We had 3 pretty solid days of straight driving south through Finland, and unfortunately, we never made it to the Moomin Museum, which was on our list of must-stops, due to several factors including the rain and over-optimistic time planning. Ah well! A reason to go back and see more! The 3 days we spent driving were very rainy, which was okay, since we weren’t stopping much, but a little hard on Anders who drove the entire trip. And plus the scenery was pretty much exactly the same: pines and birches for miles. We saw another reindeer on the road and then passed a mother and baby (though it happened too fast for us to get photos).
The view for most of 2 days
A roadside troll
We spent the first night in Rovaniemi, which is famous for being the official home of Santa Claus. They have a huge “village” with lots of stuff for kids, including reindeer petting zoo, a giant gift shop, a Christmas post office, and photos with Santa (year-round!). Anders refused to get pics taken with Mr Claus but we did make it into the post office 15 minutes before closing time. They hold the mail for Christmas all year and send it out in December. 🙂 We stayed at a fairly forgettable, though serviceable hotel, and had buffet dinner at an Asian place next door.
This sign was in a shopping center attached to a huge parking garage that held the supercharging station (completely hidden and hard to find on the basement level, no signage). I sent it to my friend Russell because it made me laugh. Finnish is just wild. I looked up some interesting info about the Finnish language: it’s unrelated to most other European languages. There’s no grammatical gender and all pronouns are gender-neutral. It doesn’t use articles (though it has 15 different cases). It has no future tense. It has no word for “please” (Swedish doesn’t either, actually). Finnish uses a lot of portmanteau and compound words, which means words can get very long.
Finnish also holds the records for both the longest word AND the longest palindrome. The Finnish word “saippuakivikauppias” is the world’s longest palindrome and is listed in the Guinness World Records book, it means “a seller of soapstone”. The biggest compound word with a whopping 61 letters is the impressive but not very useful “lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas”, which translates to “airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student”.
Listening to people speak Finnish was lovely, though. It’s a very bubbly, joyful-sounding gargle of a language.
The next day we drove further south to Kajaani. We had sunshine in the morning but it started raining about mid-day. I read my book, and texted with the kids, and paid bills online in the car. We drove through a massive thunderstorm and downpour in the afternoon. I was very glad to be inside and protected! Our destination was Kajaani, and we stayed at a very big hotel right on the Kajaani river. After dinner, which was a delicious Caesar salad, it was still quite light out, and even though there was a light rain, we took a walk down through a lovely riverfront park to see the ruins of Kajaani Castle. It was blown up by the Russians in 1716, but has been carefully and rather thoroughly repaired and cared for, even though it is still in ruins and was never rebuilt.
Fishing on the Kajaani in the rain
I’m still trying to identify these skinny Finnish conifers. Siberian pine was the only thing that seemed close.
The next morning, after a yummy hotel breakfast (all the hotel breakfasts were yummy!), we set off again. We were planning to drive to Tammerfors (Tampere) to stop at the Moomin Museum, but we never made it. I was very bummed but shit happens. We drove all day and it was sunny and beautiful and the Finnish countryside was stunning…we were out of the pine forests into farmland, rolling hills, and deciduous woods. We had perfectly timed bathroom breaks the entire way, and I discovered the goodness of dark chocolate Fazer bars. However, after a very long wait at a very busy, very slow supercharger, we realized that there was no way we would make it to the museum before it was closing, so we ended up deciding to not stress about it and we continued 2 hours past Tammerfors to the apartment Anders had booked for the night.
We got to Loimaa just about dinner time, so after getting our stuff into the apartment, Anders found a restaurant on Trip Advisor that sounded good and we walked several blocks into the town center. It was sunny out, but very quiet for a Saturday evening. The movie theater we passed was even closed. We ate dinner at Lanko Bar & Grill and it was fantastic! Another exceptional meal on this trip! I had a crayfish roll and a potato cake with grilled broccolini and zucchini, and it was so delicious I could have licked the plate, haha!
We walked back to the apartment and got ready for bed, even though it was still very light out. However, the quiet of the evening was completely disturbed by an hours-long drag-race fest down the main street right outside our window that started about midnight and went on forever. UGH. One of the worst night sleeps we had the entire trip, sadly.
Next up: Ferry ride and 2 nights on Ã…land
Mood: relaxed
Music: Tove Lo—How Long