There and back again

« Through Finland in a RAV4. »

I have always maintained that in order to understand, or at least attempt to understand, the US one must make the trek across country by car, bicycle or other mode of ground transport rather than flying from one major city to the next as the land and landscape are what made it what it is today. This, too, can be said for Finland as by making a road trip around the various regions it becomes far more clear what is rather less apparent in Helsinki, the New York of the rest of the country; Most of the population of Finland are either living off the land or, as in Helsinki, one generation or less removed from doing so. This alone explains a lot about Finns and Finland. We saw lots of snow, lots of denuded forests, lots of reindeer that Otava was quite curious about, more snow, the arctic circle, the International Coffee Cup Museum and drank Krouvi, a tasty new Sinebrychoff beer that tastes like Sahti without the deadly alcohol content that doesn't seem to be in Helsinki just yet but, sadly, no Northern Lights. I'll get the film developed sometime this week and describe our adventures of the Finnish road between Helsinki and Ivalo, roughly the same distance as Denver to St. Louis, but with the terrain and services of country highways through Maine and New Hampshire. "Hey guy, you can't get there from here." :)