Annie_in_exile wrote:Scroll up!!!! What the *** is happening in Oulu? Half the city is on the square. 8O 8O 8O
A person who's just finished lukio (upper secondary school) and heads fot the university is called an abiturient, better known as "abi".
The abis are loaded on a truck and driven around the town. While on the truck, they throw lots and lots of candy to the ground from where gazillion other Finns gather it and eat it away. Screaming like hell, of course. Because screaming is so nice.
Each city has their own routes for the abi trucks. In Espoo the abis throw their candy to the yard of the school they leave from. In Helsinki they drive two times around the Esplanade park, which is a bit less than 1km long and something like 50m wide park in central Helsinki. (the most beautiful place on this planet in July or August, BTW ;)). That's also where they throw their candies.
This year there were 44 abi trucks driving around the park. You can only imagine how many people came watching it from this town with over half a million people (Oulu only has a bit over 100 000) :) And how much candy. A nice thing was that there were also two trucks which looked like they were older than the war. They looked great.
All trucks had signs written by the abis. The signs are some 1,5m high and 3m wide. Or something like that. One on each side of the truck. Something funny is always written on them. Many refer to the name of the school or have the word "abi" "hidden" somewhere in it. Like for example one (the worst one, IMO) had a text saying "wank-a-bit".
The abis also tend to wear some weird clothes. In Helsinki most of them just wear completely white clothes and paint some odd stuff on them. They may also have weird masks or something like that. THe people from the lukio of Munkkivuori had monk robes on them ("munkki" = "monk" or "donut". "vuori" = "mountain").
So, this kind of a happening. Once a year. See it and become mad ;)