Love this globe at McGill University!

As with some other European nations, particularly in Scandinavia, the American tradition of small talk in passing is a source of scorn. While Americans offer phrases like “how are you?” as casual greetings, without allowing time or showing concern for an impending response, this type of communication simply doesn’t exist in Finnish culture.

A people much more renowned for listening than for talking (I think I may know a few women who would be interested in a guy with this quality), words are taken seriously here and people generally mean exactly what they say.

“Take a man by his words and a bull by its horns.”

This old Finnish proverb is still alive and well today. Finns will take seriously what you say, so be very careful about saying we “should” do this, or we “must” do that. In America, it is common for people to give a half-hearted indication of desire to meet sometime, without actually intending to follow up on it. In Finland, this practice will lose you many friends, for good reason. Think about the same next time you ask a Finnish friend how he or she is. If you don’t have time for a response, don’t ask.

They May be Introverted, but not Unfriendly

It should be noted that while Finns are very quiet in public, and will not likely speak to strangers, they are still hospitable and helpful. If you are visiting here and find yourself lost, confused, or somehow mixed up, do not hesitate to ask a local for help—you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the quality of response you are likely to receive.

Pardon the wrinkles, but I loved the imagery from the bag of bread I bought…I thought of it too late, but I had to capture it!

Brooklyn in the late 1800s

So yeah, you’ve been to Brooklyn. Good for you. You got hyped up the first time you could tell your hip hop friends you saw where Jay-Z grew up. Or the first time you told your hipster friends you found your apartment in “East Williamsburg”…a.k.a. Bushwick. And the first time you told your baller friends that you shot hoops on Coney Island. But how many of you know anything of the origins of the place that’s pretty much synonymous with “cool” in popular culture today?

Welcome to Brookly—err—I mean, Breuckelen!

Yes, that’s right. The original Brooklyn was called exactly that, named after a small town in the Netherlands called Breukelen. Of course as with all of America, the land that the first Dutch settlers took over as their home was originally occupied by Indians—the Lenape tribe. But, as with most of this country’s history, we seem to choose to ignore them (I often wonder is it that we just don’t’ have any lasting records of their culture or we just don’t care to find and publicize them?).

Getting back to the Dutch colonization, Brooklyn’s first settlement was Gravesend (named after Gravenzande, Netherlands), which existed before there was even anything known as Brooklyn. The following year this was replaced by Brooklyn (which was in fact spelled “Breuckelen” back then), and within the next few decades, more of today’s neighborhoods started to be born—Flatbush, New Utrecht, Bushwick, and so on.

Downtown Brooklyn today

Brooklyn was actually an official town before the capital of the new colony across the river—New Amsterdam—which I’m sure you can deduce would become Manhattan. It wasn’t until the early 1800s that the urbanization of Brooklyn began, with the area that is today considered Downtown Brooklyn, immediately across the East River from Lower Manhattan. With reliable steam ferry service, Brooklyn Heights became a commuter town for Wall Street. Around the same time, the independent towns of Bushwick and Williamsburg were growing faster than they could handle, and thus they were soon incorporated into Brooklyn.

For most of that century, Brooklyn was an independently thriving seaport and manufacturing center, considered a twin city to Manhattan. They did not merge into what is today New York City until 1898.

Brooklyn Bridge today

Perhaps this is where PSY got the inspiration for Gangnam Style?

Since we’ve got the whole February romance theme going on, here’s something courtesy of Fiumicino Airport!

Have yet to figure this one out…