Here is a joke: I was so cold I got in the freezer to get warm. Only in Finland it is not a joke, it is actually warmer in the freezer that it is outside.
I followed the advice I had been given before leaving Australia and took a bus trip out of Helsinki. I went to a town called Poorvoo. I went there on a motorway bus and came back on a bus that went through all the little towns. Poorvoo itself is the only remaining wooden town in Finland. The rest of the towns burnt down at one time or another. In the case of Helsinki it burnt down five times before they decided to choose another building material. (slow leaners)
It was really quaint, cute as a button, elfin even, with ski runs around the town and people sitting on frozen rivers fishing in little holes they have dug out, or people lazily skating over frozen lakes with no evident intent, or people furiously playing ice-hockey evidently with the intent to kill. It really was more like a movie that I can possibly say, and I am good at exagerating. The bus trip back was a little excursion through Father Christmas-land. The towns along the way had 10-20 houses, all covered in snow, with barely a soul moving about. The trees stand tall and white, and there was no wind. The lights were all on in the houses, the snow glistened and the sleigh bells tinkled (well the bit about the bells is not true, but the rest is.)
The things that Finland has too offer include
I followed the advice I had been given before leaving Australia and took a bus trip out of Helsinki. I went to a town called Poorvoo. I went there on a motorway bus and came back on a bus that went through all the little towns. Poorvoo itself is the only remaining wooden town in Finland. The rest of the towns burnt down at one time or another. In the case of Helsinki it burnt down five times before they decided to choose another building material. (slow leaners)
It was really quaint, cute as a button, elfin even, with ski runs around the town and people sitting on frozen rivers fishing in little holes they have dug out, or people lazily skating over frozen lakes with no evident intent, or people furiously playing ice-hockey evidently with the intent to kill. It really was more like a movie that I can possibly say, and I am good at exagerating. The bus trip back was a little excursion through Father Christmas-land. The towns along the way had 10-20 houses, all covered in snow, with barely a soul moving about. The trees stand tall and white, and there was no wind. The lights were all on in the houses, the snow glistened and the sleigh bells tinkled (well the bit about the bells is not true, but the rest is.)
The things that Finland has too offer include
- reindeer motifs and novelites
- reindeer pulling sleds
- reindeer on the menu including reindeer salami
- almost everyone speaks English as a third language and I have less trouble communicating than I did in Scotland where they were all speaking English as a first language
- bikinis on sale for A$12 (supply and demand)
- gloves on sale for A$60 (supply and demand again)
- lots of fish served cold
- really good heating everywhere indoors
- very long words with lots of vowels
- lots of vitimin D medicinal products with the word "Sun" in the name
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