Here we go again.....

Tomorrow morning brings yet another change in location as our group will make a return trip to the big city of Tampere south of our current post. It looks like we´re going to be shacking up for the remainder of our time in a hotel in downtown city center. I have no doubt that it´s going to be a great closing week to what has been a life changing trip.

Some thoughts.....

During my time here I have had an opportunity to experience first hand a sterotypically closed and conservative culture in a very intimate manner. For four weeks (and soon to be 5) I have eaten like a Finn, drank like a Finn, saunaed like a Finn, played badminton like an American (but with Finns on my team), hiked like a Finn, and took to the forest like a Finn. The whole time the social barriers and conservative stereotype that western Europe has bestowed upon them; broke down at first introduction. Invited into people´s homes, shared meals in their children´s schools, saunaed with their friends, and toasted hockey victories in true Suomi fashion during the world championships that have been playing out during our visit. The only disappointment that I have about the Finns is that they didn´t do a good enough job reproducing. The whole country has roughly 2 times the amount of people as the Front Range. I think the world could use a couple million more.


The Finnish social economy is foreign to the American capitalistic way of thinking. Despite being a card carrying democrat supporting the ideaology that ´thou shall help thy brother out, for thou don´t knoweth when thou ends up in that situation´ I´m not sure that I had a clear understanding of what an economy looked like that truly built and inacted policy to support the pedagogy. Some things are better, some things are worse. It´s an apples to oranges comparison that´s too complicated to argue about. The Finnish private doctor that pays income taxes of 65% probably wishes the system had fewer social programs his income had to support. At the same time, if you ask him about it, it was the subsidized tuition free education that same social system provided for him to obtain the tools and knowledge to have the privlige of earning an income that pushed him into those higher brackets. He also sleeps pretty well at night (most likely in a modestly sized three bedroom house in the suburbs) not having to worry about how his two children will pay for college, or where his retirement money will come from, or if he can afford health care when he´s 85. When you think of the current consumption the doctor foregoes in the context of the big life picture, perhaps it´s not such a rub.


War to Finland is very real. It´s not something that they learned about while reading in a histroy book, it´s not some light show they sat and ate dinner in front of while Peter Jennings narrated, and it´s certainly not a power point presentation from the pentagon outlining a faceless nameless attack on terror. Instead, it´s something that landed in their back yards, that burned their churches, that killed their grandfathers, and all but cost them their sovereignty. Perhaps it those dark days that guides their foreign policy at present. Perhaps it´s their population of just over 5mm people that prevents them from taking global chances for fear they may end up in the wrong ´neighborhood´ for too long at too much a cost...whatever it is, it seems to be agreed upon that military force is a last resort, and not simply a political game of leap frogging from country to country in hopes of restoring justice by declaring marshall law. Isn´t that same cautious attitude what we ask our commander and chief to pledge to as well?


The saying goes (as we´ve heard many times) that ´few Finns have too much, but even fewer Finns have too little´. It seems as though every part of the Finnish system has been designed to hinder the class seperation that so many developed countries face. If there is a more homogeneous population mass on the planet please show it to me. This equality creates an interesting social dynamic. The Finns don´t brag about what they have, and they don´t audibly yearn for what they don´t since everyone has the same.


The ´Finnish dream´ is still alive and well. Every Finn wants a house (with a sauna) near a lake, a steady means of making money and supporting themselves, 4-5 weeks of paid vacation a year, and a small (often without running water or electricity) cottage that they can go to in the summer to ´get away from it all´ and spend time with their 1.73 children. This dream is achiveable for Finns. A modest job, a couple lucky breaks perhaps, and the dream can be theirs. It´s clear, concise, and obtainable. Now, go ahead and define the present day version of the American dream. Is it enough to obtain a modest house with a medium sized yard, a small (god forbid) fuel efficient car, 2.1 children, and a riding lawn mower? Probably not. What would the neighbors think?


Finns will never be as blonde, beautiful and boisterous as their neighbors to the west, and they´ll never be as cold, crooked nosed, and corrupt as their comrades to the east. This slots them into some sort of purgatory where their president more resembles Conan O´Brien than an international leader. It could be something in the water I suppose.