Hyvaa Vappua

With my head still aching from a cognac champagne and a pint of vodka downed on the way home, my memories of vappu include...

• Sitting in a sauna with strange naked men, and a Mexican and Australian girl fully dressed. The strange thing was that the sauna was in a VW comby van.
• An Australian friend brandishing a wrought iron curtain rail, punctuated with barbed ends and trying to convince us it was really for a flag pole.
• The rows of men using the Embassy walls as urinals.
• French men playing rugby with two very drunk Hash House Harriers that didn't even know which way they were going.
• Getting instructions to meet someone "outside the station, next to the clown."

May Day in Numbers
45,000 The estimated number of people in Kaivopuisto Park having a picnic on Sunday
21 The estimated number of toilets available for this crowd
0 The seconds of which the sun was unobscured by cloud
4 The number of people on an impromptu French rugby team I joined
640 The number of muscles that hurt as a result of running around with said rugby team
1 The number of beers I had to down down with the H5 for wearing my devil beanie / woolly hat
2 The number of naked men I saw on the day
20 The number of men in Oulo who had a May Day fight on Vappu Eve