Impressions of Finland

#1 - Doors open the other way. Most doors, it seems, open outwards. This is reasonable, since it mean that any stampede to the outside air need not worry about having to pull on any handles.

#2 - Finnish is a language that should only be attempted by stunt linguists. When a single word contains 'ä' 4 times, and is 18 letters long, and is the name of a shop, you have to be glad that the country is close to being panlingual. (The only other time I've seen that number of as umlaut was in Basel: "Bääääng!", but that was had written above a revolver in a shop window.

#3 - It's expensive. Last night, I paid more for a single meal than I have ever done before. It was very nice, though my attempt to read the label on the wine bottle fell over somewhat when, having battled from the Latin alphabet into the Cyrillic, I then discovered the large majority was actually in Georgian. I suspect nhw might have managed, and possibly chrysaphi, but I can only cope with three alphabets.

Impressions of Finland

#1 - Doors open the other way. Most doors, it seems, open outwards. This is reasonable, since it mean that any stampede to the outside air need not worry about having to pull on any handles.

#2 - Finnish is a language that should only be attempted by stunt linguists. When a single word contains 'ä' 4 times, and is 18 letters long, and is the name of a shop, you have to be glad that the country is close to being panlingual. (The only other time I've seen that number of as umlaut was in Basel: "Bääääng!", but that was had written above a revolver in a shop window.

#3 - It's expensive. Last night, I paid more for a single meal than I have ever done before. It was very nice, though my attempt to read the label on the wine bottle fell over somewhat when, having battled from the Latin alphabet into the Cyrillic, I then discovered the large majority was actually in Georgian. I suspect nhw might have managed, and possibly chrysaphi, but I can only cope with three alphabets.