Vappu, also known as the Walpurgis Day, is a traditional spring festival on April 30th or May 1st in large parts of Central and Northern Europe. Most of these countries, e.g. Czech, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Sweden etc, have large celebrations of this special day.
For Finland, Vappu is characterized by these few things:
1. The biggest carnival-style festival held in streets of Finland's towns and cities.
2. Copious consumption of sparkling wine and other alcohol.
3. Capping Havis Amanda, the nude female statue in Helsinki
4. A picnic on May 1st
5. Socialist parade
And from my experience, the following:
6. Drunk people talks to you on the street
7. Distribution of paper sausage glasses on the street
8. Helium balloons
9. Drinking directly from huge champagne bottles
10.Broken beer/ champagne glasses on the floor
11.People dancing, shouting, yelling, screaming, laughing on the street
(Photo: Helium balloons! I would very much love to buy one, and then breathe in the Helium and sing in a funny voice! ARGH.. but it was too expensive!)
(Photo: Random drunk people on the street! Everyone was walking zig-zag! And they love to talk to you or get into your picture!!)
(Photo: Vappu is like a major festival for students. You can see students here wearing overalls, and gathered together, drinking wine.)
(Photo: The socialist parade/ March!)
(Photo: And a fight broke out, the police was trying to arrest this person. How peaceful...)
(Photo: Some delicious carnival food! we had pancake with jam and cream as well!)
(Photo: Paper sausage glasses! Everything a girl could dream of having!)
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