Simon & Gabfunkel Time

The Hon. Simon Longworth will be writing a blog today, for some direct insight and hardhitting analysis while I finish my shitty essay.

Hello, my name is Simon. Today, I will be writing a guest blog. Whilst the official title of the blog is 'Simon and Gabfunkel Time', I believe that a more appropriate name is 'boy from hot place goes to cold place, makes snowball, gets cold nose, enjoys greatly'. I will be documenting the adventures I have been on with lovely Gab over the last few days in Rovaniemi.

I'm sure all of you readers of this blog are interested in the quality of the Gab and Simon reunion at the airport! The terminal was too small for an overly theatrical performance, but rest assured it was still reported in the local news media as the feel good story after the weather!

Since I've never written a blog before, I will follow the formula  of a nice picture and then some words. The first day of my adventure was rather noneventful. It was cold and icy and I was beyond tired and there was no snow. I ate Brie on bread and went to bed. Then it snowed! I've never seen snow come out of the sky before, so Gab and I went trotting in it around town! We did cheesy things, such as writing in it and stomping on puddles.

The following week has been a mix of staying inside looking out the window at the snow and watching squirrels play in the trees, and excellent walking adventures into the city over frightening old creaky bridges or to the top of cute lookout towers out of town and in the forest.

I'd particularly like to focus on the lookout tower! I'd discussed it with Gab, and she had been there before when the view was incredible, so we walked a couple of kilometres on some frisbee-golf paths and along a rocky track to the tower. Once at the top, we were greeted with this amazing panorama of Rovaniemi and it's surrounds:

Disclaimer: it was very foggy and in no way Gab's fault that we could not see anything  (the previous was typed under fear of death)

Something else that definitely deserves mention is the quality of the drinking establishments I have been to. I can forgive them for not opening until 3, not serving food, not filling my pint all the way to the top, playing bizarre Finnish covers of 'I shot the sheriff', and serving Fosters, because one of them has a giant fish and fake fireplace and wonderful chairs for sitting on:

And this sticker in the men's bathroom (which you need to navigate a spiral staircase to get to [perfect for drunk people!]):

Also, everybody here rides bikes in the snow.

A prime example of a 'bike'

None of the bikes are particularly designed for the snow or ice, and I think there must be a lot of falling going on around here. I also experienced my first freezing cold day here! I decided to go for a walk when it was -14, and found this bear:

 
I should also mention exactly how pretty all this snow is! It turns regular weeds into snow flowers:

 
Normal trees into Christmas trees:
 

Normal lakes and rivers into amazing frozen bodies of water:
 

This is the river.

It looks like the river is fighting with the shore - there was smashed ice everywhere!

And substations into frightening soviet-era spy installations!

 
As for food, I've eaten reindeer bagels, giant pizza, crap Chinese, eggnog, deeeelicious Austrian rummy fruit punch, waffles, and fun little round Finnish potato breads!

This pizza-based ecosystem was quite difficult to conquer

 
I also took the opportunity to learn a little about Laplandic (?) [editor's note: Lappish] culture by visiting Arktikum. It was scarily refreshing to go somewhere that was basically saying 'humans are buggering the environment and the climate. The glaciers are stuffed, the toxins in the soil are ruining our waterways, and we desperately need to manage this. Climate change is real.'

There was also an exhibit on Rovaniemi during the second world war. It sounds to me like Finland was in a very nasty position in the middle of a Nazi/Stalinist sandwich, resulting in Rovaniemi being levelled by the Nazis when they left Finland.



I must also mention the Saami exhibit. Arktikum had the most fantastic array of artifacts, and many of them were the cutest little clothings I have ever seen! I don't know how they wore them without freezing to death, but I'm sure some added dead bears draped around them would have made all the difference!

The Finnish also make some freakin' incredible knives. We went to the Martiini factory outlet, and I decided to spend heaps of money on some rather fancy kitchen knives when I get to Helsinki. Finally, I feel the need to talk about something more serious i.e. Christmas decorations. We decorated Gab's cute little house! I don't have any pictures yet, but here is a picture of me being decorated instead!

I must thank Gab for the opportunity to write this blog. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed lying in bed putting off writing it!

The en

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co-authoring conspirators!