When Scandinavians like something, they stick with it. Identical buildings along an entire street or cliff top? Build a few more of those, thanks! Blonde hotties with perfect figures and perma-tans that would make Michael Jackson turn in his grave? By the barfull. Understandable perhaps in a people whose climate practically demands that similar genes like blonde hair and blue eyes will thrive, Scandinavians nevertheless do love uniformity, to the extent that all those blonde hotties get around with the same colour jackets and city planners paint all those identical buildings exactly the same colour, which makes it awkward to stumble around after a few drinks trying to find the right entrance (to the identical buildings, not the blonde hotties. Although I guess either mistake is more understandable after a few drinks).
Scandinavians are also incredibly friendly, usually resulting from an understandable amazement that anyone is visiting this part of the world at all, and a shameless curiosity about anyone who would do so. After spending a ridiculous amount of money simply to get up to the North Cape in Norway, the most northerly point in Europe, and then being left with spending a similarly ridiculous amount to get down the other side back to anything remotely resembling civilisation, I found myself in the pleasant but very remote town of Karasjok, in far northern Norway about 10km from the Finnish border, with the only bus south for the day already hours gone & darkness quickly approaching. I found a bed at a local camp ground and, with literally nothing else to do for the night, walked into town to find the local bar. I had just entered the bar's carpark when a car full of young locals got out and walked toward the entrance as well, reaching the door at the same time as me. One of the guys immediately looked at me and, with sharp powers of observation aided by the fact that I was neither blond nor related to him, reached the conclusion that I was not a local and asked me where I was from. His amazement at the answer "Australia" was matched only by his insistence that I come sit with them, and that they buy me beer all night and invite me to a house party later that evening ("That one, that one and that one I've slept with, that one's my cousin but you could have her I guess - which one do you want?". Evidently the chance for an addition to the gene pool outside one's immediate family is the prime consideration for nookie in this part of the world). Things however turned more interesting with the arrival of one guy's uncle. Uncle was just on his way to Thailand the next day, and had turned up for a quick dozen stiff drinks with his nephew before heading off. Uncle spoke very little English but has was friendly enough and in any event I'm not sure he would have had sufficient teeth to form some of the trickier sounds. He did, however, as with most non-native English speakers, understand more than he could speak. During the sort of polite conversation only possible with someone's drunk, non-English speaking uncle at the home of people you have known for exactly one hour, I made the mildly humorous observation that he should watch the girls in Thailand and make sure they were actually girls, for which I was rewarded with the reply "I don't care!!". Clearly, dark hair and skin outweighed minor issues such as gender in establishing another important consideration for choosing a mate in Karasjok and it was good to see the elders in this part of the world passing on to the kids these important tips for the propagation of their people.
The Finns, however, easily take the prize for idiosyncratic behaviour in Scandinavia (technically, Scandinavia includes Denmark, Norway and Sweden due to shared heritage and language root, but not Finland. But who the hell knows that?). I caught the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia, which left at 8am. By 7.30 the boat was full with Finns who had already descended on the bar and proceeded to drink themselves stupid during the 3 hour ride. The boat actually had a full ballroom dancing band going on, with the floor full of twirling Finns double-fisting drinks in each hand and sometimes with another couple back at the table, something I haven't seen at 8am on a Monday morning for some time. Even more praiseworthy was the knowledge that all these Finns were simply making the journey to stock up on cheap alcohol in Estonia, and then turn around & come straight back with entire supermarket trolleys overflowing with hard liquor in a few hours time.
Scandinavians are also incredibly friendly, usually resulting from an understandable amazement that anyone is visiting this part of the world at all, and a shameless curiosity about anyone who would do so. After spending a ridiculous amount of money simply to get up to the North Cape in Norway, the most northerly point in Europe, and then being left with spending a similarly ridiculous amount to get down the other side back to anything remotely resembling civilisation, I found myself in the pleasant but very remote town of Karasjok, in far northern Norway about 10km from the Finnish border, with the only bus south for the day already hours gone & darkness quickly approaching. I found a bed at a local camp ground and, with literally nothing else to do for the night, walked into town to find the local bar. I had just entered the bar's carpark when a car full of young locals got out and walked toward the entrance as well, reaching the door at the same time as me. One of the guys immediately looked at me and, with sharp powers of observation aided by the fact that I was neither blond nor related to him, reached the conclusion that I was not a local and asked me where I was from. His amazement at the answer "Australia" was matched only by his insistence that I come sit with them, and that they buy me beer all night and invite me to a house party later that evening ("That one, that one and that one I've slept with, that one's my cousin but you could have her I guess - which one do you want?". Evidently the chance for an addition to the gene pool outside one's immediate family is the prime consideration for nookie in this part of the world). Things however turned more interesting with the arrival of one guy's uncle. Uncle was just on his way to Thailand the next day, and had turned up for a quick dozen stiff drinks with his nephew before heading off. Uncle spoke very little English but has was friendly enough and in any event I'm not sure he would have had sufficient teeth to form some of the trickier sounds. He did, however, as with most non-native English speakers, understand more than he could speak. During the sort of polite conversation only possible with someone's drunk, non-English speaking uncle at the home of people you have known for exactly one hour, I made the mildly humorous observation that he should watch the girls in Thailand and make sure they were actually girls, for which I was rewarded with the reply "I don't care!!". Clearly, dark hair and skin outweighed minor issues such as gender in establishing another important consideration for choosing a mate in Karasjok and it was good to see the elders in this part of the world passing on to the kids these important tips for the propagation of their people.
The Finns, however, easily take the prize for idiosyncratic behaviour in Scandinavia (technically, Scandinavia includes Denmark, Norway and Sweden due to shared heritage and language root, but not Finland. But who the hell knows that?). I caught the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia, which left at 8am. By 7.30 the boat was full with Finns who had already descended on the bar and proceeded to drink themselves stupid during the 3 hour ride. The boat actually had a full ballroom dancing band going on, with the floor full of twirling Finns double-fisting drinks in each hand and sometimes with another couple back at the table, something I haven't seen at 8am on a Monday morning for some time. Even more praiseworthy was the knowledge that all these Finns were simply making the journey to stock up on cheap alcohol in Estonia, and then turn around & come straight back with entire supermarket trolleys overflowing with hard liquor in a few hours time.
These ALITS updates have now got to the point where I have been asked more than once whether the events described within are in fact 100% true. I can assure you that I would not be witty nor clever enough to make up some of the stuff that has happened, as will be demonstrated with this final story. Due to the distances involved, it was actually quicker and cheaper to fly to Nordkapp, the most northerly point in continental Europe (even though Nordkapp is actually on an island and therefore not actually attached to the mainland, there is now a bridge and so it qualifies. Presumably if they build a bridge to Greenland it would then become the most northerly point in "Europe". I digress). And so I found myself on Scandinavian airlines winging my way to Alta to get a bus the final way. Being a morning flight, they served breakfast, and so it was about half an hour into the flight I was presented with the airline version of breakfast, including a tub of yoghurt. Attempting to shake the yoghurt before opening, the lower pressure at altitude had left the tub expanded dangerously close to bursting point, and as I shook the foil top gave way and proceeded to coat the area with a thick layer of yoghurt, including, horrifyingly, the attractive girl in the seat next to me. Those small tubs can contain quite a lot when it is distributed over a person, and she was pretty much instantly left looking like the final scene in a particularly enthusiastic adult movie. Worse, the yoghurt arrived with such force & quantity that the girl, who had fallen asleep virtually as soon as we took off & managed to sleep through to this point, woke with a start to find herself covered in a suspicious substance & the guy in the next seat looking at her with a guilty expression.
Nothing in my life had ever prepared me to deal with such a situation. The thing had exploded after only one shake - a situation not repeated even in my earliest teenage years - and I had not even had time to react myself before the girl woke up. For the next several minutes we tried to laugh and talk about the humour of the situation, but all the time it was obvious we were avoiding the large elephant sitting in the corner of the plane, which was that it looked for all the world that I had been sitting next to her watching her sleep and become so overcome with lust that I had just taken matters into my own hands and delivered a mile-high money shot before I could help myself. I can only be thankful that it merely landed on her clothes and nothing made contact with any part of her actual body: hands, face etc, although at least I was considerate enough to have made it strawberry rather than, say, asparagus. And it was only when this forced conversation petered out and I returned thankfully to the solitude of my iPod that I realised the song that had been playing as I made my mess: Heat Of The Moment, by Asia. And with one more female safely turned off for life, it's time once again to quote the great Jerry Springer and remind you - 'Til next time: take care of yourselves.....and each other.
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