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Although I write here for exactly four years to the day and this column is called "Top and Bottom", so far, there was considerably little to the north and south. But now. At least up, or the north, or Finland. It is the best country, according to my current research status. Of course, I have not been to all countries in the world yet, I do not travel a lot and never travel far, but once a year I have to go to Finland because there is a lot better there than anywhere else.
It starts with the fact that it is very empty. Finland is almost as big as Germany, but there are only 5.5 million people there. The few Finns who feed there eat like cute gnomes of berries, fish, cinnamon buns and liquorice, plus they drink mad amounts of coffee (some say, per capita, most of the world, but certainly the most in Europe).
Alcohol is also a bit. A kind of national drink is Lonkero, grapefruit lemonade with gin, you can buy ready or mix yourself, best drink. I try to learn a few words of Finnish from time to time with an audio course, and although the course is very short in general and limited to fundamentals, it also teaches the words "drink on ex," "let's have another drink," me I'm a bit tipsy ", which I have not seen in other languages yet. Moreover, Finnish is probably the only language in the world that has its own term for drinking alone in underpants at home ("kalsarikänni"), because Finns are not human alien.
"No" means "ey", that's quite intuitive for me as a Neuköllner. The rest of the language is mainly a madness of extremely long words, but this is compensated by the fact that there are also louder terms that are so understandable (hotelli, posti, sausage, halli, automaatti, kioski).
German discipline, Finnish relaxation - even in the sauna
Finland has not existed as a state for so long, which is convenient because it has not had so many opportunities in history to misbehave. In 1906, Finland was the first country in Europe to introduce women's suffrage, and Finland is always high in all possible statistics on equality and education. Admittedly, there is also a right-wing party in parliament there, because you can not get the complete paradise there either.
The difference between Germany and Finland is most likely to be experienced when visiting a public sauna. In Germany hangs in almost every public sauna, a sign that indicates the towel duty, infusions take place at fixed times and who comes a minute late, may no longer pure.
I know several people who are fat and would never dare to use their bodies in a German sauna, because sauna in Germany is always unfortunately synonymous performance matching the exercise done so far. And discipline. The other day I was with a friend in Berlin in the hip "Vabali" spa, and the sprinkler announced his activity without batting an eyelash: "Hello my beloved sauna friends, I brought you here a twelve-minute infusion of intensity level 2, meanwhile please do not talk or whisper ... pssst. " That is Germany.
If you go to a public sauna in Finland - which is traditionally gender-separated - you will see people in all imaginable body shapes and states. Very fat, very thin, old, young, all relaxed, some chatting, some silent. While in Germany a kind of state-damaging act commits, if you do not put a two-square-foot towel under them, Finns often put no towel under it or just a small guest towel, even if it is half the size of her buttocks. The infusion makes whoever feels like it, if all others agree. Take that, Germany.
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When I came to Finland for the first time, about six years ago, I was standing in front of the train station with my boyfriend and we tried to orient ourselves according to a map of the city when a woman approached us. In general, it is very rare in Finland to be addressed simply because Finns somehow understand privacy better, but this woman approached us and asked if we needed anything, and of course because I came from Berlin, I thought they were leaving us want. Did not want her.
She was just a teacher who came from shopping and eventually escorted us 20 minutes to our hotel smalltalkend, giving us half a city tour. Really half a city tour, by the way, because Helsinki is very small, you can do everything on foot. Or by bike: There is a kind of highway for bicycles, and there are plans to free the city of private cars in the future, so that more space for people.
I do not know how they do it, but overall, everything is more human-friendly. There are no 1 and 2 cent pieces, prices are simply rounded. There's the Mumins, there's Wi-Fi behind every bush, liquorice ice cream, there's a bidet showerhead on pretty much every loo, the incomes are public, there's a word for "he" and "they."
Finnish design looks very good all the time, which is somehow logical, because who sits half a year in the dark, at least needs a good interior. Finnish women are conspicuously often dressed very comfortably and little make-up. The street sign for "sidewalk" is in Germany a person with a skirt and a child by the hand. In Finland, these road markings are painted on the sidewalks, and the person holding the child by the hand wears trousers. Small difference, but a difference.
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06.06.2019, 13:21 clock
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DISPLAY
Margaret Stokowski
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256
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The only drawback in Finland is that everything is very expensive, as expensive as in Zurich, a coffee and a piece of cake in the café can easily cost 20 euros. Accordingly, the few begging people who are there do not ask for pennies, as in Berlin, but just after three euros. Financially it is often not fun in Finland, but there you can also find something of Finland, mentally: There is a Finnish word, "sisu", which is considered untranslatable and describes a supposedly typical Finnish mental attitude: persevere and carry on in seemingly hopeless situations.
It could be considered a peculiar national romanticism, but once you walk through Helsinki in rain and cold, you can see that this is very practical. When Finns see that there are 12 degrees outside and rain is pouring down, they think to themselves: Perfect, just go for a jog on the sea. German author Roman Schatz, who has lived in Finland for a long time, describes it this way: "To continue with an eerie glow in the eyes, where every normal person would give up, corresponds to the self-image of the nation." I find it quite inspiring in political times like these. In this sense, for the next four years, kippis (cheers).
