Flavor of the Week: Lingonberry
National pride: It was already Thursday by the time I realized the world’s most perfect flag was rippling up there above every Helsinki address. Am I crazy? Did I not notice them before? Turns out they have very strict rules for flying the Finnish flag: It can only be raised on certain days and must be taken down before sunset. The only day it can stay up for 24 hours straight is—you guessed it—the summer solstice.
I am a human coffee filter: The Finnish apparently drink the most coffee per-capita of any country, and since the better part of my week was spent jet-lagged and sprinting to meetings, I think I had a cup every place I went. My stomach feels like someone punched holes in it.
Dining with Rudolph & Mr. Ed: My reindeer arrived sans-sleigh but prepared two ways at the Ilmatar restaurant in the Klaus K Hotel: Delicate medallions shared the plate with a mini-roast cooked to such smoky bliss that its outsides were crisp like jerky. My horse at Ateljé Finne came as a rich, tender, gigantic filet. And that’s two more four-legged mammals I can cross off my list as eaten.
Architecture in Helsinki: When traveling here, try not to tell people you’re an American architecture writer, for there is no issue more contentious with local residents than the 10-year-old Steven Holl-designed Kiasma contemporary art museum. Almost everyone I talked to here despises it. I got a nice preview of the Julian Schnabel show that opens on the museum’s top floor next Friday. The paintings are so big they make this soaring airport terminal of a room look small.
$1.5135: That’s how many dollars it took to buy a Euro the same day I cleaned out the factory store at Marimekko. When I got back to my hotel, I turned on BBC News to witness the carnage, curled up in bed, and wrapped my Vanitas fabric around me like a security blanket.
And if that wasn’t enough: Oil tops $100 a barrel. Suddenly starting to feel really awful about flying so much over the next few months.
But on the other hand: If I hadn’t flown all the way here, I would never have found Finnish gelato. Green apple, currant and raspberry were elegantly scooped over an oat streusel topping at Ateljé Finne. And the berries! Sometimes I had six different berries for breakfast, fresh, juiced, dried, jammed, jellied and oozing out of some ridiculous pastry.
Happy Leap Day: I know I promised you a month ago that I’d be making some sweeping, life-changing decisions by today and I suppose you can’t get more life-changing than feasting on reindeer meat a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. Plus, I just so happened to visit a culture that has a very interesting Leap Day tradition. Only today is it appropriate for a Finnish woman to propose marriage. If the guy says no, he has to purchase the fabric for her wedding gown to ease the blow. I’d say that’s a win-win situation, ladies!