On the Forgotten Art of Brunching

Brunching is one of the best ways to spend a Sunday, hands down. It is a brilliant way to start a slow day by enjoying an early lunch or a late breakfast with good friends and other acquaintances in a decent and relaxed setting. And at the same time you can pamper yourself with the small luxuries in life--maybe have a glass of champagne while casually chatting and observing the world move by.

But alas, we're in Finland, and the culture of brunching never really got on here. That itself isn't anything surprising considering how ill-customed brutes Finns are. Sophistication shouldn't even be mentioned in the same paragraph. But maybe, just maybe, this will slowly change, too. And other people can also slowly start appreciating how relaxing it is to just spend time in this elegant way.

One of the biggest reasons, perhaps, why brunches haven't caught on with Finns is because brunches are typically served on weekends, and more importantly during the morning. The culture in Finland is one where people typically end up staying awake until the early hours on weekends, getting entirely hammered more often than not. So again, this brings us back to the question of cultivated drinking habits and elegance. I'll say no more of that, as I've previously made my sentiments fairly well known.

But early mornings are in fact great by themselves. During my sick leave thus far, I've learned to appreciate them as I get up a lot more early now than when I was working. It's not uncommon for me to get between five and six o'clock these days and just lounge around for a while. This is one habit that I should really try to move into my everyday routine after I end my leave in a few weeks, too. But in fact, there isn't anything new here that I didn't unconsciously know before. In retrospect some of the greatest times in the past have been early golf rounds on weekend mornings when the weather is still nice and cool and the course is very much empty.

Maybe this all just goes to demonstrate how sickened my way of life has become during the past few years and how I can improve my overall level of happiness by just rotating my sleeping schedule a bit. Or maybe it's just the fact that the past week has been unique in the sense that for the first time in quite a while, I've done neither real work or school work and just been idling along and doing quite a bit of reading and enjoying life (to the extent that one can enjoy life while being dosed up on painkillers and attempting to recover from an osteotomy to the facial region).