Through the lands in the end of the world

The journey begins in Finland, right on the top north. All of us have heard about the lands in the end of the world, for most of us, the home of St. Claus (in Laponia) and for some others, less informed, a city where penguins are walking in the streets. Well, I’ve only saw business man looking like penguins in my best but can’t say I was looking for them often. Right after departing from Amsterdam, where the sun wasn’t that much already, the sky gains a red fired color called sunset, almost strange to my southern European perspective, to fall quickly into the dark night, just before four o’clock in the afternoon, closing the sky even to the shinning of the stars. While there was still some light, from the plane window you can see all those lakes and wonder where actually there’s land. As someone was telling me, Scandinavia has thousands and thousands of them, you just need to define how big can they already be classified like that.

As the reader probably has read, Finland lands were too long occupied by Russians until, in the end of the WW II they got their independency. Although, many Russians still live in the country and the political relations between both countries are somehow stable, the social situation is not so calm. The old fin sitting next to me in the plane, with whom I’ve been chatting in between my Russian language study times, told me gently as answer to my “Do you speak Russian?” question: “No, I hate Russians.” I know that not all the suomi fell the same way, especially within the young, although this answer didn’t surprise me at all. He also told me that Helsinki is not yet covered with snow, as I dreamt it would be, due to unnormal high temperatures. You rarely can see aurora borealis in the city and, for that, I would have to go some 10 hours by train further north, which is a bit out of my path. Maybe next time.