Common Sense and Whiskey

"there is going to be at least 10 minutes for us to break the fast."

Outside Fez, Morocco at dawn.

Once on a trip through Morocco, we spent a couple of days with a driver named Mohammad. He conveyed to me the most elaborate thing I’ve ever been made to understand with my schoolboy French. He told us how just this past year he’d left Morocco for the first time - to the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. He was awed by it all and spoke of the whole experience with awe and obvious warmth.

I asked if he worked, himself, during the holy month of Ramadan, when the devout must not eat, drink water or smoke from sunrise to sunset and he said he did. This is what he told us in French:

When this moon, rising full tonight, wanes and first reappears in two weeks, Ramadan begins. It begins a little earlier each year, to the rhythm of the moon rather than the calendar, and he’ll work this year and it won’t be so hard not to drink water all day because it’s winter.

But around fifteen years before, Ramadan was in the summer and buddy, if I may paraphrase his French, working during Ramadan in the summertime, driving all day with no water, no smokes, was one pain in the ass. Summer gets hot in Morocco.

Now comes a story about a different set of Ramadan challenges in the Arctic. Read about observing the fast in Rovaniemi, Finland.

Midsummer Train

Rainbow by the lake at midsummer, and Rovaniemi in midwinter.

Having family and a little cabin on the lake in Finland, I check in most mornings on the latest Finnish radio news in English, from Finnish broadcaster YLE.

Here's something fun: There's a story about a special train that will travel almost all the way across the country this summer, Helsinki to Rovaniemi, starting on the eve of the midsummer holiday. Way up north there, it won't get dark the whole time. And they'll broadcast it live.

"The first programme of its kind, the 13-hour live show has sparked interest in Germany, Norway and France, which will also air the marathon train ride through Finland's nightless night."

And it'll be carried live on the YLE site.

The Hurtigruten ships that ply coastal Norway did a five day live TV thing last midsummer, and Google Maps offers a video that will take you 9220 kilometers from Moscow to Vladivostok, but that, too, takes several days. A live streaming internet trip across Finland will feature all the same birch trees as the Trans-Siberian, and it'll be considerably shorter.

There's still a way to go to get to midsummer, though. The forecast for Rovaniemi right now?

Cash Money

Today is the last day for Greeks to trade in those old souvenir Drachmas they've kept in the bottom drawer for Euros. Yesterday was the last day for Finns to trade in their old Markkas.

Meanwhile, today the Turkish Central Bank published this new symbol to represent the Turkish Lira. In 1995 Turkey devalued the old Lira by lopping off the last six zeros. Somewhere I have a photo of our being Lira millionaires, from a 1993 trip to Istanbul.

You can still become a millionaire in Vietnam. At today's rate, all you need to do is trade in US$50 for Vietnamese Dong.

Winter in Finland - 6

 

My wife Mirja and I traveled to Finland last month. Here's the last in a series.

And so we’ve come to Saariselkä, Finnish Lapland, and we see that it’s possible to live inside the Arctic Circle. It takes a little more work, bundling up and all, and you need a plan before you go outside. There’s no idle standing around out there.

But there are even a few advantages. Dragging your groceries behind you over the ice on a little plastic sled called a pulkka is easier than carrying them. There’s a word for the way you walk: köpöttää. It means to walk with tiny steps, like you do to keep your balance on the icy sidewalk.

Plus, other humans live here, too, and they seem to get along just fine. Infrastructure’s good, all the transport is in big, heavy, late model SUVs. There isn’t the choice of goods you might like, but we have that problem in our little town of 600 in Appalachia, too.

Once I would have thought “selling time shares in Lapland” was a punch line, but now we have a friend who does just that. And much to my surprise, a completely full 757 flew us back down to Helsinki (and a full Airbus flew us up) and they were doing three planes from Saariselkä to Helsinki the day we flew back.

In fact, the local folk of Finnish Lapland are entirely swallowed up by the tourist onslaught they’ve created. There are 13,500 hotel, lodge, igloo and rental apartment beds around Saariselkä. And the goal is 4.5 times the number of visitors by 2020.

Kuukkeli was the only grocery in walking distance. It’s part of a chain, and a bit of a dry goods and souvenir store, too. You could buy the usual Finnish dark breads and sausages and ready to eat heat-and-serve paistos, casseroles made of beets or mushrooms or potatoes and ham. And tins of moose, bear, elk and reindeer.

A word of advice: Just capitulate on the reindeer thing. Do not try to resist.

Winter in Finland - 5

 My wife Mirja and I traveled to Finland last month. We continue our series.

 Hyvä asiakkaamme,
Ethän käytä huoneiston takkaa.
Se on tällä hetkellä epäkunnossa
Ja savuttaa sisään.

Dear customer,
Please don’t use the fireplace. It is for the moment out of order and the smoke comes into the apartment.

Ärade kund,
Vängligeninte sätta eld på spisen.
Der är ur function och skall röka in I huset.

Now wait a minute! We might need the fireplace. It’s LAPLAND and it’s -16C outside.

But the nice lady explained that they only manage these little apartments, they don’t own them, and fixing the fireplace involves a capital expenditure. That will require a meeting to authorize funds, and we’ll be gone by then.

Well, everything turned out just fine. The apartment was mightily insulated with a double door entryway and a great heater and sauna.

And I had fun with the translations. I took “Ärade kund” as a plea in Swedish to be kind and understanding, and in the Finnish, Ethän käytä huoneiston takkaa, I imagined they’d decided to confide to the natives that stupid Ethan had messed up the damned fireplace again.

Winter in Finland - 4

 My wife Mirja and I traveled to Finland last month. We continue our series.

4

A rainy, snowy mix Monday morning. We set out at 6:00 a.m. for Helsinki for an 11:15 flight to Lapland. This weather would shut down Atlanta for a week. Here, we just got in the car and drove.

Through town and onto the highway. Slushy and slippery. We sped along in the dark and I swore we’d slide off the road sooner or later, at a hundred kilometers per hour, with one lane good, the other ice.

Finnish law requires winter tires for winter. Winter tires wear out the roads, though, so Finnish law requires that they be changed back in summer. And the winter tires did the trick, and we didn’t slide off the road.

•••••

At the floating market in Can Tho, Vietnam, sellers hoist a bamboo pole from their boats and attach one of each of their fruits, to advertise that today, they’re selling pomilons or star fruit or coconuts. In the same way, totems rise at exits along the highway in Finland, lighting the fog that swirls around them in the perma-dusk.

Brilliant neon signs climb the poles: Pizza! Market! Gas! ABC! 24H! Credit Cards!

(When I thought ABC was the Finnish Alcohol Beverage Control, I was hugely amused that their logo is a hand flashing a thumbs-up. Alas, ABC is an ordinary store, and the government toddy dispensary is called Alko.)

Teboil! Neste! Those are both gas stations, often credit card only, with no attendant in sight. Teboil is part of the Russian Lukoil group.

Then we were back in the dark, and the big trucks (including those extended tandem jobs) threw slush, and I was pretty sure we’d perish on the way to the airport. But gradually it got warmer, motoring south, and all we needed were a couple of degrees to melt the ice on the road.

See photos in EarthPhotos.com's Finland and Lapland galleries.

And see previous posts in this series: 1, 2, 3

 

Winter in Finland - 3

 My wife Mirja and I have a cabin on her family's land in the Northern Savonia region of Eastern Finland. We visited for Christmas. We continue our series.

3

Tonight it’s grown colder. Not by much but you can tell. We’ve spent the afternoon in Finnish tradition, lighting candles at ancestors’ graves. We visited four cemeteries, in Leppävirta, Saahkarlahti, Luttila and near here, at Koönönpelta. We’ve seen the patriarchs, men who fought in the war of independence, fathers and grandfathers and great uncles.

Shops were locked tight, so the cemeteries were the most populated places in Finland. So many candles at so many graves that it made you think Finns born around here stay around here.

Such a majority of graves were lit that 1. There must be an entire industry supplying the candles (They look like they all come from the same factory. They’re sheltered by a particular casing to keep snow from putting them out), and 2. Peer pressure must turn people out so that Uncle Hari’s isn’t the only unlit grave.

Winter in Finland - 2

My wife Mirja and I have a cabin on her family's land in the Northern Savonia region of Eastern Finland. We visited for Christmas. Here's a little about our trip, part 2.

2

Oh my, are we full. We hit our little town of Varkaus at 5:30 in the afternoon, not so fresh from the U.S. and firmly in darkness. Up at the farmhouse there were plates and plates of Christmas food, rossoli, ham and sinappi, Finnish mustard.

Pirrika (a kind of potato bread staple) and egg butter. Karelian stew (the pan gravy is just outstanding). Sieni salatti, which is a salty mushroom salad picked in the late fall, pickled in a brine with onion, finely chopped and mixed with a touch of cream. Pickles homegrown and homemade by Risto. Potato and bacon casserole.

Risto has taken a cooking class and much of the food is his, wielded with flourishes of the chef, like whole peppercorns. Tomorrow holds the promise of pancakes (whole milk, not 2%) and homegrown berries. And it’s not even Christmas.

•••••

The ride up from the airport at Helsinki can be done in 3-1/2 hours in summer in the sunshine, but it took over four this time. Mirja’s brother Markku did us the honors, whisking us away from the arrivals hall.

Down at the very south of Finland there was snow in the (dark) fields, but not much. The top of the grass poked through. Roads were dry and clear and it was effectively dark at 3:45, so it was hard to feel like it was mid-afternoon.

Markku was patient with Radio Suomi (Sumoi is Finnish for Finland), but a song with the lyrics, literally, “dee dee dum” in call and response, finally did it. On another channel YLE, the Finnish government broadcaster, has an English newscast now and then. When they say it, it sounds like “Wily English news.”

Road signs indicated things like “beware of moose, next 14 kilometers.” The particular type of halogen they use on roadsides combined with the low clouds to cast orange patches of light just off the highway, just far enough away so you couldn’t see why they were there. The orange color somehow felt warming.

We stopped halfway so Markku could have coffee and a pastry. I didn’t envy him. It was dark and he’d already driven all the way down earlier in the day. And I’m afraid I wasn’t the champion companion, either. Mirja did that duty. They sat up front and caught up in Finnish, and I lay down in the back (as much as you can in a Kia) and slept.

Finns have a well-developed roadhouse culture. Maybe it’s because the highways are monotonous tunnels of darkness. At intervals, oases of services perch by the exit, all together in one complex. There will be fast food and sit-down cafeteria-style grills, newsstands, groceries and ABC stores, toilets and gasoline.

This rest stop had a grocery called Ako, so we went to get odds and ends, things like the licorice flavored candy called salmiakki that Mirja loves. It was disorienting here under halogen in the dark in the snow in the middle of nowhere, seeing everybody so busy - people of all ages, the parking lot and the store and the restaurant all full, families with children sharing a meal, young men smoking and hurrying by, people coming and going. It seemed like the middle of the night, but it was the middle of the afternoon.

See photos in EarthPhotos.com's Finland and Lapland galleries.

And see previous posts in this series: 1

Helsinki - Wednesday HDR

I don't know, I just thought Vatican was a pretty funny name for a café bar nightclub. This was three bracketed handheld shots with a Nikon D-700, combined in Photomatix & finished in CS5 with Nik tools.

There are 352 more HDRs here at EarthPhotos.com.

Winter in Finland - 1

My wife Mirja and I have a cabin on her family's land in the Northern Savonia region of Eastern Finland. We visited for Christmas. Here are a few thoughts, in six parts.

1

There’s an expansive view across the lake from the cabin, and more lights on the far shore every time we visit. It’s just about the ideal temperature for winter, hovering a little below zero Celsius, with just an ankle-high cover of snow.

Mirja’s father Risto is a tree farmer. He has outfitted the old farmhouse up on the road with a particular Siberian variety of Christmas tree. There’s a Finnish pine from here on the farm in the cabin.

Mirja is deep into something she does every first night in Finland. She builds a big birchwood fire, parks by the fireplace and immerses herself in Finnish TV.  It doesn’t really matter what’s on. Tonight being the 23rd of December, it’s mostly about Joulopukki (Santa Claus – literally the “Christmas goat”). Well-loved Finnish entertainers are sitting for interviews and performing for Christmas. And Mirja’s enjoying her native language.

There’s a half hour of news: Pictures of destruction in Syria. Extended coverage of tributes to Vaclav Havel, Czech audio with Finnish subtitles. Dispensation not to worry about calories over the holiday and quick lists of ingredients for traditional holiday dishes. And not a single report from a mall.

I sit outside to survey the lake. It’s much less frozen than last time. The ice is only firm very near the shore.  On our last December visit we rode horses and a sleigh across the lake. This time you wouldn’t even walk along the edge.

Northern people will know this, but it’s novel to me. Here near the shore, where unfrozen water runs by the ice, there’s a constant chatter, like maybe mice rooting around inside a wall, except sharper. When a big wind blows from one side of the lake to the other the semi-frozen surface farther out sends up a big, more profound rustle.

See photos in EarthPhotos.com's Finland and Lapland galleries.

Evidence There Will Be Spring

Under the title, Goodbye darkness - sun rises at Utsjoki, the broadcaster YLE writes, "Polar night is drawing to a close in the Finnish far north. The sun rose above the horizon in Utsjoki for about an hour on Tuesday, from 11:57am to 12:47pm." Utsjoki is Finland's northernmost town, up on the Norwegian border about 60 kilometers from the Arctic Sea.

Here's what the midday twilight looked like when we visited Lapland last month:

 

The Week Ahead

 

Some original travel writing this week, about two very different places: Tomorrow we'll publish chapter ten of Common Sense and Whiskey, The Book (Amazon) (Kindle) (BN). Chapter ten is from Madagascar, one of your more exotic places on the planet. Then Wednesday we'll start a few short takes on our Christmas trip up to Finland and the Arctic Circle. They'll come daily in short, serial form, over the following several days. Hope you enjoy them.

Meanwhile, follow along with my friend Laurence Mitchell, who's in Southeast Asia this week.

Lapland Photography

We're back on the farm and I've had a chance to put up a few Lapland photos on EarthPhotos.com. Here are a half dozen for your perusal.

Click them to make them bigger. See all we've posted so far in the Lapland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. These will all ultimately live in the Finland Gallery.

Wednesday HDR - Big, Huge, Massive, Get Out of the Way Bank

I don't know, it was just funny. In lots of places, a big bank like this one in Helsinki probably suggests safety and stability. But in the U.S., with all our bailed out too-big-to-fail financial institutions, mortgage lenders, car companies, you name it, it plays a little differently.

This particular Big Bank, on Salomonkatu in the Kamppi section of Helsinki, was shut tight on a Saturday in these photos. The top HDR was processed from three hand held bracketed shots, and the other is from a single RAW re-exposed and bracketed several times, both photos processed with Photomatix, Nik and Photoshop CS5.

There are almost 350 HDR shots in the HDR Gallery and also check out the Finland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Welcome South Carolina Radio Listeners

Welcome to fans of Walter Edgar's Journal on South Carolina ETV Radio. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed the show. Dr. Edgar is a gracious host and a fine human being.

As he and I discussed, we've just returned this week from above the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland. I haven't had time to get many photos up to EarthPhotos.com yet, but there are a few in the new Lapland Gallery, and I'll get more up over the next week or so.

I invite your travel questions to bill (at) earthphotos.com.

 

Photography - Housekeeping

Beginning a new Lapland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. Not much there yet, but it'll grow over a couple of weeks, and after it's complete I'll put copies of the Lapland photos into the Finland Gallery, too.

Lapland - Wednesday HDR

HDR from six combined exposures shot last week with a Nikon D700. It's an old building atop the Kaunispää Fell, between Ivalo and Saariselkä, Finland. We'll have a few dozen shots up in the Finland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com shortly.

Onnellista Uutta Vuotta

Sounded like the start of a pretty unlikely Finnish spring, beginning with an assault on Helsinki's Senate Square, but it was just fireworks for the New Year. Happy new year, everybody. Time to head back to the farm.

Looks Cold, Was Cold

At the Ivalo airport, Finnish Lapland.

Wasting Time and the Internet II

Continuing the highest and best use of the internet here. You can see why people do it, though. t's a good time filler in flourescent departure halls. We're at the Ivalo airport, snowy day, about to leave Lapland for Helsinki.

You knew they'd try to get us, though. Never a good sign when you find the words "nuclear," "fire" and "contained" in the same sentence. This is, what? 70 - 100 miles from here.