Last night Finland celebrated Midsummer Eve. It’s an ancient pagan holiday which has been adopted by the church as “St. John’s Day”, and is hence referred to as “Juhannus”. A very similar holiday existed in Russia at some point but has disappeared since. In Finland, however, Midsummer is one of the biggest holidays of the year still. Most people head to their summer holidays for the long weekend (and many then stay there for the duration of their summer vacations), but there were a few people left in the city – it wasn’t quite as dead as American cities tend to be on Christmas day.

I was advised to go to an island in Helsinki called Seurasaari, where there were some public celebrations, including a craft fair, singing, skits and bonfires at night. Afterwards I went to check out downtown Helsinki, which was far from empty, but instead was filled with street musicians and happy drunk people.