Sporty Finns, part 1

Part of Finnish life is doing sports. At any time of the day on the streets, fitness paths you can see people jogging, roller-blading, Nordic-walking. On the lakes people are kayaking or rowing. In the winter time you can see young boys playing ice-hokey on ice rinks located on the school yards. Ice-hockey is one of the most popular sports in Finland, so if you want to blend into Finnish society successfully knowledge about ice-hockey teams and matches will definitely help. Cross-country skiing is also very popular. There are naturally loads of other sport related activities that Finns involve in. Doing sports is facilitated by the surroundings (forest, bicycling paths, numerous sport centres, swimming pools etc.) as well as initiatives - sport events organised throughout the whole year. And once there it is difficult not to hear about any of them. It is surely easier not to sign up, but you get a feeling of being a weirdo by skipping participation.

One of those sport events is "Ladies' day". Initiative to promote healthy lifestyle and get together. The meaning of this event is to walk or run 5 or 10km and at the same time have fun. This year the event took place 15th of May. Organisation as usually in Finland was perfect. First registration, some time to hang around, then warm up lead by ladies from a fitness centre:Famous Finnish ski-jumping coach Mika Kojankoski gave a short speech about being active:... and when all of the ladies were ready on the start line he gave a signal to start:









I have to admit I was surprised by the number of all participants. The event had also fun part which was competition for most entertaining costume:
















Participants wearing the funniest costumes were awarded a prize: sticks for Nordic walk. I was in one of the lucky winners and even if I have never considered Nordic walk very appealing type of sport I have tried it and it is really nice way to relax. After reaching the finish line each participant received a little gift for accomplishing the distance:

After run/walk stretching was guided again by the ladies from the fitness centre and we could head for "after party" :)

The "Ladies' day" is only one of numerable sport events organised in Kuopio region. They are great opportunity to get together. Finns are usually so busy with work that they often don't have time to meet and socialise. That is why this sports events are often a great opportunity to take care of human social needs and contribute to overall well being of the society.

Pics by courtesy of Piotr Rutkowski.

From a customer's point of view

When visiting Finland and meeting some Finns one gets impression that Finns don't smile much. Or are very serious most of the time. Or are very sad. Or depressed. OK, that is not the point. They do smile. Really. And laugh. And have a good sense of humour.

The point is that they smile also when you are in a customer role. And it is not only when you are shopping - then most of the sales clerks are smiling. Also when you are a customer of public services like Kela (social security institution), or Maistraatti (local register offices) the offices' personnel is kind and helpful in majority of cases. This is something I am not used to and still comes as a surprise. It depends much on the person but general impression I get is so that I am really a client - not somebody who interrupts and unnecessarily bothers officials and has nothing better to do. Also the queueing system is organised so that even during rush hours waiting time is bearable (approximately half an hour). Of course there is always room for improvement but I am far from complaining.

And how about shopping? Being a client in a free market economy?

I have also been positively surprised. There is one case I remember particularly well. I bought a tennis racket. After the first minutes of playing I found out that it wasn't really good for me. Went back to that store, asked if it could be exchanged and no problem at all, even if all of the tags have been removed. Cool - I want to come back to that store and buy more! Because the personnel was friendly, and helpful I was very satisfied.

Another case - when buying running shoes I got extra socks. Unexpected little gift. Ok, laugh that it is only socks but check this out: graph. So I am in the group age where socks are desired. Especially the comfy ones.

Nowadays companies not only struggle to satisfy customers - it is quite normal that we are OK with our purchase decisions. The point is to delight the customer so that he recommends given manufacturer/store/brand to his/her friends. We trust more in friend's recommendation than in company's products descriptions. And recommendation is much more powerful than a sales representative. And I am OK with that - if I can get a good deal and great after sale services I am absolutely happy to recommend further.

So far I have had a couple of cases of good purchase deals and after-sale services. Smiling and professional staff makes dark autumn and winter days a bit better. And I also want to smile and be friendly and make my little world a bit better to live in. Because smile and friendliness does not cost a cent.

Juhannus day 2

During Juhannus we were supposed to get to some point to do something. I was not informed what would that be. It did not work the first day, but had to be done, preferably the next day. So it turned out that almost no walking was needed to reach the destination as it is possible to get there by car... The place itself was amazing. Two separate places for campers with a fire grate, wood chopped, ready to be used, a kettle to boil water - a camper does not need more than that.
But the most amazing thing about that place was this:It is not visible on this picture but the water was almost crystal clean - there is a spring somewhere on the bottom of this pond.

But it is not the beauty of this place that made guys lead our Juhannus group there. It was rather about its possibilities :>
Let's consider: high on one side, low on the second side and strong trees around... The result of this equation is obvious:

So we did some rope sliding. One could assume that the point is to go above the water and land safe and dry next to where the rope ends. It turned out that one does not have to do it in such a standard, boring way, so this is how we did it: