Ihanaa leijonat, ihanaa ...

For the last 24 hours, I have been living in the capital city of a country that has just won a world championship.  On Sunday night, Finland played Sweden in the final of the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships in Bratislava. Regular readers will know that I am not a sports fan, but it has been fascinating to observe.

Ice Hockey is to Finns what soccer is to the Brits, the most popular sport. And Sweden is the old adversary for the Finns, despite that 6% of its population are native Swedish speakers. As Finland was part of Sweden for several hundred years, before they were sold out to Russia, the Finns have a gentle enmity towards their old colonial power and near neighbour. It's not strong enough to prevent them taking more than a passing interest in what goes on in Sweden; the royal wedding there last year had much of the population here gripped.

But when it comes to sport, then a match against Sweden is viewed in much the same way as an England - Germany fixture in soccer would be back home. So on Sunday night, the prospect of competing with them for the World Championships was a delicious mix of anticipation and anxiety.

Ahead of the 9pm start time, most of the bars were filling up with fans in their blue and white shirts, getting into the appropriate spirit. And the game did not disappoint. The first goal went to Sweden in the first twenty minute period. The equaliser came during the second. But it was the final period of the match that saw the real drama. Finland quickly scored two more goals within the first four minutes and then did not give up. The final score was 6-1 to Finland, with the last coming within minutes of the final klaxon.

The city went wild. As the Helsingin Sanomat reported, "By 1 a.m. on Monday morning, both the Esplanades in downtown Helsinki were packed with jubilant hockey fans, such that the earlier rally of cars hooting their horns and with flags waving from the windows was no longer possible." Many of those cars drove home down my street and I can attest to their enthusiasm. Whoever told me that Finnish men don't show their emotions has never seen them after winning a world championship!

This evening, the team flew back from Bratislava on a Finnair flight (of course). A website that I regularly use to track the progress of my incoming visitors, flightradar24.com, was so inundated with hits from Finland that it reported that it was running a temporarily downgraded "high load" version; apparently the picture at one stage looked as though there was only one flight in the air, that of the returning Finnish lions.

Tonight, they made an appearance downtown to receive the adulation of their fans. Regular readers will know that I show the image from a webcam on my blog - this was the image at 21:00 this evening, showing the market square (Kauppatori) packed with people. If anything, it looks busier than at the recent Vappu celebrations.

Since I got home at 21:00, there has also been a steady stream of fans walking home down my street, many cheering "ihanaa leijonat, ihanaa"; roughly "wonderful lions" or "love lions". You can hear the official song featuring this lyric on YouTube. The noise has only dwindled away as I write this, more than two hours later. Helsingin Sanomat estimated that around 50,000 people would turn out this evening, which would not surprise me. That's around 5% of the population of the capital area.

The surprise of the game, though, was the award of the Tournament MVP trophy, decided before the final, to the Swedish goalie Viktor Fasth. He had only let in six goals in six matches, so earned the directorate's vote for the trophy. And then let in six goals all in the same match, the final. Ah well!

A blind date ...

Now, just in case my wife should get worried, this wasn't that kind of a date. I am in Vienna on business this week and last night, our local host took us for a meal with a difference.

We were told we were going to a restaurant for dinner in the dark. When we got to the venue, it was explained that this wasn't going to be a candlelit supper, but one completely in the dark, as a way of experiencing life without one of our most important senses. And as part of the experience, we knew only that there would be four courses and that we could choose meat, fish or vegetarian for our main course.

There were 16 of us in the party and we were ushered through a curtain to a holding area in two groups. I joined the second group and, once through the curtain, our waiter Mahendra instructed us to take the hand or shoulder of the person in front and then walked us 30 paces or so to our table, in pitch darkness. We had already been told to turn off our phones, so that the light from the screens would not be any help to us, so when he told us to stop, turn to our right and find our seats, we had to do so completely by feel.

We sat, having worked out that we were on the opposite side of a single, long table from the first group, who were already seated and whose voices helped us to orientate.

First, our waiters (Kristijan on the other side of the table) took our drinks orders. I opted for a beer. "Would you like a glass with that?" was answered in the negative, as I was sure that was a recipe for a damp lap at least.

After drinks were served came our appetiser. Our waiters handed us the plates and we placed them on the table in front of us. By this stage I had already felt on the table and found two forks to my left, two knives and a soup spoon on top of my napkin to the right and a dessert spoon and fork above. There was also a pen and a sheet of paper, more of which later. The starter, as I felt carefully, was a small salad, with two bowls of dip and a couple of pieces of bread. Using knife and fork in the dark was difficult, though the bread and dips were easier. I managed to finish the course with relatively clean fingers and felt proud of passing the first test. We all commented on how rich the flavours of the food seemed.

Next, the soup course. You can imagine that when our waiters told us to be careful and that the soup was hot, the idea of being handed the bowl was challenging. Fortunately, the soup bowl was also on another plate and so it arrived on the table without a spill. A pleasant minestrone, I did find that when blowing on a spoonful to cool it down, I could hear some falling back into the bowl as I blew too hard.

Between the soup and main course, we were given three objects to guess what they were. One was a model of a cobra, the second an elephant and the third, I am sure, a camel. Examining them, I found myself really noticing the texture and temperature, as well as just the shape.

Then the main course arrived. I felt a wooden skewer running through the meat and then felt saute potatoes. It was easy enough to eat the meat straight from skewer - after all, who was going to comment on my table manners? But there was a vegetable mix which was rather wet to the touch and so needed the fork. And my hands needed a wash in the finger bowl we had by now found on the table.

After clearing the plates, our waiters invited to follow their voices to join them at the bar, where they offered us a glass of grappa or Jaegermeister. I have never been known to turn down grappa and so inched my way towards them.

We were then told to find out seats again. By now, a little more confident, we worked as a team to do so. Dessert followed, apfelstrudel and vanilla ice cream (the bowl felt cold to the touch, so easy to work out what that was). One more wash of the fingers and we were asked how many for coffee. We couldn't raise our hands, so worked out that we need to call out "one", "two", "three" and so on. I was number six and we were served in the order that we called. A small plate, with a black coffee, pot of cream, packets of sugar and a glass of water. That was easy.

After another sensory exercise, which involved sniffing the contents of three screw-top containers (star anise, cloves and tea) we found our way to the exit and were shown what had been on our plates. All fine!

We also finally got to meet our waiters, both of whom were blind and so no more disadvantaged in the darkened room that they were in daylight. Mahendra, my waiter, had been in Vienna for 20 years - he came as a student, met a girl, fell in love ... well, you can guess the rest! We had a good chat; when I told him I worked for Nokia he told me how he used our products - he is a particular fan of Nokia Maps and uses the pedestrian navigation with voice guidance to help him find his way around the city.

We also got to compare notes, literally. We had been asked to write a message, do a drawing, write down the names of the objects, etc. The good news is that my handwriting is no worse when done in the dark than it is in full daylight. But that isn't saying too much.

For the group, it was a great way to experience the world of the 10% or so of the world's 40 million blind people who have no light perception at all. Or to put it another way, around the same number of people as the adult population of Finland. A good reason why those of us in the industry need to think about the accessibility of our products. It certainly opened my eyes.

Colonel in Chief ...

I have been ruminating on the culinary contributions of two Colonels over the last few days, both men of history but from opposite sides of the Atlantic.

The first will be known to most in the western world, Colonel Sanders. He was the entrepreneur who, at the age of 65 was faced with the failure of his restaurant due to new interstate taking business away. He went looking for franchisees and the business became Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC), which he sold in 1964 for USD 2 million. So, his culinary contribution is a secret blend of 11 herbs and spices and a business which now feeds millions of people every day. Oh, and though he started in the US military, his title was an honorary one, bestowed by the governor of Kentucky in 1950.

The second Colonel is a little more obscure, at least to those outside of Finland and Sweden. Johan August Sandels died almost 60 years before Harland Sanders was born, yet his legacy also lives on to this day.

A Swedish soldier and politician, Colonel Sandels led the Swedish troops to victory over the Russians in the Finnish war of 1808-9 (when Finland was still part of Sweden). His exploits were recorded by Finnish national poet JL Runerberg and, according to Wikipedia, "Runeberg's poem tells a story of Sandels having a feast while the enemy mounts a premature attack. Sandels continues his meal and is accused of cowardice, after which he raises and rides to the battle, drives back the enemy and is praised by his men." It reminds me a little of the story of Sir Francis Drake finishing his game of bowls before attacking the Spanish Armada. 140 years after his death, the Finnish brewery Olvi started brewing Sandels, which has become my favourite mass market Finnish beer. On the back of the cans are inspiring tales of his courage.

So, which one should be the Colonel in Chief? Well, for me, it would have to be the real war hero who inspired a beer. But it would be interesting to enjoy both of the Colonels' products together. But I've not yet seen a KFC yet in Helsinki!

Fame and fortune ...

Well, perhaps fortunate is the more accurate word, but makes for a less appealing headline.  Last Saturday I was fortunate to be part of the group of performers in a staged reading of a new play, as I reported in December, playing Man in Jakob Holder's "The Open Circuit", directed by the playwright himself and presented by the Finn-Brit players.

It was my first serious role, playing the rather unaware partner of a woman facing traumatic changes in her life, forced to decide whose side he was on. My wife was among the audience, a rather larger crowd than we were expecting, and was kind enought to say that she could tell the difference between the real me and my on-stage persona. Though clearly I was not convincing enough in telling my much younger leading lady that I loved her to cause any marital disharmony.

The play was also my first rehearsed reading. It's a little more than just reading the play as a group, as we were in costume, with props and using a staged area to perform before an audience. But we were still relying on scripts, as we had only four rehearsals before the big night. So, we had time to explore our characters, something we don't do in pantomime, to really get into the roles but without the stress of learning all the lines.

All in all, I think we did well. It was a fortunate distraction for me too, as this is normally the busiest time of our working year, leading up to a global trade show and associated announcements in Barcelona. I could not have committed to the rehearsals for the spring production of "Waiting for Godot", though I am looking forward to seeing my friends here in it. But this was a great way to whet my appetitite and a great idea to bring to our TOADS group back home. I'm hoping to be part of the next staged reading, Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party", in March.

Oh, and the fame? Tonight I was hosting the monthly pub quiz organized by IESAF at Molly Malone's. One of the participants walked over and said "Hi, I saw you in the play on Saturday. You were really good." Modest though I am, I have to admit I enjoyed the moment. Famous in Helsinki? Well, it's a start.

What's in a name?

Image from Helsinki Times

This weekend's issue of the Helsinki Times, the weekly English language newspaper here, reports on the most common surnames in use in Finland.

The most popular overall is Korhonen, though more men have the surname Virtanen. One of the rarest, according to the paper, is Sirjala, with only 11 people currently using it.

The report also shows a trend consistent with other countries, with around a quarter of women keeping their name after marriage in 2009, three times the number in 1986. Almost 7% took a hyphenated name, though their children are not permitted, under Finnish law, to continue the hyphenation. In 3 out of 200 marriages, the husband gave up his surname and took his wife's. I had a former colleague in the UK who insisted her future spouse did the same, for though his surname rhymed with "strike" when spoken, written down it was Prick, not a name which looks good with either Mr. or Mrs. before it, I suppose.

It is possible to change your surname in Finland, though apparently not as easily as in the UK, where a "deed of change of name" or "deed poll" can be used and choices are unrestricted. In Finland, it seems, there are more restrictions. You can reclaim a name used in your own family within the last five generations, or you can choose a new one, but in that case it may not already be in use in Finland. A colleague chose her surname, Merestö, and I believe, is the only one using it. Finally, and particularly for the 10-20 foreigners a month who apply to change a name that is difficult to spell or pronounce, the Association of Finnish Culture & Identity has a list of"free" names whih can be applied for.

So, having already adopted the Finnish first name of Markku, I wonder what my options would be if I chose a Finn-ished last name?

Christmas was a cracker ...

Today was my first day back at work, after 12 days back home in the UK and a great series of social events.

We started on December 23 with my birthday party, one with a zero at the end, though there were plenty of friends and family on hand to help me through the trauma. I was also lucky to receive over a dozen bottles of assorted booze as presents, so I shall continue to enjoy the memories through 2011.

Christmas Day was spent at home with my parents, sister, wife and both daughters, future son-in-law and elder daughter's aunt. Despite the domestic flood before the holidays, we managed to have a lovely day, with the empty Veuve Clicquot bottles to prove it.

A couple of days later, Stephanie and I visited a former colleague and long standing friend, who cooked sous-vide, which I think could become my next experimental cooking style when I return to the UK.

We then travelled to my wife's sister's home for wonderful food and an evening of ever-so-slightly competitive games, the classic charades and also Lyric.

Finally, New Year's Eve was spent with friends from our village. I made piparkakut ("pepper crackers" or gingerbread, pictured) and served it with Glögi: we also made canapes of smoked reindeer. 


All in all, it was a great holiday and it was really tough to come back to Helsinki, though it was good to see my colleagues at work today. But an early night is definitely now required!

Treading the boards again...

Today I attended my first auditions for a serious acting role. Of course, I have auditioned before for our village pantomimes and spring shows, but those are rather more light hearted. It was a more daunting process than I had expected; after performing for a panel of three experts, I now know a little more about how the X-Factor contestants must feel. I was also pondering on the differences between auditions and job interviews, since my contract at work expires in June next year. The latter combine describing your vision for a role with examples from past experience and achievements. Auditions are totally in the moment, with no ability to say "I got wonderful notices for my last role".

The happy news is that I now have a part in a rehearsed play reading, which I hope will be a good introduction to straight drama without the intense stress of memorising an entire script. We will have rehearsals in January and then perform once at the end of that month and then once more in February. The play is "Open Circuit", the latest work from Jakob Holder, an award-winning young playwright who will also be directing us, giving a wonderful chance to get a real insight into the characters from the person who created them. I will be playing MAN, so I shan't need any of my pantomime dame costume or props, either.

More details to follow, once we get confirmation on the dates. But for now, I have my bedtime reading set for the next few weeks!