Random Eulogy about Finland

Finland, you are like I imagine Heaven to be
Everyone is well-groomed and attractive
The men are generally quite serious
And the women have a slightly wicked sense of humour
You didn't annoy half the countries in the world with colonial antics
So everyone likes you
(Even the neighbours with whom you have slight and understandable issues).
There is military service, paternity leave, boatloads of holiday -
with nice places to spend it, and financial rewards if you're too busy to.
Education is respected, you kind of breathe design and innovation, and everyone speaks English.
If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented.
In fact it was, in the Old Testament.
It even has its own dark reflection...which is Helsinki town centre during the Tuska festival.

Honestly, I generally like Goths. And I understand there's a boatload of them in Finland, what with the weather and light conditions (I found a huge encampment of them in Petropavlovsk too, although they were Russian ones, obviously). I like the outfits (not ideal in a sunny June, but I get where they're coming from), the girls (tattoos, piercings, big boots, short skirts, sexually ambivalent - check, check, check, check and most definitely check) and the outlook (nihilism, vampirism, occultism and general deviancy). What I don't like is the music. Dear God, no.

Helsinki had the Tuska festival this weekend just gone, and I didn't know. I thought on Friday that things had just got very weird and horrible for no reason. The town centre was packed with Goths, and they'd gone feral - the bars had adopted defensive formations, although my black-outfitted chums were not visibly doing anything other than occasionally vomiting and dropping bottles in the street. But they were doing quite a lot of that.

Thankfully that's over now and everyone can just get on with being normal, cool, hip and slightly serious. With the correct Goth density of 1 in 500 people, rather than 1 in 20 which developed over the weekend.