The Passover Seder was on a Friday evening, with a short Seder chanted in Yiddishy Hebrew and only hitting the highlights of the service. Candles were lit, matza broken, shared and eaten. Mizrahi charoses was eaten with an overheard surprised, "It's GOOD!" to spice the conversation.
The Persian tradition of whacking your neighbor with a green onion while singing daiyanu ensued with much hilarity. New traditions and old. Wine was drunk, a nice meal was eaten while the chicken was forgotten in the oven overnight (and later thrown out.) The afikomen found and eaten while winding the arm around the head, make sure you have either a long piece or long arms!
Midnight Mass for Easter, arrive around 11:30 p.m., stand in vestibule. Watch as others cross themselves repeatedly at the appropriate place in the service, while we watch so we won't make mistakes because it is all in Finnish. Take a candle, get a light and walk out and around the church, it is a small block, while we freeze. Leave early to go home because it is -14 degrees C, too cold for dressy clothes. Bells ringing at midnight. Walk home feeling safe, because it is Finland.
Easter Sunday go for a long hike up to Puijon Tower. An hour and a half of walking uphill, snow covered path. Lots of evergreens, still get hot, because we are climbing. Get to the tower, pay to go up. Eat lunch while the restaurant rotates and shows us the city. See where we came from and marvel that we walked that far. Nice lunch, tasty if a bit too salty. Had our first ginger ale here! Went to the lookout, some of us got vertigo. Took pictures and decided to take a taxi home, no buses. Enjoyed an art gallery on the way home, prices through the roof! Too abstract for me, I like paintings that look like pictures. Nice, sunny, warmish, peaceful day.
