Ice hockey world championships

IIHF world championships

Honestly speaking, ice hockey is one of the few sports that Finland is able to shine at and compete at the top of the world. Maybe that's why even Finns who don't normally follow much of sport competition - like me - get excited to follow the yearly ice hockey championships in May. Well, my supporting is usually limited in the last games of the tournament. At least this year. I tried to watch the playoff match when Finland fought against Sweden (our worst enemy) but I was unable to find a working way to watch it from my laptop. Therefore, when Finland magically won the game, I decided that I need to find a public bar or such that shows the semifinals and finals in Paris. I asked for an advice from other Finns living in Paris and found out that there were at least two Canadian pubs that show all the games of the tournament.

Last Saturday I rushed back to Paris after my work and reached one of the pubs, The Moose, a bit before the Finland started to play against Russia. H joined me to support the best team. The big pub was quite empty at that time of the afternoon but I noticed a few other Finns sitting in a corner. We couldn't join them because they were in the dining area and we only had drinks. But during the game we started to hear very loud cheering from another corner always when Leijonat (the team of Finland) was doing something. So, for the last third we joined a group of seven other Finns who had a very lively way to cheer for their owns. After an exciting game, Finland beat Russia 1-0 and we very so excited that Finland was going to play in the finals on the next day. We agreed to meet in The Great Canadian, the other Canadian pub on Sunday.

At The Moose we watched a small screen while sitting at the bar table.
Until we changed to a bigger screen with sounds and Finns in front of it.

After the semifinals game we headed for Vietnamese food.
My tofu noodle dish was big and yummy. It's always a pleasure
to eat at Pho 1/Pho 13!

 I found it very amusing that we were going to a Canadian pub to see when Finland was playing against Canada to compete for the championship, and even more amusing it became when I realized during the evening that almost the whole bar was full of Finns! And even further amusing when they played some Finnish songs in the bar before the game began - and not just any Finnish songs but songs that we play to support our national team usually: Poika saunoo, Den glider in, Darude's Sandstorm... I am not exaggerating at all if I say that there were at least more than 50 Finnish people there. It was hard to estimate how many we were because I couldn't see the whole pub at once but anyway it felt like being in Finland since seemingly the whole bar celebrated after every goal that Leijonat made. Finnish flags, ice hockey shirts, blue and white clothes... Who cares about the few Canadian flags hanging as a decoration in the pub. Especially after the victory of Finland! The pub played all kind of celebration songs for Finland, many of which were in Finnish too. Finland is the champion!! Hyvä Leijonat!

Other stuff from my recent life

Which movie should we watch..?

So even though both I and H had prejudice toward the movie Detective Pikachu, out of interest we eventually decided to go and see that. The prejudice was not far from the truth. From the first moment that I saw pokemons among real actors, I didn't feel it worked well. That was just so wrong... The movie had also plenty of inconsistencies (even when you take into account the strange settings), so it didn't get many stars from us.

Yesterday evening we got a better experience. We thought of cycling through the city of Paris, staring from the Southern boarder from my place, crossing the Seine river and continuing toward the Northern boarder. Because we didn't use Google Maps, because we had to stop to park our bikes sometimes (since one can use them only 30 minutes in a row) and because the streets are curvy, we didn't end up to the highway within an hour. But actually we ended up to a great place where we had dinner in a Turkish restaurant. Labranda is the best Turkish restaurant I've ever been to (perhaps with the exception of the restaurants during my visit in Istanbul) and one of the best restaurants in Paris, too! The food was good quality and very tasty and the staff friendly and fun. Even the prices were not that high. I absolutely recommend it to anyone who happens to be in the 10th district in Paris.

I forgot to take photos of the Turkish food we ate but
go and try it yourself if you are nearby ever.

Another great finding has been a new small Asian market in my area that sells Japanese and Korean food. Unfortunately (to me) most of its products are Korean and the Japanese stuff is more expensive. But oh boy, I had to buy Calpis water that I saw inside its fridge. I miss drinking Calpis and even though this store only sells Calpis water, I'm happy to enjoy that taste again.

The Japanese products use Finnish characters to sell them.. Hmm...