Wednesday 19 August –
Isn’t it funny how you can read about a place and make a decision based on what you read? I guess we all do this from time to time but thank goodness my decision not to visit Lahti was not realised. This is how it happened…Over the last week or so we have been slowly heading for Helsinki – we need to arrive there tomorrow. Whilst in Kuopio on Sunday, Tom mentioned a couple of towns that were en-route and maybe worth visiting. One of them was Lahti, so Leigh googled the town to find out what the town had to offer. She read several features on the town and none of them were selling it to her. There were mentions of it being a raucous typeofplace, with drunken revellers falling asleep on the pavement and generally women and men behaving badly!
So we set off yesterday for a town called Heinola which would take us around three and a half hours, and leave us with just a couple of hours drive to Helsinki on Thursday. When we arrived at the campsite it was clearly shut…and looked as though it had been for at least a year! You could see by the state of the pitches that it hadn’t been used this year. We had no choice but to drive on towards Helsinki; Tom told us that the highest-rated site on our route was one located on the outskirts of Lahti – so we decided to give it a go! The site itself is O.K. Being situated on a beautiful stretch of water helps although it is looking a little bit ‘endofseason’. The reason for this is that the site is shutting next week – forever. One of the receptionists – a friendly girl who told us that she hails from Latvia, then added, ‘I am part of a multi-nationality family, and I consider myself Russian, as that is my Mother Tongue’. She went on to say that this site has been leased for five years and now the lease is up the Council won’t renew it because they are selling the land for a large Hotel and Concert Hall. She was quite sad on behalf of her employer – she said the site is very well used and provides a number of jobs but, ‘Money talks’, here just as it does in most countries. This young lady was really interesting to chat to. She is studying for a degree in Business Studies and I.T. but is concerned as to whether she will find employment in this field as she said her Finnish language is weak – she feels she may struggle with the technical language used in I.T. Leigh thinks she is pretty amazing, being able to converse in Finnish and English in addition to her mother tongue is no mean feat! She then brought up the subject of the large number of Canadian Geese type Geese that have invaded the site (smaller than the typical Canadian Goose) and told Leigh that she would love to rid the site of them because of the mess they make everywhere. Her words were, ‘In this country (Finland) there is a rule where you cannot kill animals. Even if you find a duck with a broken wing you have to take it to a doctor – you cannot kill it and eat it, which I find quite strange’. This comment made Leigh smile to herself – difference in cultures is sometimes amazing and sometimes amusing. Yelp!
Lahti is a fairly new town with lots of apartment blocks. The road that winds around the coast of Lake Vesijarvi has some super houses – some are very Dutch in style. We ventured onto a small island called Myllysaari where there is a building that looks as though it may have begun life as a Windmill – after our visit I was left wondering whether the Dutch have influenced this place or whether this place influenced the Dutch. There is always so much to question when travelling!
We stopped off at a pretty, zany looking, pop-up Café on the way to watch the Water Organ in Pikku-Vesijarvi park where my humans enjoyed inexpensive pastries and coffee. Rosie and I were brought a bowl of water by the pretty waitress.
The Water Organ is a musical fountain – Leigh and Tom had high expectations after seeing the musical fountain in Dubai a few years back. This one was much less-spectacular but when some classical music came on Leigh couldn’t resist doing a few pirouettes, and prancing around. She called it dancing and Tom…well he just said he was glad there was nobody they knew around. Leigh said that if her old dog, Scamp, had been there she would have danced with Leigh. Rosie and I are not dancers, but according to my humans, Scamp loved to dance. Yelp!
This afternoon we took a walk down to the coffee-shop which is at the Lake and almost part of our site.
Sitting in the sun (twenty-five degrees warm), watching the sparkling water embracing some swimmers and a few small boats, listening to ‘That’s Life’ by Frank Sinatra was, for me, a little bit of heaven.
Woof, Martha x
Pam says
excellent, as always x