Tunturi Lapland

Introduced to downtown with a drunk guy urinating in the middle of main street at 4PM alongside his patient friends....with the unsurprised locals passing by. Had a good time being shoved all over the place on a Saturday night in the chilly city with great nightlife. <br><br>So all you get here is a picture taken at 3AM or so, almost as bright as day.<br>

... meal and tried to do some reading. But I was so tired I dozed off. Only 6 hours on the train, it was difficult to have a good rest and so I didn't but luckily all my belongings were safe with me hugging my bag and looping my leg over my additional hand-carry.<br><br>---------<br><br>Tha t night in Frankfurt, it was no surprise that I have a restful night at Hotel Continental. Bought a huge pork knuckle, it was so huge that I ate it for dinner and ...

Today we took a cruise through an archipelago of twenty thousand islands to Aland Finland. It was an early start so we had a huge buffet breakfast on board followed by another as much as you can eat lunch. The scenery is magnificent as well! There is free internet connection on board , handy, as we cannot access it out in the woods!!

... Superior Double Room. Initially the reservation was for 10 nights but we later decided to shorten the planned stay by a couple of nights just to give us more room to plan the rest of the trip (we can always book extra nights in Seoul should we decide to stay there longer). (to be continued if I'm happy with this travel blog service...)

1. Weaving the Incantation 2. A Servant 3. Born From Fire 4. Towards and Against 5. The Smoke 6. Better Unborn 7. Veil of Sin (Ei ennen soitettu, ikinä) 8. Silver Bride 9. Two Moon 10. Cares 11. In the Beginning 12. Silent Waters 13. Alone ----- 14. The Way 15. House of Sleep 16. Black Winter Day 

... back in coach (is it really necessary to rub it in like that?), but I did get a blanket, pillow, and eye mask which is better than nothing. and the seat beside me was empty, so I got a little bit of extra room :) Since the first flight was delayed an hour I was worried that I wouldn't have time to make my connecting flight. but not to worry, I wasn't even listed on the "time critical" transfer board, so I didn't have to ...

... the winding aisles, admiring everything but purchasing nothing. Thank goodness America is blessed with these posh super stores because it was hard to leave empty handed! Before leaving the store, we ate at the IKEA café, I had yummy vegetarian ratatouille and Kyle had a big plate of Swedish meatballs. Very tasty and fresh, also the cheapest meal we've had at about $6 a plate. We got back on the highway and headed toward Oulu, Finland. Oulu turned out to be a cute city ...

... youtube.com/watch?v=e98PEx6b aiA. you see, conan bears an uncanny resemblance to the president of finland, Tarja Halonen, who spoke at the forum. it was actually pretty cool to hear the leader of the country speak, it was the first time i had been in the same room as a world leader (okay, so finland isn't exactly a world power, but still, it was great that she came!) - unfortunately she ...

... going further east. The funny thing is that the driver was only speaking russian and the lady at the back only russian or finnish. So it ended up that I was telling Laura in english (I was holding the map) who was telling the lady in finnish and who was telling the russian guy. The ride went pretty well and Jyvaskyla is not a hitch-hiker friendly place so I found safer to get few km further down to Helsinki along the highway to a big service station ...

I don't remember exactly what days I did things, but in the last week I went to services a few times with Steve and Judy to listen to Eric Jurmu speak, went out to dinner one evening with Eric and Maggie, went sledding one day with Stiina and her family then later to services and then to haps, and went to Gabe and Arja's to say 'bye to them and the kids.