Thanks to Heli for this comment. Appreciated!! ''Comment: Hi! VPK comes from words /Vapaa palokunta\ which literally translated means /Free fire brigade\ Welcome to Finland!''

I had another session with V.P.K (still haven't found out what that means actually) last night. This time it was a yearly fitness assessment which all volunteer fire fighters have to pass in order to attend an incident. We have our own fitness tests back in OZ for the same reason but compared to the Fins, in this regard we are soft. In Australia we have to wear a weighted vest and walk a certain amount of kilometers within a time limit. Depending on which weight amount you pick you get either an A rating or a AA rating. Really, there is no difference between the two. I think as a AA rated crew member I got some extra food in my ration pack or something. It was probably Tuna or something non vegetarian anyway.

In Finland the tests are a lot shorter but they are harder and more numerous. They break down into two categories.
1. The gym
2. .... Well we did it in a shed so I will call it ''The shed''.

So in the gym you have four tasks to complete. You are allowed to fail 1 of these and that is it. I, unfortunately failed 2 so I don't quite cut it as a Finnish fire fighter... yet.

Gym challenge no.1 - Complete at least 20 sit ups in 1 minute. PASS - I made it to 31 push ups before running out of time.

Gym challenge no.2 - Complete 11 bench presses of a 45kilo weight. FAIL - That is over half my body weight! I got to one and was out.

Gym challenge no.3 - Complete at least 3 chin up's in a row. PASS - I got 4... Yea!

Gym challenge no.4 - Complete 11 squats with 45kilo's of weight on your shoulders. FAIL - Because of the snow boarding incident on the weekend I decided it best not to push my limits with added weights on my shoulders, neck and back. I am not sure I would've passed this anyway. 

What did I take away from the gym test? I lack upper body strength and it may be time for me to lift some weights I think.

In the shed I also had five tasks. All have there own time limit to be completed within. Trainers will also take heart rates and pulses before and after tasks. As a paid fire fighter if your heart or pulse rate exceeds a particular speed you automatically fail the test.

Shed challenge no.1 - Walk two 50meter laps wearing a fire suit. On completion of these two laps you are to pick up two hose reels and walk another two laps of 50meters. Each hose reel weighs roughly 15kilos each. You have 4 minutes to complete this in. PASS - After 2 minutes I was done.

Shed challenge no.2 - Complete 5 laps (up then down = 1) of a 25 meter long stair well in a fire suit. You have 3minutes and 30 seconds to complete this. PASS - In 1minute and 22 seconds.

Shed challenge no.3 - Using a sledge hammer you must hit a truck tyre which is lying on it's side along the floor for 6 meters. You have 2minutes to finish this. It may sound easy but the tyre is heavy enough to be difficult to drag along the floor by hand. Constantly swinging a sledge hammer and hitting something this heavy for anything over 30 seconds begins to take it's toll. PASS - With 59 seconds to spare.

Shed challenge no.4 - An obstacle course made up of three beams. Imagine a hurdle set at just under a meter high. Crawl under the 1st, step over the 2nd, crawl under the 3rd and repeat. That is one lap out of a total of 5. You have 2minutes to complete the task. It should be mentioned at this point that I had it pretty easy. Because I don't speak Finish, regardless of weather I passed or not I am still unable to attend emergencies so my doing this was really more a test for my own satisfaction more than anything. For those who are being assessed they must do all of the previous tasks wearing a breathing apparatus (B.A). This is basically an oxygen tank on your back weighing between 25 and 30 kilos and of course a full face mask which would allow you to breath inside a smokey, burning building. After 15 minutes of non-stop physical exercise it begins to hurt. Anywho..... I cheated! So what?!? I'm Australian, I'm  all about shortcuts. I passed the obstacle course in 1minute.

Shed challenge no.5 - By this stage you are absolutely knackered so they give you an easier one. Roll up a 50 meter hose line on your own in 2 minutes. Props should be given to the V.P.K crew. They are damn good at this. In Oz we use two people and roll the hoses along the ground. They do it by themselves and off the ground. Not only had I never done this before but I was rooted and my gloves were to big so when ever I made a roll my glove finger would get stuck and I would have to pull it out. PASS - With two seconds to spare. This was strangely, the hardest one.

It was a successful night all up and I was invited back again next week so I cant be all that irritating which is good. It is great to see how things are done in a totally different area. All the people seem really friendly and welcoming which will make things a bit easier for me I think. It feels good to have done something.            

Julia and I went snowboarding on Saturday. It was the coldest day I have ever experienced yet. -20 degrees but to quote the weather man ''the wind will make it feel more like -30''. I dont know the difference really. We have this thing in Australia where if it reaches +40 everyone bitches and moans about how hot it is or how hot it is going to be. If it reaches +45 no one cares. By +40 it is regarded to as ''damn hot'' and +45 falls into the same category. The cold here is the same for me. -5 is cold. REALLY cold! -20 is cold. REALLY cold. Either way it is the kind of weather that makes me want to stay in bed. Not that day though. I was going snowboarding and was so stoked to be doing so. I haven't snowboarded since I was about 14 so I was well overdue to ride again. We got up at 6:45am. Well Julia did, I got up at 7am. Had breakfast and headed out. The bus left the station at 8:45 so we planned to be at there at 8:15 to book in and pay. When we arrived we couldn't see anyone else with skis or snowboards. All of the buses were Russian and no one seemed to know anything about our bus or it's whereabouts. There is no building at this bus depot. You just stand in the snow, freezing your ass off hoping that something will arrive. At 8:40 we found a few more people looking as lost as we were and carrying skis. At 8:55, just as my toes and fingers were turning black with frostbite the bis arrived. For €30 you get a bus ride to the slopes, a day pass for the ski lifts and a ride back home. That is roughly 60 Australian dollars. In Australia if you want to go skiing you pay hundreds of dollars for a day.

The bus was freezing. I am pretty sure the floor was concrete and it had a plastic lino over the top which made it even colder. The windows were cold as... well, ice so I kindly gave Julia the window seat as any gentleman would. The bus driver was Estonian. That doesn't really mean anything to me as I have never been to Estonia or met anyone from there. Apparently it is the place to go for a cheap night out. if you are a Finn. I tell you what though, this Estonian sure as hell had never driven a bus before. He seemed to have a lot of trouble finding 3rd gear. To the point where we were stopped in the middle of a freeway trying to find it. We came very close to hitting two other buses and braking was a short, sharp series of stomps on the brake pedal which made you regret eating vast quantities of porridge for breakfast. It was worth it though to finally go snowboarding again. That's what I kept telling myself in my head. A couple of hours later, we arrived.

It was dreadful!! I can't snowboard to save myself! As a skater I have the habit of landing on my knees when I fall because I am always wearing knee pads. I fell a lot snowboarding, with no knee pads and regardless of what cartoons tell you, snow and ice is really quite hard. I had bad knees from my guard rail incident skating in Adelaide the week before anyway and this was not helping. Lastly I hit my head. Quite hard. So hard that I don't remember riding the rest of the way down the hill to the cafe and ordering hot chocolate and cake. Wearing a helmet is important when snowboarding too, lesson learned. Julia informed me that the ride down the hill that I didn't remember was full of cursing the sport, the snow and the country.

The afternoon was better. I started to fall out of 'skating' mode and into 'snowboard' mode which may not be the best thing but at least my knees felt better. I had a couple more falls but not quite so gnarly as the ones in the morning and by the end of the day I was feeling much more confident.

We headed back to the cafe for some Dr. Pepper and french fries. I tried to film some horses that were in a paddock thing where they were being whipped by small children and made to run about the place. Apparently I was standing to close to the door because I was pushed over by 3 Frenchmen as they barged through the door way. They said something French and I apologised in Finish which made the situation more awkward because they clearly had no idea what I had said which made me then doubt what I had said also. I just smiled and continued filming.

The drive back was a relative success. The driver managed not to stall the bus on the freeway though, although he did stop at a red light half way though the intersection. He only hit one lady too but she was wearing a Mink fur coat so it wasn't all that bad.

Apparently we are heading to Lapland soon for a week of snowboarding which will be interesting. I am sore all over from that day. Every muscle in my body aches and throbs so I am feeling a bit dubious about the whole Lapland trip. We shall see.

 



      

I picked up my skateboards from the freight place today. All 31kilos of it. Very excited. They charged me €15 for storing it for one day which pissed me off a bit but never mind. I had to go to an office and show a lady who quite obviously hated both me and her job some bits of paper. I then trudged over to the customs center where I had to take a ticket from somewhere and wait for my number to be called at a window. For the life of me I couldn't find the machine that printed out the tickets though. Eventually I found a window with a lady behind it who informed me that it was her job to give out the tickets. She seemed quite happy with her job, probably because the room only had 3 people, including me in it so she didn't quite have the workload of the previous lady. When my number was finally called the customs lady took a photo copy of my passport and then told me that my bag wasn't there. This made me a bit angry because I had just paid €15 worth of storage fee's for the damned thing. I then had to walk back to where the first office was and collect my bag from the warehouse. The bag now has three big tears in it but the skate gear is ok. A bus ride back to the city and then a cab ride home with a driver who found it necessary to drive on the foot path on more than one occasion. Fun!  

Tonight I headed out to the local fire station for a training session. They are called V.P.K and are a volunteer brigade much like the C.F.S back home. I got into contact with them before I arrived in Finland and they had said they were more than happy for me to attend training nights but I would need to speak the language before I could attend an emergency. That seems fair. I am not quite sure what V.P.K means but when I know, I will let you know. The course was based on Hazardous material emergencies. Rolling trucks full of gas or an exploding farm truck full of some environment killing toxin. The usual kind of thing. The great thing about this subject is for the most part, everything is the same world wide. Of course the Americans have to have their own signs with their own meanings but for the rest of the world, we follow the same guidelines. The course was in Finnish but I had the brigade captain Perttu, sitting next to me translating the important stuff so with his help and what I had done in Australia the course was a success. Perttu showed me around the station and gave me a briefing on who they are and what they do. Not what the name means though. He welcomed me back to future training sessions which are held every Tuesday. When I return to Australia I would really like to get full time work as a firey with National Parks so this is a really good way for me to keep in touch and keep my skills up to scratch. Although bush fires are not the most common thing in Finland, a lot of the practices are similar. V.P.K mainly deal with vehicle accidents, structure fires and animal rescues and they offer a lot of training that could really boost my experience. Next week we have a fitness assessment which sounds a lot more involved than the ones we have to take in Australia. I am a bit nervous about the whole thing but hopefully it all goes well.  

Well I have been in Finland for a week now. I have had a great time so far. I kind of feel like a 5 year old in this place, having to think so carefully about everything that I do. Walking is really difficult because you go from ice to snow then water. Occasionally you will find a metal tram line which is super slippery and then your back to the ice again. Getting dressed is a huge task too. I am very used to throwing on a shirt, some shorts and a pair of shoes and that is it. Here I am wearing boxers, skins, loose tracky type pants with jeans over the top. Normal socks, woolen socks and crazy hiking boots. One shirt, a woolen jumper, a huge jacket that an Eskimo would be proud of and a scarf. Not to forget a beanie and a pair of gloves with mittens over the top. Putting that on takes roughly 10 minutes then you walk five minutes to the shop, train station or someones house and you have to take it all off again. My face is so incredibly cold when I walk but you cant cover it with anything. If you put your scarf over your mouth and your nose then the residue of your breath will freeze and you end up with a scarfe that is covered in ice. That being said though, I haven't struggled with the cold all that much.  Like I said, I feel it on my face but that is really it. I have not had a day yet where I have been miserably cold.

I have had a fairly busy week. Mostly exploring the area and trying to memorise my way from A to B. When everything is covered in snow it can be quite hard to get your bearings. We went bowling on Friday night with a bunch of Julia's friends. The bowling alley is one of those nightclub ones where it is so dark you cant actually see where you are throwing the ball but funnily enough, that made me play better than I usually do. I tried some Finnish beers which are not to shabby at all. I was glad when we left though and headed to a normal bar where I could actually talk to people and here what they were saying back. It was a nice relaxed kind of event, just getting to know people.

The following day Julia sent me packing to a place called Kontula which is a suburb I suppose of Finland. Later I found that it is quite a dodgey part of Helsinki but I'm glad I didn't know it then. In Kontula there is an indoor skate park. Julia had a Yoga class so I had decided to try and find it while she was out. I had a note book covered in hand drawn mud maps and crazy names that I could hardly say without taking a breath half way through. To get to Kontula you have to catch the Subway. The problem I have with the Subway is that all the signs and names of places are written in either Swedish or, of course Finnish. I missed my first train. I sat on the platform and watched it roll up. I read the name on the sign which was different to the name in my book so I sat back and watched the people scramble to get on and then watched as it pulled out of the station. I then read the map which was on the wall behind the train. I had read the Swedish name but I had the Finnish name written down. Luckily the trains arrive every 4 minutes. I waited for the next one and made sure I was the first on board. I spent the 20 minute train trip listening in to Finnish conversations and making up in my head what they were saying. Most of them were talking about skateboarding which was to my liking. I got out at Kontula and wandered about for a bit looking for the skate hall. My map told me that I was to cross the main road which ran along side the train station, take the first side street to the left and it would be a few hundred meters down the street. The problem was that there were loads of main roads (none of which were sign posted as is custom in Finland) and the amount of side streets was ridicules. I saw two girls standing at a bus stop and I thought I might ask them if they knew where the park was. I crossed the road towards them, trying to look as normal as possible but when I set foot on the path I slipped and stumbled about like a drunk for a few seconds almost landing on my face. When I looked up they were both giggling at me so I walked around them, ignoring the laughter and looking for someone else to ask. I ended up going into a store. I remembered Julia had advised me not to ask any of the older generation for directions because most of them wouldn't speak English so I should try to ask the younger people. I stood at the counter hoping for a young person to emerge from the back room. They didn't. I got a lady who would've been at least in her 70's. When I asked her if she spoke English she shook her head. Instead I held my note book up to her, pointed at the skate hall. I was watching her as she studied my map for a few minutes. I knew what she was thinking.... ''What is a skate?'' This lady was to old to know what a motorcycle was let or lone a skate board. She gave me my notebook back and just stared at me shaking her head slowly from side to side. The look she gave was ''I am sorry young man but I am afraid you are doomed to wander the streets of Kontula for all of eternity'' I backed out of the shop slowly saying ''It's ok, thanks for your help, Kiitos, moi moi''. She had somehow made me feel really bad for going into the shop and worrying her. I pictured her on the phone ringing the poliisi about a poor, lost Australian boy wandering in Kontula. I headed back to the train station and found a Taxi. I asked the driver if he spoke English, ''yes'', ''do you know where the skate hall is?'', ''yes''... ''Can you tell me where it is?'', he pointed at a ramp and told me 50 meters down there you will find the door. Not across a main road, no side street in site. It was right next to the train station. I walked down the ramp and found a shipping container. In classic Finnish style I found a sign on the highest possible point of the crate and with writing about the size of my thumb nail. I read ''Skeitti Halli''. When you open the door of the crate you are faced with stairs that go for miles underground. I felt like I was going on a caving tour. The further down you go the louder it gets, banging, screeching and grinding. Once you get to the bottom you enter a huge chamber full of wooden ramps, banks, boxes, rails and half pipes. Before I left Kangaroo Island I had given my street deck to a local kid because he seemed pretty keen to skate and I had a lot of weight in my bags anyway so I didn't have a board with me. I sat for about an hour and a half before I headed back to the train station. I felt very satisfied that I had found the place and I was now focused on buying a new board.

When I got back to the city center I got lost. Really lost. The most irritating thing about Finland is the street signs, or lack there of. They put the signs up as high as humanly possible and instead of putting them on poles like every other half normal nation they stick them to the side of the buildings. The signs are about as big as your mobile phone and the have names like 'Lönnrotinkatu'. Now try to write a name like that with the space of your mobile phone and you end up with a sign that is two stories high and each letter is the size of a grain of rice. Better yet, Europe is quite famous for the amount of parks they stick in the middle of there citys. This means, if you get to a street corner with a park the council has no where to put a street sign. So instead of maybe now using a pole to put your sign onto they just skip it. No building, no street sign. In any other city you would just look down the road and you would be able to read the sign at the next block but no, not in Finland. You have to walk the block through the ice and the snow to get to the corner of a building that has a sign saying ''yöuäregöingthewröngwäyässhole''. So back you go, two blocks now because remembering the first block is a park which means they have no where to put a sign.

When I finally got home (about an hour and a half later) I was ropeable! I was ready to have a shower, book my flights back to Aus and go to bed. Then Julia told me we were going to Liisa's house. Liisa lives around the corner from us. She came to Australia to visit Julia earlier in the year so she was really the only other person I knew in Finland other than Julia's mum. I was really not in the mood to spend 10 minutes getting dressed again and trudging about in the cold only to get lost all over again but Julia managed to persuade me with the promise of hot food. Turns out Julia had not been at a Yoga class. She had spent the day at Liisa's cooking and organising a welcoming party for me. I spent the night drinking more Finish beer, some nasty Vodka mix that reminded me why I don't do Vodka, meeting and greeting the locals and eating a lot. After a few hours we all headed to a local pub that sold REALLY expensive imported beer. I found myself spending my life savings so I could drink a Japanese beer in a Finish pub. It was a good beer though.

Our apartment building has a Sauna. We have it booked for every Sunday night at 8:00. I spent tonight sitting about in a wooden box which was roughly 70 degrees and then laying in the courtyard snow naked to try and cool off. Then back to the Sauna and repeat. It was fun, maybe more so for all the people whose windows face the courtyard.

I have been in Helsinki now for a couple of days and thought I should probably write some stuff down before I forget it all.

Before I left for Finland I had a weekend of skating in Adelaide. It was by far the gnarliest and most enjoyable weekend of skating I have ever had. From the Snowy Mountains to Mary Hill. Blue Mountains to the alley ways in East Vancouver this, this was something else. Hanging out with mates on a warm summers weekend and knowing it will be the last time to ride with these people on these hills for a long time. Pushing your limits and all riding harder and faster than you ever have before. It is a weekend's riding I will never forget. We all had a couple of crashes and I had a particularly nasty crash involving a guard rail and my legs. While I promote hard riding I promote safe riding more so. It is important to skate within your limits and know when your beaten. Downhill skating will always have risks just as motor bike riding or base jumping but there are ways to minimise risks and skating within your limits is the second. Wearing a helmet is the first. I caught up with friends and spent some time with my mum in Adelaide and then on the 9th of February my travels really began. By midday, I was on my way to Europe.

My first stop was Singapore. I love Singapore. I have never left the airport but I have fond memories of it from when I was about 8 and I stopped over on the way to England. Singapore airport has everything. Butterfly gardens (which are as good as any sauna), a cactus walk, free cinemas, gaming and an MTV lounge. On top of all this it has some crackin' food outlets and endless amounts of Saki. I spent a happy four hours in Singapore before flying off towards Heathrow. I only had an hour in London which was fine with me. After four hours in Singapore airport red square looks boring and Heathrow is a long way from being compared to either! I spent the hour sleeping at my gate, waiting anxiously for my flight to leave.

After being on my flight from London to Helsinki for an hour or so I opened the blind on my window and peered down at the earth below me. It looked just like any other place I had flown over except everything was black and white. All the fields were gray with black borders around them. The forests were totally white and of course, all of the water was ice which made it a dark grey/blueish colour. Since that first glimpse outside I didn't stop peering out my window until my flight had landed and even then all of the edges of the tar-mac were walls of snow and equally as enjoyable to look at. Don't get me wrong, I have been to the snow before but in Australia we like to keep our snow away, in the middle of no where. That way it can be enjoyed for a day or two and then when we get sick of the cold and the wet we can go back home to the sunshine. The Finns obviously had not grasped this concept and as a result the snow was everywhere and more often than not, in the most inconvenient places imaginable. After we landed I had to go through customs. Having been thrugh American customs last year then across the border into Canada then back and finally through Australian customs I was expecting a long, drawn out saga. I got to a machine that scanned my passport and my eyes. I was  a match, which was a relief. The door opened and I was in. That was it. I felt a bit ripped off actually, no frisking, no abuse and no bag searching. Europe didn't give me one good customs story. I will try to look more suspicious next time. Julia was waiting for me out side the gate. We collected my bag and then spent about 30 minutes trying to dress me for the winter cold. Something I am still not used to.