You know Dasher and Dancer...

I have now discovered two important things:

1. I like Finnish food.
2. Finnish food and Italian food should not be combined.

Two nights ago, we went with some of Mom and Ron's Finnish friends to a traditional restaurant just around the corner. The hospitality was, um, Finnish (more on that later) and the food was great! For starters I had salmon soup. This is not something I would normally see myself eating, but it was great; some sort of creamy potato base with salmon and potatos. Continuing to love the seafood here, one of the Finns we were with informed us that you shouldn't eat fish from the Baltic more than once a week. Apparently it's very polluted and full of heavy metals. I choose to believe that the salmon I had earlier this week came from, um, somewhere else.

Dinner continued my foray into Finnish dining. After all, I was here, so I wasn't just going to eat something I could get some variation on in the states. So I had what translated on my English menu into "Reindeer Sizzle." I think that that was their way of pandering to we uncultured tourists who clearly wouldn't eat anything without a peppy name. Reindeer it was! Reindeer is, well, a little like beef, only lighter. That's the only way I can describe it. It was served with mashed potatos and lingamberries, which are berries that only grow up in the far northern artic region of Finland. They were sort of like cranberries, only a little less tart. After dinner, we had some lakkaliquoori to drink, which is made from cloudberries (another arctic berry) that was sweet and very good. For dessert...French Toast! Of course it's a dessert, after all, it's fried bread covered in sugary berries and whipped cream. What else would it be?

During dinner, mom's friend (who is a linguist) explained the difference in culture between positive politeness and negative politeness. She said most people consider Finnish culture to be grounded in negative politeness. You can probably guess, but positive politeness is the "hi, how are ya, hope all is well" school of interacting with other people, whereas negative politeness hinges on respect for the other person's space. Thus, our waiter didn't really have much to say other than getting our food, and generally left us alone for the entire evening. This was really okay with me, given my recent experiences back home with overzealous waitstaff, who seem to think that if left alone for more than 6 minutes you're bound to run out of something.

Unfortunately my Finnish dining experience took a different turn last night, in part due to my stubborness. We found a little place that looked kind of touristy, but we were in a hurry to eat, so we ducked in. The menu could have been lifted from Ruby Tuesday or TGI Fridays. I, however, given my prior excursion into Finnish food, refused to eat something I could get in Virginia. Scouring the menu (past burgers, fried mozzerella and pizza) I finally found it: reindeer! But not just regular reindeer. Reindeer pizza.

Let me just say that some things are never meant to be combined. These, I now know, include reindeer and pizza. Apparently reindeer pizza also needs to have ham (because they don't really give you that much reindeer, it was kind of annoying), onions (for flavor) and sour cream (because...um...yeah I have no idea). I mostly ate around the sour cream, and I sadly couldn't taste the reindeer very well. Needless to say, something of a disappointment. But at least a unique experience!

So all in all, I'm enjoying the cuisine here. The fish is fresh, the reindeer is good and there are lots of cool artic berries to make things out of.

Just don't put any of those things on a pizza.