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cimoreneMy sister and her husband came to visit us in the midst of my nervous breakdown, the week after we had to say goodbye to Snookums and Anubis. (I did warn her we were having a hard time, but they couldn't have got a full refund on their plane tickets by the time we knew, and she said she still wanted to come as long as I still wanted to see her.) (The last time my sister visited Finland was in 2009, when she graduated from high school! She spent about a month with us in our old flat near downtown while Wax was still working at Nokia. After she graduated from college, my sister came to see me again, but we met in Stockholm and stayed in a hostel in Gamla Stan for a week. My parents would no doubt have wanted to visit since, but my dad is quadriplegic and has a more vulnerable immune system, making traveling challenging and more dangerous for him.)
After arriving at the Turku bus station at 2 am on a Saturday (their plane reached Helsinki at 11 pm, but we couldn't pick them up because our vehicle is an ancient clunky white van man van, a Citroen Berlingo that's like 20 years old and only has two seats), they spent a quiet weekend and Monday with us at home. Tuesday they and I went into Turku by bus to visit Turku's medieval castle. I've been on a guided tour of the castle once, with my Finnish language and cultural integration class in 2011, and I loved it - the castle, of course, was pretty inevitable because I love all old buildings, but also the tour was really good. We unfortunately got there in good time for the English tour only to find all the tours of the day were cancelled, so we were invited to follow the signposts and arrows, but we hadn't bought headphones for the free audio descriptions. My brother-in-law does not have sufficient museum patience for these descriptions anyway, I suspect, so the guided tour would probably have worn him down. As it was when we got out we were all pretty tired and didn't have enough energy for a second museum - we went up to Forum Marinum, the boat museum, which my BIL was interested in, but even he didn't really want to go through the museum, just to walk through the outbuilding full of retired torpedo boats.
1. My sister at Turku castle 2. Me in the great hall of the longhouse in Rosala Viking center 3-4. The Christian chapel's exterior and my sister at its altar 5. The outdoor smithy
The next day I finally got to see the reconstructed Viking village on the neighboring island of Rosala in Kimito! I've been meaning to go here since I came to Finland, basically, but I never have, because it's about 2½ hours by car from Pargas, more from Turku. My friend Sissela wanted to see it too, and her dad's BFF offered to take us there in his boat (making the trip shorter by about 30 min)! It was fun and the Viking village was also a lot of fun. We got there after their summer high season and before their big autumn events, but we got to walk around and read the signs in all the reconstructed buildings ourselves - a primitive forge, a great hall, a small farmstead, several outbuildings including one with displays of jewelry, tools, and musical instruments, a primitive church, and an adorable introductory video in the main building.
Thursday they and I took the night train from Turku to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. I've always wanted to see and pet reindeer, and my sister shared this ambition. We got to Rovaniemi Friday and spent some time wandering around an international street festival, and Saturday we took the bus to Santa's village. It is obviously also the off season for Santa's village, but we had no problem finding a place where you can feed and pet reindeer. We also toured a husky farm that does dogsled tours in the winter and where they raise many award-winning huskies, over a hundred, and also got to pet a bunch of them. That was really the main thing we wanted out of the trip. Sunday my sister and I had really wanted to see Arktikum, the natural history museum of Lapland, but unluckily the entire science half of the museum was closed while they constructed a new exhibit, so we only got to see the cultural history half, and again my BIL was underwhelmed.
We took the night train back to Turku again, where I was intending to take my sister into Turku to shop and visit the biological museum either Monday or Tuesday, or possibly both. But unfortunately for us, my boss tried to call me on the phone (not about anything urgent), and as a result, I ended up having an extended anxiety attack all day Monday and Tuesday was too much of a mess to go into Turku during the day as well. Tuesday night I took them back to Turku by the last bus and we spent a couple of hours in Wax's brother's basement waiting for their bus to the airport (the last bus from Pargas to Turku arrives at 11, but their bus wasn't leaving Turku until 2 am). Then Wax picked me up and took me home.
After arriving at the Turku bus station at 2 am on a Saturday (their plane reached Helsinki at 11 pm, but we couldn't pick them up because our vehicle is an ancient clunky white van man van, a Citroen Berlingo that's like 20 years old and only has two seats), they spent a quiet weekend and Monday with us at home. Tuesday they and I went into Turku by bus to visit Turku's medieval castle. I've been on a guided tour of the castle once, with my Finnish language and cultural integration class in 2011, and I loved it - the castle, of course, was pretty inevitable because I love all old buildings, but also the tour was really good. We unfortunately got there in good time for the English tour only to find all the tours of the day were cancelled, so we were invited to follow the signposts and arrows, but we hadn't bought headphones for the free audio descriptions. My brother-in-law does not have sufficient museum patience for these descriptions anyway, I suspect, so the guided tour would probably have worn him down. As it was when we got out we were all pretty tired and didn't have enough energy for a second museum - we went up to Forum Marinum, the boat museum, which my BIL was interested in, but even he didn't really want to go through the museum, just to walk through the outbuilding full of retired torpedo boats.
1. My sister at Turku castle 2. Me in the great hall of the longhouse in Rosala Viking center 3-4. The Christian chapel's exterior and my sister at its altar 5. The outdoor smithy
The next day I finally got to see the reconstructed Viking village on the neighboring island of Rosala in Kimito! I've been meaning to go here since I came to Finland, basically, but I never have, because it's about 2½ hours by car from Pargas, more from Turku. My friend Sissela wanted to see it too, and her dad's BFF offered to take us there in his boat (making the trip shorter by about 30 min)! It was fun and the Viking village was also a lot of fun. We got there after their summer high season and before their big autumn events, but we got to walk around and read the signs in all the reconstructed buildings ourselves - a primitive forge, a great hall, a small farmstead, several outbuildings including one with displays of jewelry, tools, and musical instruments, a primitive church, and an adorable introductory video in the main building.
Thursday they and I took the night train from Turku to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. I've always wanted to see and pet reindeer, and my sister shared this ambition. We got to Rovaniemi Friday and spent some time wandering around an international street festival, and Saturday we took the bus to Santa's village. It is obviously also the off season for Santa's village, but we had no problem finding a place where you can feed and pet reindeer. We also toured a husky farm that does dogsled tours in the winter and where they raise many award-winning huskies, over a hundred, and also got to pet a bunch of them. That was really the main thing we wanted out of the trip. Sunday my sister and I had really wanted to see Arktikum, the natural history museum of Lapland, but unluckily the entire science half of the museum was closed while they constructed a new exhibit, so we only got to see the cultural history half, and again my BIL was underwhelmed.
We took the night train back to Turku again, where I was intending to take my sister into Turku to shop and visit the biological museum either Monday or Tuesday, or possibly both. But unfortunately for us, my boss tried to call me on the phone (not about anything urgent), and as a result, I ended up having an extended anxiety attack all day Monday and Tuesday was too much of a mess to go into Turku during the day as well. Tuesday night I took them back to Turku by the last bus and we spent a couple of hours in Wax's brother's basement waiting for their bus to the airport (the last bus from Pargas to Turku arrives at 11, but their bus wasn't leaving Turku until 2 am). Then Wax picked me up and took me home.
