D&D Web

Last night we saw “March of the Penguins”.

On one hand I was amazed about the things I saw in the movie and on the other hand I felt bad about how little I knew about the emperor penguins. Most of the documentaries I’ve seen so far focused too much on how cute they are and so on, so I had no idea what they go through to keep their species go on. The movie opened my eyes to lots of things I had no idea about: how they travel so far to breed, how the mothers leave the eggs with the fathers for months while they go to feed themselves, how the fathers have to stay without food for about four months and endure terrible weather while trying to keep the eggs warm, how the mothers return from their feeding trip exactly after the eggs hatch, how the fathers leave on the feeding trip after they transfer the chicks to the mothers, and so on.

While I found out new things, lots of questions came up after the movie:

* What happens to the penguin pairs that remain without a baby, either because they could not protect the egg well enough (it seems it happens in a quarter of cases) or because the mother could not protect the chick well enough? Do they still remain a pair, even though they have no child? Do they still remain at the breeding place or just go back to the sea?
* What happens when a mother does not return? Will the father just leave the chick to die and go to feed? Is a chick ever “adopted” by a childless mother?

I think the movie shows very well that not everything is perfect in nature. It is quite sad that the penguins’ “home” is in the water, but they cannot actually breed there, they have to endure terrible ordeal to go and breed somewhere far where the ice is thick enough to survive melting untill the chicks are big enough to go out to the sea on their own. I wonder how long it took them to find that breeding place and what will be the impact of the climate change on their routine.

Another thing: in the movie I realized how small these penguins are ! I always thought that they are tall but they seemed to be about knee-high or smaller!

Anyway, amazing movie! Quite a memorable experience for me.

We were enjoying a wonderful weather here in Helsinki. Sun and early light with this tremendous feeling of spring. Everybody on the street seems to be reloaded with energy, and that includes us. This morning, when we walked to work, we noticed the first boat anchored at the small marina that we pass every morning. Also, the market at the local kauppahalli seems to be preparing for re-opening soon. It is these signs of re-awakening from the winter that made this week so enjoyable.

On Monday is Vappu, 1st of May. It is seemingly the first opportunity of the year to get drunk under bare sky And it is done with style apparently since sparkling wine was asked from us to bring when joining the masses on the marketplace.

On May 1st, we will also enjoy a picnic with friends, another sign of re-awaking. We do hope that the weather will stay as it has been all week long: just great!

It is kind of funny when you’re having two Easter Sundays to celebrate. Not that the events in themselves mean a lot to me since I’m not particularly religous. But it of course represents a lot of tradition. Catholic Easter is a long weekend (Friday and Monday are off). Luckily the ‘closing down everything’ is not quite obeyed anymore. We were at my parents’ place last week for this event, had eggs and the family came over for coffeee and cake.

Being back in Helsinki gives us the opportunity to celebrate the Orthodox Easter this weekend. Both events are quite close this year, so it’s kind of funny to do this right after the other one. Why two by the way? My own Catholic and Dana’s Orthodox background gives us these two Easter events, with different nuances in traditions (and food for that matter). While we celebrated Orthodox Easter during the past years with friends in the US, it was our first one here in Helsinki. Dana made a cake, we’ll have a nice lunch today and a good Easter walk. It is Happy Easter…again.

After so much bitching at US now I have to say a bit also about Germany. It seems that paying with credit cards here is a whole adventure. And I don’t mean only small stores or small amounts! Yesterday, we were in Trier, which is a very touristic town, and in Kaufhof, which is a very big department store chain. When we got to pay we gave a MasterCard, which is probably the most available card all over the world. The cashier says “we don’t take American cards”. First of all, it was actually a card we got in Finland. It turned out they take ONLY German cards, which nobody else has in the world (e.g., EC) !! So, the only thing to do was to go and get cash (for which they charge 2% at the cash machine, not sure why) and only because we really wanted to buy the stuff. Otherwise, I would’ve just left the things there and got out…
I have to say that, for a tourist, this is a very good self-protection against spending since we just took the stuff and left, without any further browsing through the store It seems like some stores really do not care if they sell stuff or not. It is not brain science to comprehend that credit cards enable “impulse buying”!

We are off for vacation in Germany. Finally, we decided to take some time =
off, running around in old castles in the part of Germany where I grew up. =
More once we will be back.