Week 32: Finland to Bremen

Our two summer months in Finland have passed so fast. This last week we spent with our families, enjoying nature, arts and history of our home towns. Now we are in Bremen, Germany, ready for up to four months of exploring Europe.

Welcome to our weekly recap! This one's for August 7th - 11th, which is week 32, 2014.

Memorable moment: In Kokemäki we visited a local art exhibition, Käsitekesä (concept summer), where several pieces of art are hidden in a jungle of hemp on a local field. I felt like a proper explorer, walking along the narrow paths beaten amongst the 2 meter high plants, looking for the next interesting piece of art to appear.

Kokemäki, Finland


Food love:
One snack I always like to offer/recommend to visitors in Finland are Carelian pies. I do see them as a very Finnish thing, but most of all they are so good! Especially when eaten fresh and warm with munavoi (=boiled eggs mixed with butter).

Finland


Surprise of the week:
 On Wednesday we said goodbye to Finland and Hämeenlinna (with its Häme castle pictured above), got a ride to Tampere and hopped on a plain to Bremen, Germany. A Finnish girl sat next to Antti in the plane. And what was the surprise, you might wonder? She just started talking to us! If you have met any Finns, you know that most of us are not very chatty in an environment like an airplane. We got along so well, that we ended up sharing a hostel room for the night, before she started her hitchhiking trip to a wedding.

Hämeenlinna, Finland


Tip of the week:
Finns like to spend their summers at lake-side cottages (=mökki). Many families have their own and if you're lucky you'll get invited along. If not, you can always rent one. They are not too expensive and there are plenty to choose from. You can start at Mökkiavain or just google "mökki" + your desired area. Just a word of caution for luxury-seekers: Finnish cottages can be quite basic, most do have electricity but many no running water nor indoor toilets. But that's the way we like them! Back to the nature :)

Virrat, Finland


Workwise:
One client project finished! And our main server was down a couple of days, Antti spent a lot of time trying to get it fixed. Emails, phone calls, tweets at the end. We need to create a contingency plan for next time... I also did some manual work: rowed a boat, as proven by this picture!

Kokemäki, Finland


Random thought:
How different it is to read a real newspaper instead of an electronic one! We have grown accustomed to using our tablets / Kindle for reading, but when given a chance we choose the paper version. When reading electronic newspapers I mainly scan through them, but with a paper one I can spend an hour reading all the parts of it.

Finland


What I've learned: Germany is a huge country. I've been trying to figure out the best way to get from Bremen to München. What ever way we choose, it's going to include a lot of sitting down.

Kokemäki, Finland

And that's it for our week. How was yours?

This week's photos can also be found in our photo albums in Flickr.


Antti and Mirje

We are Mirje and Antti, a 30+ digital nomad couple, entrepreneurs with restless feet and passion for experiencing the world. more »