Helsinki, Finland, 11th-14th May 2012
I've reached the age where many of my contemporaries are doing the honourable thing, having kids, settling down and getting married. This weekend's mission was to take part in the wedding of a delightful friend of M's to an equally delightful guy in Helsinki. It was also an excuse to visit some old friends and brush up a bit on the rusty Finnish language skills.
Weddings, for some reason, make me nervous in a way. Wearing proper clothes and trying to remember wedding etiquette (I've only been to a handful and so I don't really know my way around) and attempting not to bring any form of disgrace to myself or to proceedings. I can usually rely on M to guide me through such occasions but she had been asked to fulfill the role of bridesmaid and so, for much of the evening, I was left to fend for myself. The only other person I knew at the wedding was another friend of M's who was as nervous and clueless as I was. Emilia and I managed to huddle together through the church ceremony, stand up at the right times and so on (mostly successfully done by just copying what everyone else did). Singing a church hymn in Swedish was a step too far for me but I think I got away with it by generally looking foreign and half-hearted attempts at lip-synching. We then moved on to the reception. One feature of Finnish weddings is that, at some point early on in the event, the guests line up and congratulate the happy couple and then repeat the exercise for the happy couple's parents. As I knew the happy couple the first round of congratulations passed off without incident but I have never met any of the parents involved and they had no idea who I was. Handshakes and congratulatory messages were then followed by an awkward silence as I wondered whether to try to make small talk or not, although I had noticed that people generally passed by quite quickly and so I made a tactical retreat into the crowd of people, hoping that it wasn't badly seen. We then attacked the food and all was good again.
The speeches were apparently good as many laughs were had by 99 of the 100 guests - I noticed at this point that my Finnish comprehension had gone downhill in the 3 years since I left Helsinki. Half of the speeches were also made in Swedish, which I have absolutely no knowledge of and so I concentrated on looking like I knew what was happening and occasionally trying to find some understanding at the bottom of my wine glass. Fortunately a couple of the speeches included amusing photographs of the happy couple projected onto the wall which even I could understand. After this the band came on, the international language of dancing to 60s music broke out among the guests and the free bar was ruthlessly abused. I remember very little of the events afterwards besides ordering a coke at a nightclub and having to stop the taxi for tactical reasons on the way back to M's parents place. Another proud moment. I managed to emerge from bed at 4.30pm the next day, just in time to watch Finland get stuffed by the USA in the ice hockey world championships.
In any case the whole event was well done and I'd like to extend my best wishes again to the happy couple and to the newest addition to their family: a wide-eyed, curious and seemingly easily amused little girl. I think it will be many years before I see a baby expressing such joy at dancing with her dad to MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This"...
In non-wedding news, I thought that in my five years living in Helsinki I had seen it all. It seemed, however that this was not the case. After meeting up with my friend Kuba at an art exhibition he was volunteering at, he invited me to a sauna-and-beer event afterwards. When I turned up, it was to find this:
A home made sauna, whipped up in a car park that very morning. The rocks were placed in a stolen shopping trolley and the fire was lit underneath in a couple of beer crates. Genius.
Next stop - Ukraine in 2 weeks for some more fun and games !
