Summer Highlights

Ciao a tutti!

Today being the last day of summer I want to take a look at the highlights of this summer and relive the best moment of summer 2018.

1. Our holiday in Italy. Lots and lots of gelato, fun day trips and many train journeys... Julius and I sure had some fun.

We travelled by train a lot in Italy and quickly realised that Italian timetables are just rough guidelines. The train we're on in picture above was already 30 minutes late when we left Verona and a hour late by the time we got to Milan.

The view from Città alta in Bergamo

"Finally some shade." The Italian summer heat can be scorching.

A beautiful flower somewhere in Italy.

The swans of Lake Garda

2. Our picnics, forest and city excursions in Helsinki. We went to the beach, we cycled to Teurastamo to eat gelato (because we hadn't had enough in Italy), and Julius and I went berry picking where the little imp ran away and hid from me. Sweet memories.

For some reason there was a sheep on the wall in the ice-cream shop. Of course Jevgeni had to go and talk to her but she only spoke Italian.

Mmm gelato....

Mmm blueberries...

3. Our exciting trip to the countryside in Russian Carelia to say hallo to grandmother, Tim the Dog and some feline acquaintances. We ate so many berries and peas and drank so much tea, we went the sauna, we teased the locals and Julius was hunted by giant mosquito.

Julius enjoying country life

Do you know what these are? If not, come to Finland, I'll show you.

I just told a joke but Tim wasn't amused.

Monster mosquito

Goodbye summer 2018 and thanks for all the memories!

Souvenirs from Russia

Привет!

As you know we came back from Russia a couple of days ago. You've seen all the things we experienced but I'm sure you're also dying to know what kind of things we took with us back to Finland.

I couldn't bring everything that I wanted to bring. Partly because I only had a small backpack and Julius is no help when it comes to carrying stuff, but also because some of the things I wanted to bring probably wouldn't make it through customs. You don't want to fuck with Russian border guards. You may have seen in the movies how badly that can end.

So let's have a look at the things I did manage to bring home.

1. Sweets of course. I'm actually not terribly fond of Russian sweets. They taste like... well, sugar. But I love the colourful wrappers. Most of them have cute animals or other cute figures. This time I went for Alyonka and Mishki v lesu (bears in the woods). Asian tourists would pay a lot of money for the Alyonka wrapper, I promise.

2. Here is one of my life hacks. This one's for free. You're welcome.
Matches. Julius loves to play with matches and I let him have his fun of course. You should hear his laugh when he's playing with fire, so cute. So if you have hyperactive kids – buy them matches!

I bought Cheburashka matches. If you don't know who Cheburashka is you should definitely look him up. He's one of Russia's cutest carton characters ever.

Look at that smile

3. Wooden spoons for Julius. Did you know that spoons can be used for more that just eating. They are also musical instruments. The kid is obsessed with learning to play wooden spoons. He's watched thousands of tutorials online and broken all our spoons. So I had to get him some proper Russian wooden spoons. You're all invited to Julius' concert by the way. You might want to bring earplugs...

4. I brought quite a lot of things for Julius this time. Aside from the matches and spoons he also got a real Russian babushka scarf. We didn't buy it, we stole borrowed it from grandmother. Anyway, it's very practical in winter or after the sauna.

5. Of course we had to bring something for uncle Jevgeni too. We bought an old Soviet poster for him. I think he really liked it. He hung it in his room and stared at it for hours, I think...

"Have you taken care of your breasts?" Remember that cleaning your nipples with cold water is very important, folks.

6. That wasn't all though. We normally bring a bottle or two of something strong for uncle Jevgeni when we travel. Then we won't hear from him for about a week which is nice. This time he got a bottle of "Dusha monacha" (Monk's soul).

Having alcohol at home can be useful. When we travel I always add a little to Julius' water bottle. Then he sleeps like an angel. There you go, another useful life hack, I should start charging for these... But remember don't give him too much, if he wakes up with a hangover, he becomes downright unbearable.

That's it for today folks. Hope you enjoyed the post and my useful suggestions.

Summer trip to Carelia. Round-up.

Hello friends!

Just in case you've missed one of my posts here are links to all the parts of the story of our Russian adventure: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Today I'll tell you about our visit to the village of Danilovo. It's a beautiful but almost deserted village. In the good old days it was the home of eleven thousand people, now there are one three permanent residents. This time of year it's a bit more lively though with tourists and people spending the summer in their dachas in the village.

A typical Carelian house.

The village was founded by Orthodox Old Believers who had a monastery there from 1694 to 1857. Now there's hardly anything left. Only old, abandoned wooden houses, raspberry bushes, snakes and bears.

But the scenery is wonderful. We decided to take a walk to an old spring where the monastery supposedly was located. Everything was so quiet and calm as we walked along the path but of course Julius had to go and ruin the mood. He was feeling hot and started complaining.

Look how dry it is.

Good thing we found the spring

A strange thing happened while we were in Danilovo. I told you before that Russians used to believe in spirits and other mythical beings likes gnomes. There were various creatures all over the place and they could take on different forms, so for example the gnome living in the banya (Russian sauna) could reveal himself to humans in the shape of a frog. Harming them in any way was very bad luck. 

Well, by the old banya we found a small frog. We thought he looked lonely so we introduced him to our friend Pyzhik the playful kitten. That may not have been the best idea in the world. Rest in peace banya gnome, we ment well.

Pyzhik

Talking of banya. After the trip to Danilovo when we were back at granmother's place we got to try her sauna. It was old, dark and smokey. But that's the way it's supposed to be. Like a proper Russian I beat Julius with birch twigs. I was very good at it, he was all red afterwards, very good for his circulation.

After the sauna Julius could hardly move so we spent the rest of the evening on a bench outside eating raspberries. The next day we went home to Finland.

Summer trip to Carelia. part 3

Доброе утро! (Good morning!)

Just in case you've missed one of my posts here are links to all the parts of the story of our Russian adventure: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Today I'll tell you some more about our adventures in Russian Carelia. So, what did we do? Well, mainly ate and drank tea. You have to prepare for a lot of eating and drinking tea if you're going to visit someone in Russia.

At grandmother's we drink tea in the morning, around noon, as well as 5 o'clock tea and then we have some more tea in the evening. Julius hasn't quite figured out how to drink tea yet. He's too careless so he often ends up spilling the tea and getting burns. But he really liked the samovar. He won't shut up about how we have to get one for our home too. Somebody shoot me.

You probably want to see what we ate in Russia. The humans ate lots of fish, but there's no way you could get me and Julius to eat fish. We actually ate very healthy food in Carelia, though – lots of fruit and berries, and candy with the tea of course.

Julius just before he started eating his way through the whole watermelon.

After we'd finished breakfast it was time to go out into the yard.

Oh, look, an old shoe!

The dog was busy barking at passers-by. He didn't even have time to talk to us.

Grandmother also has a cat, Glafira. We wanted to play with her, but she was super pregnant and didn't want to play with us. We offered to help squeeze out the kittens but she didn't like that idea.

Grandmother has lived in this house almost her entire life. So it's quite old. It was last renovated in 1992 or thereabouts.

We saw some cows grazing outside the gate, so we climbed up on the roof to tease them. Trust me, teasing cows is much safer if you're high up somewhere where they cant reach.

Climbing up the ladder to the roof

So we spent the rest of the afternoon on the roof teasing the locals. Julius taught me some chastushka songs. We sang so loud that even the dog started joining in, or, well, howling at least.

Then we had the brilliant idea that we were going to look into the old well. Julius wanted to have a competition to see who could spit the best into the well. It didn't end well. We both fell in and ended up in the dark and cold water. Luckily our human was nearby. She heard us shouting and rescued us. I'm really glad I didn't have to spend the night in dark well with the frogs.

Me looking into the abyss

Hanging out to dry

That's all for today, folks!

Summer trip to Carelia. part 2

Добрый день!

Just in case you've missed one of my posts here are links to all the parts of the story of our Russian adventure: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Yesterday's post was about our journey from Helsinki to Karhumäki, but after that we still had quite a long way to go to get grandmother's place. So after waiting 5 hours in Karhumäki in the heat we took a minibus. You can't even book tickets online, you have to get them from the driver. We were quick (an advantage of being small) and got ourselves a good window seat. The trip was, well, an experience. Have you ever travelled 50 km on a rocky and dusty dirt road that is more potholes than road? Then you may have an idea of what it was like. At one point I was worried that Julius would fall out the window from all the bouncing up and down. But the kid just laughed, he thought it was hilarious, like a roller-coaster.

When we got to our destination grandmother was there waiting for us. She recognised us even though she thought Julius was a rat at first. She gave us tea and candy. Yum!

Here I am drinking tea from my favourite cup. Julius, the stupid kid, got some burns on his tail. Who climbs onto a hot samovar, anyway?

Then we shared a bowl of blackcurrants.

The next day we were ready to explore the place. We started with grandmothers old suitcases. I vaguely remember that she used to hide candy and money in them.

"Keep looking, Julius. There must be something here."

"Nope, only curtains, sheets, and other grandmother stuff." :(

We kept looking but all we found was a spider.

While we were desperately trying to find the hidden candy, grandmother was sitting on the porch eating peas. We were also invited. Eating peas isn't good for Julius' stomach. He... well, I'm not going to explain the details but it isn't pleasant...

Grandmother turns 90 soon, so she prefers to sit in the shade. I joined her.

Later I moved to a bench in the sun. Mmm fresh peas!

Of course Julius couldn't stay away from the peas...

We also said hello to my old friend Tim the Dog. I almost didn't recognise him – he's shedding his fur and that makes him look quite shabby and unkempt. But he was as friendly as always and told us all his best hunting stories.

Easy now, dog, I think you might be laying it on a little thick there.

After a while we got tired of the bragging dog and went inside again. I took some more selfies, my second favourite thing to do after eating candy.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

When everybody in the house had gone to take an afternoon nap, we were really bored so we took the old guitar down from the wall and started play as loud as we could.

While I was playing Julius found an old sickle. He climbed up on it and started singing dirty chastushka songs. Where did he learn those?

Oops, looks like we woke up Kuzya the House Gnome. Back in the old days Russians believed in different types of gnomes and spirits. Julius and I still believe in them. How else can you explain that our candy mysteriously disappears in the middle of the night?

He was in a really bad mood so he through us out. We spent the rest of the evening on the old porch drinking kvass. It was nice in the heat.

Tomorrow you'll get even more pictures from Russia! Пока!