Drip drip drop little April showers ...

I've been enjoying a week living back with the family in the UK.  When my time comes to return permanently from Finland, I think we will need a programme similar to those devised for returning captive bred animals to the wild, otherwise those I love may never recover from the shock!

The first thing I have noticed (well, actually, it has been pointed out to me) is that I am rather loud, especially in the mornings.  Whether this is male pattern deafness setting in, I am not sure, but there was a lot of shh-ing going on this morning from my wife and younger daughter, lest I wake the sleeping beast that is our eldest.  Since she has been known to create holes in doors simply by throwing a hairbrush, I suppose it was wise counsel.

Secondly, I am remiss in completing my "honey-do" list, a concept introduced to me by a former colleague with an American husband, for whom such things are apparently part of the marriage contract.  Normally, my visits to the UK involve a lot of changing of light bulbs.  This time, I have at least managed to drain, clean and refill the hot tub.  Since it is raining at the moment, I am not sure whether I shall get to enjoy the benefits before I return to Helsinki at the weekend.

Tomorrow is Vappu in Finland, the Labour day holiday.  As I speak, I suspect many of my Finnish friends and colleagues may already be in a state of total lubrication, ready to spend their day off recovering from a hangover.  I wish them all a happy holiday.  I will be visiting my parents on the South coast of England.  I am hoping that today's relentless drizzle will abate and I might actually get to see the sea.

The weather does remind me of the Channel Islands weather forecast which Stephanie and I were given when we visited Jersey a couple of years ago (that's the original Jersey, for my trans-Atlantic readers, rather than the New one).  It was very simple.  "If you can see France, it's about to rain.  If you can't see France, it's raining". 

Blazing Saddles...

I am feeling rather smug. I have just returned from my first bike ride in nearly five years and managed to cycle the route I would take from home to the office.

A friend once remarked that middle age is when a broad mind and a narrow waist change places. I hope that the mind is not narrowing, though if it is, I shall simply say I am becoming more focused. However, the challenge of keeping one's weight in check does seem to become more difficult as one gets older. At least, it does for this one! So, I resolved to purchase a bike and, after a visit to the K-Citymarket in Ruoholahti, this blue Maxim 26" hybrid bike found its way back to my apartment block. I really liked the 28" bike which had even more whizzy features, but I couldn't sit on it without falling over, as my legs didn't quite reach the floor.

We have a locked bike storage room on the ground floor, so I don't have to drag it upstairs. Tonight, after checking the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council (YTV) website, which has a cycling route planner showing all the bike paths, I set off. An hour and a half later, I returned, tired but happy.

Now, gentle reader, you may ask, why did it take so long? After all, plotting Snellmaninkatu to Keilalahti on the website suggests that the 8.5 kilometre journey should take 30 minutes at their default speed of 17 km/hour. So, the round trip should only have taken an hour.

Ah, well. Three reasons. First, even with 21 gears on the bike and a noticeable lack of mountains, I don't think I am averaging that speed yet. Second, I had a little navigation incident caused by forgetting my reading glasses even though I had the map (I must ask the Nokia Maps team when they will add a cycling mode!). It was only a short detour; eagle eyed locals will notice that where I took the photo from is not actually on the direct route!

And the third? I had to stop half way to buy a spanner (a wrench, for my American readers). Before setting off, I hadn't checked that the the nut underneath the saddle was properly tightened, which meant that the saddle kept slipping and pointing upwards. At the risk of offending those of a delicate disposition, this does have rather profound effects on the nuts above the saddle. So if you see me walking like John Wayne in the next few days, you won't have to ask why!

To the manor borne ...

Over the last couple of weeks, I have had the chance to stay in two Finnish manor houses, now converted to training centres and hotels.

The first was Sannäs Manor, about 10km east of Porvoo, a town I had already visited with the family when they were over. Sannäs dates back to the 15th century and became a manor in the 16th century. The present main building (where we had my team building days) was built in 1836-1837. It was designed by Carl Engel in the Empire style. The appearance has been changed in the 1880s and 1890s. Some of outbuildings including the gate and the granary were also designed by Engel.

The second was Hirvihaara. The history of Hirvihaara Manor dates back to the 16th century, though the present main building was built in 1918. It served as a war hospital during the Second World War, and the tower was used for air surveillance. The manor house is used as a hotel and restaurant at present. This one had the added benefit of a traditional smoke sauna, which was a great way to chill out after playing my worst ever game of pool. We were playing on a quarter size snooker table, with rather narrow pockets. At least, that is my excuse for a game of doubles that lasted nearly an hour and a half.

Finland has a number of these manor houses and I hope to explore more during my time here. This useful web site will be a handy reference and also has a number of other buildings of note.

Clearing up ...

I have spent my first Sunday alone in over a month tidying, ironing and doing the chores. It appears I am not the only one, as the city is working to get rid of the accumulated snow from the last week.

For the last half hour or so, this digger has been working up and down my street, shovelling up the mounds of snow into a couple of trucks. I shall be interested to find out where they take it to, there being no equivalent of a rug in the middle of the room to sweep it under.

Just the ticket ...

I spotted this driver's novel approach to the parking challenge mentioned in my last post- how to deal with the big piles of snow? Park on top of them. Of course, you need a big 4 x 4 vehicle to be sure of success.

However, I noticed as I walked past that the owner had a surprise to come back to. One of Helsinki's finest traffic wardens had left a parking ticket under the nearside windscreen wiper. As I can't read Finnish, I was not able to see whether it was for parking too far from the surface of the road. I suspect the truth is more down to earth, as the car was within 5 metres of a pedestrian crossing (you can see the sign just behind the car).

's no parking ...

Gunther (my Audi A3) has been spending a lot of time under the snow this week. The photo shows him on Sunday after we got back from lunch, but by Wednesday he was parked further up the street under about 10cm of snow.

One of the challenges when it snows is that some of the parking spaces end up full of the snow which has been cleared by the snowploughs. On Tuesday evening I had only one choice of spot and didn't notice that about 1 metre of Gunther's rear end was overlapping a restricted parking zone, where you may not park between 8am and 5pm.

When I went to drive to work on Wednesday at around 8:30am, I was excited to see that there had been a further fall of snow overnight. However, it had not deterred the Finnish traffic warden from writing me a ticket and reaching through the drift to secure it under my windscreen wiper; I was somewhat less excited to find that as I brushed the snow off the car.

It is only my third parking ticket, at €40 a time, since I moved here. If I add the €36 for each six months that I pay for an on-street parking permit, it still costs me less than renting a garage. But I can't help feeling a grudging admiration for Helsinki's traffic wardens, who don't let these adverse weather conditions deter them from their noble work. Yet another example of Sisu!

Easter in Helsinki ...

So, we had a blissful few days over the Easter weekend. Good Friday and Easter Monday are both public holidays in Finland, as they are in the UK, so my wife and daughters flew over on the Friday and arrived in time to get settled in the apartment before venturing out for dinner at Ateljé Finne. Stephanie tried the Licorice Creme Brulée.

After dinner, we walked through the very cold wind to Esplanadi and stopped for a reviving drink at Kappeli, a favourite spot. Following that, we walked home and saw the illuminated cathedral, as mentioned in the last post.

Saturday, as the only day that the shops would be open, meant some serious retail therapy for my girls. For dinner we visited Sundmans Krog, right on the South Harbour close to the market hall. The food was excellent and we walked home happily full, just missing the end of the Easter performance in Senatoori square in front of the cathedral.

On Sunday, we walked to the tram stop, in just enough snow to cause trouble for those of us with little experience of wintry conditions. We caught the 3T tram to Kapteeninkatu to take lunch at Sea Horse, a well known restaurant offering traditional Finnish fare. Their Salmon Soup was excellent, followed by a selection of traditional entrées. Somehow, Ellie's vegetarian cabbage rolls were filled with meat and Stephanie's Pike-Perch fillets had a few too many bones, but Sally's meatballs and my Scandinavian hash were excellent.

Returning to the apartment, we had our traditional Easter egg hunt with a twist - having no garden meant that we did this indoors, but Easter would not have been the same for any of us without it. We then tried a few Finnish traditions, eating mämmi, an oven roasted, malted barley porridge. It tasted a little like liquidized malt bread and is an acquired taste. We also tried pasha, a dessert of Russian origin. But rather than me try to write it all up, I recommend the article from the Helsinki Times which goes into much more detail. We did also try the Mignon eggs from Fazer, possibly the most palatable treat of the day!

On Monday we had a walk, a coffee and then I cooked Salmon for lunch, before we finished watching series 6 of Scrubs (probably our favourite TV show) and then drove to the airport for the flight home.

It was a lovely weekend. We reflected that back in the UK, we would not have spent so much time just being together as a family. So much has changed for us all in the last twelve months that it was good to take the chance to think about what we have to be thankful for and enjoy each other's company.