Stayed up for crabs

Last Saturday I entered the first crawfish party ever for me. It was fun. It was... an experience. Funny that I had to come back to Nokia from Stockholm to do it. But I guess things happen that way.

We were invited to a buddying family of ours to spend an evening at their house. They had fished crabs in a river nearby, Nokianvirta. That's the main stream (pun intended) that runs through the city of Nokia, being the main reason for the birth of the city as a matter of fact. The huge paper and gum factories still lie by the river. Well, they have put some baby crabs in the river years ago and now they are up for grabs.

As the tradition requires, we took a schnapps in the beginning of the meal. A small drink of hard booze down the hatch. Then we learnt how to eat crawfish. I knew already that it's pretty messy but also that it couldn't be avoided. There's not much to eat in one crab, but it tasted good. Surprisingly good actually. Along with wine and more alcohol we discussed and had a pleasant evening there. We even went for a walk to see some crabs in pots placed in the riverside. The view from there was beautiful. It was chilly, dark - only some city lights glimmering and reflecting in the river. I hadn't seen Nokia in that light before.

Luckily I didn't get too drunk. We had planned to take a taxi anyway, so there was no need to worry about it. This Swedish custom of having crawfish parties includes singing crab(by) songs, but we skipped that. In fact, it was not even mentioned. Knowing our family singing abilities, that was a wise choice. At 2:30 a.m., we were climbing from a taxi to walk home and almost straight to bed. It was a reasonably controlled drunk and the hang-over that followed the next day. Naturally. This time a fair enough price to pay.