20+ hours of sun and still so cold?

I didn't think it was bothering me, all this sun, after all, I'm the one my mother has always referred to as a "champion sleeper". Sleep is what I do and not much interferes with it, not fire alarms, not my cat pouncing all over me, and certainly not something as insignificant as daylight; so I've responded to all concerned inquiries about my sleeping and comments about how difficult most tourists find it to adjust to 20+ hours of sun with a smug "not me". Yeah. I've discovered a small addendum to that.

I don't have a problem falling asleep to what may look like a sunny afternoon when it is, in fact, 11pm at night but I am having a difficult time staying asleep. You know that feeling when you open your eyes to a much brighter day than normal and you have that full body start accompanied by a feeling of dread knowing you've slept in? I do that pretty much all night, every night from 3am onwards. I wake with a start, look to the window, see how bright it is, and groan because I've totally slept in and I'm going to be totally late and, oh God, what a pain before I realize that a) I'm on holiday, I have nothing to be late for and b) I'm in Finland in the summertime, it always looks like it's 1:00 in the afternoon out.

Last weekend was a visit to Turku where, in addition to marveling over a place where baking bread is a part of normal weekend preparations and trying to follow inside family jokes (in Finnish, no less ;) around the dinner table, we collected photo-evidence of the ridiculous amount of sunlight Finland hogs throughout the summer months.


8:30pm - The riverbank that runs through Turku is lined with restaurant boats, grassy shores and heaps of people engaging in what must be Finland's unofficial national pasttime: picnicking



9:00pm - At the pier engaging in my official personal pasttime: chilling out


10:30pm - On top of the hill, looking out over Turku


And, yes, I am sporting my spring coat and a scarf wrapped several times around my neck; although Finland hogs the majority of sunlight throughout the summer months, it seems that Canada is hogging all of the warmth.