Read before you eat?

Sometimes life goes by too fast and a good intention suffers. I was determined to understand everything on the packages containing the food that I ate in Helsinki, and I dutifully got out my dictionary or Google-translated all those interesting words beyond what I could already identify. After all, I sort of pay attention to what's on the food packages in the US. I wouldn't think of consuming something I couldn't identify with certainty. So if I was planning to eat something here, I found out just exactly what was included. A clear picture on the package was great, but not all manufacturers felt obligated to illustrate their foodstuffs. But my good intention to translate words on food packages suffered after only a couple of days because I started to go hungry. Now I'm not talking about translating the fine print and the list of ingredients; I don't even bother with those in English. I'm talking about those big words, sometimes in all caps, that you see on packages…such as the one on the side of my yogurt:

UUTUUS!

Finnish words like this are basically easy to translate because they are being used in simple ways (that's to say, not in a sentence where syntactical demands just complicate the word -- such as using it as a direct objet! and forget about direct object and plural!). So "uutuus!" is nothing more than "new!" and is found on about 50% of the packages in my local grocery store, on a rotating basis. But then there are those words that appear prominently on packages containing food you can identify (there is a picture, and the packaging is transparent), yet the words do not match what you have learned to associate with the food. Such as cheese, which is "juusto." On the cheese package I just bought tonight, I read emblazoned across the front:

SYDÄNYSTÄVÄ

I knew that "ystävä" was "friend," but what was this package trying to convey? After I ate some (oops! there goes that intention again), I looked it up to find out what kind of friendly cheese I consumed. It meant "bosom buddy." Which, for me, is now strangely associated with cheese. So I have to confess: I have started to look for pictures, prefer transparent packaging, and trust the good intentions of food manufacturers (after all, they can't be out to sicken the public they depend on, can they?). Besides, the cheese package told me that it was "parempi valinta" (better choice), and my bosom buddy would not mislead me. Maybe someday I will figure out what the "10" means.

Tomorrow morning I am going to toast some bread whose package screams:

NYT ENTISTÄKIN HERKULLISEMPI!

I don't care if it means "NOW WITH MORE REINDEER PIECES!" -- I can see a picture of the bread, I can see the actual bread, and who makes bad-tasting bread in Finland?

Author's note: "NYT ENTISTÄKIN HERKULLISEMPI!" means something close to "NOW EVEN MORE DELICIOUS!" I finally broke down and looked it up.

Trammit!

I am already pretty good at train etiquette in Finland, especially since I had practice years earlier in Germany and France. Trains are trains: ticket, track, number, etc. You get on, you get off. You would think that such experience would transfer to using the tram in Helsinki. I had a tram-awful day yesterday for my very first tram day, I and am not afraid to admit it. I learned my lesson(s) and will move on.

Lessons:

• Know your tram schedules. Although the tram stop is almost right outside my door (I could throw a rock and hit it), my obsessive-compulsive nature forced to me to go out and wait a full 15 minutes in the very chilly Helsinki morning before getting on a tram. Now you would think that 15 minutes is not much time, but realize that the tram comes by about every 15 minutes. So the click-clack of the last one should have been ringing in my ears before I even left my door. And Helsinkians seem to know their tram schedules so that they don't need to stand around needlessly. Not much to do at a tram stop unless you want to read the tram schedule. Ooops, too late!
• Don't build up high expectations of how a tram should sound when you are riding it. You hear the click-clack when you are outside the tram. Inside the tram you hear a sound that you will associate with what you remember as a kid when you played with those electric model race cars. But then you will realize that the common denominator is electricity, so you can imagine yourself riding in a model race car (one of your childhood fantasies; admit it), so I suppose this is a draw.
• Do not attempt to get off at the point where the tram changes drivers. You can't. And this point is often 20 feet from where you are supposed to get off. It can be confusing, especially if you fear being transported all the way to the next stop (oh well, maybe some 50 yards, not like to the next city). But only the tram driver can get off and his/her replacement on at these designated points. You need to go another 20 feet before disembarking.
• Just like a train, you can pay when you get on the tram if you don't have a ticket. But don't assume that the fare is what you paid for the exact same route (in reverse) because, perhaps, you bought your 1st fare from a machine. So if you have math phobias and math-performance anxiety about having to count in public with people lining up behind you, it does you no good to have your exact amount ready in advance. Just make sure you have plenty of change, two free hands to bungle your coins around, and a cheery "Kiitos" to say to the driver when your painstaking math-centric challenge is completed.
• Take your ticket that you just bought from the tram driver. You may not need it again unless you plan to transfer (except maybe as proof that you can count). But if you don't take your ticket, the driver will become very worried about your mental condition, as if you were walking off without your passport or residence permit and just didn't care. Unacceptable behavior.
• Do not stand up to get off the tram until you are sure that you have passed the last stop before your stop. If you do, you end up standing while the door opens in front of you (thanks to the driver), which remains open until the driver finally realizes that you are obsessive compulsive and have probably been standing near the door for several stops. You will catch the driver's "Really?" expression in the rear-view mirror. Try to descend with some dignity when you reach your stop.

But, all in all, my day was successful if you consider that I got from point A to point B and back again. And today will be a better tram day, I just know it.

This is slurped?

Figuring out something new in a different language is fun and sometimes challenging. I have never had trouble before with French, German, Spanish, Latin, and even Greek. But Finnish is especially "fun" and "challenging." I am encountering too many words that seem to defy translation, but these words are used in everyday situations, so their meaning must be known to the five million or so speakers of Finnish. Google is great and all that (although read my post "A slap in the face for .99 euros"), but I also know very well how to use a dictionary, and I have several Suomi/Englanti dictionaries. So when I saw a seemingly simple phrase on a McDonald's poster advertising a strawberry shake, I assumed I could translate it: Tämä on ryystö. I already knew the "Tämä on" part, which is easy: This is. I was happy I could learn a new, common word that I could use with "This is" and impress everyone with my McDonald's street talk: Anteeksi, tämä on ryystö! But this is what? "Ryystö" was not the word for "shake" (that word is "pirtelö," and it is on the poster). So I figured the word must be an adjective that was informal (slang) for something like "great" or "tasty." Well, I spent way too much time (that's to say, more than five minutes) trying to discover the meaning of this word. Google Translate informed me that "Tämä on ryystö" means "This is ryystö," which I can't deny, but I know there must be some real meaning behind that word. The word sort of looked like the verb "ryystää," which means "to slurp," but it was not a conjugated form of the verb like you could expect (This is slurped?) because I checked: http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/Finnish/ryyst%C3%A4%C3%A4.html. Is it a variant (This is slurpilicious)? At least I learned a few more words trying to figure out this one, and "ryystö" is now on my list of words to ask a native speaker. The list is growing.

UPDATE: A very nice Finnish person explained this to me (Thank you, M!). The Finnish verb for "to rob" is "ryöstää," which is very close to the verb "ryystää." So it is a play on words. This is robbery (the cost is so cheap?) and this is slurp (what else do you do with a shake?). And now I know enough so that I don't use this phrase in public unless in line at McDonald's, and probably not even then.

A good skill not to have in Finland

I had the chance to take typing class in 1970 -- but at that time, people typed on manual typewriters. And who needed to learn to type, anyway, unless you wanted to be a secretary? So I never learned to type, and when personal computers came around in 1985, I was left behind. I could never keyboard. Touch typing? Ha! I needed to look at the keyboard for every key I pressed. Every key. Then I would look up at the screen to see if I pressed the key I had intended to press. And sometimes I had not. But I continued to grind away over the years, and I type a lot. And I correct a lot. Yet I always was jealous of those people who look at the screen while their fingers dance over the keys as if they had eyes on the tips of those fingers.

When I started to use keyboards in Finland, something just wasn't right. Even though I still had to look at the keyboard to find the right keys, I had to look a little longer. Some things just weren't where they seemed like they should have been. Of course, I couldn't say so for sure because every day I sat down at a keyboard, I was like one of those poor amnesia patients who can't remember anything they learned the day before, and they have to start every day from scratch. But I realized that I must have developed some simple, basic instincts of where certain keys were located. The letters were still in the QWERTY locations, but other keys such as @ ; / + " < > ( ) { } [ ] & etc. took longer to find. Keys I use all the time in my work. Well, my "typing" (yes, that's what I call it) was slowed down a bit, but just imagine how my typing would have looked had I been a touch typist! This is how it would have appeared had I not kept my eyes locked on the keyboard:

• Please e.mail me at helling"yahoo.com
• 4 ; 5, but 5 : 2
• And then he said _Hello!_
• 3 ? 4 ) 7
• I-d come by if it wasn-t so late.
• Get the !!"%&& away! (which replaces !!@%^^, so I guess I can still curse easily on my Finnish keyboard)

Finally, something important I should have done decades ago would have simply slowed me down even more today. Success! Now I type better than ever before *really!(.

A slap in the face for .99 euros

Sometimes I like to know what I have done after I have done it. For example, I like to figure out some of those items on my grocery receipt, you know, the items that I just bought. Some of the Finnish words I already know (parsakaali is broccoli), some words I can figure out (kuskus), but some words are completely mysterious. I evidently bought something called a "korvapuusti" this morning but I couldn't remember what it was -- so of course I tried to Google Translate the word when I got home. Yes, I'm aware of the poor quality of computer translations, but this was just one word, for goodness sake. Usually not a problem. So I took a chance. The Google Translate answer was: "slap in the face." And this slap in the face cost only .99 euros, which made it quite a bargain! However, I swear I wasn't attacked in the grocery store. And, besides, I doubt if anyone in Helsinki would slap me in the face for less than 5 euros. Translate fail. Lesson: Be aware that even the simplest Finnish words can be easily mistranslated. So how to find out what I really bought? I just plain Googled it and was sent to the Wikipedia page for cinnamon roll, which included a nice picture of a korvapuusti. Which really means "slap on the ear," by the way. Or at least that's what Wikipedia says, and its picture resembles something I actually did purchase. I also bought a "rahkatasku" for .89 euros -- but I am still working on that word.

How do you turn this on?

Turning things on and off is an important and usually incredibly simple skill. Very intuitive, especially after decades of practice. Turn a knob, push a button, click something, clap your hands (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper), etc. So nothing makes one feel more frustrated when that skill is lacking. All I wanted to do the first day we arrived in Finland was to turn on the burner of an electric stove, an UPO. Four knobs, four burners. Two knobs for the oven. One extra knob that seemed to serve as a timer. Should have been easy, and that is what I assumed. Half an hour later, I was almost ready to give up. No amount of turning those different knobs seemed to work. The oven was no issue; I got that turned on right away. But I didn't think I should try to boil water in the oven.

I had instructions -- but all in Finnish. I was almost ready to try clapping. Finally, by some effort and pure luck, I read on www.upo.fi (with the help of Google Translate) in the section on "cookers" (it wasn't the best translation) about "safety" and "timer." So that is what the extra knob was for. The burners would not turn on unless the timer was turned on…for safety! When the timer goes off, so do the burners.  No burners get left on for kids (or me) to place their hands upon later and receive 3rd-degree burns. No way do I turn on the burners, leave the apartment, and wonder hours later if I turned them off before leaving. And so now I can boil water on demand in Helsinki.