The last
week I celebrated my 27th birthday again. Actually it was the 34th time to do
so some say I have something more to celebrate. I’m not very familiar to being
the centre of the attention so I didn’t want to do big number of the issue. The
most important thing was to meet my daughters and grandchildren. I had made
the agreement with my daughter that the kids will get used to have a
slightly different grandpa. They have not met Anukatariina but I decided to
introduce to them some elements of her. This time they were a slight makeup, scarlet
finger nails, pantyhose under the lady pants and lady style T-shirt. The necklace and the ear rings they have seen always. My
daughter told me for the kids the issue gender is not very clear nor important. And yes, they payed no attention to my specialties.
At work I
bought the birthday cake for the staff of my department the day before. Then I
realized I have been at the same work place more than half of my life!
The actual
birthday was my official day off so I could do whatever I wanted. It turned out I didn’t do much, just relaxing
the morning and meeting DWC friends to plan our new websites in the evening.
To celebrate my day I bought Runeberg tortes for everyone. Such cakes enjoyed this
time of the year, near the birthday of the Finnish national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg.
After the
meeting we went to the restaurant to celebrate a little more near the office. We drank a bottle of sparkling and ate some
Spanish tapas while chatting about some deep minded and some not so serious
issues.
The weekend
was the Carnival time. Normally the Finns don’t celebrate it but for us the
Carnival has become an important thing because our experiences in Cologne where
we have some friends. So on Saturday after the sauna we decided to dress up to celebrate
Carnival. I was a German maiden in the dirndl dress and my wife was a sandman (
an easy way to dress up and not to dress up before going to sleep…). We had
some bottles of original Kölsch beer from Cologne and even the original small
beer glasses. So we had some of them and shouted “Kölle Alaaf”, the ancient Carnival
shout.
The Carnival feeling in Cologne is normally very joyous and relaxed and
I love to be there to feel the atmosphere. As everyone knows the situation in
Cologne was tense. I hope that the city can get over of the dramatic happenings
and have a fresh new start as a city of joy and happiness.
