July 19, 2006
Mökki Meininki
I'm always few days behind with my writing, so it feels strange to be writing about the things we've been doing in the mökki, as we're in Helsinki for couple of days already. Right now we're very lucky to stay at Taina's and Mika's immaculate apartment for a few days where we can see our previous home through the window...
The heat wave has passed and we're having slightly more moderate weather now (cold!)
Tomi and Darja from Rovaniemi (yes, the famous Lordi (and Santaclaus) town of origin!!!) came for a visit (yeah! how nice!). We went to Sandskar again and the sea was realy raging, you can't see it in the pictures, but the waves were really big (for the Baltic sea at least). Kaj estimated that you could surf for maybe 2 meters before crashing into the cliff, but otherwise it would have been perfect weather for kite surfing or wind surfing.
We didn't do any of that, didn't even go swimming. When I just moved to Finland, it was completely incomprehensible for me, how are you supposed to swim from these rocks (especially if the sea is rough). There's sea weed growing on the rocks and they are all extremely slippery. For a Lithuanian I am, you're supposed to have a beautiful sandy beach to even start thinking of swimming. Later I learned that in Finland you just have to slide down the rock into the water and hope for a wave to wash you up the rock again.
Boating was also something new for me. These days I am quite useful, jumping out of the boat in time, holding the rope, pushing or pulling when its needed, when parking the boat in the harbor. Its not all natural. There's a lot to learn, I have to tell you.. Some simple things, like balance, or knowing how to tie knots or how to help another person to park it tightly in place!
With the big boat these days we can go to faraway places, like this uninhabited island (I've never been there before!) What is Kaj checking out there? Is he lifting up something?!?
Oh yes, Kaj has this new obsession of firewood after chopping all this wood in the mökki. He notices every single log lying around that doesn't have any obvious ownership. And you'd see him wondering how much of firewood would come out of this log or that and how many saunas you could heat up with it.. That one that he found on the island apparently was worth about 6 saunas... :) Just when shopping for outdoor clothing mania seems to be over... :)
This is the sauna in the mökki that needs wood to be heated. The cottage (and sauna) itself was built sometime in the 60s by Kaj's parents and there's still a lot of stuff (such as happy colour bowls and buckets) everywhere around. Looks retro to me (that is fashionable, isn't it?)!
Besides visiting uninhabited island, we went to the neighbouring Sjolund island for a visit and coffee. The island is full of children (aparently even tents are in use!). Kaj's childhood friends still come to their mökki with their 6 children. So the going there is quite lively, as you can imagine. We can hear some happy screaming from our island at times.. :)
The strawberry season is almost over, but I'm happy to have been there right at the right moment! We're still going to Lithuania (flying out on Friday) and then we'll be going back to the mökki again for some time. The summer goes on.
