Kevät: Spring

The sun is shining, the birds are singing... it's 4 AM.

We've discovered that now the sun never completely sets. The closest we ever get to "night time" is a cornflower blue twilight, with a pastel, yellow glow hanging on the horizon. But along with 20 hours of daylight has come a full-fledged spring. We know most of you back home in the States are already in summer mode, but here the trees are finally blossoming with lush green leaves, and where there were once patches of snow are now verdant mosses, tall grasses, and beautiful flowers.

A Very Finnish Weekend

We got back from Stockholm to a special treat with our Finnish moms: they had set up the kitchen at the public library downtown for us to have a traditional Finnish cooking lesson. After donning our booties to keep the kitchen floor clean, we dove into a busy afternoon including potato peeling, taste-testing, and a marathon pulla-making session. The exact methods that have been passed on to us are secret, but we plan on making lots more pulla when we get home. At the end of the evening, we sat down to enjoy a delicious dinner cooked by our Finnish moms with a little help from us.

The end of the weekend brought an even more enjoyable treat: a Sunday trip to Ritva's summer house on an island in the middle of a lake on the outskirts of Jyvaskyla. We got to the island via rowboat, courtesy of Ilpo (also known as Mr. Ritva). The house was a charming log cabin with a small sunroom, cozy living room, kitchenette, and beds upstairs in the loft. We spent the afternoon relaxing, taking an authentic sauna, and laying out by the lake. We also enjoyed eating sausages cooked over the fire and celebrating the birth of Ritva and Ilpo's first grandchild.

We now completely understand why the Finns escape to their summer houses during July; the scenery was beautiful, the weather amazing, and the company enjoyable, as always.

Bloopers

Hover on photos for captions!

Book Review

With Christmas having been right before we left, our family and friends were kind enough to give the gift of travel guidebooks for Finland, Russia, Scandinavia, and Europe. Over the course of our stay, we have put these books to great use, and can now speak with corresponding great authority of their merits, demerits, and general usefulness.

Lonely Planet: Finland
Possibly the book we have found most useful of the four, the Lonely Planet: Finland guidebook has a great introduction complete with brief rundowns of culture, language, history, and general tips for each area of Finland. Divided by region, the book was detailed but concise, and offered annotated lists of activities, sights, shopping, and places to eat and stay, as well as really helpful maps for getting oneself oriented. It also had the winning attribute of having a photo of really fantastic Lappish boots on its cover. Kiitos to Jacob for an excellent gift.

Fodor's Moscow and St. Petersburg
Given that an entire half of the book was dedicated to the city (St. Petersburg) that we were visiting, it was automatically a win. This one was divided into genre of activity (Where to Eat, Where to Stay, etc.), and came with a metro map and such helpful add-ons as Local Dos and Taboos and Worst Case Scenarios. It also had an extensive Russian language guide – not that it really helped us, but we think that's more to do with the complexity of Russian than the simplicity of the guidebook. They also had stars marking recommended attractions and Fodor's Choice designations, and we can affirm that they typically merited that distinction.

AAA TravelBook: Europe
For a company dedicated to American automobile travel, AAA did impressively well providing a guidebook for tourists seeing Europe on foot. Encompassing 41 cities across 19 countries, the information was understandably limited, but what provided was a very useful overview to each area. Its Survival Guides were particularly entertaining, and its History and Essential Information were great to prepare us for our short jaunts across the Finnish border. It also featured beautiful color photos but questionable quotes representing each country. Examples: Finland - “The appearance of the town is entirely modern, in some respects suggesting America rather than Europe.” Sweden - “The farther I came North, the more like New England everything grew to look.” I mean, we guess if you're catering to Americans... Regardless, our new Eurosnob status forces us to be affronted, and mention that Sweden and Finland were there first.

Rick Steves' SCANDINAVIA – As Seen on Public TV
The most obnoxious travel guidebook we have ever encountered: Rick James Steves apparently felt the need to publish his personal favorite Scandinavian attractions... and nothing else. Even while doing so, he managed to retain a snotty attitude, the delusion that he is funny, and consistent failure to disclose times or locations.

Rather than having you listen to us complain, we'll just treat you to an excerpt: “Vegeta Vertushus, which has kept Oslo vegetarians fat, happy, and low on the food chain for 60 years, serves a huge selection of hearty vegetarian food that would satisfy even a hungry Viking.” He also tries to convince you that he has been everywhere worth being and seen everything worth seeing, and doesn't want you to be “fooled by overweight guidebooks!” He likes to plan itineraries for you as well: “Helsinki is worth... about seven hours.” Incidentally, Helsinki is the only thing he talks about in Finland. What he advertises on the back cover of the book to be “dozens of custom-designed, user-friendly maps” turn out to be hand-drawn atrocities that really only served to get us more lost than found.

Rick Steves thought he was so awesome that he decided to write, sing, and publicize his own rap song advertising... himself. Listen by clicking here. Yeeeeah boi!

The Cave of Military Secrets

Now that we've been living here for almost 5 months, we finally took it upon ourselves to ask our Finnish moms what was up with the huge garage door that leads into a gaping black tunnel in the side of a mountain that is located just up the street from our building. We had asked our tutor, Laura, the first time we saw a car disappear into its depths, and she had informed us that it was some kind of military place. Our Finnish moms took this explanation one step further: this cave is in fact full of secret military computers doing secret military things.

If we take the theory that Austin (Elizabeth's brother) proposed into account - that the Russian girls living next door to us are not really music majors like they claim, seeing as they play really awful songs on their piano, but are instead Russian spies - it would seem that we have a Finnish James Bond movie unfurling at our front door.

Stockholm Highlights

The Ferry Ship
We caught the ferry from Turku, on the west coast of Finland, to Stockholm, Sweden on the night of the 18th, expecting a large passenger boat. What we got instead was more like a mini cruise ship, complete with multiple restaurants, a huge duty-free store, casino, and movie theater. Our cabin was rather cozy (read: TINY) but comfortable.

Changing of the Guard

To our surprise, we learned that Sweden has a royal family (and we saw their pictures everywhere on postcards), and, though they no longer live in the Stockholm Palace, it is still their official residence and therefore guarded by the Högvakten, the Royal Guard chosen from members of the Swedish Armed Forces. We were lucky enough to witness the changing of the guard at noon while we were exploring Gamla stan, the oldest part of the city. We found a YouTube video of this event for your viewing pleasure.

The Under the Bridges Boat Tour
Stockholm is composed of several islands and two peninsulas. It's therefore easily divided into large areas, each with its own character - Djurgarden, for example, is a National City park, and previously-mentioned Gamla stan, or the "Old City," has cobblestone streets and medieval architecture. We took this boat ride around the city and even happened across a Swedish submarine.

Skansen

An open-air museum that was founded in 1891, Skansen is a recreated pre-industrial village, including farmhouses, windmills, a marketplace, a manor, an old railway, and a Nordic zoo. We were particularly amused by one peacock who had made his way to a sidewalk, who, upon running into a group of tourists, attempted to scare them away by displaying his plumage. Unfortunately for the rather-flustered peacock, who was growing more and more agitated by the second, his display only drew a bigger crowd. We did feel rather bad for him and do hope he has figured out the reverse psychology required to get rid of humans.

The Open Market
In the Södermalm district of central Stockholm, we wandered across a huge open-air market. Underneath their long white tents, merchants were selling plates and glassware, jams, honey, chocolate, sausage, cheese, herbs, clothing, fudge, and even olives. Many of them seemed to be foreigners, especially French vendors of cheese and sausage. We did try a very interesting dessert that was essentially a very long, tubular marshmallow covered in chocolate and coconut.

Surprise!

We're not in Finland anymore.

No, we're not home early; we're just taking advantage of our last two weeks in Europe to pop over to Stockholm, Sweden for a few days. As you can imagine, there've been a few bumps along the way. Regardless of lost hostel reservations... and ferry reservations... we're currently using the WiFi at our cozy hostel in the center of Stockholm, and we're about to go find some lunch.

We'll tell you all about it, but right now the smörgåsbord is calling our name.