After touring Parliament on Friday, all of the Fulbrighters were invited to a sort of Thanksgiving potluck at the Helsinki apartment of one of the Fulbrighters. We had a nice time and I even found a way to make fresh hummus (using Macedonian Tahini, go figure). We had a super time. Over the last couple of months, we gotten to know some of the students and faculty on the program and it was a really nice time. Currently, we are one of only two families here though a couple of the faculty have their spouse along. Our kids are a novelty for most and so they have been tolerant.
Saturday morning we drove to the Northwest about 100km to Liesjärven National Park where we had rented a rustic cabin for the night. No electricity, just a propane stove for cooking, a wood stove for heat and a separate building with a sauna. We got there after stopping to pick up the key from a lunch place. The lunch was a typically Finnish buffet with salad, bread, and a couple of other options on this day meatballs and pork. Daniel and Gab had chicken nuggets with fries. They seem universal.
From lunch we drove to the cabin. This picture is not the cabin but the sauna. It too was heated by a wood stove though a more efficient one than the one in the cabin. We started by making a fire in the cabin which took some time to get going. Time to find the flue. By late afternoon snow was falling. The first real snow we had had on the trip. Pretty amazing given that it has snowed at least three times in Canton, NY already. The sauna house was about 150m from the main cabin.
Here is the view from the cabin. There was a dock onto a lake. The lake had about 2 or 3 inches of ice on it. Of course, our kids wanted to go walk on the ice. Nope, ain't happening.
Here is Daniel standing outside the sauna cabin getting a drink with the first snowflakes before we headed down to the load up with water at the outdoor well.
The picture is from the sign on the door to the well. The well was a real well dug about 15 feet down. There was a bucket attached to a long pole and you lowered the pole down to the water and then pulled the bucket back up with the pole. This was our source of fresh water for the night.
We went for a hike after getting both the fire in the cabin and the fire in the sauna going. This bridge is part of one of the trails in the national park between two large lakes. When we got back we took a sauna. We got the temp in the sauna to about 60 degrees C and stayed in there a good long time. All of us in our underwear. We went out of the a couple of times and the snow falling on our unclothed bodies felt good. Christo in particular seemed to enjoy the hot then cold, hot then cold juxtaposition. After we were done, I walked back to the main cabin without a shirt on.
After the sauna is was dark (pitch black) and still not 4pm. We had some chips and salsa for snack. We reheated taco meat for dinner and ate it in tortillas with rice and salsa. One of our camping staples. We also managed to make hot chocolate. The picture (at left) is from after breakfast the next morning but the candles give you a sense of the place.
Here is Christo in bed reading at the cabin. The cabin had two bunks. The plan was to have one of the kids (usually Christo since he moves the least in the night) sleep with one of the adults. However, while Steph was reading 'Tom Sawyer' to us all, Christo and Gab fell asleep in the same bed and that is how we stayed for the night.
Here is the woodstove. It held heat for a good 2 hours which necessitated several visits in the night. Fortunately I fell asleep at about 8:30p and so getting up a couple of times was not a huge ordeal. Steph loaded it up around 10 and again at 12 only to try to get it to go for three hours to find that it was out at 2:30. She relit it and then I took the rest of the night to keep it going. Fairly easy since I was up from about 2:30 to 4. The cabin never really got above about 55 during the night but under the blackets and comforters that we brought it was not uncomfortable.
This sign says that the cabin is at 33 degrees 27" east and 67degrees 34" North.
This picture was taken about 10 in the morning as we were packing to go. By we, I mean, Steph and I as the kids were down by the dock having stick sword fights.
Here are the kids as we were ready to leave. The upstairs is a special old fashioned sauna known as a smoke sauna and you have to reserve that and pay extra for it. We did not.
Part of the national park is a restored old farmhouse. We drove over and had lunch near where this picture was taken. Hard to see from the picture but the farm is on a peninsula that sticks out into the lake. In this picture it is hard to see but there is a well just behind the fence much like the one we used except that this pole was attached to a balance that makes pulling up the bucket much easier.
We came home Sunday afternoon and then Sunday evening we went to Helsinki to see Swan Lake performed by the Ukrainian National Ballet Company. It was pretty impressive especially the female lead. We all managed to stay awake for the whole thing. Here is a picture of us taken at intermission. It is possible to order food and drinks for intermission and then your order is waiting for you at a designated table when you come out for intermission. Pretty nice. Probably common in big cities but not for these country mice.
We arrived on Friday evening and returned Monday. This picture is the kids with Steph in front of the Nordiska Museum in Stockholm. This was the first real snow that we had seen (it fell Friday night) and the day got very windy and cold. We did not go into this museum but it was a nice picture. We were on our way to the Wasa Museum. The Wasa (pronounced Vasa) was a double decker gun ship (cannons on the two uppermost levels) that was commissioned in 1625. One of the first double decker gun ships, it sailed for all of 1300 meters before it sank, largely because it was poorly-design, top heavy and the first good solid crosswind tipped her over. It sat at the bottom of the Baltic largely forgotten until it was recovered in the 1950's and brought back up in the 1960's. 
We then went to Skansen which is an old Swedish village. Lots of different shops with things like glassblowing, blacksmithery, etc. This was Saturday and it was freezing. So we walked a little then snuck into a building. Got some glogg or glogi and went into another buidling. We visited some of the Christmas markets there. We were a ways from anything so we decided to go to the aquarium near Skansen. It was a small aquarium about the same size as Helsinki's. There were tarantula's to touch, a path under a gaggle of monkeys threatening to jump on your head. Then there was the crocodiles with the following sign.
After all of that, we headed home. We decided to get dinner at a Chinese restaurant near our apartment. It was a somewhat surreal sight. Fortunately, the menu had pictures because no one spoke English. A family of Americans, in a Chinese restaurant, in Stockholm and the music is playing Sting's "Russians". Which leads to a discussion of The Cold War and World War II. The Swedes and WWII and the Finns in WWII and the spectre of nuclear war during The Cold War and how the Cold War started. Why I was in Stockholm in 1986. I did not get into Yalta but we did discuss Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Russian losses during the siege of Leningrad and the involvement of grandfathers. And then they liked the Chinese food. Christopher in particular has discovered on this trip that he likes Thai food, curry (a little) and way more chinese dishes than the two we usually are allowed to eat for take out. 
Switching gears somewhat, here is a picture of my workspace at VTT. The windows are higher that it appears here. I share my office with a woman named Katariina who works in a different group. As is typical we do not talk much. We have spoken less than 2000 words to each other since August. Most days are simple: "Good morning", "Hello" and "Good bye". Very Finnish.
