I was completely unaware of this battle until I moved to Tampere. Apparently there has been sort of a "my dad is stronger than your dad" competition going on between Turku and Tampere for however long. Years. Maybe decades? Maybe even longer. The competition rises about any given subject. Also, both cities (and their citizens) are trying to out do the other on a daily basis. If something great happened in Turku, something equally great must happen in Tampere as well - and fast. And the other way around.
Not too long ago the news mentioned that gold had been found underneath the city center of Tampere. Of course someone immediately needed to point out that oil had been found in Turku. Every Christmas both cities get a large Christmas tree for the city center - and every year it gets bigger and bigger because the cities are both trying to have the biggest, greatest tree in the country. Or at least bigger than in Turku. Or Tampere, depending on where you are. That was the first time actually that I became aware of this competition. When Tampere got it's last Christmas tree and it was national news that it was bigger than the tree in Turku.
Regularly people argue about which city is better at ice hockey. Which, as you know, is a big thing in Finland. Tampere has two teams in the top Finnish ice hockey league (Ilves & Tappara) where as Turku has one (TPS). People also regularly check which city has more residents. Apparently Tampere is leading this one too, by a hair. Turku argues that it's generally better because it's by the sea, where as Tampere "just" has a river. Apparently a lot of contests regularly go on between students (mainly engineers) as well.
Fascinating?
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