Christmas in Finland

inland is home of Santa Claus. He apparently lives in a city of Rauvaniemi in Lapland (the north part of Finland). To see a more real view of what santa is, take a look a the following video:

As I mentioned before I am very fortunate to have family in this country so far from my own. I was lucky enough to be able to spend Christmas and new year with family.

One of the things that keeps surprising me about the finns is the way they are very shy/humble about everything, nothing is extravagant or colorful or loud. It is very practical in a sense and I'm actually starting to like it. Nevertheless, it was impacting at first.

Welcome to Turku/Åbo

Turku, or Åbo (the name in swedish language, pronounced "obu"), is one of the bilingual cities of Finland. It is also the fourth largest with a population of 170,000 following Helsinki, Tampere and Espoo. (See more)

I arrived to Turku city on the 24th of August of 2008. Immediately I felt that the weird impression that I got before was beginning to change. The road to Turku was a beautiful countryside as you can see in this image:

My very first impression of Finland

My flight was on a Finnair airplane from Boston to Helsinki. This was a trip that would change my entire life in ways I could not even start to imagine. Somehow I had managed not to be nervous about this whole life changing situation, I had allowed myself to settle in this numb state that kept me safe from being scared.