Family visit

Heipä!

Last week my parents, sister and brother came to Turku to visit me. The day they arrived they immediately came to my place where I served them homemade karjalanpiirakka that was left from our Finnish dinner. They liked it a lot. Afterwards we went to their cottage on an island and almost in the middle of nowhere. There cottage was great. It was a very old villa which was kept original as much as possible. The furniture in the rooms was old and in each room there was still an original stove. Besides there was a lot of decorative stuff that was very old and made the atmosphere in the cottage very nice. A modern thing was the electric heating which was very nice because it was quite cold during the days they were here.

The next day we went to Helsinki. I had already been there one day but this time I saw many different things. I also knew the way through the city centre a bit, so I could guide them to the most beautiful place. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to visit Suomenlinna, a sea fortress at the seashore of Helsinki. But I will go there tomorrow on my own, it should be one of the most interesting places to visit in Helsinki.

Because my parents rented a car it was very easy to visit places. Even though some things are not that far away (15 km for example), they are still quite difficult to reach, especially on the islands where the public transport is not that frequent. With the car we could go to any place we wanted. We made some hikes on the islands which are beautiful. The nature here is very special with a lot of forest, rocks (from the ice age) and many different colors of moss. We also went to a natural park, kuhankuona. Here the forests were combined with a lot of swamps, and many different colors.

I gave them a tour around Turku including the university hill (all university buildings of the two universities Turku has are located on one hill near the city centre) and they met my friends. Luckily I found some time to be on my own too. I really liked my family’s visit but it was also a little exhausting. I wanted to do a lot with them because there are so much more possibilities to do if you have a car, but then you are around people 24/7 and you don’t have time to be on your own. Especially because there was no internet connection in their cottage and I have to admit (and I don’t really like that) that I am addicted to facebook. During my exchange/Erasmus life here everything that is going to happen is on facebook. You need facebook to know what is going on.

The last evening we went to an ice hockey match of TPS, the local team. It was very cool to see an ice hockey match and I think it’s a great sport. However, TPS lost with 0 – 5. It was nice to sit in between the supporters of the other team ;). The last they we went to Porvoo, the second oldest city in Finland after Turku. Porvoo is located to the east of Helsinki and a really cute city. The streets are small, no cars in the city centre, streets are made of stone (not asphalt), wooden houses and a lot of small shops, restaurants and cafés. If I could make a list of must do’s in Finland, Porvoo would definitely be on that list. It was great that my family visit me and I got to see things that I would not have seen otherwise!

After my parents left I have had some sauna visits (I love it), another ice hockey match, a concert of the navy band my Finnish ‘dad’ with Queens music and a singer of a Finnish heavy metal band, I made some kruidnoten with the kids, we had a birthday, a thanksgiving dinner, another ice hockey game and yesterday a Sinterklaas party. I wanted my friends and roommates here to taste the delicious kruidnoten, pepernoten, gevulde speculaas, marsepein etc and we had a great time. It’s still funny that they keep laughing about the Sinterklaasstories I tell. For them it’s totally crazy that he comes from Spain, that the Pieten jump through chimneys, that he is here for about 3 weeks and most of all: that he comes by steamship…

Busy times still in Finland and I like it. There is so much more to do and only 4 weeks left. Next Tuesday I will finally leave to Lapland for a week. Hopefully it will snow a lot the coming days because there is not much snow yet. Winter is very late in Finland this year. They had to cancel some skiing competitions and normally Turku should have been covered with snow at this moment. However I haven’t seen any snow yet. Maybe it will be white when I return from Santa Claus!