Kuopio, a city in the Finnish heartland, some four hours north of Helsinki. Four hours and maybe a couple of years. It used to be about ten, but news travel fast these days.

Kuopio, a city in the heart of Savo, a region known for sneakiness and twisted humor. As the old Finnish proverb goes, “when somebody from Savo talks, the listener bears all responsibility.” And like most clichés, this one is true, and very much alive.

As I arrived to the rink tonight, I was told to go to the door and ask for tickets that had been left for me there. I walked to the door and introduced myself, and said that there should be two tickets for me. The man at the door looked at me and goes, “no tickets here…”

My jaw dropped.

“… but I have your name on the list,” he said, laughing so that his entire body shook.

Talking with these Savo people on April Fool’s Day is just asking for it.

Being a Finn living in Sweden, I’m in the privileged position of always being right when there’s a question of these two countries. “How dare you question my patriotism for Finland?” or “How dare you tell me that you know better what Swedes are like, I’ve been here for ten years – and my kids are Swedish.” (Or Finnish, depends on who’s asking).

A friend of mine always says I’m living behind the enemy lines. Well, I’m going back to the old country for a few days again, and I thought I’d blog my way through it. So come back and refresh often. (Really, grab that RSS feed while you can).

I’m going deep, too. Kuopio. Rhymes with nothing.

Since I have been working from my home office for over five years now, I’m not a regular commuter, and therefore, not a regular subway train passenger. I’d (almost) like to be, I find the subway to be a great place to read and listen to my precious podcasts.

And to get a feel what “they” think. And judging by the trip I made today, people don’t read newspapers as much as they did five years ago. Which is naturally no surprise, we knew that. But now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

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I took the train yesterday. Nice, environmental choice that also gave me an opportunity to work the full three hours it took for me to get transported from Stockholm, the “capital of Scandinavia”, as the city’s tourist council wants us to call it, to Gothenburg, the .. something of the something on the “front of Sweden”.

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I’ve never been a smoker so if I sound obnoxious here, please forgive me, and just shrug it off. Just think that I’m ignorant when it comes to these things.

(Full disclosure: Back in the 1970s, I did think it was cool to smoke the liquorice pipes now banned by the EU, and the long gone liquorice cigarettes, wrapped in Camel paper and all – and in fact, I smoked a liquorice pipe as recently as today. Not endorsing that habit, either, though).

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I’m not one to make cool entries or exits. I know one when I see it, but I don’t think I have the ego to pull them off. Sometimes I do something that seems like a great idea at the time, or I lash out to someone in a way that is really witty, but also mean, and then I feel bad about it for the rest of the day.

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Time truly flies. In just 105 days, it’s time for another edition of Island Games, the sports event for the island nations. Or “nations”, depending on your view on autonomous parts of independent countries. It seems like yesterday that Greenland’s Kim Godtfredsen stopped the clock at 33.27.60 to win the men’s 10 000 meter race.

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