Christmas in Finland

This year, me and Mathilde were unfortunately spending Christmas apart, as I was heading over to Finland, while Mathilde was spending it with her dad and Francoise in Angers. After a not-very eventful flight, I arrived safely in Helsinki.

Celebrations kicked off a bit prematurely with my mum's birthday, which is on the 23rd of December. It was a nice and intimate affair, with Janne & Katja joining me, mum and dad for a nice dinner and just chilling out. A great occasion to catch up with everybody...

We started Christmas eve with a nice dinner at my parents place (Janne & Katja joined us again) - all the traditional Finnish specialities were on the table, with the foie gras I'd brought along from France adding a bit of a French touch to the proceedings. Our stomachs filled, we headed off to my other brother Tomi's place in Espoo for the distribution of pressies! (not before eating a bit more, of course!). It was a great occasion to meet Theo & Jimi (Nanna's and Jesse's young sons) as well. As for the pressies ? Well, let's just say I'll be pretty busy reading over the next few weeks - which is just fine by me ;-)

We finished off a great Christmas eve playing board games back at mum and dad's place! (Ticket to Ride: European edition as well as the latest version of Trivial Pursuit). I really liked Ticket to Ride, but wasn't too impressed with the latest respin of Trivial Pursuit (if you ask me, they should've just stuck to the original rules...). As tradition has it, we went to bed at something like 4 in the morning....

On Thursday, I made my way out to

Sundsberg, Kirkkonummi, for a sauna session at Aki's place. And of course I got to meet Aki's and Maija's young son Eetu as well! To finish off a great sauna session, Aki poured us each a nice glass of 21-year old Balvenie - now that's what I call class! From Sundsberg, I then jumped on the train and headed over to Kauniainen, to catch up with my good mates Jani and Jocke. After drinking a couple of cold ones at Jocke's place, we jumped on the train and headed off to Helsinki town centre to finish off the night - in Molly Malone's where else? (Jonas joined us over there). Good intensive day of catching up!

On Friday, it was board game time again, this time at Katja and Janne's place (our cousin Rasmus joined us as well). And quite a marathon it turned out to be - about 12 hours of non-stop board gaming (well, we did interrupt the session to eat some fajitas). We went through quite a few classics: Twilight Struggle, Puerto Rico, 7 Wonders, Dominion and Caylus. Quite a nice little nerdy session, I have to say, brought back nice memories from my days of long-gone youth... ;-)



Saturday was my last day in Finland, sadly. Well, not sadly, I was rather looking forward to be reunited with Mathilde! :-) Anyways, for the last night in Helsinki, my cousin Maikki had organized tickets for a pretty cool event, "Vain Elämää" (only life). Vain Elämää was a reality show that united a bunch of famous Finnish musicians - and this concert reunited them, basically. it's a 2 hour show where they basically sing each others songs. For me, it was a pretty cool nostalgia trip (since Ilkka Alanko and Pauli Hanhiniemi were amongst the artists - rather legendary figures of my youth), and also exposed me to the some of the more contemporary stars. But most importantly, the event was kind of a meetup between cousins from my dad's side of the famliy - Mikko, Maikki, Eeva, Jukkis were all there as well as Janne (with partners) - and Maikki had even organised a nice VIP booth for us with a buffet dinner and drinks. Fantastic job, Maikki! We finished off a superb night out in Zetor (where else?).

Just a few hours after hitting the bed, it was time for me to catch my Paris-bound flight (with a stopover in Riga)! It had been a very nice week indeed - thanks for mum and dad for putting me up, and great to see everybody!