Arto's Blog

Kamei and Maki, two Japanese friends of mine, came for a 12 day vacation in Europe. We spent a few days in Finland, did a short trip over the bay to Tallinn and then traveled to France together. First time in years I was on a classic holiday trip, including odd things such as hotel reservations and pre-booked transport tickets.

For Kamei and Maki the trip was to experience Europe. For me, the main themes were enjoying food and meeting old friends from the time I spent an exchange year in Lyon. With Kamei I had tried the best food I ever had in Japan, and relaxed meals in atmospheric small bistros are one the best things France has to offer. During the slow dinners I also had the best discussions and felt being on the same frequency with my friends. Perhaps a couple of glasses of wine helped, too.

Sightseeing was naturally part of the trip. I did enjoy it, but it wasn't very important, pretty much as I expected. The best parts were views from hills in the countryside of Eastern France, where one of my friends now lives and hosted us for a couple of days. He and his wife are also building a very interesting ecological house. In Paris, I visited first time the Centre Pompidou and was impressed by some of the modern art pieces there. Still more than that, I liked wandering in the streets of Montmartre and riding around on a city bike (Paris has a city bike network nowadays!) which I did while my friends went shopping.

After Kamei and Maki left, I CouchSurfed for one night in the eastern parts of the 18th district of Paris. I immediately liked the area: a lively mix of different ethnic groups, old buildings which were not too classy but still in good condition, and friendly small bars. As my hosts explained, it remained one of the neighbourhoods where people continue to go out in local hangouts and get to know each other. We even got invited to a flat party after simply chatting for a while with other customers in the table beside us.

The last day and night I spent at another friend's place in Noisy-le-Grand, an Eastern suburb of Paris. That had a quite different feel from the more central areas. Buildings were architecturally interesting and looked quite nice from the distance, but they were too big and rather poorly maintained. There were no small shops in the bottom floors which would contribute to the atmosphere: smell of fresh croissants, fruit salesmen, couples discussing over a cup of coffee, perhaps artists showing their works. No, a hike or drive to the nearby mall was the only option. Curiously, even very few kids were playing outside. Overall, a completely different way of planning the area, which felt kind of distant and somehow alien to the French way of life. Naturally, that didn't prevent me from having wonderful time with my friend and his kind and hospitable family — after all, to meet them was what I traveled there for.

A message was out, inviting people to play with snow and to build an ice sauna. The people behind the invitation were Philippe, a Canadian mathematician who had settled down in Finnish Lapland some years ago, and his Finnish girlfriend Kirsi. Wow, that was something not to miss. :) Read on, or go directly to the photo gallery on Phil's site.

The meeting was held at Phil's home in Torvinen, a village about 80 km north of the Arctic Circle and about 30 km south of Sodankylä. Three French and a Belgian guy had already arrived a couple of days earlier and helped to cut some seven tons of ice from a nearby lake, using a chainsaw and Phil's Land Cruiser. The ice was chopped to about 50 kg (35x35x40cm) blocks which could be lifted without a winch or other heavy tools.

The ice blocks were then used to build a round shaped small room, leaving a small entrance on one side. Between the blocks we put snow sprinkled with water which worked as glue in the -15°C temperature. Two seats inside and the roof were made out of wood. A sauna stove was installed in the middle.

We were 16 people in total so not everybody could be building the sauna at the same time. In the kitchen Kirsi together with guests baked and cooked Lappish bread, Carelian pies, salmon soup, apple pie with vanilla sauce and other tasty food with enough butter and fat to maintain human energy and good mood.

On Saturday sun shined beautifully and most people went out skiing, snowshoeing or ice fishing. I climbed on top of the Luosto fell with two friends. The small trees carrying a thick snow cover were simply beautiful. This year we've had very little snow in Helsinki, but even during a normal winter there's rarely anything similar in Southern Finland. Only in Lapland and other arctic areas, where the wind blows hard across vast open spaces, does the snow get packed in fascinating shapes like that. See page 5 and page 6 of the photo gallery.

How about the sauna, did it work? Well, not perfectly but at least the temperature was above zero. :) The stove was a bit too small and the wood we used for heating were waste pieces with low energy content. When the stones on the stove were finally hot, it was 2:30 am and most people were already sleeping. I had decided to test my sleeping bag outside and didn't want to get wet just before going to sleep under the stars. So only two people got naked, went in the sauna, poured a lot of water on the stones to get as much steam as possible, and had fun.

The following day some improvements were made and more people tried the special sauna experience. I was already on the way back towards the south with a few fellow travelers by then, but we had a nice sauna evening in Riihimäki. Now I also know that if I put my two sleeping bags inside each other and wear some woollen underwear, a fleece and a face mask I can sleep outside in about -30°C — there's no need to buy a separate winter sleeping bag.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Internet censorship in Finland. On Tuesday March 4th there was a public demonstration against the censorship law. I was there in front of the parliament house with about 500 other demonstrators.

Lack of interest from the parliament members was rather disappointing. Out of the three big political parties only one (Kokoomus) was represented, with SDP and Keskusta not having sent any representative to hear what we had to say. A few representatives from smaller parties were there, but most of them still didn't seem to understand what the whole thing is about.

Luckily, the journalist who wrote the article about the demonstration in Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest daily newspaper, did get the point. The article is not available online free of charge, but if you can read Finnish and have access to the March 5, 2008 issue of Helsingin Sanomat, check out page A-5. That gives some hope.

The first weekend of February I traveled to Otepää in Estonia to participate in VastlaCamp, a Hospitality Club and CouchSurfing meeting. With a few friends I ended up joining the Georgian team in Winter Olympics which were not even part of the camp. :) See the photo gallery.

Vastlapäev is the Estonian name for Shrove Tuesday, or laskiainen in Finnish. Traditions of the festival include building sledges and sliding downhill in them. Some might aim for a long slide, but at least among students nowadays it's more about style: the funnier the better. That was also the plan at VastlaCamp, but because of small amount of snow and lack of equipment the sledge building part of the camp on Saturday was cancelled.

I went for a walk with a few other people and noticed a group of people marching in a formation and shouting something. They were carrying signs reading "Armeenia", "Georgia", "Kreeka" and "Nigeeria". It looked fun so we immediately joined the procession and the Georgian team got surprise reinforcements. Olympic rings were formed and flag hoisted, and the first event was a skiing competition.

Later it turned out that the "olympics" were part of a teambuilding event for the Delfi company which maintains a popular news website in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. First they actually thought we were some Latvian employees who were expected to arrive late. The reality was soon revealed but it didn't matter, they kindly welcomed us. So we got a chance to try sledging after all, both downhill and on flatland.

After a couple of hours we headed back to the camp which was at the Otepää high school. Pea soup and special buns were waiting for us and before evening sauna we still had time to go snowtubing. There were also a lot of social games both Friday and Saturday evening. One of the most interesting ones went like this: Chairs were put in a circle and participants sat on them sideways, knees as close to the chair in front as possible. Next everybody leaned back on the lap of the person behind. Then the chairs were taken away one by one... against all odds it actually worked and didn't result in everybody collapsing down! Other games included air guitar competition, button spinning, and writing a folk song in 5 minutes.

Saturday night ended in a costume party and dancing. My favourite costume was a cardboard television set which had enough space for another person to join in order to create a tv program. I dressed up as a Japanese in festival outfit which matched my habit of going around and taking photos of all the others.

One of the classrooms of the school was reserved for the party and next three for sleeping, the closest to the party room being labeled for "party animals" and the furthest for "sleepers". The party animals room wasn't quiet but not too wild either. A few people who didn't want to dance all night gathered there in a story telling circle. Vivid descriptions of bus travel with chickens in Bolivia and hitchhiking experiences all over Europe were just some of the topics.

The total number of participants was about 40 which felt just right for that kind of meeting. About half were from from Estonia and other half from neighbouring countries. Estonians have been very active in Hospitality Club and the HC Eesti spirit was certainly there! It was my first HC/CS meeting in Estonia but probably not the last.

Freedom is important for me. Freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, right to receive information. The two last ones have been recently violated in Finland. The Finnish police has been maintaining a blocklist of web sites allegedly containing child pornography. Now they have added a Finnish site criticizing the censorship on the same blocklist.

Instead of trying to describe the matter further, I'll point to an excellent summary of what it's all about.

My Internet operator doesn't use the blocklist, at least not yet. However, it's a sad moment when censorship is seen as the official way of silencing critical voices. I certainly hope this farce is going to end soon and the law which originally enabled the creation of the blocklist will be overturned.