European Van Trip 2022

1. Dawn, a statue to represent Finland. Unlike the other grand, detailed statues in important places this statue was designed and placed a little differently. She is dressed simply, and modestly, and placed on a back street on a simple corner, to represent the humble and modest nature of the Finnish people, her hands are up to the sun, representing the shock of sunshine in summer shielding her eyes and simultaneously worshipping the sun in winter, during the months many fins become depressed as they live in so much darkness and cold, they idea is they are always waiting for the next season and never content with the one they are in. The statue is also places in a spot with grass and trees around to show the strong cultural desire to stay close to nature. The dream Fin holiday is a powerless cabin with no neighbours where you wouldn't bump into another soul and would need to hunt, fish and collect berries and mushrooms, playing games by candle light etc. This want of privacy and personal space is another reason the statue is fairly hidden away from the busy areas of Helsinki.

2. Lennon woke up and so I missed all the explanation of the mouse, but something to do with taxes and the day everyones records are put up on line for a week, literally translates to 'see how much your neighbour has' week 😂 to ensure trust in mps, powerful people etc, and to encourage a sense of equality as you see those that earn a lot pay a lot, and it makes people 'happy to pay their taxes' apparently as they have full trust in their government and how their money is spent (😂 sounds hilarious to us brits but she was totally serious)

The very last photo of the wheel, notice one pod is a different colour... It's (of course) a Sauna 🤣 you can't go anywhere without saunas in Finland

One more fact... Finnish is known to be an incredibly hard language to learn, it is part of an unusual language group, linked only to Hungarian and Estonian. For this reason its very different to other Nordic language. Our guide explained it is in fact even worse. Even Fins don't read or write much in Finnish, in fact region to region the language varies so much not everyone understands each other, and written Finnish is basically not used, because it never existed, it was always spoken only, until they were finally granted freedom of religion, and so the Bible was then translated into Finnish to be printed... Because written Finnish did not exist, the man who was writing the translation had to completely make it up, every single word 🤣 so unlike other languages that have evolved over hundreds of years, written Finnish was one man, over the course of 2 years. Many words didn't exist in Finnish that he had to translate such as Lion, and plenty of other things that didn't exist in Finland... So he of course had to just invent those words, meaning many words are very similar as he probably ran out of ideas. The whole written language hasn't changed since so if you read it out loud it would be to a fin as reading Shakespeare would be to a modern brit 😂Läs mer