Just so we are clear, Santa is from Finland, look it up or watch Rare Exports if you don't believe me.
Anyway, as you may or may not know, I didn't
go back to Canada for Christmas this year. I have friends here in
Finland that would have welcomed me for Christmas and Christmas back
in my hometown can get a bit hectic sometimes going between two parents
and my brother being in B.C., so I planned on staying here. Over the
summer, my mum decided that she would come to Finland to spend
Christmas with me. I for one was not holding my breath until she had
a plane ticket in hand and my dad said that I was not allowed to
spend Christmas alone so he would fly me home if she didn't make it
out here. In September I got a message saying she had booked her
flight for December 16 to December 30!
December 16, which is also the day I
was extracted from the womb, comes and Im on a train from Tampere to
Helsinki-Vantaa to pick up my mumma. She has never been to Finland
before, even though she has been to basically every European country
before I was born. I was mega excited to show her around the city I
used to live in, especially since she is the one person that was
subject to my full on Finnophile ways. I felt sorta bad since there
is no snow in Helsinki and it
rained almost the entire time she was here, but I think she had fun.
She kept telling me how much she liked Helsinki and how she
understood why I liked living in Finland so much. My birthday evening
was spent at a wonderful restaurant on Pohjois Esplanadi called Aino,
which specialises in Finnish food. I had moose neck and sausage (yum)
and, since it was her first meal in Finland, Mumma had reindeer and
wanted to start a long term relationship with it. The
night of the 17th
was a belated birthday present for me because I got my socks blown
off when I went to see one of my favourite bands, Satyricon, perform
at Circus. I could ramble on about how awesome the concert was, but I
won't and you can just go look at the photos I took.
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| My birthday dress. A present from Mumma that she got from a Canadian shop called Blame Betty! |
It didn't feel very Christmasy,
probably because of the lack of snow, but we had a little Christmas
tree complete with Canadian themed ornaments, and
even though my dad wasn't there, he sent me some gifts that were also
Canadian themed. We didn't have an oven at the little apartment we were renting so
we couldn't make a proper Christmas dinner or bake cookies, but we
had as close as we could manage for Christmas Dinner, which actually
ended up being eaten on December 26th.
In
Canada we celebrate Christmas on the 25th,
but I know most of Europe opens their presents on December 24th.
Our typical Christmas Eve is to have a ridiculous amount of finger
foods and Mumma makes a huge pot of mussels in white wine. We
couldn't find any fresh mussels, we didn't look that hard), so we
just had loads of smoked salmon and the usual amount of finger foods,
and of course a lot of wine. Since my parents have been split up
since I was fifteen, I've always opened presents from my mum on the
24th
so that part wasn't strange to me. What was strange is that hardly
anything was open on the 24th,
nothing on
the 25th,
and nothing on
the 26th.
I don't know about other countries, but in Canada, the 24th
is one of the biggest shopping days because of last minute shoppers.
There are a number of business open on Christmas Day, especially in
the bigger cities in Canada, mainly because there is a much larger
number of people that don't celebrate Christmas in Canada compared to
Finland. Boxing Day in Canada is a massive
shopping
day; a wonderful day to go to the Eaton Centre if you have a death
wish or are feeling dangerous (the Eaton Centre is a large mall right
in the centre of downtown Toronto).
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| The Leafs aren't my favourite but there is a player on their team with the same last name as me so my dad had to get it for me. I know what I'll be wearing when I go skating this winter! |
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| Christmas Eve dress! You can't see our decorations very well but that IS an RCMP Beaver as our tree topper |
Without
going into too much detail about the rest of the trip, since I can't
really remember everything we did the whole two weeks, Helsinki with
my mum was awesome. I was a bit on edge for a few days for some
reason; I think I'm still dealing with school stress, lord knows I
keep thinking of all the stuff I have coming at me in January. Mumma
wanted to go to Tampere, Turku, Tallinn, and even St. Petersburg and
was kinda bummed we didn't manage to get to those places. I like to
stay away from the touristy places anywhere I go, so I tried to take
her to the places I liked to go to when I lived in Helsinki in
2011/2012. I'm not sure which her favourite was, but she really liked
the Christmas Market, Kaivopuisto, and Suomenlinna; I know, I know
two of those three places are very touristy but you can't go to
Helsinki without seeing Suomenlinna and we don't have Christmas
Markets in Canada on the same scale as Europe does. The rain sorta
slowed us down most days, but we walked a ton, something Mumma isn't
used to since it's pretty hard to get around without a car in my
hometown, but I think I showed her a lot of Helsinki and I think she
enjoyed herself a lot. I definitely enjoyed myself and I'm overjoyed
that both my parents have now seen the country I love so much and
understand a bit more why I love it so much. I did miss being back in
my hometown for Christmas, which apparently has a ridiculous amount
of snow right now and thankfully didn't get blasted by the major ice
story (one of my best friends that lives east of Toronto was without
power for over a week), and I did miss seeing some friends and family
(and kitty cat!) during the holidays, but I'm quite happy I decided
to stay in Finland for Christmas; what is Skype for if not connecting
with people at times like this?! Mumma is going to Scotland in May
and said she wants to come visit me in Tampere and that there had
better be nicer weather then!
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