North of Turku

Saturday was a picture-perfect day for sightseeing, and as everything in Turku was closed, we decided to take a drive north up the coast. Good choice. Well, we did find out where "everyone" was - out in their boats or at their summer cottages on the coast. We drove about 40 miles up along the coast and out onto a peninsula into the archipelago - a lot like driving in the Champlain Islands in VT, except that the farms and cottages are modest in size, some of them quite tiny, but nearly all well maintained with either attractive gardens or just plain yards that are very neat and tidy.

Driving about 20 km or so along a road through the country, we were impressed by the number of speed camera signs - it seemed that every time the speed limit changed it would be preceeded or succeeded with a sign about a camera! Naturally, that makes for pretty controlled driving - which we didn't mind at all. Also, Finland, like other nordic countries, has extremely strict laws about drinking and driving - apparently the alcohol in 1 strong beer is enough to put a man in trouble with the law if picked up. And the penalty is severe - he would lose his license or an extended period of time.

When we left Turku it was about 8:30 in the morning, and it was a bit cloudy, but as we drove north the sky began to clear and the day turned out lovely. We drove to the very end of the peninsula, where the map indicated there was an inn (maybe there was when the map was printed), and suddenly we came to one of those signs that shows a car falling off a cliff into the water - like at Innisfree in Ireland. All along the road and in the parking lot at the end were parked cars - but no people. We were trying to figure out where they had all gone, as there were no boat trailers in sight. Finally, we noticed rows of boat racks on the ground - like the ones we used to have at Sunnyside for pulling a boat up on the shale, and we noticed that there were literally tens of small islands within sight, each with one or two small cottages on them. We could even see people on some of the islands. Obviously, people keep a little boat - maybe a row boat, maybe a row boat to which they can attach a small motor - on the shore, and when they go to their kesämökki they drive out and hope into their boat!

It was gorgeous and wild - looked a lot like the BWCA with its rocky shores, low scrub evergreens, and blue sky. The water looked a bit different, it was a gray-blue-green color - like Lake Constanz in Germany. But it was really, really lovely. I would love to spend a month on one of the islands. On our way back toward the mainland, we stopped at a small roadside bar and restaurant in the tiny town; their billboard advertised a buffet lunch for E16. This was a really fun experience. We went inside and I asked the waitress (in Finnish) i we could get lunch there, she said yes, but then disappeared. The restaurant seemed to be totally run by pretty young people - and we discovered that none of them spoke any English. They seemed quite flustered by my Finnish (probably my fault, but it might have just been that they were young and local and even when my grammar was correct, it was formal and probably sounded weird), anyway, they mostly stood around and giggled and stared. Finally, I decided to ask if anyone spoke English, and that got a totally deer-in-the-headlights look, BUT the young woman with whom I was trying to converse did seem to think that one of the young men, who had been standing towards the back of the group, might be up to that. He protested that he didn't speak much English (well, maybe he didn't by his reckoning, but his English turned out to be WAY better than my Finnish), however, he asked if we spoke German!! Turned out his German was excellent, so Peter was able to take over the conversation. Later we did talk with the proprieter, who also spoke perfect German, but we never did ask how that happened that they spoke Finnish and German, but little English. Anyway, we had a terrific, Finnish buffet lunch - starting with 2 or 3 kinds off pickled herring, several cold vegetable salads (including potato salad and home made cole slaw), and going on to hot courses of boiled potatoes with dill, rice, some kind of meat (I think it was pork chops) in a gravy, a fantasticly delicious salmon in a light lemon sauce. And, of course, including bread and butter, dessert, and coffee/tea.

I was thinking of what Chris said in one of his Ghana blogs about how tiring it is to be a stranger, and to have everyone looking at you, etc. That's curiously true here - even though our skin and eye colors are the same as most of the population, obviously our clothes are not Finnish, and we just look different. Plus, we've discovered that as we don't know the customs we have to ask a lot of questions, which people find very funny. Like, even in Helsinki, when we were going to have lunch in the little restaurant at the museum, we had to keep asking the waitress things like, "How do we order? Do we just sit down at the table? How do we pay for our meal?" Turns out, you do just sit down, someone comes and asks you if you want a menu or if you want the buffet (in some instances that requires additional instruction. In the museum, there were 2 buffet sections that were similar but not quite the same. You could have one or the other, or you could have both...but we never did find out if they charge more if you have both! We also weren't quite sure if it was considered polite to return for seconds at the museum or the little restaurant yesterday, so we didn't. In the big hotels, of course, you can go take as much as you want several times, you just take fresh dishes each time.

Anyway, it was great fun even though we did get a bit tired of the stares we got from the other guests at the restaurant and the staff. Even the proprieter kept looking at us, and smiling - maybe we were did seem strange, or maybe they just liked having foreigners there. Peter was convinced that they thought we were Germans! Yikes!

Today we're off to Tampere, where we'll stay for 3 nights, and then back to Helsinki on Wednesday to stay there overnight before returning home on Thursday. Tomorrow we plan to go to Hämeenkyrö, where Muumuu came from.