My coworkers a) aren't paying attention to my soft singing at the bench, b) have confirmed their suspicions that I am a strange American, or c) happen to know the song and that I didn't make it up myself. Not quite sure which is the correct answer yet, but in the meantime, I've begun to be more vigilant about singing whatever tune pops into my head.
No matter whose springtime it is, the Finns prepare for this season, too. The three major must-dos are washing windows, beating the carpets, and putting the boat in the water.
1) Windows. Deciding when to wash the windows is a big undertaking. One must decide the optimal time to enjoy all of that sun and to avoid washing them a second time. After the winter weather is gone, the city comes through and picks up all of the pea gravel it has laid down and then brushes the streets, kicking up a lot of dust. Unfortunately, it is unknown as to when the city will come down your street. This was the subject of several days' morning coffee a few weeks ago.
2) Carpets. All of the apartment buildings here have this metal structure in the courtyard. It is unusual-looking, and we tried to guess it's purpose. A bench? Something for bikes? Something for skis? Our list of guesses was pretty short. As time went on, my curiosity faded.
Then one night while sitting on our deck, we heard this sound that was reminiscent of a shotgun being fired, but repeated with a steady frequency. Upon inspection from the safety of our windowed-deck, we saw a woman using one of these stands, beating the dust out of a rug. Just toss your rug over the top bar and take out any agression you may have. There is a dedicated paddle for this purpose, which was apparently very common in the days before vacuum cleaners. Wall-to-wall carpeting in Finnish apartments and houses is very rare, and so people generally have several area rugs in their homes, explaining why every apartment building has one of these specialized stands.
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
3) Boats. Finland has 1250 km (780 miles) of coastline and within it nearly 190,000 lakes, thus boating is a very popular pastime. The Baltic Sea surrounds Finland and it is calm enough that it freezes solid in the winter, depending on the year, this happens in late December and lasts through March. In preparation, people remove their personal boats and store them in dry-dock for the winter. This year, as the winter wore on into April, I knew it couldn't last much longer when the ice near the shores thawed and a large crane arrived to begin hoisting the boats into the water.
Spring is here to stay, I am certain. Here are a few pictures of other sights I've seen:
