As promised, this week I’ll save you all the nitty gritty details of my school work. While this is a study abroad, there is more than just academics that make up a study abroad experience, you know like all the awesome local food.
Helsinki being positioned right on the Baltic coast, fish of all varieties and preparations is abundant. Unfortunately, I’ve never been one for seafood so I’ve yet to try the Baltic herring that seems to be the staple of many Finnish diets. For those that know my eating habits back home, I have the ability to put salad bars out of business (especially when I get back from a run, a dinner plate is of no use, I eat my salads straight out of a large mixing bowl!). So while maybe not as exciting as fresh piece of fish, I’ve been tried a bunch of amazing little cafes that serve all kinds of fresh and seasonal vegetable salads and dishes. While maybe not as adventurous as a plate of pickled Baltic herring, nothing beats fresh, local, and made with care food. With that said, I’m certainly no vegetarian! This past week I went to local bar for a sausage and beer pairing event. The craft beer bar brought in a local sausage maker to prepare a selection of traditional sausages, made fresh that day just for the event. It was the perfect, hearty meal after a few days of late fall cold weather.
At university, there are many dining hall like cafeterias called Unicafe. The student rate is a very affordable 2.60 euro for a full plate from the hot meal bar or salad bar. It’s probably no secret now which option I normally pick! 2.60 is really incredibly affordable and truly a student’s dream, because the prices for a meal out in the city are crazy expensive. A small takeaway meal will run you at least 12 euro. A nice sit down dinner? Bring at least 25 euro if you want to get an entree, and much more if you plan to make it traditional three course meal. So I, and many other students, try to get our monies worth with a very full tray at Unicafe.
One thing I have found quite odd, both in the food stores and at Unicafe, is the crazy amounts of margarine! Like most other European countries, a slice or two of fresh baked bread is customary with every meal. But instead of traditional butter or maybe a cheese spread, Unicafe offers three different types of margarine for you bread. In the food stores, the dairy section is dominated by margarine. I was talking with another exchange student, and we both agreed it really is quite incredible that a country that places such an emphasis on fresh, local foods and seems by and large very health conscious, to have this obsession with a food product that has pretty much denounced around the world for being awful for your health. Come to find out Finland has historically been one of the world’s largest producers of margarine. And as a note of some fishy politics, higher ups in some of the leading margarine companies also hold positions of power in Finnish food regulatory agencies, one of whom is even the Finnish representative to the World Health Organization. Perhaps the little extra fat is their secret for surviving these long, cold winters!
