Finland in 2300km - Day 6

Porvoo's famed shore houses
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Day 1 - We picked up our trusty purple Kia Picanto and begin our effort to circumnavigate Finland in 5 days. The route was carefully selected to isolate every scenic nook and cranny that Finland could offer us in the time allowed. First stop was the small town of Porvoo, half an hour east of Helsinki. Here we spent a small time exploring the old wooden town famed for its small hilly lanes and riverside setting. From Porvoo we started into the majestic Lakelands. Until now we had found the whole country deserted. Now  we started to find where they were as campers, families and opera festival  punters littered the shores at Lapeenranta and our destination for the evening Savonlinna. The lake fronts at these places were idyllic and reminded us of the Southern Lakes in New Zealand, minus the mountains. Lapeenranta even pulls them in every summer by building a massive sandcastle on the shores. Accommodation, however was sparse so we smelt out a little farm stay in Kerimaki, 20km from Savonlinna. Here a huge moustached man and his wife treated us like royalty and we stayed in our converted stable thinking life in Finland is good to us. We were soon however to learn that it wasn't and that Finland isn't the culinary capital of the world. Sitting outside the largest wooden church in the world at Kerimaki we ordered a burger and received nothing but a hamburger and bun. We even had to ask for ketchup. When I disputed the actual finished product compared to the advertised sign all I got was a token dose of lettuce lobbed on top and some garbled Finnish back at me.

Lapeenranta's space themed sandcastle
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Day 2 - We powered north through more lakeside scenery. The awe that transpired us with the lake views the day before was quietly dwindling as we soon realised that this will be the only scenery we got intermittently with burst of pine forest. For 600km we powered north through pristine hiking and camping country only to remorse that we had time to do none of that. Therefore we made a gioal to get as close to Rovaniemi as possible. We pulled up stumps at a small village called Pudasjarvi. Here we found a beautiful river side camp ground and given our budget scraped up 30€ for a wooden cabin.  As soon as we left the car we were pounced upon by  hundreds of mosquitoes. We had seen nothing like it and by the time we traveled the five metres inside the cabin we counted  at least 5 bites each.  Petrified by the  hungry predators outside we lay totally bored in our shack for the rest of the evening.

Emma and our farmstay
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Day 3 - A short drive to Rovaniemi the nearest town to the Arctic Circle and the home of Santa. Reindeer were sighted early. Investigations concluded that none of them even had a slightly red nose. In fact our pictures of reindeer couldn't have been further from the part as they look hagged in summer shedding their fur. Horror stories clouded us about severe crashes involving reindeer and elk. We pictured ourselves driving through them like sheep but given these were the only 4 we saw on the whole journey we were left a tad disappointed. We reached Rovaniemi by lunch and headed straight to Santa Claus Village. A money making exercise if ever I saw one, but the lure of having crossed the Arctic Circle beckoned and who better to spend it with but Santa in holiday mode. We lined up duefully for our overpriced photo and Santa patted us on the head and told us to be good for Christmas or else we would get no presents. Rovaniemi apart from this was a ghost town. Thriving on its number 1 success story, Lordi who won Eurovision last year the town has little to offer.

In front of the Olavinna Castle in Savonlinna
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Day 4 - Halfway and heading back south. We traveled through Oulu a noted varsity town. We stopped for a lunch of elk and salmon in the kauppatori which was teeming with people.  Most Finnish towns have a kauppatori which loosely translates into Fish Market. However most don't have fish just some old  grandmas flogging off  home knitting or second hand clothes. We battled further south to the town of Jakobstad which promised a majestic old town. This it did but apart from that it felt like a place out of a zombie film. The place was deserted only frequented by the local drunks and the stoned out little goths. We drove around feeling like we were going to be dinner before hiding back at our cabin. Again the night was spent in the sanctuary of our 5 square metre wooden box petrified that this time by the local weirdos.

Dancer and Prancer
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Day 5 - We decided to hit Route 66 to Tampere, Finland's second largest city. The Finns love cars and American muscle cars even more so the road as a bit of a cult following. Along the way we had planned lunch at a famous 18th century roadhouse. We pulled up to a plethora of cars thinking that we may be onto a winner here. We pushed aside the market stalls to the cafe to find hundreds of grannies sipping on their teas. Further to this they were being recited a local bible production to which we almost gatecrashed. We looked at our watch and realised it was still early Sunday so vamoosed before we could cause any further controversy. Tampere itself was a former industrial town revitalised with some nice urban planning. We took time to visit a microbrewery and its limited sights before taking in some dinner.

Look out they're everywhere
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Day 6 - Our last day and a nice easy stroll along the motorway back to Helsinki. We split up the drive by stopping at Scandinavia's largest mall, supposedly. It did nothing but reemphasize how little money we had to splash around on luxuries. We stopped off again to stroll around the Hammellinna castle before dropping the car back at the Airport.

All in all we enjoyed our time in Finland. The place it a tad strange in the fact that the majority of the population either are bogans, goths or punks and that I have never seen as many blonde people in one place as here. Unfortunately we didn't really allow enough time to explore Finalnd's more natural experiences which may have been more rewarding than its limited sights.