Battlefield: Sun

It seems all I do is complain.

All year long, I have been complaining on how cold, rainy, and windy the Netherlands has been.  Now it is none of these things.  It's hot.  The humid air hangs in a stagnant, unmoving mass above the city, with no hope for a refreshing rain shower.

And still, I complain.

Yeah, yeah.  I've lived in Texas.  I should be used to the heat, right?  Well, there is one important difference.  In Texas, you wake up in your nice air-conditioned house.  You walk into your garage, which is slightly warmer, get in your car, turn on the AC, drive to work, run into your building, where it is air-conditioned to a good 60* F cooler than the outside.  You feel pretty dumb bringing a sweater to work when it's 120* outside.  The hottest part of your day is when you come back to your car at the end of the day, which has been parked outside all day and is now hotter than super-critical plutonium.

But Dutch summer is something completely different.  Sure, it is not as hot, but there is NO RELIEF.  No air conditioned bedroom to sleep in.  No freezing office.  Not even a cool grocery store to walk around in for a break.  It's hot.  Everywhere.  

Figure 1: Idiotic window design

It turns out that my house has a pretty idiotic window design.  (Figure 1)  The only way to get fresh air into the house is to crack open the window, which opens about a fraction of a millimeter.  This pretty much eliminates any hope for a breeze (if there was a breeze in the first place).  And since I live on the top floor, that means all the hot air goes into my apartment and stays there.

Because of this, my apartment has pretty much been at 30* C (or 86* F) for a week.  It is hotter inside than outside, and at least outside, you can feel fresh air on your skin.

I have therefore waged battle on the sun.  The curtains are always closed, but this pretty much blocked what little air I could get from my window (open a fraction of a millimeter).  I tried putting a yoga mat up in the window to block the light but let in the air, but after a few days, the yoga mat melted.  So finally, I taped aluminium foil up in the window.  I ran out of tape, so I used whatever sticky things I had left.  I knew I was saving that gum for something!

Ahh!  Immediate relief!  I can feel the temperature drop already.  Take that sun!

Just remind me of this in two weeks when the rain comes back and I again go into sun withdrawal.

Of Reindeer and Rain

While in Helsinki, we took a small trip to the island fortress of Soumenlinna, an old military fortress.  To get there, we boarded a ferry and headed out through the archipelago off the coast of Finland.

The approaching ferry, with a host of seagulls hovering above it. 

Our own flock of seagulls hover above our ferry. 

Traveling through the archipelago, we see the thousands of islands that dot the sea.  Some are no larger than a rock, peaking up above the water, while others host a house or two.

I want my own island!

Soumenlinna has lot of little shops and cafes to stop at for a nice break. 

We stop at one of these cafes and try their creamy cheese and reindeer soup.  Reindeer is a popular thing to eat in Finland - not sure if it's because it is easy to get, or because tourists like to say "I ate reindeer". 

The church on the island has an interesting fence - chain supported by cannons on end.

We visit the ship-building yards, and I meet this creepy looking fellow.

Flowers on the island.

Including this thing.... now THAT'S a thistle.

Finally, we reach the remains of the fortress.  It was built in the 1800s when Sweden owned this part of Finland.  It's been a part of major wars since then, such as the Crimean War and the Russian Revolution. 

Of course, with all these rocks around, I couldn't keep him from climbing a few.

The beautiful rocky coast of the island.

And uh oh - what's that I see on the horizon?  Dark grey clouds approach.  This does not bode well for our outing.

Soon, it starts pouring.  Bram and I take shelter under a tree.  Nearby, a group of Finns hold out - a little rain won't spoil their picnic!

That's how we Finns do it.

As the rain intensifies, our tree is not offering enough protection, so we head to the nearby "indoor picnic area", presumably designed for exactly this purpose - since I'm guessing the weather is more often that not cold, rainy, snowy, or some combination of precipitation.  Inside, it feels a little bit like a refugee camp, with soaked people cramming in for a little place to sit for a while.

After a bit, the rain slows, and people slowly venture outside again.  Of course, all this rain makes pretty flowers and green hillsides possible. 

Back outside, we explore the coast of the island. 

Moments later, Bram falls in the Baltic Sea after trying to retrieve his sunglasses, which fell in.

Bunkers pop up, built into hills in the fortress.  From the back, you can't even tell they are there.  Now, in more peaceful times, they remind me more of Hobbit Holes.

Looking out over the tiny islands of the archipelago. 

Heading down to the sea.

The number of islands Suomenlinna is on is shrinking.  That's because the entire region is uplifting due to post-glacial rebound, causing more islands to surface, and islands already present to merge.

The King's Gate, on the far side of the fortress.

Weird mushrooms (?) growing up the tree.

Uh-oh.  More clouds gather, this time with thunder.  We carefully time our walking, so that we arrive at a cafe at the precise moment it starts raining.  This time, we spend the time when it's pouring rain enjoying a piece of cake and talking to a nice Canadian couple.

On the ferry back.  I claim false advertising - we saw more rain than sun! Well, it is Finland, after all.

Heading North for the Summer

Greetings from Helsinki!

 

For our summer vacation this year, we headed up to the farthest north we've ever been.  We started our trip in Helsinki.  The Helsinki skyline is dominated by two large churches, both very different.  The first is an Orthodox church, built on top of a rock, dominating the skyline with its green domes topped in gold.

The inside was beautiful and ornate, as Orthodox churches often are (and, unfortunately, un-photograph-able as well).  But we were able to see a wedding at the church, including seeing a bunch of kids throw rose petals directly at the bride.

The other church is the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which has a much different character.   It also sits high above the city, but is purely white, again topped in green domes. 

The inside is much plainer, but it features an incredible organ.

Check out the gold finnish on that organ!  Ba-dum-dum.

Another interesting church Helsinki has is the famous "church in a rock".  Instead of building ON a rock, like the other churches, they decided to cut construction costs and blast a hole in a big piece of granite, and building their church in the hollowed out area inside. 

By doing this, their church is pretty unpretentious on the outside.   In fact, people even come to sunbathe on the roof of the church.

A woman in a bikini, sunbathing on a church.

 The inside is pretty cool though - with all of the walls made of pure rock.

Finland was enjoying an uncommonly warm summer.  As typical for places that don't get a lot of sun for the rest of the year (cough Netherlands cough), once it is sunny, everyone heads outside.  And it sure was nice to be outside as well.  There were plenty of places to sit along the water and enjoy the sun.

Some people even took walks ON the water!

While in Helsinki, we also tried the local cuisine - Hesburger (the Finnish equivalent of McDonalds) with its addictive mayonnaise, recommended to us by our Finnish friend Sami.

Are you Finnish-ed with your fries?  Ba-dum-dum.

People in Finland aren't quite as excited about their bikes as the Dutch, but there were still a lot of bikes to be seen, including this one, which is now mostly rust, with a wine bottle in the back basket.

It would make the Dutch proud.

Helsinki also has this weird monument that tourists (like us) travel halfway across the city to see.

It tried sucking Bram's brain out.

Luckily I was able to talk to the big steel man and I put a stop to that. 

Near the ocean, we see one of the huge cruise ship/ferries, being loaded with a semi truck!

The street signs were in both Finnish (on top) and Swedish (on bottom).   Oddly enough, when we were in Sweden, none of the signs were in Finnish.  I had no chance of understanding the Finnish, however, the Swedish actually seemed a bit natural to me, having Germanic roots.  Finnish, on the other hand, is part of the Uralic language group, which I have never heard about before this trip.

I can almost understand the Swedish.

 Helsinki also had some disturbing sculptures.

Why?

Do you know Santa lives in Finland?  He actually is from Lapland.  Lapland is well known for its interesting winter landscapes like this.  But, luckily, we did not visit Finland in the winter.  During the summer, Santa heads south, and runs a mini-mart. 

Ok, so we didn't see snow, and we didn't see the Northern Lights.  Actually, the Northern Lights are visible (at least from the northern parts of Finland) for 9 months out of the year.  But not during the summer.  Why?  Well, they are too busy showing off their sunshine, available at all hours of the day or night!  Here is the view from our hotel room after 11 pm.

Land of the Almost Midnight Sun.

Enjoying all that sunshine.

We finnished of the day (ba-dum-dum) by going to listen to a cover band for the Beatles.  They weren't half bad, and even reminded me of the Beatles in their younger days.

And for a point: of the songs covered in this video, what was the earliest one released by the Beatles? (no google)