Seinäjoki - Tampere

The snow covered boots are a better clue to the temperature in the hut rather than the fire

Esa and the beers.

A guys night out in the fire hut of a hunting camp in the forests surrounding Seinäjoki.. not the cliche Valentines scene but the one I found myself part of on my last night in Seinäjoki. After picking up the necessities; beer, sausages and fire wood.. Esa and I went on a little adventure to find the hunting camp a friend of his had recommended we travel to. After a few dead ends and  emergency consultation, we found the fire hut and Esa taught me how to make a fire the lumberjacks way. Esa is from a farm in the country and during our conversation, recommended I find a host with a similar way of life to discover the 'real' Finland. So I took his advice and found a host who lived in an old house on family land next to a lake.. perfect.

Anni's house.

I met Anni outside her house in Lappajärvi and inside I found a house full of family antiques and, of course, a sauna. The area she lives in shares her family name.. a connection that reminded me that some families and some people haven't had to move from their ancestral lands to find work in towns, cities and factories. I had wanted to go for a walk in the forest and after checking with Anni that I wouldn't be attacked by any bears or moose I set of walking towards the snow covered trees. I was competing with about a metre of snow wherever I was walking but the struggle was worth it as after an hour of wading I discovered I was surrounded by nothing but nature for as far as I could hear.. silence.

Horses aren't known for their kisses.

The next morning I was asked by Anni what I planned to do. 'Probably go for a walk towards the lake and enjoy the scenery' I answered. Anni replied 'Well I could give you a horse riding lesson if you'd like?' I immediately dropped my plans and the next thing I found myself doing was grooming Kukka, the horse who I placed my trust into giving me a good introduction to horse riding. 'They say the world looks more beautiful from horse back' Anni told me as we were leading Kukka outside after a quick lesson on the basics inside the maneesi and I don't know if they were right or it was just particularly beautiful in Lappajärvi but riding around the fields and roads was a supreme pleasure.

I'm on a horse!

Next on my agenda was an activity not too dissimilar from "late night bathing in the arctic sea in the middle of winter in sub zero temperatures". Anni told me of a sauna club just a couple of kilometres away from the house so I grabbed my trunks and headed for the sauna. I opened the sauna door to be greeted by four old Finnish men were clearly surprised to see a young foreigner speaking English at them. None the less I managed to communicate it would be my first time walking from the sauna to the hole in the ice just outside and climbing down the steps into it.. a prospect they all seemed to be excited for. As one of the men lead me outside the others gathered round to watch and as I stepped down into the water I realised why.. involuntarily panicking because of the dramatic change in temperature, my breathing raced and I forgot how to think. I tried to stay in for the 30 seconds the men had told me to aim for but I managed around 5 before I had my sights set on the warm haven of the sauna. The pain was about to increase as the men said to 'get the full experience' I had to roll around on the snow before I could return back to the sauna.. that felt like being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles because of how sensitive my skin was feeling after the dip in the ice. Then, finally, I returned to the sauna - heaven. I repeated this (crazily) twice more and by the 3rd time I actually could bare the water and stop myself from panicking.. and once I returned to the sauna for the final time I was overcome by an odd emotion that I haven't yet been able to describe and retrospectively I'd probably do it all again to experience that emotion again.

The next day I left Lappjäarvi and Anni for Tampere. Arriving in a big Finnish city on a Friday I had one thought on my mind.. party! It would turn out I was to hit the jackpot. I had been told by my host Veera to meet her at the amateur theatre she volunteers with and I discovered there is something particularly odd about being welcomed to a city by a whole troupe that knew my name. Veera later joined us and it was explained to me that it was the premiere of the troupes latest play and I was invited to watch the show and join the after party once it had finished! Watching the Importance of Being Earnest in Finnish is a stranger phenomena but one I wouldn't say avoid. IT was good fun to compare what I thought had happened to what had actually happened after the show and besides, horny priests and drunk waiters are funny in whatever language.

Veera having some fun with her guitar.

The next morning, or should I say afternoon, I woke with the characteristic symptoms of a hangover an not before long I was being introduced to the commune Veera lives in and the city of Tampere. The commune looks as if it hadn't been renovated since the cities and my explorations of it would suggest it hasn't. Amoughst the 60s furnishings and decor I've found all sorts of fascinating odd bits and bobs.. including an old gas mask - just in case.

Classic pose.

I had been in contact with Toni since I had met him at the ice hockey game in Vaasa and he had invited me over for lunch with his girlfriend on Sunday afternoon. His girlfriend works at as a freelance translator which basically means she gets paid to watch tv shows and movies at home all day everyday. Toni is a history masters student but also works as a guide in a couple of the museums inVaasa so invited me to the museums the next day... but not before he invited me to his winter swimming club - meaning that once again I plunged myself into the cold waters of a frozen lake for the sake of immersing myself in the Finnish culture. This time there was no sauna to warm me before or after but I somehow convinced myself to get up early and join him for a morning swim. Once I got that tourture out the way we headed for the ice hockey museum where Toni introduced me to the history of the Finnish game along as showing me the virtual ice hockey simulator. We pounced upon the simulator when, for a rare moment, it was abandoned by children and I proceeded to prove how useless I was at the sport.. and I wasn't even wearing ice skates!

Östersund - Seinäjoki: a few photos

At the top of the Åre ski resort in Sweden.. still feeling the cold despite the mass of clothes I'm bundled in.

A bit of music at the 'Tillsammans' (a popular Swedish film) themed party in Östersund.

'I'm in an igloo!'

The opening face off  at Vaasa arena, taken shorty before I met Toni.

Östersund - Seinäjoki

I have to issue an apology to those wishing for descriptions of my travels as detailed as previous posts. This is because I have failed to keep the blog updated and thus leading to a too great a job to update it in the fashion of previous posts. My thinking being if I can bring the blog up to date quickly, then I can continue a more detailed and, dare I say, entertaining account of events in future posts. So, I'm going to have to briefly describe my whereabouts and doings of the past 9 days:

Östersund

I stayed with Maria over the weekend. A lovely host whom I had many an interesting conversation with. She took me to meet a lot of her friends including taking me to a themed party on the Saturday night where we played some funny games, sung songs and I got to learn some more about Sweden and the Swedish. The party was after a long days Snowboarding in Åre following a beautiful mornings train ride to the mountain. It was cold.. so so cold.. -33 C at one point. It's so cold that the moisture in my nostrils froze when I breathed through them. I still had plenty of fun snowboarding, as I tend to find it hard not to enjoy it, and the cold wasn't really too much of a problem. Maria, being a student, took me to a games night organised by the student union where I learnt a lot about politics in Sweden from a friend of hers called Johan, played some chess and ate some pizza. I left Östersund on Tuesday morning and took a bus to Umeå. The bus route went through some of the vast forest that makes up Sweden and provided some stunning morning views.

Umeå

My host in Umeå was Jonas.. a couchsurfing veteran who has hosted many couchsurfers in Umeå. I found music is a large part of his life; he spent the evenings rehearsing with his band, he took me to a Jazz club with his friend Maurine, and whenever he is in the apartment good music is playing. I spent a lot of my time on Umeå relaxing in his apartment, Jonas creates a mellow atmosphere, as I was still a little stiff and exhausted from snowboarding. I spent Wednesday and Thursday nights out at the bars in Umeå. On Wednesday I met a trio of college students, Johannes, Ellen and Erik. They were keen to practise English and so we had fun chatting about, England as well as Sweden. On Thursday, after the Jazz club,  I spent the night trying out different beers with Maurine and having interesting conversations on psychology, Paganism and she taught me a new English word. My stay with Jonas was to be my last stop in Sweden before I took the ferry East across the gulf of Bothnia and it was certainly a pleasant and enjoyable stop at that, I put it down to his refined hosting skills.

Vaasa

I arrived in Vaasa at the awkward time of 00.30 Saturday morning but my next host, John, was there waiting for me to give me a lift to his apartment in central Vaasa. He lives with Marianne, both experienced couchsurfers, and the next day they gave me some advice on what to do and see in Vaasa. I decided to try out the Berlusconi pizza at Koti pizza, a famous Finnish pizza chain that originated in Vaasa. The Berlusconi is named after the Italian after he complained about Finnish food on a visit... The Berlusconi beat the Italian pizza chefs at an international pizza competition. The pizza's meat topping is reindeer meat - a Finnish delicacy. Later that day I went to an ice hockey game between Sport (the home team) and Hokki. The names didn't seem too creative to me. I asked the guy next to me what was going on and he was happy to explain. His name is Toni and, after chatting for a while, he offered me to a place to sleep, dinner and a tour of Tampere (a city I was planning to visit in Finland) where he now lives. After a few beers and sampling of the international beers snacks John and Marianne had accumulated on their own travels, we went to a bar across the road I met some of their friends and enjoyed beer and wine. I decided that night I'd get up at sunrise to use John's ice fishing equipment to catch a fish, ever the optimist me. At midday the next day I had found an old Finnish guy help me out with fishing, tricky as he spoke little English, abut despite his expertise and experience we both failed to catch anything. The rest of the day was spent collaborating with John to make a hybrid Finnish/English roast.with boiled Moose meat. It turned out to be quite successful and afterwards John spoke to some friends of his that live in Seinäjoki to see if they could host me.

Seinäjoki

I arrived in Seinäjoki yesterday afternoon where I met Wuokko. She took me back to her apartment where I later met Esa. When they showed me round their smallish place they casually mentioned they had a sauna in their bathroom. I had been warned that the Finnish have a love for saunas but I was still shocked to see it! I spent the evening going from shower to sauna to balcony and found the combination of the three very relaxing.

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I'll expand on this post some time in the future but I could not possibly speculate when. I'll upload some pictures soon as I don't have to availability to do some here.. plus I only have 3 minutes remaining on this machine as I'm in Seinäjoki public library.

Stockholm - Västerås

I left the idyllic island of Tranholmen and headed back to the city to spend one more night before I traveled West to Västerås. My host would to be Benozir, the Bangladeshi student who I went ice skating with earlier in the week. He had cooked me a curry which he described as 'sweet'..  it turns out we don't share the same definition of sweet.  A few glasses of water later and I was off down the hall to play some indoor cricket with some of his friends from Bangladesh and classmates from Sri Lanka thinking I was not the best person to represent England.

Benozir had talked of a lake in a nearby park that had frozen over, meaning people had been cross county skiing and ice skating on it. I went on a walk the next morning to check it out and it was nestled in the middle of a forest on the outskirts of Stockholm near one of the royal palaces. There were, sure enough, people skiing on the frozen lake and an area cleared of snow with the characteristic scars of ice skates covering it from the previous day. I later wandered into the forest to enjoy its beauty but was interupted by a couple of young teenager girls shouting something at me in Swedish. 'Kan du prata Engleska' I shouted back (the only phrase I had needed to learn to get by in Stockholm) and they explained, in English, that they had spotted some reindeer and were scared in case the deer would attack them. The deer weren't reindeer but the variety I had came across on Tranholmen so I knew that the deer would be timid.. information that the girls were pleased to learn.

I said farewell to Benozir, and to Stocholm, that evening and boarded a train to Västerås with the hope of getting to find out abut Swedish people. As it turns out, it is't actually hard to met Swedish people in Sweden. Within minutes of arriving in Väasterås I was in a car with three Swedes with the prospect of joining two more once we arrived at Emma's, my host, apartment. Emma treated to me to what I believe to be my first vegan meal, a tasty one at that. Emma enlightened me that evening that it was now the week, I tend to lose the concept of a week and weekend, and that meant she would have to work the next to days. This wasn't to be a problem because her friends Linda & Martin had the time to hang out with me and show me around the city. 

Definitely more of a summer house.

Västerås is built along side Lake Mälaren although you could easily be forgiven to think this lake was a sea as it covers about the same area as Greater London. Lake Mäleran, like most bodies of water in Sweden, was frozen. This didn't deter the lakemen(?) though as they ploughed through the ice with their boats making a delightful sound that I didn't tire of listening to. As I look out from the lakeside over the frozen mass of water I spotted what looked like a little house. Linda explained it was a small hut people could rent out an live in when the lake was a lake and not ice. She continued to explain there was an artist that had built three huts which people could rent out to stay in, the one on the lake,  one down a mine and one in atree opposite the city hall. I could understand why somebody would want to rent the tree house and the lake house but the mine hut seemed hard to wrap my head round. It turns out the artist also has plans to build a hut for placement on the moon.. but don't hold your breath.

After a brief tour of the city I was asked if I like Swedish candy which I knew to be pick 'n' mix. I replied 'of course I like pick 'n' mix' and was subsequently taken to the best 'Smågodis' shop in town.. and by best I mean it had the greatest variety of sweets to choose from - over 600! Between the three of us we bought 2 kg of sweets. We returned back to the apartment and continued to pretty much finished them all before the night was out.

All smiles before the 'haunted' island.

My last evening in Västerås was spent on an island a short dive away from the city. On that island stood a Swedish castle, a past residence of the ruling monarch of the time. The island itself it rumored to be haunted and Emma warned me of all the things I shouldn't do if I wanted to avoid the ghosts. I spent the evening doing all the things she told me not to in hope of tempting a few ghosts out of the shadows.. although I stopped short of walking backwards around the castle's church 7 times in order to be confronted by the murdering ghost of a monk. Unfortunately I failed to tempt any ghosts into existence and we left the island unscathed.

I used the opportunity of spending time with Swedes to ask them about the country.. particularly where I could go snowboarding. Emma and Martin mentioned that a place called Östersund had applied to host the winter Olympics on a number of occasions so it could be a good place to start looking for a couch. I did exactly that, and the morning after the island trip I was saying my goodbyes to Emma at the train station hoping it wouldn't be too delayed so I could catch my connecting trains to Östersund.. easier said than done in snowy winter Sweden......