I always romanticized Finland when I was a teenager, and Helsinki was the first foreign city I ever visited by myself, and is one of only two that I’ve bothered to go to twice. In Finland, there are no gendered pronouns. And during midsummer, the sun doesn’t really go down so much and you can walk from bar to bar and sit in the sunshine (moving as the shadows move, you understand), while a middle-aged, wealthy, kinda depressed guy buys you and your even-more-depressed and not-wealthy friends beer. Then you can black out and pass out in a gutter and wake up with 40 American bucks in your pocket that you didn’t start out with, acquired by means of telling strange tourists a sob-story when they ask you why you were passed out in the above-mentioned gutter. As the night progresses towards 5am, you can declare your love and desire for marriage to someone you haven’t seen in 6 years, and then you can leave town like 2 days later heartbroken and happy, perhaps ne’er to return.

But I digress.

The reason that, today, I remember why I love Finland is for two of their marvelous inventions: the sauna and the molotov cocktail.