Friday night I was watching a film, in peace and quiet, minding my own business, when suddenly I heard a huge roar from downstairs. Nothing to worry about, this has been happening ever so often during the last few weeks: there were the Ice Hockey World Championships going on and my dear neighbours love watching the games and drinking beer. The first roar was accompanied by a few others, which could only mean one thing : Finland was going to be in the final against our beloved enemy, Sweden. Yay!
I usually don’t watch hockey, but World Cup final is an exception. The last time we won was 16 years ago - I was only seven years old but I still remember how big a thing it was, people singing and shouting and crying in the usually so quiet streets of Tampere. So this time I thought it would be fun to go and watch the game somewhere public. We went to a bar with a bunch of friends. It was really crowded and the ambiance was grrrrrreat. The first two periods Sweden was completely controlling the game, I could hardly watch it and I sensed everyone around me being very tense. Then in the end of the second period the Finnish team got their first goal and in the third period they just kept shooting, goal after goal after goal, and everybody in the bar was on their feet shouting and applauding. It felt so surreal…
Of course there was a party afterwards. There was a huge crowd on the market place, people were hugging each other and singing and just shouting random things at strangers, cars drove around the city centre honking their horns and of course a few guys felt obligated to make a tour of the market place with nothing on except for socks and shoes (some sense of self-protection there, there were broken beer bottles everywhere, I even got a good deal of some Karjala in my shoe). My throat was all sore for all the shouting and singing when we finally got home at 2:30am with my room-mate.
I know many people think it’s stupid to go all crazy about a match of hockey and to some extent I agree. There has been some fights in Lapland on the border of Finland and Sweden because the Finnish people went to the Swedish side to party and I find that all this drunken bluster about beating the crap out of them is just sad and embarrasing. Of course it feels good to win but why go rub it on their faces? They already feel bad enough…
But apart from all this, it was good to have some fun and to see such a spontaneous joy on the faces of people. We only win the World Cup so often, so why not make the most out of it? 90 % of the time it’s dark and cold in this country and everything is pretty much dead, so I really don’t get people being all annoyed for one night (well, okay, maybe even two or three) of noise and mess in the streets. Peace and love, everyone <3
Well anyway, this is pretty much why I haven’t even started packing my stuff yet. I’m moving out next week and before that everything needs to be in boxes… Plus, I need to take care of some bureaucracie which is driving me crazy! Maybe a bit more about that tomorrow, now I’m dead tired.
I know, I know, my flag is a bit small (it was actually inspired by one of those tooth pick Swedish flags you get with your köttbullar in Ikea)… But it’s not about the size of the flag, it’s about how you use it!
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