Here comes the summer

We spent Easter at Ulriikka's parents' house which included a walk around a frozen lake. On the way home we saw the huge lake Näsijärvi from the train and it looked pretty much frozen solid. On monday this week, I was wearing my winter coat as the temperature dropped to about -5 in the morning.

Next week is Vappu, the first of May. It's a big deal in Finland and the tradition is to sit in the park having a picnic while nursing a terrific hangover. We were looking at photos from last year when it was t-shirt weather and everything was green. We were contemplating a Vappu in the cold when something remarkable happened. The sun, which has been shining more or less constantly for the last month or so to no great effect, suddenly started feeling warm and now today it's a rather toasty 18 degrees and looks like a beautiful day - looking out of the balcony window just now, I can't see a cloud in the sky.



We've started getting prepared for Vappu and yesterday we made some Sima. Or rather, we are about halfway through making some sima. Right now it's sat on the kitchen table brewing, or whatever yeast does when it's in a pan full of sugar and water. We'll be bottling it later and the idea is that it will make a slightly fizzy weak lemon drink that we will be drinking on our picnic next Friday.

We'll have a house full next week as Lash, Stevilee, Danny and Vicky all come to visit us. They'll be arriving to Tampere at about 11pm on Thursday, which should be just as the city reaches the peak of its post-apocalyptical drinking session. It will be a baptism of fire for them - especially if they get the bus from the airport and arrive at the train station surrounded by the Ale-Pubs there. "Ale" is Finnish for discount, which means that where beer normally sells for about 5 Euros a pint in normal bars it's sold for about 3 Euros in the Ale-Pubs. This means that it attracts the... ahem... more interesting characters in Tampere.

But I don't want to paint a bad picture of Finland and Vappu is more like a festival than a party. There will be bands and fairs in the town centre. The new university students are dunked into the rapids that run through the centre of town - which might be cold since the water will be made up from defrosting ice. The Ice Hockey World Championships is on and Finland are actually quite good at it - they were finalists a couple of year ago. There is always a really good atmosphere in the city, which is maybe helped by the alcohol flowing through everybody's blood system. But I'm really looking forward to it and I will try and give an update as it happens.