Well, I am finally catching up with real time. I arrived in Helsinki a few hours ago and am staying at a downtown SAS Radisson Hotel. It is a very pleasant cold outside - assuming you are well enough dressed - at least minus 8 Celsius and due to drop to minus 11. This is the cold I enjoy; dry, crisp underfoot and cold enought to kill off a lot of the germs; not like an unhealthy UK damp winter when it infrequently freezes.
My economy class flight with Finnair included an above-average meal (speaking of European flights generally and Finnair in particular) but I was still a bit peckish after checking in. In the Nordic countries it is usually easy to find brilliant hering and salmon. I ordered three starters:
1. Picked Baltic herring with juniper berries
2. Smokes salmon with aquavit
3. Sliced cold reindeer
4. Mixture of Finnish breads and crispbreads.
It was delicious but with drinks came to €40! Pickled herring is good on an arc from Denmark to Russia - and probably best in Sweden - there is also a company in Orkney who does it but I have not tried their product yet. The same countries are usually good for any form or smoked salmon or Gravadlax. The brown breads had varying amounts of rye and different seeds and went very well with the fish. Beer and aquavit were the perfect drinks to go with these starters. BTW, the classic Finnish crispbread is dark brown with a carraway taste - I remember my parents buying it a lot in the 1970s but it seems to be less frequently for sale in the UK now.
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2006-11-06 @ 01:12