Trees and Pokies

I write this as I zip through Finland at 176km/h on a train from a place that I can't pronounce or spell to another place that I can't pronounce or spell.  On my journey thus far I have noticed that anywhere that is not a lake has tress planted on it, even then some lakes have been drained to plant trees on.  Another thing I have noticed that any spare area in a shop has a pokie machine growing from it, they are everywhere servos, convienance stores, train stations, coffee shops anywhere with spare room.

From 2011-06-23

Finnish Baseball

As part of our journey through Finland we got the privilege of attending a Finnish baseball game.  This game bears little resemblance to ordinary baseball.  For starters the bases are in a zig zag shape, the ball isn't pitched and getting out, or burnt as the Finns say, is very different from what I would call baseball.  Wikipedia has a good explaination of the game, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pes%C3%A4pallo

Here is a video that we took at the game we saw:


It is a very fast paced game, seemed like you had to look in three places at once, I still don't fully understand what was going on and why someone got burnt.

Although the crowd was small, about 500 I think, they were enthusiastic, they were very vocal and really got involved with the game.  This is something that is lost in larger venues, it was a more intermit experience.  The crowd also seemed very knowedgable, well this was compared to my complete ignorance of the game.

East and West seem to be closer together up here

As I'm writing this I am sitting in a cafe, Tin Tin, listening to an Australian family talk loudly about the complications of dialing international phone numbers, can't I go anywhere.  

The thing that is really doing my head in at the moment is the sun seems to rise and set in the same place, its doing this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solstice-50.jpg.  Its really messing with my sense of direction, we bought a compass yesterday so that should help out a bit.  My other issue with the sun is it never really goes down, we are heading up to middle Finland which will make the days even longer.

Hello from Finland!

We made it to the beautiful Finland in the early hours on Thursday morning. We were greeted by sunshine and relatively warm weather (in Finnish standards that is!). First things we had to do was to stay awake the whole day to get over jetlag. This was not a problem as Leena's relatives popped in for a coffee, we went for a bike ride around Myyrmaki and later went for a drive with Leena's Mum and Dad along Helsinki coastline. Craig had his first true Finnish culinary experiences in a form of cured Reindeer meat, Turkish Pepper (salmiak) ice cream, 100 % rye bread, Carelian stew and rice pudding with fruit soup. Here are some photos of these delicacies:

On our way!

Well we've checked our bags, cleared immigration and got some duty free booty, Finland here we come!