This is the Finland I miss when I'm away.
So yeah, I'm back from a summer holiday! This entry will be full of photos and little else; be warned that when I say there will be photos it means there will be LOADS of them. Like, sweet Bob how many.
After hanging out at Helsinki Big City for a couple of days we headed over to Tampere for seeing some dead_damien, cinnamonhusky and two other girls whose LJ nicks I don't seem to remember, and of course we went there also for some feasting at Harald. We may also have visited Teerenpeli for some beer sampling, maaaayyyybe. No confessions though.
Our room at the Omena hotel was supposed to be a cheapo two bed deal, which it was - only there was also enough room to hold a frikken independence day ball, a HUEG balcony, four beds actually and to top it off it was nearly on the top floor. The view was therefore nothing short of amazing. I woke up at 4 a.m. for absolutely no reason and sneaked out to snap a couple of photos.
Btw that apartment down there has its own terrace on the roof of another house. How cool is that? Answer: very.
I may be a bit gay for Tampere, actually. That chimney sort of looks like it's flipping the bird at the whole wide world.
After Tampere we headed up north and after getting lost once in the way we finally found Ruovesi, a small town where my summer cottage is. We stopped at Kallenautio on the way.
!!!
!!!!!
!!!!!!!
Ruovesi church. Once upon a time a friend of ours climbed upstairs to try out the organ, quite without a permission but since the church was totally empty we figured what the ever, YOLO and things like that. Naturally while she was playing a tourist guide entered with a horde of foreigners who apparently thought the entertainment was created for them and were quite happy, but that was an awkward moment when our friend eventually returned and we made a somewhat sheepish exit under the apparently still confused guide's eyes. Just so you know, Miss, we were those hooligans and sorry about that.
For some reason church architecture has always appealed to me, and my favourite part is always the altar. This is a classic and perhaps a bit simplistic example of an altar of a Finnish church, maybe a bit too decorative for my tastes but I have to admit it's still tastefully done.
Ofc since we were in Ruovesi, a visit at Tarjanne was a definite must!
My butt on Tarjanne. That Space Invaders hoodie sure is an awesome piece of clothing if I say so myself.
It begun to rain soon as we got on but on Tarjanne that's never a problem. The ship was rather full and we nearly missed it - not because of being late but because I missed the first mate's two first call-outs at Ruovesi (when they're on the regular routes they don't stop at any harbours where people aren't leaving or boarding) until a granny sitting next to me nudged me. We were the only ones getting on the ship after all - even if the pier is full of people most of them only come there to watch Tarjanne, not to travel on it.
Flink, Woitto and Roosa.
Kummeli.
All that green and all that spider web!
Rock paintings by Hugo Simberg and Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Simberg's female figure on the left, Gallen-Kallela's Churning Woman on the right.
I'm trying to figure out what this is. A sauna?
Leaving at Murole, some bicyclists getting on board while waiting for the canal gates to open. When it was time to leave, the ropes of the ship were untied by a mysterious person that ended up being called "Mr Ísland" (there's a bit of a funny mistake there - Iceland is called Islanti in Finnish but the pronunciation is almost identical to Ísland, Iceland in Icelandic - the first mate very likely mixed up the words Islanti and Iceland and ended up pronouncing the country name correctly by accident) at the request of the first mate.
There will be more photos of the trip to come. And of Harald, OMG YES.