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In my last blog (Dec 3, 2012) I mentioned that the most wide-spread presumption of Finland is it being a country with a very severe climate. That’s why I was amused to read the Helsingin Sanomat columnist Cristopher Sloan, originally a Frenchman, writing about the same topic two weeks later (Dec 17) under the title Surviving in the Cold .
In my last blog (Dec 3, 2012) I mentioned that the most wide-spread presumption of Finland is it being a country with a very severe climate. That’s why I was amused to read the Helsingin Sanomat columnist Cristopher Sloan, originally a Frenchman, writing about the same topic two weeks later (Dec 17) under the title Surviving in the Cold .
Sloan told
how impressed he was by the Finns when moving to Finland. They seemed all,
without an exception, to be extremely well equipped for the winter season. It
would be hard, he said, to convince a Frenchman to wear a woollen stocking cap as
he wouldn’t take any risk of looking silly. The Finns, in opposition, would
have no difficulty to dress in a full
winter outfit: a warm beanie, gloves, a scarf, pullover, a thermo baselayer, a
waterproof parka, a windstopper pant,
woollen socks - and a reflector to help the drivers to see you in the traffic.
My German
parents in law always used to say that they have never experienced anywhere
else such warm houses and apartments as in Finland. For them it was very exotic
to see us being barefoot at home with 20 degrees below zero outsides. Sloan has
excactly the same notion: “The truth is that it is much warmer for me here in
Finland than it was in France in the winter. In France, the radiators were
often out of order and the windows couldn’t be closed properly.” In Finland you
have three-layered window glasses, an extra door behind the frontdoor to keep
the warmth inside and maximum temperature in the radiators even if nobody would
use the room.
There are, still,
some similarities between Finns and Frenchmen. According to Sloan, when it is
freezing cold in France, people tend to say again and again to themselves that
the suffering will be over in a couple of weeks. Here in Finland I use to think
likewise, but in months: “After two months the snow is going to melt, after one
month there will be considerebly more daylight, in a three months time I can
start biking to my working place again etc.”
I’m pretty
sure that the ability to dream of better times has been the most important
factor in the survival of the fittest.
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