freakin' finland

I'm cold approximately 11.5 months out of every year so, if you've spent any time with me outside of that brief, glorious period when the weather is juuust right, you've probably heard me complain that "It's freakin' Baltic in here". I never really gave it much thought, its something my sister used to say that caught my fancy and seemed to sum up just how terribly, horribly, uncomfortably cold I was. Then I went to the Baltics.

Turns out, the Baltics aren't so Baltic after all. In fact, I owe them a very big apology because the Baltics were downright balmy, particularly compared to the Helsinki weather I'd left behind. For several days I roamed Tallin and Riga, face turned up to the sun, with jokes of changing my favourite 'holy crap it's cold phrase' from "It's Baltic in here" to "It's Finland in here" running through my mind. Then I returned to Helsinki.

What a difference a week can make. I've returned to a whole new city. I left a city still wrapped in scarves with just hints of green here and there and returned to sandles, beach chairs on patios, and riots of flowers in full bloom complementing trees that have suddenly turned green. It's gorgeous and it's warm. It seems my time of juuust right weather has finally arrived.

As an aside: I'm staying near the park that houses the Sibelius Monument and I have yet to visit it without my arrival coinciding with that of a tourbus damning me to enjoy the view among hoards of other, noiser, tourists. Today, of course, I arrived at the same time as a tourbus but it was the strangest thing; instead of making a beeline for the monument like most groups, everyone disembarked from the bus and headed straight for a mallard duck, cameras clicking madly. We stood there, Sibelius Monument ignored to the side, tourists staring at the duck, duck staring at me, me gaping at the whole scene and I mentally shrugged my shoulders while addressing the duck: "Hey, don't look at me - I don't get it either".

I remain yours from not-so-baltic-finland, r.