Goodbye Ruka.

Hello again everyone. It's been a while. Working up north left me little time to waffle here but now I'm back in Helsinki which, overcome with Star Wars fever, has dressed up as Ice Planet Hoth.

Helsinki

More about the frozen fun later, first let me first wrap up all things Ruka-related.

Christmas came and went and Girlf. arrived with Dog to makes things festive but mostly so we could watch Dog's first experience with snow. We have now established that her feet are cold-proof down to about -10 degrees. At -25 she malfunctions completely and I have to carry her home in my arms.

Dog auditioning for Cinderella

Christmas in Finland consisted of making lamps out of snowballs and a candle, and fantastically complicated and improvised lies about Joulupukki (Father Christmas) and his family/wife/elf sweat shop.

Girlf's snow lamp. So talented. 

For Christmas dinner we were kindly invited to Kuksa, a swish restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet. The traditional offerings in Finland include a variety of what are called casseroles but are actually mashed vegetables (the swede is particularly good). These accompany salads, delicious mushrooms and lots of delicious fish including the wonderful smoked perch.

Perch (pre-smoking. Low-tar)

The guides had been assuring me that you could eat the perch that we'd been catching all month so it was nice to finally do so. These were certainly more goodies on offer but the bosses decided to buy a three-litre bottle of wine so the details are a little groggy.

How the world looks when you buy giant wine

The next day I was back at work then Girlf. went back to the capital and soon it was New Years Eve. Again, the bosses looked after us and treated us to beers and sauna. Here we also discussed the local hooch, Jalovina, which according to Wikipedia is a Cut Brandy.

The one-star has a generous 30% of brandy mixed in with the white-spirit/anti freeze that fills up the rest of the plastic bottle. However, it ain't too bad. Outside fireworks exploded all over the moonlit valley flashing the skies and booming across the frozen lakes. Pretty good start to 2016.

So finally, still under the delusion that somebody might actually find some useful information among te waffle on this blog, let me mention a few names.

• Ruka Adventures. Great company, lovely people and the guides really know their stuff. Thanks to them I now know how many hairs per cm2 of reindeer and I can catch perch in a frozen lake.
• Motel Willis West. Cheap and Cheerful and the German boss is the finest caterer in the region.
• Sport House Ruka. Lovely people. Sorted me out with some cross country skis.
• Erä-Susi Husky Farm. 200 huskies and an owner that looks like a Lord Of The Rings character. What's not to like? Also, driving a husky sled is something that everyone should do before they die.

In conclusion. An amazing experience. I want to go back and I'm already hatching a brilliant plan as to how. Ruka/Kuusamo is a great place to live. The contact with nature is so satisfying and the people that live there, like the trees covered in snow, seem to get along calmly and happily and with a glint in their eye that knowingly says, "my life is better than yours". 

   Guiding (or assisting to the guide) can be hard work. Thirty Spanish people can have a lot of problems and dealing with them takes patience and there wasn't a day that I didn't get home exhausted, but also happy. When your work day involves driving snowmobiles to the lake for ice-fishing you know you're onto a winner. 

 This video is insane

   Finally, the area is perfect. In winter, as well as all the activities mentioned above, there is ice climbing and masses of cross country skiing, In summer the area is popular for its rivers and trekking, especally the 80km Karhunkierros trail (the Bear Trail). There are also bears. And Elk. Go there.

These trials of Cat, Dog and Mine.

I've now been in Finland for almost nine weeks. Though I'm still looking for work the immigration processes seem to be going quite well. Last week I got the thumbs up from the police so now I'm just waiting for the Registry Office to accept me as a permanent resident.

Welcome to Finland. I am your guide

Cat and Dog are also settling in well. Cat has discovered shrews and has been eager to present his new friends to me. Girlf. is not nearly as happy as Cat as he drops another (usually) dead gift at our feet. He looks so sweet, like a kid that's just made a rubbish breakfast for mother's day. Being a nature loving vegetarian I of course have to put aside any feelings of parental pride and get back to feeling guilty for having brought this little ecological disaster into Finland. We seem to have found a solution now though, I've pimped my cat with little bells and he's only allowed out during the day; so far, zero-kills.

Dog is more interested in the dozens of dopey rabbits all over the island although the only thing she's managed to catch are the ticks from the long grass where the disappearing rabbits hide. Is it possible that the rabbits and ticks are working together? Anyway, her jollies have meant more father-dog grooming time hauling the ticks off with my special tick lasso.

So there you are. In case you were wondering, having pets is mostly disgusting.

My own trials come in the form of mind-boggling Finnish lessons. I'm just about to finish (this is getting confusing) the level 1 course so I thought I'm just about ready to give some feedback.

Finnish is a bit of an oddity language wise. Most European languages have the same root, and therefore have a lot of similarities, but Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian and a bunch of minority languages spoken only in rural Russia have taken a separate path. This lovely picture demonstrates these connections.

The main complications seem to be twofold. Firstly, word endings. A basic word like house can have several forms depending on if you want to say more than one house, or to the house, or at the house or from the house. If you want to say the house has two bedrooms then that's yet another form. All these tricks, and the inevitable exceptions, have to be wrestled whilst trying to pronounce the crazy vowels. No doubt this diagram will help.

But perhaps the most difficult is the vocabulary. Because of Britain's long history of immigration our vocabulary isn't a million miles from that of the Spanish or French or German. The inconsiderate Finnish forefathers however didn't bother to visit back when it was all the rage and now, 1000 years later, I find myself with endless lists of completely alien vocabulary to memorise. The problem is that you can't just hit and hope like you can with Spanish; you either know the word or you don't and that means learning them. All of them. 

Some friends have a one-and-a-half year old child and my goal is to be able to always speak better Finnish than him. If that's still the case in two years time I think I'll have done well. 

Dog

A younger Dog in the mountains

Dog's real name is Marlene. Actually, I'm not sure what her original name was. She was already one and a half years old when I saw her one night dodging between three lanes of cars with her great udders swinging away beneath. I never discovered what happened to her pups nor anything more about her previous life; the only clues I have are that she was perfectly house trained, loves riding in cars, has two great big scars on her back and is terrified of men and bulky things and especially of bulky men.

Mistaking my come-here-away-from-the-cars gesture for a come-to-my-house-and-live-with-me-forever gesture she followed me home and then puppy-eyed her way into my apartment. Being a cat person I wasn't sure what to do with her so we spent the first couple of days just looking at each other. I got her a cardboard box which she hid in immediately and didn't eat anything for two days. That's the longest, by about one and a half days, that I've ever known her not to eat.

Standard/begging face. Do not look into her eyes. 

Though she's not keen on men, she adores women and children. And food. Though she's definitely improved, I still have to keep a constant eye on her as life on the streets has left her with a taste for some of the more undesirable morsels to be found in the gutter.

Though she never shows the same amount of joy with me as she does with any random woman or child, we get on pretty well. I think she sees me as the safe-haven and will put up with long walks in the hills and occasional attempts to teach her tricks as long as she gets food and a warm place to sleep.

Now we've been together for about eight years. It's been quite a journey. Looking back, finding her was probably one of the most formative experiences in my life and now, almost 8 years layer, we're preparing to move to Finland together. All that for a person who wasn't very keen on dogs. But I guess that's just the way life works; these things happen for a reason. Let them all be positive experiences. 

Cat and Dog on the balcony.

Into April - Bad capitalism. Did Jesus die for this?

Me: "Hi. Are you a business that provides services for money?"
Business: "Yes."
Me: "Can you help me? I have money."
Business: "Meh."

My mate from the states says that Chile is an extremely capitalist country, the problem is that it's rubbish at it. This week his observation has been ringing through my baffled brain as time and again I've asked travel agents to help me, in exchange for money, and they have, time and again, failed to do so.

It's a model you see a lot in Chile. Businesses steadfastly refusing to change their 'unhelpful' M.O. despite other businesses right-next-door doing so much better by offering good service. It's amazing. You want to take the owner of the empty restaurant by the hand, walk him down the road to the heaving popular restaurant and say, "Look how it could be. Just be nice to your customers."

On the other hand, I kind of respect the defiance of the bad companies. Like some old boy refusing to move despite the cliffs below his house slowly crumbling into the sea.

So. I still don't have a flight.

However, I did read an amazing story about a man known as D.B. Cooper.

He hijacked an aeroplane, demanded a parachute and $200,000 in 1971 money, locked the pilot and the crew in the cockpit then jumped out the back, never to be seen again. Hero. As I write I'm looking at Cat and Dog and wondering if they'll need their own chute or if we can get away with just the one for the three of us.

Have a lovely Easter.