torstai 10. toukokuuta 2012

Thursday, 10th of May. Country girl from East Finland currently staying at Bicester gliding field, sitting in the Dick Stratten room and getting into the Hemingway mood.. no magic mushrooms growing here....

DON´T MENTION THE WAR TO ME... this what happens....

I mentioned Russia the other evening. I have plenty of time to think here!!! No no, it´s not a life sentence... just few months at Bicester and all with my free will, honestly!

I was born in Eastern part of Finland near Russian border, in Karelia, so I am a country girl. My first language was our dialect, which is very rich with words. We have dozens and dozens of different words for snow, forest, war, lakes, vodka etc. And the way we use the language, it´s art. Just like gliding comparing with power flying, at least with modern flying machines! I started speaking the president´s Finnish (Queen´s English) when I moved to the capital in the south 20 years later. These days it sounds silly, but back then it was the norm, when people moved from the country side, they stopped speaking their own dialect, as we wanted to blend in.

During my childhood and long after Russia was a popular topic among us, it still is, only the tone has changed. Now we welcome the Russians as they came in large numbers in their four by fours and bring lots of money with them and don´t want to take over the country! Also they know our way of living and enjoy the snow in Winter time and light and warm weather in Winter. Russians are also keen on spas. Spa industry is booming.

I was born about a decade after the war ended. We won the war. Actually we didn´t, but in a way we did as we kept our independence, unlike some other Baltic countries. We Finns are a tough lot, I need that toughness here right now, day to day living in a rain living in a damp caravan requires courage and toughness. Waiting is the hardest bit, it has been raining nearly every day and looks like it will continue long way to the future that way.

During the war, Finland had 3 million people and most of them lived off the land. As country folks, we knew how to survive over night outside in a snow when the temperature fell down to -40C. Never ever eat snow when you are in the wildness and need to survive. It takes so much energy for the body to warm up the snow, you need that energy to survive. You can build a cave inside the snow and spend the night in it and in the morning you crawl out and continue your journey. In the forties and long after every single person knew how to ski, that is not the case anymore. And men knew how to shoot, every household had guns, they were hanging on a living room wall. Those three things were our secret, when 1939 Russia started climbing over the state frontier and thought that they just come in and take over. We put up a fight and continued that through out the Second World War. We came out the other end still independent, but had to pay huge compensation to Russia. But looking back, in a way that become the making of Finland as we know it today. Finland had to start a heavy industry, start making large ships, ice breakers, tractors, trucks, trains, all sort of machines, just everything and they had to be perfect. For the citizens it was a tough time, building the country, but that is the base of our wealth.

Nearly all the men in the village had fought in a second World war, the oldest ones even in the First. Not everyone came back, their graves can be found in a grave yard in a main village. My father´s brother died in a war.

Over the winter I was at Koli, which is the main down hill skiing centre in East Finland near the border. Lots of Russians had bought holiday homes there, spa is being build, Russia was the main language... with my sister we even helped a Russian 4by4 out from the ditch. The roads are so curly, the area is full of hills and the roads had been ploughed wide, so if you drive too near the edge, you go in. We had a rope in a car boot and were happy to help.

When I grew up and started flying, I saw huge forest fires burning day after day on the other side of the boarder. They burned until the fire reached a lake or started raining heavily. Fire spotting flights are done by flying clubs all over Finland. I flew few sorties or acted as a spotter on a back seat.

The funniest thing happened about 20 years ago. I was living again near the border and a local man reported  that he had seen a lion in a forest! He was a hunter and country man, so we did not have any reasons what so ever not to believe him. The papers were full of stories of the lion. It made sense, a rich Russian had bought a lion and when he got tired of it, let it to escape into the forest, as you do. Perfect explanation for it. So people started looking for a lion. We even flew lion spotting flights from the local airfield, the same way, as we fly search and rescue missions, when vulnerable adults or children go missing. The lion was never to be seen again. We never got to know the truth, it might have been a real lion who went back to Russia, or the hunter had a middle life crises, male menopause or simply the wife had turned her back on him the previous night... you never know.

Many years earlier a very worried man came to the airfield where I started my flying and asked me if I could go for an donkey spotting mission. His heavily pregnant donkey had escaped and he was very worried about it. Could not do the flight, it was getting late and the summer was in stage when the nights starts getting dark.

This is all about Russia today, more later on. I may go for a walk now. In the afternoon I will write about crop spraying in Sudan in the 70ties. No, no, I didn´t do that, but somebody else did.



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