Finnish Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving, a treasured holiday that involves lots of food, family and no religious obligations. A day that likely makes all the surviving Native Americans wonder what in the hell the Wampanoag tribe was thinking when they helped those prissy pilgrims survive the first few winters instead of taking care of the problem early. So much romanticism is imbued in the whole idea of Thanksgiving that even Plymouth Rock is a major tourist attraction which, I can tell you from personal experience, is the saddest bit of rock anyone might waste their time travelling down two hours from Boston to gape at.

In the annual fit of family and patriotic turkey eating frenzy, the Pilgrims were, in fact, immigrants celebrating the fact that they managed to survive a year or two in their new homeland, one that they either chose to or were forced to move to. Not that everyone shouldn't have something to reflect happily upon in the previous 365 days, but people who move to an alien land have a completely different need to do so since, like with the Pilgrims, there are lots of days where the misery you knew back home seems a lot more comfortable than the misery you are just beginning to make friends with. Simple things you once took for granted are a new challenge and few things come easily.

I didn't go home this year, much as I wanted to, but we had a 'Finnish Thanksgiving' dinner of turkey meatballs, mashed potatoes with aura cheese and garlic, and lingonberry sauce. It wasn't the same as a full spread of turkey, stuffing, giblet gravy, yams, cranberry relish, pumpkin pie, and piles of other food you try to cram in before you feel so full that you feel sick, but it was good. I don't feel much like a pilgrim but, like them, I've managed to survive so far and that's something worth treating yourself to a big meal that would drop a moose in 50 paces. Of course, this year I have something to be quite thankful for and that is, after much waiting and hoping, I finally got a job. Not only a job, but a job at the one place I wanted to work for above all the others. :) I'm happy, too, that I'll be working somewhere that I'll be, I think, the only native English speaker and where the operating language is Finnish and I will have no choice but to finally start speaking a bit more Finnish. I hope I survive the awkward stage. Getting back into a regular workday routine is going to feel really strange for a week or three I think. :)

Also, this week's paper had a story about Korttelit.fi, a pictorial map of every building in downtown Helsinki. The interface is very nicely done and the pictures are good as well. It's not finished as the person who created it is doing it himself, but I suspect there will be some commercial interest in it to make it worth his while.