Sure Travel Journey 6.1 Summer 2020 | Page 33

© CHAPMAN
© CHAPMAN
What does Christmas smell like for you? In the
heat of a South African summer, chances are
there’s braai smoke involved or perhaps the
sizzle of roast potatoes in the oven. But in my
childhood, the true smell
of Christmas was the
heady scent of ginger
and cloves, cinnamon
and allspice. It was the
smell of piparkakut,
traditional Finnish
Christmas biscuits.
When the spices and
cookie cutters were
laid out on the kitchen
counter, we knew
Christmas was coming.
Making those spicy
biscuits – with their
bite of ginger and the
warmth of cloves – was
my annual homage to
Liisi Tuomainen, my
Finnish grandmother.
Born in Ylämaa, a small
trading town in eastern
Finland, she’d grown
up in Helsinki between
the world wars, before
eventually marrying an
Englishman and leaving
her homeland behind.
On the few times I met
her in her small English
home, all elfin face and
sparkling eyes, she’d
tell stories of the city
she once called home
and of winters so fierce
she’d get to work on
the islands near the city by walking across the
frozen Baltic Sea.
The Baltic is sparkling, and certainly not
solid, I thought as our British Airways jet
descended across the Gulf of Finland towards
Helsinki. I’d come in search of Liisi’s final
resting place and to discover for myself the
city she once called home.
While Helsinki is a little off the tourist track
for South Africans, it’s a charming Nordic
capital brimming with markets, architecture,
culture and glorious coastal scenery. And
there’s certainly no shortage of it: Finland
boasts more than 300 000 kilometres of
MAKE MEMORIES FOR LIFE // 33