"En svensk och amerikansk sommar i Finland"

A few weeks ago on a very early Friday morning, Carl Johan was in transit to his job, crossing a very barren Medborgarplatsen, when he made eye contact with a Finnish man with a microphone and camera crew in tow. Although he used his very best maneuvering skills, the Finns were far better, stepping in and asking him if he’d like to go to Finland for the weekend to be on a television show called “En svensk sommar i Finland.”

Last Friday, Cal insisted that I meet the YLE crew as well and after we did that (around 10:16), they called us later and said they’d come to our flat and film us packing and we’d be on our way (at 17:30). When they arrived, I was in the middle of having a crisis with a very large beetle and so they filmed that, too.

We drove to and onto the Viking Line cruise ship that travels to Turku, hopping to the top decks immediately for an interview.

This first interview taught me that although I am shy in person, I am extremely, uncomfortably shy when there’s a microphone present and to make it more interesting, I lose the ability to speak coherently. Rather, my vocabulary becomes three words: “cool,” “nice,” and “great” with extra long pauses in-between. Also, the hardest question to ever answer is “Who are you?”

After I made a fool of myself and felt really silly, Cal and I had dinner whilst the YLE crew, then only consisting of Tomas, Åsa, and Jukka, went to bed and the next morning, upon arriving in Turku, we promptly began driving northbound in a frenzied fashion.

Conversing in the car during the four hours of driving was one of the best things of the entire weekend. It was deeply inspiring to hear Tomas talk about film-making and his children, the two things that he seemed to be most passionate and proud of. I found it very fascinating that Finland’s surrounding sea level drops 6 millimeters every year and how very complicated Finnish is and, well, all sorts of things were extremely intriguing!

Hours later, we arrived at a historical site that seemed to be in the middle of a forest ― a touching monument to the people who fought in the battle of Oravais in the Finnish War, some delicious 18th century style food for lunch at their restaurant, and the firing of cannons. Oh, and one of the old men dressed in a fancy uniform let Cal handle a gun. And then fire it. This should never be allowed because Cal is Swedish and Swedes haven’t any idea how to work firearms.

Following that, we drove to Jacobstad where the tiny town was celebrating their holiday, Jacobs dagar. I had only slightly heard of the town before (“they produce yachts and it’s in Finland” was my thought) and wasn’t very knowledgeable about it. Cal and I had to quickly try our hands at juggling, uni-cycling, and other such circus tricks before moving on to a volleyball game already in progress and looking a bit at the festival goings on. What a cute little place!

After wandering Jacobstad, we drove out to a brilliant little restaurant and conference site beside the sea called Restaurang Hästöskatan — Cal and I have promised ourselves that we’re going to fix their website for them; it’s a tragedy that such a fantastic place is using Comic sans.

During the entire trip so far, the Finns spoke about how wonderful and apart of their life that the Finnish sauna is. Here at Hästöskatan, they shoved us in a sauna (and they stood outside which was odd to us since they loved saunas so much!), we swam in the sea — I wouldn’t have been surprised to see an iceberg float by us, it was that bloody cold, and then went back to the sauna (because this is what you’re supposed to do!) and then to the jacuzzi so there could be some filming of some sort.

I think they might have given us the sauna addiction.

Soon after, we had dinner at the restaurant which was quite the delectable meal and included some very spicy strawberries — perhaps balsamic pepper strawberries but better? Who would have thought you could do that to a strawberry?

… but the day was not over yet!

Enter the Jacobstad American Car Club. Tomas said that we must try out the “aimless driving” that classic car owners seem to do and so, from the restaurant we loaded ourselves into a vintage Chevy and headed back to town, whilst listening to rockabilly and discussing the mysteries of the car collecting kind. (I had a laugh in my head that the Finns were very serious in trying to find an explanation to why people would have classic cars as a hobby.)

It isn’t very strange to me that people overseas collect American cars (they’re really nice looking cars, to be fair, and quite resilient to age), so when asked if it was flattering coming from an American viewpoint, I couldn’t really say yes. If perhaps I had made the cars, of course I’d be flattered that they had spread globally just like writing a book and having it translated into 26 languages, but they are only cars that happened to be made in a country that I have lived in which I don’t necessarily call my own.

Finally, we checked into a quaint inn and I passed out.

Sunday was more relaxed. We started off with a quick breakfast and then drove into the forest to learn how to do some fly fishing. I have grown up around lakes and oceans and seas and all kinds of fishing and so I very much enjoyed this!

Although the water level was down by quite a lot and I mostly caught grass and occasionally tree branches, it was a super nice experience that I would like to try again! Fly fishing is pretty difficult because the fly rods are tall and flimsy and very hard for a girl of 157cm to reach things and also because the fly is very light and the wind isn’t very friendly sometimes.

Once we decided that we wouldn’t be catching any large fish (several tiny fish were caught and a pike tried to eat one of the tiny ones that I was reeling in - very rude of him, as a matter of fact), we went back to the tiny wooden hut where a large Norwegian salmon was being held up over a fire by a stick. And it was really tasty.

Subsequently, everything was loaded back into the YLE van and we drove off to a café called Strand-Mölle where I believe we were supposed to hear a certain dialect of Swedish-Finnish but something went wrong and my eavesdropping wasn’t good enough to understand anything more!

We had a last dodgy interview and headed back to the van in which we separated from the crew and was driven back to Turku by Fredrik, the projects blogger. Frankly, we had a great time in the car making him pronounce Finnish words, dancing to radio, and discusing how Cal and I should talk on the radio program God Morgon Stockholm: “We went to Finland—” “FINLAND!” “It was quite brilliant—” “BRILLIANT.” Finally, we skipped off into the sunset but skipping is hard when you are carrying heavy things and hopped on-board the ship. Farewell to the cold Finnish summer!

I genuinely enjoyed learning more about Finland. Beforehand, I only knew that it was quite cold and there had been a war against the Russians in which the Finns just happened to be very hardcore in completely defeating them. I loved getting to hear and see the language, and learn a little more about the nature, the people, and the past-times.

In the end, though, Carl Johan and I are both pretty sad that we didn’t do a better job of ‘being curious’ and asking questions in front of the cameras, but rather asked a lot of questions in-between and we felt like it was very difficult to interject when we did want to ask something. I, especially, because I was translating in my head and if I was behind, I wasn’t going to ask a question because perhaps it already been answered! What a mess I was!

We also hope we didn’t make their jobs harder because we realised how difficult their job really is, pulling in strangers and having to get them to react in different ways in just one weekend and then only having a few days of editing to make it look proper. I’m sure it’s extremely stressful.

Everyone was so fun and cool, I’ll have to stop by Medborgarplatsen with lunch or coffee for them on another Friday, and I’ve definitely been converted to a Finland fan. I can’t wait to go back!

More photographs: flickr photostream
“En svensk sommar i Finland” official blog