Family Affairs

COLD, BEAUTIFUL AND FULL OF NAKED PEOPLE

The lovely Erica at Little Mummy has organised a group of bloggers to do guest posts on each other's blog. I am lucky enough to have swapped with Heather from Notes From Lapland, who writes a HUGE and wonderful blog from Finland, where she writes about her life in that strange and beguiling land, her struggles to come to terms with some of the culture and any other nonsence that comes into her head.:- "-51C was our coldest day,' my husband says, smiling fondly at the memory. I look out of the window at the -25C weather and my jaw drops trying to imagine it another 25 degrees colder. -25C is the kind of weather that freezes your nose hairs within seconds of stepping outside, that makes your eyes water, eyelashes frost up and your tears freeze against your face. The sort of temperature where your thigh muscles begin to scream in pain 30 seconds after leaving the warmth of the house and your lungs feel as though you are breathing in jagged glass if you take anything more than shallow breaths. -51C sounds like a whole new level of hell. As I pull faces trying to imagine it, my husband talks about how the water pipes froze and the family had to walk to the lake and cut a hole through the meter thick ice. How they had to light a fire underneath the tractor to warm the engine and pour alcohol into the fuel tank to stop it freezing. 'Feeding the cattle was almost impossible,' he says with a sad shake of his head. 'It was all we could do just to keep them alive.' He sits quietly for a while, lost in thought and then looks up with a grin. 'It was so cold they even had to close the schools.' How the Brits deal with snow and cold is a constant source of ammusement to him. How can a few sub zero degrees and a little snow bring an entire country to it's knees? Whilst January brought school closures and countrywide melt down in the UK, it was -35C here in Lapland and everything, busses, schools, shops, business, still ran as normal. Just 60 miles south of the Arctic Circle with temperatures between -15C and -30C for 120 days of the year, the cold is just a part of life. You either learn to live with it or you leave. Originally from Rochdale, Lancashire, I am in no way used to it or the rest of Finnish culutre yet, as my blog details in humourous and graphic detail, but waking up to see the thermomter showing - 25C or colder doesn't fill me with the same dread anymore. Perhaps I am finally aclimatising after 5 years. The winter isn't all doom and gloom though. Sure we may have to plug our cars in via a little electric plug they have on the front to heat the engine oil, 2 hours before we can even start them, use studded tyres on our cars, shovel snow off our rooves to stop buildings colapsing and dress our children up like Michelin men before we can go out, but the winter brings some magical things with it too. The silence you experince standing on our snow blanketed farm is like nothing on earth -your ears actually start to ring for lack of things to hear. The sun sparkling off the snow and in the dry frozen air like diamonds makes you feel as though you have been transported to Narnia. Catching sight of a reindeer making it's way along the bottom of your garden. The northern lights, which we are lucky enough to witness often over the lake at the bottom of our farm, are the most amazing display in the star studded night sky that they really take your breath away. And those stars. Wow, who knew there were so many? There is one thing, however. Something more chilling than the cold, more worrying than the midwives advice to put babies outside to sleep down to -10C, more disturbing than hearing the neighbours sheep are being eaten by bears, that may put you off this frozen winter wonderland. Something dark and sinister lurking in the Finnish countryside Naked people of all shapes and sizes, running, jumping, rolling in snow and throwing themselves into holes cut into the ice covered lakes can be found the length and breadth of the country. The Finnish sauna experience is just that, an experience, and an eye opening one for sure. It may seem ridiculous to us Brits and our relatively prude ways, but most Finnish get togethers involve climbing naked into a hot wooden cupboard with friends and quite often running around in the garden afterwards without even a fig leaf for discretion. Like many visitors to the country, I couldn't help feeling as though I was being conned somehow the first time I was instructed to take my clothes off and climb into that hot cupboard with a group of people I barely knew, but that is a whole other story. The naked people, aside, there isn't anywhere else I would rather be. After all, where else can you say you're on first name terms with Santa's daughter or buy a vibrator from the supermarket?" Her post has brought back fond memories of my week in Finland a few years ago. I want to go out and do it all again....Finland will have to be included on our bloggers gap year travel itinerary for sure.

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