Oh, Finland.

As Munich moved further towards spring -- fighting it every step along the way, whining and crying -- we moved our rear ends to the airport and flew to Finland. Oh, the snow banks of late March! The sunlight has been plentiful however, and it hasn't been as cold as I anticipated: this winter has been long by Helsinki standards, but overall it's been quite mild as this year found temperatures below -40C being measured nowhere in Finland.

 Here, some photos.

 

Wordy Wednesdays: Things That Grow In The Dark

That's today in five images. I'll spare you the sixth and seventh, which were of the chicken I was going to cook for dinner. It was one of these pay-more-for-feeling-better-about-eating-meat free range, happy chickens -- I suppose as happy as one gets when they're slaughtered and plucked, anyway -- and although the date claimed it was good until tomorrow, it was busy growing green parts. The smell was reminiscent of, well, not of death, but rather of new life, if you catch my drift.

I enjoy eating a variety of fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut; I think mold is tasty on stinky cheeses; I love snails, mussels, oysters and shellfish; I'm trying to get better at cooking offal, although I still find myself sadly limited to liver. (I've been eyeing the kidneys and heart at the butcher's and intend to make a move one of these days, really.) But green chicken? I was dry heaving as I threw that out. And then I dug into the dust bin again, took a few photos of the green parts with the "best before" date visible, and emailed those to my husband, who in his turn forwarded them to the supermarket chain with an "is this a chicken I see before me?" email of complaint.

We will not be eating chicken today. We may not be eating chicken ever again, eww. Thankfully I had a huge spicy tuna salad for lunch, see image, and can afford to snack on nuts and fruit and dark chocolate for my second meal of the day.

Finally enough snow! We've gone sledding every day to take advantage of this rarity. We've also shoveled a goodly amount of snow with our set of hers and hers shovels, one for myself and one for Her Majesty, who insists on helping.

I remain highly amused by the impractical southerners Bavarians venturing out in jeans, ear muffs and no gloves and then complaining about the cold. I suppose this goes a long way in explaining why wool socks are so hard to come by here and wool socks for small children more so: nobody wears them.

Munich winters

This is what our winter looked like for a brief while.

I knew it couldn't last. This is the more typical Munich winter:

Children don't seem to care much; my views are not fit for printing. In retrospect, my decision to leave buying ice skates for next winter wasn't the worst one...

Still, there's a lot to do in town. We obviously go out, even if it involves some degree of whining on my part. (Merino wool underwear? Best thing I bought this winter.) For indoors fun, we have Deutsches Museum, the public libraries, a variety of indoors play parks around town, The Botanical Gardens, and of course our favourite haunt Hofbräukeller, complete with play room and childcare for the daytime hours. I'll get back to you on that last part tomorrow.