Lighting the Christmas Tree

Sunday turned out to be an incredibly bright sunny day. The blue skies were welcome after many days of November gloom. Walking home from church we noticed that with the clear sky had come much lower temperatures. Of course, I was wearing a skirt but I had on tights. I was actually cold on my back and arms. By the time we reached Senate Square which is only a few blocks from our apartment, we had decided that we would not be back to see the lights lit on the huge tree at 3 pm.



The tree is covered with small colored lights which are not very noticable in the day time. Hakaniemi Square has a huge tree as well.

Photo: Katja PantzarHelsinki's Harrods: Stockmann is at the foot of Aleksanterinkatu, the city’s official Christmas street.
Helsinki is a city that truly celebrates Christmas. The lead up to the big day starts in late November, when Santa Claus opens the Finnish capital’s official “Christmas Street” on Aleksanterinkatu (one of Helsinki’s main thoroughfares), famous for its Christmas lighting display. Crowds of children of all ages line the street’s sidewalks to catch a glimpse of jolly Saint Nick, who is a celebrity in his own right here – which is not surprising, for as all Finns know, the real Santa Claus comes from Lapland in northern Finland.

Muumi was one of the celebrities who appeared while we were there. He was accompanied by a "little" girl in a red dress. She did all of the talking. Listen here to Muumi Techno.

The first book about Muumi was published in 1945. He remains Finland's best known cartoon character. His creator was Tove Jansson.

The Big Day is Over and Everyone has Gone

Part 1 - The Big Day

The last guest has left and most of the kitchen is cleaned up. Despite all of my worry, the day went okay. Lots of people commented that the turkey was great. Not the I had much to do with that. I just stuffed it and put it in the oven. And my cranberry sauce made with longenberries was a hit. Don't know why. Maybe because it was a surprise and most people hadn't eaten the berries before or if they had the berries were very bitter.
Elizabeth who is a senior Fulbright grantee (she has something to do with the evolution of butterflies) came over and cooked so it was great not to be alone in the kitchen and feeling so responsible for the outcome. So many people pitched in to clean up or to help get things ready. Great food was brought by everyone and one of the guys mashed the potatoes while two others carved the turkey. I don't think there was anyone who did not contribute. Dad cleaned house better than Cinderella ever could have and played host while I was in the kitchen.
We had a good day with about 18 guests, but we are so delighted to have everyone gone. :) However, they left behind a few things that they could have taken. For example; coffee that never got made. I found that after everyone left. Also a Bûche de Noël that was totally untouched. Sigh.
Tomorrow Santa Clause comes to town on Senate Sq. There is a parade and the Christmas Village opens. The huge tree in the square will be lighted by the mayor and Santa. We'll have to check it out.
Part 2 - Before the Dinner.
I was not a happy camper. If someone had bothered to tell me that getting a real turkey in Helsinki in November was no big deal, I would have been spared a lot of stress. I have stewed and worried about this for about six weeks - ever since we were told that we would be hosting the Fulbright grantees for a pot luck dinner. All I had to do was provide the meat/turkey. (I also did potatoes and longenberry sauce.) But of course, we have a miniature oven. We could not have done a bigger bird. This one was supposed to be 4.99 kg.
It cost about 29 Euros and the Fulbright center paid for it. Fortunately Elizabeth came over early to cook and everyone pitched in to make it a success (I think).
Anyway, about ten days ago, I went into the closest store to us and there were all of these frozen turkeys. Most of them about the size of the one that we bought. Who knew? Obviously the Fulbright people must have known. I told Dad we would be letting the next people coming in the fall know not to panic because about November 7th turkeys start showing up everywhere. People were telling me that I would have to go to this store or that store to do a special order etc. I just thought "Oh no. Why me?" And it turned out to be so easy to find a turkey just the right size.
Never having seen one in Paris, I worried for weeks about doing this. Obviously the Finns have either embraced Thanksgiving or have so many ex-pats living here or Americans married to Finn. Something. I am so grateful.
I did not try to do any pie. I'll have to make some at Christmas. Or buy a huge pumpkin pie from Costco if they still have them. :)
I think the turkey was delicious and I take no credit for that. The packaging said it was Wild Turkey from Finland. And it was so good.
The funniest part of our weekend for me was that while I was looking in the cupboards I found a lot of sheets. They were packed away in the sideboard/buffet. Someone must have thought that they were table clothes. But there were pillow cases with them. Here I had thought there were not enough sheets in the apartment.

Ps. My apron which I brought from home was also a big hit.

The Professor in Zurich

I had a very nice trip to Zurich the weekend of November 11-13. After arriving at the airport, I took the train into the central train station and then found tram #6 which dropped me close to my hotel, the Plattenhof. The hotel is right next to the University of Zurich and my conference was held down the block at a university facility.
I arrived early on Friday afternoon and then walked down to the main part of the city. There is a very nice “old” section of the city which features major churches and winding streets limited to pedestrian traffic. Several brass bands were playing in the old section, some with greater skill levels than others. The musicians were also dressed in rather strange costumes. I wondered if it had anything to do with 11-11-11 or if it were a regular Friday afternoon activity.
Central Zurich is a shopping mecca and there were no signs that shoppers were worried about an impending economic slowdown in Europe. Prices were sky high, even higher than in Helsinki. When I first started coming to Switzerland in the early 1970s, one U.S. dollar would buy four Swiss francs. Today, one dollar won’t even get you one Swiss franc.
On Saturday morning, I went into town again and purchased the one bargain that I had discovered the previous day. At the local Co-Op grocery store, I could buy 10 bars of Swiss chocolate with nuts for a grand price of 8.80 Swiss francs, about ten U.S. dollars.
As I returned back to the hotel, the sun was beginning to shine and temperatures were headed up to above 50 degrees, an exceptionally nice day in Zurich. I even saw a man in an old Mercedes convertible who was driving along with the top down. I also saw another rather novel sight—someone was in a telephone booth at a street corner and actually making a phone call. How times have changed.
I headed back to the hotel and changed into my suit, in time to meet the Swiss North American Studies Association’s handful of delegates. We then walked down to a restaurant where I had a tasty and filling plate of Zurich-style veal with roasted potatoes. It only cost 42 dollars, excluding the bottled water. I think that someone could get rich running a restaurant in Zurich. Even the Chinese restaurants had lunch menus starting at about 24 dollars.
I then walked over to the conference room and heard short presentations from the U.S. Public Affairs Officer, who had recently arrived from an assignment in Tel Aviv, and a professor from Fribourg University who had enjoyed a Fulbright at UC San Diego in 2002. She actually stayed at UCSD for several years and obtained a Ph.D. in comparative literature and cultural studies. Indeed, most of the people in attendance had a foreign language or literature specialty.
I then spoke for an hour on what had occurred in the United States since 9/11. I was honored to learn that I was the featured speaker for the meeting which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Fulbright program in Switzerland. The people seemed to be receptive to the topic and during the Q and A we discussed some of the challenges facing both the U.S. and Europe. Quite frankly, as difficult as things are back home, the current crisis among the 17 eurozone members (out of 27 nation-states which constitute the EU) is probably more vexing and intractable. I pointed out to the audience that the distance between Seattle and Miami is almost twice as great as the distance between Helsinki and Athens, but that there is a “world of difference” between what you would see traveling cross-country in the U.S. versus north-south from Finland to Greece. Greece is charming and Athens is a living museum, but the country is an economic basket case with a plethora of major problems. On the other hand, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands have globally competitive economies but are getting tired of picking up the tab for the dysfunctional political and economic systems in southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). I have serious doubts that the eurozone can survive in its present form and this could lead to some major structural problems for the European continent and headaches for us on the other side of the Atlantic. By the way, Switzerland is “neutral” and not a part of the EU. It seems to do well economically no matter what is happening in other parts of Europe, but even the Swiss will suffer setbacks if the eurozone economy flounders.
On Sunday, I took the tram directly out to the Zurich airport and returned home, having experienced a very nice weekend in Switzerland’s largest city.

Flag Days

On our way to church yesterday, we discovered that the city was decorated with flags. Flags were out everywhere. Places that usually have flags such as the parliament buildings had bigger flags. We learned that November 6th is an important day in the lives of the Swedish speaking population of Finland.

The Swedish calendar provides for special flag days. Flag days are in some cases official holidays or the birthdays and namedays for the Royal family and informal holidays like Gustav Adolfsdagen (Gustavus Adolphus Day, November 6).

Gustav Adolfsdagen (Swedish for Gustavus Adolphus Day) is a general flag day, celebrated in Sweden and Finland on November 6 in memory of king Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (Swedish: Gustav II Adolf), who was killed on this day in 1632 at the Battle of Lützen. Gustav Adolfsdagen coincides with the Finnish Swedish Heritage Day.
The date has been celebrated since the early 19th century. It is especially popular in Gothenburg, which was founded by Gustavus Adolphus, and in Uppsala, where the king donated a lot of money to the university.

Kustaa Aadolf is the king's name in Finnish.
Who knows. Maybe Gustav was the king of Finland in 1632. Poor Finland has been shuffled back and forth between Sweden and Russia for much of its existence.

Life on the Navagator of the Seas

When in Rome

The Blogger had advised us that we should stay in Rome close to the railroad station rather than outside of Rome close to the airport. Following her advice, the Professor found us a room in Rome. He did mention getting a B&B with a bathroom down the hall. Since I am over 60, I was a little horrified at the prospect of wandering down the hall in the middle of the night. My hero came through for me and found a very comfortable room for us not far from the station at the Hotel Camelia, at Via Goito 36, Stazione Termini, 00185 Rome. It had a great bathroom "en suite." It would have been even more terrific if the plug had actually worked on the tub allowing me to soak in a huge bathtub after a long day of walking.





Rome surprised me. I had a vision of what the city was like and it turned out to be very different from that idea and much, much lovelier. We arrived on a Sunday morning. We left our suitcases at the hotel and set off wandering with the hotel clerk's map. We were very close to the Place Republic and from there just a short distance to the Coliseum. We still do not know if we arrived on a special Sunday or if every Sunday is like it was that day in Rome. Major streets were blocked off to traffic. We wandered towards the Coliseum down broad streets with hundreds of other people. Parents with babies, lovers arm in arm, and older people like ourselves. Along the street were groups producing music and there were gelato wagons everywhere. The sun was shining and the breeze was cool. It was a perfect day.









I had not expected there to be so much continuing excavation in the area around the Coliseum. Frankly I had expected the area to be dirty and unpleasant surrounded by a bustling city. It was delightful to find it a part of a larger group of archeological projects with a feeling of openness.

On Monday morning the Professor woke me up and told me that we needed to have breakfast and go. We took the Metro from the Republica station to Ottaviano to see St Peter's cathedral. We arrived there at about 8 am and waited in line about 15 minutes before passing through the metal detector at security and going on into the cathedral. The square was breath-taking. The cathedral interior was awe inspiring.












When we came out of the massive museum into the sunshine again, I was startled by the length of the line waiting to go through security. Already a half hour later the line was 3 or 4 times longer than when we had arrived at 8 o'clock. The Professor had been wise about getting our day started early. Unfortunately we had only a short time to take the metro to get back to the hotel to check out and go out to the airport.

Would I go to Florence and Rome again? Yes. But only if I can go in the company of the Professor.

Ancient Ruins of Ephesus, Turkey

For our trip to Ephesus,* the Professor hired a private guide for. Melissa ( Melis Basaloglu - her Turkish name means Sweet)was a charming young woman and full of information. We did not choose to go see the home/church where Mary and John supposedly lived their last years after leaving Nazareth following the death of Jesus. Melissa did take us to see one statue though. Probably she could not understand our disinterest in seeing the ruins of the Church built in honor of Mary. Because we chose to miss that part of the usual tour, we had the city of Ephesus* pretty much to ourselves for awhile. It was lovely. Of course, my mind is like a sieve and I remember so little that she told us. The names just came and went. The library was built in honor of a man named Celsus. Apparently there was a discrete tunnel under the road to the brothel across the street if you did not want to read. Please also note the community toilets for the upper class men. And I do mean community. Ugh. I like MY privacy.







I think we enjoyed this morning more than most of our other days. We paid extra to go see the enclosed ruins of the houses climbing up the hillside. They were "completed" and enclosed in 1999. Melissa told us that she was so frightened when she first went there as a child. The metal stairs connect plexiglas platforms so that you can see through the flooring to the ruins below. I didn't think to take a picture of the see-through floors.

It meant a lot to us to see the amphitheatre where Paul spoke to the Ephesians.
By 300 AD Ephesus was a city of about 125,000 people. At that time it was actually a port city on the Aegean. Since then the river has dried up and silt at first turned the port into a swamp and now it is a valley filled with grass and trees.

We docked at a port called Kusadasi and drove for about 20 minute to Ephesus. Kusadasi, Turkey is in the area of Anatolya with the largest city being Izrim.

Later in the afternoon we went shopping in the bazaar. Looking was much more fun than buying. But since my flip flops had died on our last day in San Diego, I replaced those with some leather ones. We'll see how they are. :) The theory is that they were handmade in the area.

The bazaar was large with shops lining several small streets close to the port. While we were shopping we heard a loud pop sound. A moment later a man ran past us with a policeman in pursuit. Following him was another man yelling angrily. It took no time for two more policemen to materialize and in no time the suspect had been captured. All of the people involved were dark haired and could have been Greek. We have no idea what was happening and no idea if the loud pop we heard was a gun being discharged. I am not at all disappointed that we were not in a position to know the answers to any of our questions.









We visited this area on Thursday, October 27th.

* Both of these links have great pictures and information about Ephesus. One has a virtual tour.