Yesterday, December 6th, a day in honour of a Saint (Nicolas), the wind spew snowflakes left and right; a good day for a part. Finnish Independence day, to be exact.
Now, I'm not entirely new to the phenomenon, as I celebrated Finland day before. Last year, to be exact, in Beijing. Where it undoubtedly was very cold too, perhaps no snow, a quadruple amount of pollution and a pile of beer that refused to quit. I remember flags, Finns, a speech, a heap of blue wigs, and a game of darts.
No parades, no happy, flag waving people dancing on the streets. Instead, there's a 3 hour item on television, about the president. First he waves to a parade in front of his house, where he stands on the balcony with his first lady, doing his best not to shiver, because it's cold out and they didn't wear a jacket. Later, they took to the inside where they received all kind of
rich bozo's important people; veterans, athletes, Teemu, you name it. Now pay attention as this is apparently the main event of the evening.
The first thing I noticed, was the overall mood, from the ladies, mostly. I'd think, that meeting the president and his wife, shaking their hands, have a few words of small talk, would put a certain amount of pizzazz to one's daily routine. Shake things up a bit. Excitement! Would that not bring some sort of expression on someone's face? Not quite. Many people seemed untouched (and downright bored)by it all, and iffy to get the hell out of there.
My latest fashion show was in Tampere, featuring an array of Finnish design (photos later), so despite not knowing who was who, I could certainly tell my Jukka Rintala;s from my Saaga Designs (there was one, and it was gorgeous. WHY can't I find it online
anywhere??) before the commentators did. And luckily, among a stream of obligatory polyester numbers, and a lot of people took it upon themselves to show up in traditional costume (which is truly fantastic, and they should have their picture on the front of all the tabloids). Apart from those, there were dresses made out of recycled coffee cups, dresses so fluffy and pink they made my teeth turn to liquid, the lady from the students union wore something graphic with really cool colors.
Honestly, I'd love to participate in a more productive way (which I later sort of did, with beerpong), but considering I don't know who all of those people are (Didn't know any of them except from Teemu). I'm guessing my favorites are a lot different from what newspaper editors were thinking (
Here's a link to Iltasanomat, with an obligatory stream of safely dressed swedes not smiling). Either way, many things stood out. I'll put up a picture parade later, as all I could find was either the boring ones, or last year's standouts. And only the finest here!
