Life IS Hard

On Friday, something interesting happened in Helsinki ! Around Töölönlahti, one of many lakes dotted around the city (which is not much of a city at all outside the centre, more of a collection of suburbs dotted around with forests, parks and lakes, which would be very pleasant if the architecture wasn't so reminiscent of the Soviet era) a massive crowd gathered for the all-Finland firework display contest. In it, five teams competed to launch massive amounts of money into the air in a show of noise and light that was impressive to even the most cynical viewer. London's firework display to announce the arrival of 2008, for instance, cost £1,3million. That half hour of light and noise in one city (and it can be safely assumed that the major cities of most of the world's countries have at least 2 large-scale displays a year - for new year and for the national day) cost the same as a year of anti-retroviral drugs for over 6000 people. Multiply this by the amount of countries in the world and the amount of cities in those countries which would have fireworks displays and you start to get an idea of how much money is fired into the air which could be put to slightly better use - third world debt relief, AIDS and malaria treatment and so on. It's unfair to pin the blame squarely on fireworks though, and the profligacy of authorities the world over can be pointed at. But I digress.

As in most cases of something happening in this city, the majority of the city swooped on the park, vodka and beer bottles in hands. Those looking upwards could see fireworks, and those looking in any other direction could see kids getting drunk not actually looking at the fireworks. I remember being drunk in my final years of school during fireworks displays and even though I was slightly underage by a year or two like these wasters, I didn't turn my eyes away from the pyrotechnics. This is when, aged 25, I lament the youth of today and how they don't appreciate anything. Actually this may have something to do with (and prepare yourself for another psychoanalysis of the Finnish population here) the state of things I came to realise quite early here.

Alcohol abuse by kids around here is explained away by M as a reflection that it's "difficult growing up in Finland". I've never grown up here so I can't really comment from an objective point of view. It does seem like quite a bold statement though. On first view, the Finns are a tough, resilient bunch - they live in a country whose climate is fairly harsh, to say the least, have come through 40 years of forced friendship with the Soviet Union and a large economic depression in the 1990s. They are, on the whole, people who like to live at one with nature. The majority can sort themselves out very well in terms of survival skills out in the elements and all men above the age of 18 go on between 6 and 12 months of what seems to be a quite rigorous stint of military service. However, for some reason, the national sport here is complaining about absolutely everything that doesn't work perfectly. Something that the average resident of a relatively dysfunctional country like Belgium would shrug off with an "ah well, shit happens" is treated as a large (and possibly distressing) inconvenience here. It is a country where social security throws money at absolutely everyone. I get 480€ a month of absolutely free money just for being a student here - kids start getting this in high school and just about anyone is eligible for free money of some sort - including the large population of alcoholics and those who just can't be bothered to work (one man I shared a hospital room with claimed to have not done any work for 15 years because he didn't like working - he had been supported by the state every step of the way. They were also paying entirely for his operation whereas I had to shell out for mine). I have never been perplexed at peoples' distress as much as I have here where people have a tendency to have a total nervous breakdown over something very trivial. Consequently, I'd hazard a guess that if kids growing up in this situation don't have entertainment and money right on their doorsteps, they'll just go and drink and smoke with other kids. Where they get the money to buy cider and cigarettes, I would imagine, is quite obvious. Life is hard indeed - I'm sure the children of Angola and Afghanistan are thanking their lucky stars that they were born in their respective social paradises !

This situation of excessive teenage angst leads to a bifurcation of the population of Helsinki, for example - half of it will hit the bottle, live on the number 6 and 8 trams and get battered every day on cheap vodka, berating passers-by and falling asleep in bus stops by mid-morning. Others will kick the habit, get jobs, and complain about how things don't run quite as well as they should. Before I moved over here, my ex described Finland as a country where "when a bus is 2 minutes late, the president hears about it". I laughed at the notion then but I'm getting more and more convinced of the reality of it.