I was got a beauty on April Fools day by my deceptive and quite sinister girlfriend Outi and Kaarina. We went looking for blueberries in the forest at about 9 at night under the pretence of making a pie. I thought this was very strange since it was really dark and about one foot of snow was on top of any blueberries if they even existed at all, but just thought it was some cultural difference or something so kept my mouth shut. When we returned home without any berries they asked if I could go and pick some from the garden (also covered in a foot of snow) while they prepared the pie inside. Being a gentleman (and a gullible one at that) I agreed. They gave me a bowl and a little spade for digging in the snow. I dug in the snow for awhile and but thought nothing except that the little spade was a very poor tool for such a task and why hadn’t the Finns come up with something more suited to the work involved. Then suddenly I thought that something was very wrong here. I leaned in the window and asked timidly if this was an April Fools joke, and the girls lost themselves laughing.
In Oulu we also went ice-hole swimming in a frozen river. It was so damn cold getting undressed in the snow, and then the water was only 4°C. Kaarina’s brother had a camera but only managed to photograph Kaarina since Outi and I weren’t in the water for long enough. I dived in in my boardies and it felt like an explosion had gone off inside me it was so cold. I ran out of the snowy river bank and couldn’t even feel my feet touching the ground. It was the strangest sensation! And it took about 2 minutes before I could feel my legs again! But afterwards with the blood pumping it was possible to stand around just in boardies in 0°C air temperature and feel totally warm. Bizarre.