Of mosquitos, moose and bright nights

Thinking about what to write for this entry a funny anecdote comes to my mind. When I worked on the boats in Milford Sound (New Zealand) and we were in the process of clearing tables from plates, cupes etc one of my workmates asked the customer "Are you finished?" whereon the customers replies "No, I am Indian!" .... Don't tell me you didn't laugh!

Alright, back to the real issue. Seems like I am on a mission....to see as much as possible from Europe while I am on home leave. And so I just came back from a week in Finland, visiting my brothers mate and his wife. The newly-weds have tied the knot just a week before our visit. After checking all means of transportation and the costs involved we've decided to take the long enduring inland route and packed up our car - right under the roof as Micha (the mate) had given us a long shopping list with things to take from Germany. If you don't fly the only way of getting to Finland from Germany is via ferry from Rostock right at the top end of northern Germany. We live in the middle though so it took us about 6 hours to get to Rostock, where the ferry wouldn't leave before 5am Saturday morning. We killed time by eating out and going to the movies and boarded the ferry at around 1am. If felt like ages until the ferry finally left the harbour and just a few minutes into the trip I had fallen asleep. We all were dog-tired!

Back in Australia I had believed that cruising to Tasmania takes a long time but 12 hours is quite tolerable seeing the fact that it takes 26 hours (!) to Helsinki/Finland. To kill time we played board and card cames, read, ate (and that quite a lot, what else is there to do when you're bored?) and slept. More than happy we left the ferry in Helsinki upon arrival on Monday morning and ...... yipee.... it was raining! Anyway, we had decided to do a sightseeing trip on a bus to get an idea of how Helsinki looks like and so we've done it. And we had the bus for ourselves! At lunch time we left Helsinki to drive north and at about 6pm we arrived at Michas place right in the middle of nowhere, deep in the forest. What is there? Just the house the couple is living in, a wood shed, a sauna, a BBQ area and a pit latrine. The longdrop wasn't that bad, it didn't smell or anything because you use a special mixture of earth and other stuff to cover what you've just done.

To relax a bit we instantly went to the sauna and spent more than an hour sweating. After dinner we noticed that light outside hasn't change much and we learned that it never gets really dark up there (they are quite close to the Arctic Circle). At 2am in the morning it was still dawning and you can go outside without needing a torch. Unfortunately that also means that in winter it never really gets bright and on cloudy days with no moon and stars it can be pitch black.

Over the next few days we experienced a mix of rain and sun and depending on the weather we either went sightseeing into the next bigger cities, went shopping, hiking in the forest, paddling on one of the many lakes, bbq-ing or just relaxing. We also spent quite a bit of time in the sauna. Doesn't happen every day that a sauna is located right infront of your door!

What about the title you may ask? Hm, unfortunately moose seem to be shy or busy or whatever so we haven't seen any. Mosquitos on the other hand aren't shy at all and like to be around humans a lot. Can't say I made a lot of new friends because they all had to die immediately!

As it's always the case time went by far too quick and on Friday we had to leave this tranquil place to go back to Helsinki where we made good for Monday's rain and not being able to take any pictures. We also had lunch before we boarded the ferry, leaving harbour at around 9pm. Saturday 11pm we hit German ground and although we were quite tired made our way home (remember, 6 hours drive down south!). With swapping drivers a few times we made it home and my brother and his girlfriend (ooops, haven't even mentioned yet they were with me...) kept going a bit longer to reach their home.