around 80 000 citizens. I’m so excited to begin my journey here in the old city with beautiful buildings and riverside and I can’t wait for all the adventures to come! <3
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