There is a movement afoot on the streets of Helsinki to celebrate creative personal style.
“Hel Looks” is simple but engaging. They feature photos and short comments from people on the street, a glimpse into the fashion lives of Helsinkiians (Helsinkites?). I really enjoyed devouring the site. Not to say that there isnt some serious euro-fug going on here, cuz there is. Vice DOs & DONTs would eat these people as easily as a seagull snaps up a silvery Baltic herring.
First off, WOW@how far they took the skinny jean trend on both men and women! One Finnish guy says he wore skinny jeans for so long that when he put wide-legged jeans on again, he felt “liberated!” Haha, I bet he did!
It doesnt happen often, but it does happen. I am stricken with a case of tech lust so intense that it makes me a little ashamed. How DO you justify a thousand dollar phone? “I want it” isnt really enough for me to convince myself. But wait, there’s more!
My current phone (the Nokia 6101, one of their first widely-promoted flip phones) has served me honorably the last two years. Wear has worsened it tho; I had to glue a piece back on over the antenna and the paint on the front part is chipped and ugly.
So very different from this new beauty, which should be available in the US any day now (if it isnt already?!). The e90 would be my PDA and camera (both gadgets I need to upgrade) as well as mobile internet and music player. And phone–it’s a phone, too.
M already informed me that I am NOT getting this for my birthday. He said an iPhone is more likely. Not to be ungrateful but, I dont want an iPhone. Nokia no ka oi!
Wow, how disgusting. Yet strangely not unfamiliar .
Some student archaeologists from the UK uncovered a 6,000-year-old globular remnant of birch tar chewing gum at a Neolithic site in Finland.
“Most likely the lump was used as an antique kind of chewing gum,” said Sami Viljamaa, an archaeologist who led the dig near Oulu, some 380 miles north of the capital, Helsinki. “But its main purpose was to fix things.” [Yahoo]
Like duct tape it could be used to repair anything, from ceramics to stone-age weaponry. Or you could chew it, if there was nothing to fix. Just the thought makes my teeth ache. But according to the student’s adviser in England,
“Birch bark tar contains phenols, which are antiseptic compounds. It is generally believed that Neolithic people found that by chewing this stuff if they had gum infections it helped to treat the condition.” [Guardian UK]
The Yahoo! article connects this to the present day popularity of healthy xylitol gums, formulated in Finland. But you cannot tell me that that does not look like some nasty, sticky, half-melted, bottom-of-the-bag, blob of licorice. . . that you’d eat if you had to, you know, in an emergency.
Pam Anderson and I have something in common–but it is not the way we look in a bikini. Turns out her grandfather is from Finland and she recently visited there with her father, and wrote about it in her online diary:
“I will have a summer home there one day and plan on going back every summer to enjoy the midnight sun. I’m surprised at how much of the language I retained from before I was 10 yrs old speaking with my grandfather. It came back quick. I’m going to learn more and more. . . . Our heritage is here. We are both excited. We will be taking lots of saunas. Save my liver.”
I thought that was really sweet and can certainly relate to the language coming back and just soaking in the nature and sweating yourself clean. Then she writes:
“Also I thought of a great way to celebrate my Finnish heritage at home. I’m going to look into opening a chain of strips club and ill call them LAPLAND!!!”
Um, yea. LoL.
On a more serious note, she’s using her position as a PETA spokesperson to speak out against the Finnish fur business, which is apparently an industry-leader in Europe, peeling out something like 2 million pelts a year.
“I’ve written the President a letter. Sweden, Austria and England have banned fur farms. Let’s hope Finland will too. Other than that I’m very proud of my Finnish heritage. It is the most beautiful countryside.”
One of my missions in life is to taste every product made with a mouth-watering substance known in Finnish as salmiakki. I usually explain it to my American friends as “salty black licorice” but that description in no way does justice to this undeniably acquired taste.
Anthony Bourdain said something about all cultures having that one food that they are crazy about that no one else understands, but when he did the salmiak-vodka shots at the biker bar on the Swedish episode, I think he overlooked the passion Scandinavian people have for this substance. He treated it like street food, easily endured by one so iron-intestined as he.
But my love for salmiakki goes so much deeper. I’m not even ready to talk about it right now except to say that one of my missions in life is to taste every product made with salmiakki.
First on my wish list of new products to try–this is kind of insane–is salmiak HONEY.
There is a movement afoot on the streets of Helsinki to celebrate creative personal style. 
