The Grand Cafe

Wir schaffen das.

We shall overcome :grin:

Seeing snow fall is over-rated Pete!

But one’s attitude to snow varies a lot depending how big a part of your life it is of course. We don’t get a lot of snow in Southern England, so as soon as there is some on the road I can’t help contingency planning.

I remember sitting in a conference room outside Helsinki city centre a few years ago watching the snow fall quite heavily for several hours and I was worrying about getting back to the airport later that day and flying back to the UK. After a while, during a pause in the meeting I mentioned to one of the locals that I was a bit concerned at the snow. He looked out of the window in surprise and then said “Snow? That’s not proper snow. This is Finland and it’ll be fine!” And of course it was all fine, the taxi arriving for me on time and the flight taking off on time too.

Best

David

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I’ve skied and spent time on our snowy “mountains” but it’s never actually snowed while I was there. Mrs Pete and I were planning to have white Christmas but the way things are going that’s on hold indefinitely.

Yep, we got a couple of inches of snow a week ago. Terrific. Sledges everywhere. Snowmen outnumbered real people !

We’ve spent a few winters in the Canadian Rockies and a couple of feet of snow each day soon builds up. First tracks each morning is great.

Schools in town get closed because travel might be difficult. But the kids soon find mum or dad can easily drive up 6,000ft to Silver Star or their local mountain no bother, and ski all day !

The Finns are special people. I’ve always enjoyed working with them.

I remember getting a cup of coffee from a machine. Once the cup was full I took it from the machine. After 10 seconds the machine said ‘beep’. An older Finnish bloke was looking at me and said ‘now its ready’.

I was surprised that he spilled so many words communicating with me.

Did you visit the Espoo side of the bay?

Yes. The meeting I mentioned was at Nokia’s HQ at Espoo. I was there many times, but mostly I only saw the scenery from the taxi window. But Nokia used to have an old hunting lodge on the water’s edge a few km from there and they would sometimes invite senior visitors for dinner there, so I was there a few times too. It was all very lovely I recall.

Did you take a sauna at lunch time?

No that was never offered!

Quite common for Finns to take a sauna over the lunch time period.

An ex partner of mine had a 6 months contract for Nokia back in the late 90’s and when I came over for a visit, I often took a sauna, very quick, very convenient.

My only slight gripe about the Norwegian culture is that they are not particularly enthusiastic about saunas, unlike the Swedes and Finns.

Sometimes, you just can’t beat a cold beer, a sauna and a run and jump in a lake, to feel fantastic.

When I worked in the Capital of Scandinavia (Stockholm, to avoid unlikely misinterpretations) I was working with two Finnish blokes. They ran back from the office in Kista to the hotel in Stockholm city centre every single day.

Yes, its that important for many Finns.

One of them told me that his wife was working in the army and that they need to go on rehearsal every year for some weeks which includes camping with the whole family whilst his wife is working for the army.

Russia is very much a topic in Finland and Sweden, we in the Netherlands have lost that urgence.

Oh, I don’t know…

kaunis!

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Similar story - Location = Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

  • same comments from us (south Hampshire based) Brits

-same response from the Canadians

And we also made the flight!

:smiley: :smiley: :laughing:

We took daughter2 and her friend out to Helsinki for a rock concert - final bash of Nightwish’s three-year long World Tour.

Had a long weekend there,

Lovely place, lovely people. Expensive car park on the waterfront :smiley:

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As the Scandinavians say, “There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing”.

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…or according to the Iceman, just bad breathing.