As is usual when you travel, you discover things that are very different from home, and things that are similar, and things that are almost the same.

In some ways, Finland seemed very similar to here - the people are friendly, but a little bit reserved as well, and they do like their privacy. You pay with Euros, and a lot of things in the touristy places are written in English as well as in Finnish and Swedish, so it's not hard to find one's way around.

Some things really prodded at our weird-receptors, though. Bakeries and hairdressers were one big thing. When you walk through a town or city here in Franconia, you come across a bakery about every second step, or so it feels - well, at least there's a lot of them. Whereas when you need a hairdresser, yes, you will find a few - but they are spread rather far apart, and you might have to search for one for a bit.

In Helsinki, this was reversed. We found about one single bakery that was similar to what we would have here, and that was it - there were cafés selling baked goods, but nothing like what we are used to from home. On the other hand, every third shop seemed to be a hairdresser's, sometimes a wellness or beauty shop something, and quite often there was a shop for evening and bridal wear right beside it.

Speaking of bakeries and thus, implicitly, cake, prices for baked goods were a real shock to me. You can get a small piece of cake for about twice or three times the money that will buy you a large piece here. Yes, in a café. Which means I still grin when going to the bakery after coming back home, as it is so nice to get really affordable bread or cake!

Lunch buffets, though, are a thing in Finland, and they are quite good value for money; buffets actually all tended to be good value, especially compared to the prices for single dishes or single snacks bought in the same places. And just like our guidebook had warned us, it was not so easy to get traditional Finnish food in a restaurant. We also were curious about the non-touristy restaurant-y traditional food - so we did what people living there would do: shop in the supermarket and buy TV dinners.


That was a fish dish with potatoes and a dish from cabbage, rice and minced meat. I liked both of them a lot, and they were definitely Finnish (at least the package promised it).

We also went bouldering in Helsinki, and that was another thing with a good dose of weird, as the walls there were... smooth. Slick. Laquered wood. Which meant that instead of getting some resistance when placing your foot on the wall, you'd get... nothing, except a squeaking sound. That, plus the many kinds of holds we were not used to at all, plus them being rather small and bad, and lots of reachy moves made it very, very hard for me to get up the routes. I did manage a few, but wow, it does make me appreciate our home bouldering gym a lot more now!

[caption id="attachment_3321" align="alignnone" width="490"] Shiny walls at the bouldering gym in Helsinki. Note the light reflection on the right side of the wall!


 

If you watched the bouldering videos, you might have noticed that there are white spots on parts of the wall, and there is white stuff on some of the holds, and there's also white stuff on our hands. That is chalk - or, to be more precise, magnesium carbonate.

The reason for this? It keeps your hands dry, which is a very smart thing to do, as sweaty hands tend to slide off holds, and wet skin is also softer than dry skin, which can lead to more abrasion (those holds sometimes feel like someone has coated them with 80-grain sand paper). So most climbers and boulderers invest in a chalkbag quite quickly, to have their necessary dose of the white powder readily available.

Up until a few days ago, we had a shared chalkbag... which basically works nicely, there's enough of the stuff in there for several climbing sessions, even when chalking up quite a lot. However, over time, it has happened again and again that we ended up having  different projects at different ends of our gym - and there was only one chalkbag, which, for the party further away from the bag, either meant quickly de-whitening fingers or treks back to chalk up.

How practical, then, that we recently went to donate blood... where you get a) half a litre of your blood taken away, b) coffee that can wake up the dead (and is the only coffee that I actually take sugar in), c) a meal, and d) a little present. Depending on which companies and shops have donated stuff for d), the selection is very varied - we got nice water glasses there, and foldable baskets, and other quite useful stuff, but sometimes there's mostly or all things that we do not need.

Last time was one of these times... until I noticed, tucked in the back of a shelf somewhere, a medium-sized plushy rat.

Aaaaaah.

There must have been a very telling glint in my eye, as the most patient husband of them all got at once what I was thinking of. Chalkbag.

So that little cuddly rat went home with us, and then lost a good bit of its soft, squishy polywool filling... in the body, and in its left paw. There's a rubber band on its right paw now, holding a brush ready (this is used for cleaning holds, which gather both chalk and rubbed-off rubber from the climbing shoes). The left paw acquired a zipper and is now a little bag that can hold a key, some magnesium in case of cramps, and a bit of emergency coffee or chocolate money. There is also, not visible in the picture, a clothespeg just behind the rat's teeth at the underside of the snout, in case a pen or a piece of paper needs to be taken into safe custody.


Most important, though: the miraculous transformation of the main body, which is not very obvious in that picture. It does become more so when the press-button is opened:


revealing the drawstring keeping the chalk in, and the chalkbag itself. And once opened up, it looks like this:


A cheeky chalk rat. Which is one-of-a-kind and thus will also be easy to find again on the bouldering mat!

Since at least a few of you seem to have found the bouldering videos amusing, here's a second pair. We did these quite a while ago, and it took me ages to find the solution that worked for me, and then another couple of tries and the encouraging words from below to work up the courage to actually do the tiptoeing thing at the end.

So here's the normal-sized version:

Pretty straightforward, right? Well. This is mine.

As is often the case, it sort of felt much more spectacular than it looks on film. It also gave me very, very dirty legs and a good adrenaline spike. The lower bit - getting onto the large, flat-topped volume - was not so bad, it's mostly a bit of strength and even more of figuring out where to push and pull. There was a lot more wiggling and squirming the first time I tried it. The reason for the weird leg-first-move, by the way, is that I couldn't reach the edge of the upper grey volume well enough to get a grip on it and pull myself over like the most patient of all husbands did.

The upper bit is the adrenaline-high part, as I'm completely stretched out when I am reaching for that left piggy-head ear. If you look closely, you might be able to see what the actual sequence is: crawling the left hand up to the left ear, while lifting up on tiptoe - I can then reach it enough to hook the front bit of my fingers in there for just enough grip to switch from the handhold on the round thing on the right to the toehook - which gives me the bit more reach necessary to bump my left hand properly into the hold, and then it's possible to get the right hand up to the right ear.

Being just that bit too small to easily flow up the bouldering problems with the intended beta? Annoying. Figuring out the alternative ways and finally crushing the problem, with weird, funny and amusing moves? Priceless. Which partly reconciles me with the annoying part... as you might have guessed.