Turku 2011

I finally watched the opening thingy for Turku becoming the culture capital. Suski cleverly recorded it off the tv, which was a good thing because we took too long getting ready and missed the whole thing.
After seeing it I'm actually quite glad we didn't have to stand in the cold watching that, because it was quite boring. At one point they were playing the theme tune of BBC News for some reason...and there was a lot of random music and a really bad song about Turku.
For song reason the show was based around a British group of acrobats! In the end credits the names of the people who wrote and performed the show were very clearly not Finnish names. They sounded suspiciously English to me. I think that's a shame, and such a wasted opportunity to show what's good about Finland and what Finnish people can do, and surely that's part of the point of being the capital of culture? As the show wasn't great maybe some Finnish people would have done a better job.
It was all a bit disappointing. The fireworks were quite nice, and Tarja Halonen had a very nice red hat on, but apart from that it wasn't very good. I hope that for the rest of the year there'll be a bit more emphasis on Finnish-ness. Silly Finland.

Finnish New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve was fun. First there was a strange tradition of melting small horsehoes and putting the liquid into cold water to set, then looking at the shadows of the shapes to work out what will happen in the coming year. They all looked like dinosaurs...
After that we set off fireworks by the church, and lots of people were doing the same thing. That shit really wouldn't fly in England. It was nice though. At midnight there was a really huge public display, and lots of people were watching by the river. At one point I rolled down the snow piles on the bank, mainly because Tommi did it first. It was fine until I realised my arse was completely frozen.
Today I've been extremely hungover, just as I am most years on the 1st of January. I feel horrible. When will I learn not to mix my drinks? I really hope I'll feel better tomorrow because I'm flying to England to visit my parents and friends. Things have been really hard here lately and I need a break for a week.