In Finnish, hyvää huomenta means “good morning!” (As this package prompts us—in Russian.)
There’s nothing like fresh Finnish eggs in the morning.
For those of you who have the good fortune not to be able read either Finnish or Russian, these eggs were, in fact, produced by a company called Volzhanin, Ltd., in the village of Yermakovo in the Rybinsk District of Yaroslavl Region. They were not produced in Finland, however hard the top side of the carton tries to convince us otherwise.
In Russian, hyvää huomenta apparently means “screw you!”
The odd thing is that on its website, Volzhanin, Ltd., goes out of its way to boast about its environmentally friendly policies and practices.
Interestingly, you won’t find Hyvää Huomenta eggs on Volzhanin, Ltd.’s list of products.
So this is the kind of three-card monte Volzhanin, Ltd., plays with folks in Petrograd, used to buying food at Finnish chain stores like Prisma, which have set up shop in their city, or making trips across the border and loading up on high-quality Finnish produce before heading back home.
For more on this shady business generally, see Sergey Chernov’s fantastic photo reportage from this past January.
The Russian Reader 