Last week was a bye week for us.  We actually have two bye weeks in a row, so we don’t play again till July 7th. 

Juhannus

Juhannus is what is known as Mid-Summer in Finland.  Juhannus started on Thursday and ended Sunday.  The celebration is somewhat comparable to Independence Day or New Years back in the states, BUT much more elaborate.  They love Juhannus here and actually most everyone takes off from work and celebrates.  Most residence leave the city and head to summer cottages or to festivals and eat, drink and party for four straight days. 

Rauma

·  Raumanmeren juhannus (RMJ, Midsummer by Sea of Rauma) is an established summer festival for twentysomethings, which is (again by Finnish standards) a large outdoor festival with a predominantly Finnish lineup. This festival takes place during Finnish midsummer festival close to summer solstice, typically around 24th June. Expect to see many of 18 to 25-year-olds, Finnish rock and electronic music. Sleeping in a tent is a viable option. Best to acquire tickets in advance and note that in the one or two days immediately before and after midsummer, pre-bookings on buses and trains are often a necessity, and on the Midsummer Day itself, it is impossible to travel by public transport as there is none. Also on the first and last days of the festival as people arrive/depart, traffic in Rauma is heavy, and long queues tend to form.

That is the PG version of what is RMJ.

10 Football Players, 100,000+ Fins, 3 straight days of partying....."You think about it!"

So Ryan and I had discussed what we were going to do for Juhannus and decided at the last minute to pack up and go to Rauma for RMJ.  We knew a few football players that were going to work security there so we decided to hop in with them.

Thursday morning I got up and threw a few extra clothes, a toothbrush, a towel, deodorant, my camera, IPod and some candy into my backpack.  "The General" showed up with two bags that were both bigger than me.  We started to load up the car and he asked where my bags were.  I mentioned that this was all I had and he just laughed.  Ryan just had a backpack as well, but we knew we could stick it out. 

We showed up around mid afternoon.  The other football players had to go to straight to work so we were left on our own.  We found our way to the festival and right away we were blown away by the amount of tents and people camping.  We had no tent and actually I had no clue were I was going to sleep.  We knew Stan and Obi (the two Pori bears players) would have a place for us to stay but they weren’t coming till Friday. 

That night we met up with a girl that we knew from Kouvola, she had met a few friends there and had a small tent pitched right next to her car.  I started getting a little tired and knew it was going to be chaos over the next couple days so I just jumped into the front seat of her car and attempted to get some sleep.  If you look at the pics you will see how packed these camping areas are.  The "neighbors" were up most the night with the huge speakers blaring music and drinking.  They didn’t like the fact that I was trying to sleep and started knocking on the window at like 4 a.m.  I finally talked them into letting me get a few hours but the sun never went down and the music never stopped playing.  Finally I fell asleep for a couple hours and woke up to silence.  I looked around and everyone in the camp ground was passed out!  It was about 7:30 in the morning.  I attempted to go back to sleep but couldn’t, so I just sat in the car and listened to some Dave Matthews until Ryan woke up. 

Day 2 - We were walking back to the campground from the beach and heard 3 guys talking English.  One asked another "Where's the beach" and my ears perked up.  It turned out to be 3 football players (2 from Hanover University, and 1 guy was from Toronto Canada) from Lappenranta.  A few hours later we met up with Stan and Obi from Pori. 

This festival was like nothing I have ever seen.  The only thing I can compare it to would be Chili-Fest or Homer's Backyard Ball, BUT times about 10,000 people. This festival was massive with over 100,000 people, 10 clubs, I'm estimating that the festival area covered around 1 square mile.  The pictures don’t even tell the whole story.  I saw men walking around with nothing but a belly shirt on, girls walking around in thongs, people passed out at 2 p.m. in the middle of the beach.  5 people died, mostly due to stupidity combined with drunkenness.  (2 in a fight, 1 died from choking on his own vomit, and 2 idiots died because they were drunk and decided to take their grill into their tent, they passed out and the carbon monoxide killed them).

I slept for 3 hours Friday morning in an office building owned by one of the Pori Bears player's Father-in-law.

Day 3 - Ryan and I met up with the Lappenranta guys and headed towards the main part of the festival.  While walking around we notice 3 guys that "stuck out" pretty badly.  Finally we yelled at them and they turned out to be football players from the Sea City Storm.  Sonte was played at Linfield, Edu was from Spain, and Mike was from the UK.  The festival never stood a chance after that!!

We stuck our like you would not imagine.. and we were by far the loudest and probably the most obnoxious group of people at the festival.  It was so fun watching people react to us.  Nobody would get close to Obi and in fact many people mistaked him as some sort of celebrity i.e. mike tyson, and 50 cent!  It was hilarious!

We were good kids for the most part and the craziest part was when "Rock" a linebacker from Lappenranta wanted to get into a fight.  NOTE* Finnish have this thing that they don’t say excuse me or sorry if they bumped into you.  Sometimes when they are drunk they will be walking towards you and purposely bump shoulders.  Rock didn’t like that very much so he decided that he would start doing it back to them.  He would be walking towards a guy and smash into him. But nobody would ever look back at him, they just kept walking.  He finally got fed up and went and stole a guy’s beanie (hat).  Rock finally found a guy that would fight him, until Obi walked over, and then the guy quickly changed his mind!

I didn’t sleep at all Saturday night and by about 3 a.m. Sunday morning, Ryan and I were more than ready to get home, take a shower, and sleep in a bed!  I proceeded to sleep for 16 hours out of the next 24.  I'm still trying to catch up and it's Wednesday!