© AFP | Finns take a dip in an unfrozen hole of water after a sauna session -- a national ritual. Straddle a wooden stick decorated with a pretend, but laboriously decorated, horse's head and off you go as if you were riding a real horse.Hobbyhorsing has its own sporting federation (http://viuhku.net/sky/index.html) and jumping competitions, which are taken very seriously.Finland is also home to a slew of other wacky competitions: the air guitar world championship gathers dozens of contenders each year who go on stage and energetically pretend to play a non-existing guitar. Markku Aleen, Ari Vatanen, Hannu Mikola, Timo Salonen, Juha Kankkunen, Tommi Makinen and Marcus Gronholm have all won the WRC championship.- Tops in education -Finland has since the early 2000s made a name for itself in the PISA studies that measure the education systems of OECD countries. Despite a slight decline in the 2015 study, the most recent one available, the country is still one of the top performers behind Singapore, Japan, Estonia and Taiwan.It came just behind its neighbour Estonia -- whose language also belongs to the Fenno-Ugric family -- in sciences, but scored ahead in written comprehension.The main key to its success? Reforms that allow independent management of schools, less theory and more practice, and widespread use of new technologies.- Lenin museum -Finland is the only country outside Russia to have a museum dedicated to the father of the Bolshevik revolution, Vladimir Lenin.Housed since 1946 in the Workers House of Tampere, in southwestern Finland, the Lenin Museum has a library, archives and a collection of bronze busts and propaganda posters.Three Soviet leaders visited the museum: Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.

Source: Egypt Today December 04, 2017 11:48 UTC