The travels of Munniver

I' sorry for all the (imaginary) readers of this blog, for not having time - or means - to share my extreme experiences in the country that recently won the "most eccentric country" award: Finland.

I've been here for... several weeks, lots of time and yet not enough. My knowledge of finnish advances very slowly, partly for lack of time, but mostly for the characteristic of the language itself. Every time I learn a new word, or grammar feature, I find out later that I was mistaken, or the word is right, but it has 7 other more often used synonyms. Learning a language has seldom been more frustrating.

The other habits still surprise me, or I surprise them; for example, Jaakko was amazed, impressed and disgusted when he saw me putting salt on salad.

Salt and oil, is there anything more basic for a salad?

And there is a lot more. What about, for example, the silence? It seems to be a law in here, that I actually don't dislike - and as every rule is often broken by teenagers. I could spend hours describing the perfectly hygenic lack of hygene; no matter what they do, finns are always healthy - except for lactose allergies.

I should post a few pictures, but, well, they are on the other account now. I suggest to everybody who has a facebook account to check them there.

All the time I've been moving. After Lappeenranta I came back to lahti for one single day to leave again for Helsinki. There, after 2 days I departed for Turku, where the Ferry to Mariehamn, Åland, was. Together with Jaakko we went on a short trip with the motto "Knights & Dragons". Don't ask me why.

After enjoying tax free shopping, wonderful scenery from the sundeck, terrible wind on the sundeck, we reached the glorious capital of... Åland.

The city is tiny but quite pretty, a weird little island, in which finns can fell "half-foreigners".

There's not too much in Åland, but beaches, bird poo, ships and tiny forests should keep you busy for some time.

Then we faced another too early departure, this time towards the capital of... Sweden!

I have to say - finns, forgive me -  I loved Stockholm. There is so much to see and to do; the capital seems massive, its city centre comfortable and huge: looking from the channel, you can see a wide wide city, or so it seems. Don't think of New York, that's way to  big, but in Stockholm, there's free air - except in the small tourist venues of the Old city - everywhere. There is room for people. And toilets are expensive.

There is an entire small island for museums and a park, a Tourist could spend weeks in it. We only had tim to visit the Vasa museum and it was great.

By chance, we had the two sunniest day of the summer... so that the city looked even happier and warmer - Helsinki feels quite the opposite.

So, long story short, I ran out of time. I'll try to write again soon....

BWOOOOOUU - INAPPROPRIATE!!!!