Finteresting Finland: Midsummer Fest in Finland

In Finland, Midsummer Fest is, well, a festival that celebrates the middle of summer. Most people leave their homes and go to their summer cottages to get closer to nature and build huge bonfires in celebration. However, my family already lives quite close to nature anyway so we went to a friends house for dinner instead on Friday, June 20. The family we went to for dinner had two girls (one was 8 and the other was 10) and they loved to play hide-and-seek with Aleksi. I played two rounds before I realized it wasn't even worth hiding behind the door because I was taller than the door. So, I decided to join the parents and their huge dog Zulu downstairs (Niklas was at a different party). I watched the soccer game while the adults talked in Finnish but soon the children came downstairs too. My host mother explained to the children that although I was from America, I could speak German fluently, which the 10 year old girl was very excited about because she was learning German in school. She quickly rushed upstairs and came back with her German textbook in hand. We then sat down and read stories from the textbook until dinner was ready. For dinner, we each had a large plate of nachos with vegetables as toppings. I also had an interesting grapefruit soda which was very good. I ate at the kids table at first but once they left to carry on their game of hide-and-seek outside, I pulled up a chair and sat at the adult table. The friends that we came to visit were very interesting as the mother of the children lived in Africa for many years and the father is Mika's (my host father) childhood friend. Their English was quite good and we continued to talk over the ice cream and domino cookies (the Finnish version on Oreos). We then watched the FIFA match until 12:00 a.m. before we left for home and went to bed.

Saturday, June 21, was a pretty relaxed day. We were going to go to another friends house for dinner, but one of their daughters got sick so they had to cancel. However, I spent the day at home with my host brothers and I feel like they began to talk a bit more. It was a nice and calm day.

On Sunday, June 22, I woke up excited come along on a tour of the gardens of the President's summer cottage with my host mother. Unfortunately, it began to rain and hail (yes, hail in the summer) about an hour before we were going to leave for the tour. My host mother then decided that it would probably be best for me to stay at home and not go on the tour due to the weather. Once she left, I asked my host brothers if we could go to any of the museums but unfortunately all of the museums were closed due to midsummer. However, I hadn't seen much of the city yet and I didn't really want to spend another day playing video games and watching movies, so as soon as the rain slowed down to a drizzle I asked if we could just walk around the city center of Turku. So, we got our rain jackets and umbrellas and packed into the car to head off into the city. Even though the weather was rainy, I was super excited to finally explore the city. Mika dropped us off near the tourist information office and my host brothers and I walked to the river. It was really nice to walk along the river and we encountered many shops and cafés. They were all closed of course, but I got to see where I may want to come back to later. Niklas showed me his school and they also showed me the movie theater, mall, and shopping square. Our last stop was a candy shop where we all chose a bags worth of sweets! We ended up almost walking to the harbor, but we decided to stop and cross the river with a ferry to meet my host mother who came to pick us up. I think it's funny that they have a ferry that only goes from one side of the river to the other instead of a bridge, but apparently it enables larger ships to pass through more easily. When we came home, we had another nice dinner of steak and potatoes (a very popular and delicious dish in our family). We also had a great rhubarb pie for dessert! After dinner, we watched The Social Network, a movie about the creation of Facebook. I had wanted to see the movie since a few months already and I really enjoyed it. After the movie, I went to bed (even though it was only 11:00 p.m.) because I would have to wake up a bit earlier the next morning for my second trip to the island of Porvoo.

Those were my midsummer days!