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cimoreneThe titular badfic summary, collected from the My Chem plebe community's backlogs a few summers ago, is my Reading Page title of the moment because on Walpurgis Eve I saw a man with a stuffed parrot.
The man was wearing a red tartan kilt, a corduroy blazer, some heavy metal accessories, Converse high-tops, an eyepatch, and a stuffed parrot. Weird outfits aren't unusual on Vappen, when traditionally all high school graduates wear their extremely silly graduation ceremony hats out in public to sing songs, and all the members of the universities' unofficial academic field societies (like the Political Science Club, the Chemistry Club, etc ) wear their color-coded nylon jumpsuits covered with patches, and non-high-school grads wear the silliest hats they can find. Old people and rich people dress up before going to stand in their hats and sing, which is very funny when contrasted with the hordes of rainbow-hued hooligans around them.
Vappen, as we call it in Finland (Vappu in Finnish, Valborgsafton in Swedish), is the most Carnivále-esque of the several currently-celebrated Finnish holidays with pagan origin - Midsummer, Halloween, New Year's, Eurovision and World Cup Soccer and Hockey. On any of the above nights you encounter drunken street carousing and loud noises in the street all night and puddles of vomit on the sidewalk the following morning, and on several of them you have plenty of fireworks, and at Midsummer you have bonfires as well, but only on Walpurgis Eve (I say Eve because the festival starts around midday, although the public drunkenness doesn't really get off the ground until, oh, at least 6 pm or so) is the entire downtown square and all the streets around for blocks thronged with masses of people in special costumes and hats carrying street vendor food, open alcohol, children, and balloons.
The traditional May 1 post-Vappen picnic on Watchtower Hill, the gathering-place for the Swedish-speaking Finns' Vappen celebrations. Finnish speakers meet by the riverside several blocks away. Observe the silly graduation hats.
My theory is that the extra excitement is because the last day of April is generally right about when spring finally arrives - it's rarely here yet by Easter - and after a Finnish winter, the never-melting towers of sooty snow and unrelenting overcast and the four hours of sunlight in January, everyone except![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anglepoiselamp (who is a photophobe) is very happy to see the spring.
The man was wearing a red tartan kilt, a corduroy blazer, some heavy metal accessories, Converse high-tops, an eyepatch, and a stuffed parrot. Weird outfits aren't unusual on Vappen, when traditionally all high school graduates wear their extremely silly graduation ceremony hats out in public to sing songs, and all the members of the universities' unofficial academic field societies (like the Political Science Club, the Chemistry Club, etc ) wear their color-coded nylon jumpsuits covered with patches, and non-high-school grads wear the silliest hats they can find. Old people and rich people dress up before going to stand in their hats and sing, which is very funny when contrasted with the hordes of rainbow-hued hooligans around them.
Vappen, as we call it in Finland (Vappu in Finnish, Valborgsafton in Swedish), is the most Carnivále-esque of the several currently-celebrated Finnish holidays with pagan origin - Midsummer, Halloween, New Year's, Eurovision and World Cup Soccer and Hockey. On any of the above nights you encounter drunken street carousing and loud noises in the street all night and puddles of vomit on the sidewalk the following morning, and on several of them you have plenty of fireworks, and at Midsummer you have bonfires as well, but only on Walpurgis Eve (I say Eve because the festival starts around midday, although the public drunkenness doesn't really get off the ground until, oh, at least 6 pm or so) is the entire downtown square and all the streets around for blocks thronged with masses of people in special costumes and hats carrying street vendor food, open alcohol, children, and balloons.
The traditional May 1 post-Vappen picnic on Watchtower Hill, the gathering-place for the Swedish-speaking Finns' Vappen celebrations. Finnish speakers meet by the riverside several blocks away. Observe the silly graduation hats.
My theory is that the extra excitement is because the last day of April is generally right about when spring finally arrives - it's rarely here yet by Easter - and after a Finnish winter, the never-melting towers of sooty snow and unrelenting overcast and the four hours of sunlight in January, everyone except
anglepoiselamp (who is a photophobe) is very happy to see the spring.
