hiidenkonttibeta

It’s a custom in several Finnish cities for the students to let some statue wear the “ylioppilaslakki” at Vappu. In Helsinki the statue is Havis Amanda, or ‘Manta’. First the statue is washed, then it’s dressed with the cap, and all the students gathered there put their caps on, too. And bottles of champagne (or, more commonly, sparkling wine) pop open and the liquid rains over the crowd.

Here’s the whole ceremony:

The dressers wore some sort of ape costumes. And the last photo shows some of the crowd by the Tuomiokirkko, next to which everyone seemed to gather afterwards.

It was a very traditional Vappu weather i.e. cold. According to witnesses it was actually snowing in some parts of Finland. We checked out the Linnanmäki amusement park with my sweetie and ate the first (and most likely the last) hattara of the year.

They’d been cleaning the Ainola park when the snow melt away.

For some reason, a lot of dead bikes seem to end up in there. Bikes seem to be dumped often, one seems them in the bottom of rivers and ditches, hidden in bushes. Most seem to lack a lot of parts. How do they get in such condition? “I don’t really need this bike I stole, but it has so nice frontal forks that I’ll take that part with me.”

In a piece of park there was a bunch of spruces which had been tethered down:

Probably very dangerous spruces. Without those ropes, they would VOOM!

And in the real world, some of the others had such a ridiculous amount of spruce cones that they probably wouldn’t stand straight without support.

There was a smithery by the marketplace, called “Toripaja”. The smith was a bladesmith, producing hand-made knives. He also made swords and pendants from time to time; I have a bronze Ukonvasara (aka “Thor’s hammer”) pendant he made.

But now he’s gone, the ad advertising a moving sale said he’ll move to Turku.

No more sound of hammer striking hot metal in the neighborhood. It’s a pity; it’s somehow pleasing to know that there’s still real craftsmen around, not just mass-produced junk.

A collection of random but somewhat noticeable signs and ads I’ve encountered during the last week.

This must be one of the most unique institutes in Finland:

Huoneistokeskus had completely covered their several big windows with ads for houses / apartments. Probably those they’ve sold?

And this must be the most strange ad for an event ever:

Kilju + mora? Sounds like a party to enthusiastically avoid.

A certain company in Oulu (working in the field of entertainment business) achieved a good result last Sunday, beating their competitors the second year in a row. Because of this, the city was filled with celebrating people on Sunday evening:

The company also arranged a special celebration on the market place on Tuesday. According to reports, >30000 people attended. The following morning some kind of white and yellow pieces of plastic junk was scattered around the city center:

Later this week some cleaning company guys worked with a device which looked like a leaf blower running in reverse and vacuumed most obvious piles of the plastic crap off.