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Today I celebrated my birthday on a picknick in a small, nice park near my home in Helsinki. Actually my birthday was on the 7th of August, but this was the first possible day for the picknick I'd been planning - and what a day it was! Sunny and surprisingly warm (compared to the past week), you could forget the summer will soon be over.
In the morning made two kinds of salads (potato & couscous), courgette pancake, blueberry pie and chocolate & raspberry cake (which I swear tasted better than it looked like). Ten of my friends came in the afternoon (plus one baby, and the Boy, of course) and we spent the day eating, chatting, and playing mölkky. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did - it was lovely to have a birthday party for a change (in the last few years I've been too tired/busy/lazy to organize anything), and to see all my friends.
In the last photo miss L (in the front) is wearing this super cool hedgehog hairclip. I didn't seem to get a good shot of it, but it's lovely!
Tomorrow will be spent washing dishes, I guess. I do like cooking and baking for my friends, but I'd like it even more if I had a dishwasher!
On Monday night I caught the night train and traveled over 800 km (13 hours! that nighttrain is s l o w ) north to Rovaniemi, almost to the Arctic Circle in fact. It's kind of embarrassing that I'd never been that far north before - embarrassing considering how much Finland there is even above the Arctic Circle.
The reason for my trip was visiting miss P, who moved back to her old home city two years ago. We've known each other for eleven years (eleven! we must be getting old), and I guess we've always talked about me visiting her parents in Rovaniemi... I'm kinda slow.
And what a trip it was! Rovaniemi was all about hot hot sunny weather, cycling across the city (I love how easy it is to cycle from here to there in small cities), swimming in the river and one lake - we spent one whole day on a river-side picknick, seven kids and fourteen adults altogether, meeting old and new friends, making fleamarket finds, feeling happy and free. I just wish I could have stayed longer, but the Boy's youngest sister gets married tomorrow, so I had to get back south today.
a café where everything's for sale
golden sand!
and lots of blueberries! yes, in the city (although a lot of Rovaniemi seems to be covered with trees)
As much fun as I had travelling around all June, I was pretty tired afterwards. Maybe that's why July has been a lazy month for me; I haven't even blogged... and there are many other things I could have done, or should have done, but didn't. But I am not going to blog about things I didn't do and feel even more guilty, I will tell you about the nice things I did do.
In July I
*got a tan without trying (which never happens)
*spent two lovely sunny days with nephew
*read good books
*enjoyed long days on the beach; the water in the sea is really warm
*traipsed around the city
*ate great brunch twice with miss H; here and here (I especially recommend Fanny Goes to Hollywood's brunches)
*made good fleamarket finds
*met some lovely ladies at a knitting/crocheting/gossiping etc. club - hope I'll have the chance to join them again
*wore a dress almost every single day
In true midsummer fashion, the weather was rather cool - luckily only one day was really rainy, so we did enjoy being outdoors as much as we could. Barbecued, read, went rowing on the lake (the Boy insisted on the life vest. even though I thought it rather unnecessary), and swam.
I rarely feel so calm as when I'm swimming, alone, feeling the water around me and hearing only the noises of birds, wind, and water. And there's nothing like swimming when the water reflects the clouds. Perfection.
On the first night the water was 14 degrees Celsius, and it felt icy - it still felt icy a few days later, at 17 degrees, but I still managed to swim for quite a long time. Too bad we had to leave just when the weather turned warmer - I'm sure the water would be perfect right now - but the Boy had to return to work. I'm already planning another long weekend there, though...
Having a kesämökki* ("summer cottage") of one's own is a dream every Finn has, or at least is supposed to have**; I guess the idea of a mökki painted with Falu red and situated by a lake is still deeply rooted in the minds of many Finns, even though nowadays a mökki can be a modern house with all the modern conveniences. Still, traditionally mökki is a place where Finns can be one with nature, with no neighbours in sight.
Come midsummer, the cities and towns in Finland empty up when the Finns travel to their cottages en masse. I, too, have spent most of the midsummers of my childhood out of the city, and even if midsummer in a city can be a good thing (there's something magical about how much a city like Helsinki changes; it's really empty and quiet), it still doesn't feel quite right.
I've spent the last few or so midsummers in Helsinki, due to having too much work to go anywhere, but this year The Boy and I followed the masses, borrowed his mother's car and drove some 300 kilometres to Rautalampi. The cottage we're staying in has been built by The Boy's grandfather in 1950s and is situated by the lake Konnevesi. It's built on a cliff, so the view of the lake is wonderful.
Unlike our summer house on the island, here we have electricity and even running water, so by my standards this is pretty high-tech! There's also a sauna (Finnish mökki isn't a proper mökki without a sauna), another mökki built in 80s and an outhouse. I like how every small building has been built so they fit in the rocky forest landscape; apart from the main building, you can hardly see them from the lake.
We arrived late on Thursday night, or early in Friday. The nights are short and light right now - the first photos I took at ca. 2 a.m.
*According to the Finnish Wikipedia article Mökki, mökki is "a smallish building often made of wood and meant for holidaying ".
**I do know that for some people, staying in a mökki is a nightmare; they've been forced to spend too much time with mosquitoes and people they do not like, and that has scarred them, some for life. Though I bet having a mökki of your own will be the next cool thing amongst those hipsters who have already picked up knitting.
