Happy holidays everyone!

Grocery shopping at Kannelmäki

My parents left for a holiday trip and left me with a car for Christmas (and my dog although he's nice and cosy at my grandsparents' at the moment) so after dropping them at the airport hotel I decided to use this gained feedom of travelling and went to check out my old hoods at Kannelmäki. Actually it was for buying some more windshield washing liquid for the car but any case, I ended up visiting Kannelmäen Prisma, a HUMANGOUS supermarket they have built there in last couple of years. It was now twice the size it was when I lived next to it (it's now the biggest supermarket in the metropolitan area) and to be honest, I find it ridiculous (it has 41 checkout counters for christ's sake). I can't imagine someone would actually enjoy shopping there. I do understand the strategy in trade perspective as people get hungry by the time they even reach the food section...
Anyhow, being there I recalled someone had mentioned they had some speciality considering the organic food stuff so I decided to check it out. It turned out to be (when I found it after walking a mile from the car section) a shop-in-a-shop for Eat&Joy Maatilatori, a succesful local/organic foodstore business which just had opened an organic megastore in the restored mall of Kluuvi. So my expectation where quite high at that point. I checked out the stall and I was pleased by the variety of organic meat (although freezed) and the flour section. On the other hand, I have to admit I was quite disappointed for the fact everything had been put for display like in a tourist shop. I mean, when I go grocery shopping, I really don't care if my jar of jam has a bow tied around it or not. It's cute, sure, but the fact is, I don't really want to buy organic local stuff for the fact the packaging looks crafty, I buy it for ethical reasons. It pisses me off so much how local food is so often marketed in this cutesy way as it's just food after all. It's never gonna be the everyday choice for people if you always have to pay extra for the time put in to making the products look extra pretty. It's of course good for products which are meant to be given as presents but I would love not to see it when it comes to regular foodstuff.
All in all, I think it's good they have the stall at Prisma, yet it's really not a reason for me to go there ever again. :D I hate supermarkets (although I have to admit I kinda had some strange love-hate relationship with Colruyt next to VUB in Brussels... Must have been the free coffee).

Finland, the country of snowy winters

Not. It's almost Christmas and this is what you can see from our balcony. Just wanted to share this as it's ridiculous.