Two new Finland-in-English blogs to check out
Along with a few old favorites (Such as Jukka V., FinnSense, and Mr. Slender), here’s a couple new Finland-in-Englsh blogs to check out…
Toby Archer of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs (interviewed here on Radio Free Finland) begins a new blog about international politics entitled, “Northern Light – chilled thoughts from the top of Europe”
We are colleagues who work as researchers studying various aspects of international affairs. Our interests are wide and many, often going beyond what we have time to write about for our work. This blog is to provide space to write shorter, but hopefully still well-informed, comments on whatever else sparks our interest. We are based in Helsinki, so there may be a Finnish ‘tinge’ to the comment, although Toby is British and Charly has spent as much time out of Finland as in it. The focus will be unapologetically on international politics – if this makes us foreign policy wonks or geeks, we can only take that as a compliment.
Helsingin Sanomat begins a new blog in English for this summer. “Citysherpa” puts together a tourist, a native, and a reporter together for a tour of the city - then they write about it on the blog…
Wouldn’t it be great if a local showed Helsinki to you? It is possible now and it doesn’t cost anything! Citysherpa is a service which gives a tourist the chance to meet someone who lives in Helsinki and who wants to show his or her city. Sherpas will not be paid a salary, and it doesn’t cost anything for a tourist to use their services. The job they do is entirely voluntary.
How does it work? Read the presentations of sherpas and send an e-mail to the person you wish to show Helsinki to you. Citysherpa says yes, if it is all right for him or her. There is no defined length for the tour, it can take an hour, or a day. The tour as such doesn’t cost anything, but you are expected to pay entrance fees and other such expenses yourself.
Have any of you volunteered to be a Citysherpa? I think I’ll sign up and my tour will be called “Excellent Espoo!!” or “The Welfare State Experience: A Day in the Life of a Homeless Alcoholic” 
Ummm, what’s the url for Toby Archer?
Comment by Jani Kuusisto — Tue, Jun 27th, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
D’oh!! That would certainly help, wouldn’t it…
http://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/
Comment by Phil — Tue, Jun 27th, 2006 @ 10:00 pm
Hey, this is a great idea for those entrepreneurial call girls to get a foothold in the ever more competetive flesh market!
Comment by Petteri — Tue, Jun 27th, 2006 @ 11:48 pm
Hey, this is a great idea for those entrepreneurial call girls to get a foothold in the ever more competetive flesh market!
As if a foreign man in Finland had any use for call girls.
Comment by Anonymous — Wed, Jun 28th, 2006 @ 8:09 pm
As if a foreign man in Finland had any use for call girls.
This is one of those cherished myths that I hear quite often but that, frankly, go way over my head, kind of like the “Finns never criticize their country” -myth. I do not know a single Finnish woman who considers the foreignness of a man to be some sort of merit. My acquaintances are fairly evenly divided among well-traveled university educated people to car shop workers and hairdressers. None of them get this myth.
I have heard of one French guy who got Finnish girls with the snap of his fingers. He was an exchange student in the graduating class of a friend of mine, but he did his hunting among the beauty-school -students in the small town the university unit was based in (Mikkeli). The university girls wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole.
I guess this is just one of those things that a native Finn just cannot understand about her country. Or maybe I just don’t visit the right places. I should maybe hang out at Marilyn in Turku more often, and watch how “popular” all of the middle-aged African men are with the drunken jail-bait girls.
Comment by Anzi — Thu, Jun 29th, 2006 @ 10:58 am
Anzi - I don’t know if “get” is taken just to mean one-night stands or more, but from my experience over the years in Finland from my foreign friends, work colleague and people doing Finnish course with me it must be about 5 to 1 men against women who came here for “love”. This is obviously relecting the circles I move in because I saw figures a few years back that actually show slightly more Finnish men marry foreign nationals than Finnish women. But the origins of the those married were starkly different: with men the biggest number of wives came from Russia, followed by Thailand. Finnish women marry EU citizens Swedes most popular, followed by Brits then Germens) and then North Americans (i.e. Phil!). Make of all that what you will!
I think the figures were from Statistics Finland so you might be able to dig up last years stats if interested.
Comment by Toby — Thu, Jun 29th, 2006 @ 1:54 pm
Toby: I’ve read the statistics and I do actually believe them. I know plenty of Finnish women who are in an international marriage, but none of them have chosen their husband based on his nationality. They just fell in love the old fashioned way.
I was just pondering on what was said in message #4, which implied that Finnish women are somehow easily attracted to a foreign man just because he is foreign. I don’t think that is at all true.
Comment by Anzi — Thu, Jun 29th, 2006 @ 2:04 pm
“that Finnish women are somehow easily attracted to a foreign man just because he is foreign. I don’t think that is at all true.” Being foreign definitely seems to make you more interesting than you perhaps really are to Finns (which is lovely of course!). I’ve always been in a relationship since I’ve lived in Finland, so I’ve never found out whether I could actually “get beyond” a conversation with a very attractive Finnish woman in bar or a club if I wanted to, but I would have been very suprised if an equally attractive woman had started talking to me in a similar social situation back in the UK! Being foreign seems to help.
Comment by Toby — Thu, Jun 29th, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
Well, there are many kinds of women. Some will..err…come up to see the etchings after the bar night, some will not. Those who come, may also enjoy some variation in the usual selection. In the old days it was enough to have black hair, good dancing skills and not live in the same village.
Comment by Antti (the redneck one) — Thu, Jun 29th, 2006 @ 6:08 pm
“http://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/”
Fuck that sucks, no comments and will be reviewed by the authors.
Comment by tim73 — Thu, Jun 29th, 2006 @ 9:41 pm
I used to check out Nothern Lights-blog, and I liked it. Unfortunately, the gentlemen have decided not to publish anybody’s comments and thus there is no answers either. Pitty!
Comment by Petteri — Fri, Jun 30th, 2006 @ 4:39 am
Tim and Petteri. Hi - you say you can’t leave comments? Damn - it’s not meant to be like that! When I look at the blog I can leave comments - you just click the little “comments” link below the post. Are you saying this doesn’t work for you? Bugger - I’m not very good at the techy side but I’ll see if I can work out what is going on. I wondered why we didn’t have any comments - even if it was just spam.
Excuse our technical incompetence. I’ll see if I can fix this.
Comment by Toby — Fri, Jun 30th, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
Have had a look at the settings and fiddled about with them - give it a go now and see if you can leave a comment. I’m really upset if people have been trying to comment but haven’t been able to - we just figured we were boring and no one was reading the blog! Bums, bums, bums.
Comment by Toby — Fri, Jun 30th, 2006 @ 12:40 pm
Comments now seem to be working on my blog now. Thanks for pointing out the problem chaps.
Comment by Toby — Sat, Jul 1st, 2006 @ 12:03 pm
#5 You’re never been out of the house have you?
Now these days when theres a random crowd in a pub. We’re all speaking English with usually a Babylon of accents (Dutchies, Germans, Turks and Greeks) along with major Anglophones so some Finnish girls come up with certain “interest”…
chatting up: pull 100%
Q: “Where are you from?”
A: “Vantaa”
Q: “No, like where were you born?”
A: “Naistenklinikka”
Q: “Ai, sä oot joku suomalainen vai…” [*]
…and *pluf* even it isn’t midnight and the Ferrari just turned into a Lada and the glass slipper into a grey Ecco - the only resort still is to get another beer to drink the ugly ones beautiful, as Finn = no profit.
[*]for the linguistically challenged = “Oh, so you’re a Finn then…”
So I really don’t know what to do. Now the question is where do all the foreign girls go hide themselves? Any pub/club one goes to theres only foreign “exotic” guys. I seriously think all nations South of the Alps propagate by cloning. Never seen a woman from those parts… OK, one or two, but by the probability there is something about Miriam in them surely. (Or a bigger & uglier Finnish boyfriend). Maybe I should dye my hair black and get a sprayed tan and say I am Joseph-Maria Müller from Patagonia…
Comment by Hank W. — Tue, Jul 4th, 2006 @ 1:29 pm
Hank, what do you mean by “foreign” girls? Are you saying that women from Eastern Europe aren’t foreign enough or that it’s too difficult for you to distinguish them from Finns?
“South of the Alps” was an interesting quip, though. There is this myth that women prefer men who are darker than themselves and men prefer women who are lighter than themselves (a similar stereotype to those stating the woman should be shorter, younger and earn less). If that would be true, French women would most likely head south and French men north in search of a foreign partner.
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Jul 4th, 2006 @ 6:07 pm
Well if I wanted a lighter woman than me, I’d need to be standing in front of the Albino Society.
Comment by Hank W. — Tue, Jul 4th, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
#15: I do get out of the house. I guess it must be the places I go to. I mostly hang out at beer restaurants and student pubs where there’s also a myriad of accents and nationalities that no one cares. Those places are homes to much weirder characters, and a foreign passport just won’t cut it if you want to stand out.
Some foreign guys act as if though their foreignness is something special, but they usually receive very little feedback. Or they go home with the drunken jail-bait who thinks that espresso is an exotic drink.
Comment by Anzi — Wed, Jul 5th, 2006 @ 5:30 pm
Hank W:
What’s with this Finnish honesty? (tee hee). Just pretend that you’re English or Scottish or Irish or whatever. It’s not like the girls who spread their legs at the sight of a(n imagined) foreign passport can discern between accents. Just remember to tell them “Hyvvee huomenta!” the next morning.
Comment by Anonymous — Wed, Jul 5th, 2006 @ 8:47 pm
Anonyomous.. where are these girls (of legal age) you speak about….?
(fx: practices English accent…. ey ey ey! )
Comment by V2 — Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 @ 11:19 am
Anonyomous.. where are these girls (of legal age) you speak about….?
Well, if you’re going for the barely legal category, you always have the unholy trinity of Arkku (or Ctrl-Alt-Del or whatever the hell it’s called now), KY (ditto) and Ale Pub. Yuppie places like Teatteri might work for you, as would the recently reopened Stockholm. Any of Sedu’s places is probably not a bad bet.
Sorry for the Helsinki-centredness. (You’ll have to do with Sedu if you’re not from Helsinki)
Comment by Anonymous — Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 @ 11:57 am
Anzi:
Some foreign guys act as if though their foreignness is something special, but they usually receive very little feedback. Or they go home with the drunken jail-bait who thinks that espresso is an exotic drink.
Well, that’d be about 80% of the Finnish population, then. Being from downtown Helsinki, probably having gone to posh schools, probably having had furriner friends from an early age etc. etc. you might be a little out of touch with the deep ranks of the people.
Comment by Anonymous — Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
All I can say from last night is that Irish *is* a maddeningly beautiful language. Even theres three girls, who all have as the content of the message in this unintelligible but beautiful language as “piss off”…
Comment by Hank W. — Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 @ 12:24 pm
I usually try to make it a point not to answer people who are such pussies that they have to comment anonymously, but I would just like to say this:
My in-laws are from Pori, and are about as posh as an Opel Astra. They’re also just about the greatest people I know. So what’s your point?
Sorry to be the buzz-kill in your little high-horsed proletariat fest.
Comment by Anzi — Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 @ 1:18 pm
My in-laws are from Pori, and are about as posh as an Opel Astra. They’re also just about the greatest people I know. So what’s your point?
My point was that even if you fail to see the passport-derived attractiveness in a foreign male, it doesn’t mean that many other Finnish girls wouldn’t. Hence, this is not a myth.
My in-laws are from a town of 4000 and are truly great people. I suppose they’re from a bit more bourgeois line than my own parents, who are strictly from a working class background. Neither have ever owned a new car, Astra or otherwise. What’s yours?
Sorry to be the buzz-kill in your little high-horsed proletariat fest.
¿Que? I didn’t quite intend to invite such hostility. Was it the posh school bit?
Comment by Anonymous — Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 @ 4:24 pm
I don’t have a car. I have a bicycle.
Comment by Anzi — Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 @ 5:02 pm
Hi! I’m Indian and so a foreigner in Finland. I found that if one speaks a bit of the local language, it is definitely a plus with the Finnish girls. And ofcourse they all want to practise their englisha.
But hey where is a good place to meet some hot finnish chicks in Tampere?
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