My Illegal Trip to Finland

So, Finland ended up being pretty cool. I even learned how to spell 'Jyväskylä' which makes me feel speshel. (And now I'm hoping to bob that I actually did spell it right...) It's pronounced 'Ya-vas-ky-lah' for the curious. We actually didn't stay there, but we went through it on the way to Turvo, which is a little tiny village in the country, way way way way north. I was the most north I'd ever been.

The ferry ride over there was fairly good, we got on the boat, dumped our stuff, had a look around, played some roulette, (I won 90 Euro, or $150AU) and ate a meal that was priced by weight. Then we slept and got up disgustingly early to meet Ash's father after a 6 hour bus ride. I think it was six, anyway. It's all a nasty blur. I've discovered that it's really difficult to use a bathroom in a moving bus.

All that aside, the cabin was all rustic and cool. It smelled a bit funny as nobody actually lives there, but we almost made it normal by the time we got home. Actually, it smelled very strongly of mosquito repellant. Snail was right, Finnish mosquitos are little fuckers, and apparently they weren't as bad as they usually are. Here's the outside, anyway.



Most of the time was spent reading or playing on the laptop (there was no running water, but was power, so laptop came to play too) or wandering around randomly eating the chocolate we got on the ship. It was all very relaxing and nice, really. We'd go into the little village every day for supplies (and ice cream) and even braved the lake for a swim. It was bloody freezing with a wind, so I chickened out and went and sunbathed instead. Ash was being all tough and actually did swim. Good for her.

Here's a picture of the modern bathroom. It was pretty stinky, and filled with mozzies. The again, it was better than some facilities I've found in nightclubs, so there you go.



There you are then. What amused me most was the fact that there were two little places to sit, just in case you felt like doing yout business with a friend. Which is something I would never wish to do, ever.

And now that I've written about the least pleasant part of our stay, I shall counter it with telling of the most pleasant, which was the sauna. Oh, the sauna. It was even better on days that were cold. It was built in the 1930s we think, and is rather large.



Sure, you had to duck to get into the door, but mmm, the heat. It took hours to build up, but Ash's Dad did all the work. Mwaha. Thankfully, he had a go and then went off so Ash and I could use it. So this is what you do in the sauna:

• Get nekkid and splash water all over yourself.
• Sit around in the heat and chuck water onto the coals, making fantastic sizzling noises.
• Get too hot and wander outside for fresh air.
• Go back in, splash more water and whack yourself with birch leaves to help blood circulation.
  
• Wash hair and the rest of you.
• Come outside and splash each other with freezing water from the pump.
  

It gets you amazingly clean, though.

And then we'd cook kransky sausages over the camp fire on sticks. All very tasty, actually.

So, the ferry back was way less fun. We drove all night to get to the dock at 8am. *shudder* That was horrible, of course. We ended up sleeping most of the morning and then getting up to play roulette again (I lost, and got grumpy, but Ash did quite well) and then purchased Jäger from duty-free. Num. Made me feel ill when I mixed it with coke in our cabin, though. Maybe it was just the motion of the ship?

Oh, and this:



Mm! Drink's!

Thus ends the report from Finland.