This week we moved gradually north, beginning in Sulkava (not very north) to catch up with our family - Marianna, Heidi, Jukka & Ilja. On our way we visited dad's old house in Kyrsyä - about time he went home! We saw the lake that they swam in as kids, the swamp that dad was often sent to, to catch tiny little fish for Mummi's pie, and found the forest alive with lingonberries and cranberries. Many memories were shared as we walked (and ate) and made our way to Sulkava.
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| Brothers back home |
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| #FatherDaughterTravel #Generations |
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| Opri decided to swim... does Marianna have a choice? |
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| All dry! |
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| Excitedly discovering Tamania #PekoePhoto |
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| Cooking together |
For lunch I made some pumpkin soup which the girls remember having when they visited Australia. Considering that Halloween is fast approaching I got a little creative and carved a funky face to light the way to the sauna. Ilja found the soup revolting, but gave me two thumbs up for the lantern, so hey that's a win in my books.
As well as music and a visit to the church we taught Ilja the all important game of cricket. Heidi has kept a surprising amount of skill from her early days living in Australia and playing cricket at school, and between us we got out enough rules to begin a backyard tradition.
After visiting some of the places my vaari lived in his youth it seemed only fitting to return to the hometown of my mummi. Kerimäkki is a little town in Eastern Finland with the largest wooden church in the world. The church is an impressive structure to behold and shadows the cemetery caring for my ancestors. We wandered between the headstones looking for Mohells and found two of my Mummi's brothers, and her parents. We also found something incredibly spooky... a single headstone with the name of my grandmother and her (also living) twin brother. First, middle and surnames names. The whole family. Pretty weird coincidence, *No* they are not there.
Now we had visited south, west and eastern Finland. Time to go up, up, up. Dad and I caught the night train and arrived the next morning (somewhat grumpily on my part) in Rovaniemi, home to The Big Man himself - Santa Claus. We met up with Geoff in a beautiful house to call ours for the week in the suburbs, complete with sauna, piano and guitar. Until now we had had sunshine and warmth (7 degrees, Finland warm) every day, once we got north the temperature dropped to an average of 3 and the sky was overcast and grey. We still avoided any rain, but it removed chances of seeing the northern lights.
On our first day in Rovaniemi on my over-excited request we visited Joulupukki (literal translation 'christmas buck', aka Santa). You can meet him in his office, in a village smack bang on the line starting the arctic circle. Here we saw reindeer and tonttu houses. We visited the post office where thousands of letters are sent and received each year, and saw traditional Lapland teepees. Most importantly, we went into Joulupukki's office and said hello. He was very pleased to see us and thanked us for coming all this way from Tasmania - you live in Hobart, right? Dad was complimented on his beard and I was asked what I'd like for christmas (books, please). He flipped between Finnish and English when speaking to dad and I, and on our departure requested that we please clean the chimney and save some 'fries' for his reindeer. Magic.
On day 2 we drove far, far north. Many hours north. Lots of road, north. The scenery was beautiful with scattered houses and reindeer grazing along the side of the road. After many hours of driving and conversation hilariously contributed to by dad with off-topic statements every so often (he couldn't hear from the back, so took a stab), we arrived in Ivalo. Well and truly in Lapland and the arctic circle, here we met an interesting old gold digger, drank coffee and visited the local flea market. After such a long but impressive drive the final location was a bit of a non-event - you see, they're just about to start building a 7 story sky scraper for tourists (what). On the way back we stopped by the famous glass igloos, perfect for aurora watching and beautiful when covered in snow. Only it hasn't snowed yet, and its overcast, so they were somewhat uninspiring at this time of year. It was a loooong day, but so worth it. Especially for the reindeer. Oh, how I love reindeer.
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| Geoff on a typical day - check out the road! |
On Geoff's last day in Finland we decided to take a 'short' drive to the Swedish boarder. We called into the large-ish town of Kemi and found some books in the obligatory flea market visit, and came across the perfect spot to have coffee and pulla before continuing on our journey: Pulla Jussi.
Back in the car we drove north a little way and came across the first booze bus (or so we thought) of the trip. The conversation went something like this:
Geoff: "looks like there's a booze bus stopping cars over there."
Ally: "Mmm, haven't seen one of those yet."
Ally: "Hang on... did we just drive under a... That's a border sign!!"
Geoff: "Wait, what..?! Where do I go?!"
Dad: "Ah yes, that van says border police."
Ally: "That sign says Finland, that way!!"
whoops....
They didn't check cars on the way out of Sweden, but we were a little concerned about how we were going to get back in again without mine and dads passports... We pulled over in a side street beside an enormous Ikea to collect ourselves and two hoons fishtailed past us, with a female passenger dad thinks looked like ABBA. That was our experience in Sweden.
Thankfully they didn't bother checking the crazy Aussies trying to get back into Finland and we could laughingly attempt to navigate out of the right-laned highways to the 'quick' detour home. A few hours later dad commented that he thought this wasn't the route we had planned to take.. Turns out I had misinterpreted the instructions that morning and had been navigating Geoff along a beautiful road on the border to triple our journey time.. Oh well. It happened to be the most beautiful stretch of road we've driven this trip. Remember that time we accidentally went to Sweden?
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