After 182 days of adventuring, my blog has almost caught up with my everyday. I had a lot to say about many things, but some just happen without eliciting a response. Not everything deserves a long text; many things just don't fit into one. Before I left Finland, I wanted to go back and sweep my virtual floor. A friend recently asked me what I had hoped to get and what I had gotten out of my stay in Finland. The answer is constantly changing in my head. I am unable to make a coherent summary...

Then, suddenly, everything happened fast. I got my visa for Russia, bought my ticket, had my first big successes in picking up the little girl from kindergarten (breakout of enthusiasm and exclamations of pleasure at my sight), found a way to play with the middle boy and went cross country skiing for the first time. On the 31 of January my successor came, and I introduced her to the inner workings of this family. And then I sat on the train. Bang, bang, pow: Chapter closed.

Ice swimming in Finland, solo female traveller, a step-by-step- description of what it's like to go ice swimming.

I only visited Tampere because so many people told me that I couldn't miss it. My touristic curiosity had already been exhausted in other places, and I didn't expect to discover too many unknown aspects of Finnish life. I felt that I had seen most of it before, and I was more interested in the landscape of the north than in a large(ish) city in the south-west of Finland. However, as I had learned to believe my Finns when they recommended something, I drove to the city that is also called the...

There were some moments this Christmas that are burnt into my consciousness for eternity. One was the frozen sea and the wonderful summer house of my hosts, and the other was a walk that I went on with the dogs on Christmas Day.

My host family was so kind to invite me to their celebrations. We drove about 600 km to the north, to Kalajoki, where my host mother's parents live. Kalajoki during summer is the Las Vegas of Finland. In winter, nothing is happening. It's not far enough in the north to be snow prove in December, which means that their favourite pastimes (skiing, snowmobiling, etc.) can't be guaranteed. Most Finns go to relatives or directly to Lapland. Whether you believe it or not, although at the beginning of...

Porvoo sits on the southern coast of Finland, one hour east of Helsinki. With fifty thousand inhabitants it's one of the twenty most populated cities in Finland. It's particularly attractive because it has a relatively large area of old wooden houses, an old town with a town hall and a cathedral. After Turku, it's the second oldest city in Finland. Through it flows the river Porvoonjoki, which, when I was there, was charmingly frozen and sang under the ice. Wale like sounds echoed across the...

*** I woke up one morning, and before I turned on the lights, I checked the time on my phone. There was a message: "Grandma died at two o'clock this morning after she had a brain oedema." I'm sitting in the dark. Typical for my family, emotional messages are broken down to bare facts. It takes me a while to understand what that means. I don't know what to do, so I stay where I am, mumbled into the warmth of my bed in the otherwise cold room in Vantaa, Finland. Soon, I feel wet patches on my...

On my journey I redefine luxury. The biggest is a cosy bed, and the second is time to linger. To guarantee these luxuries, I wear the comfortable bed on my back, and I take the time to stay in beautiful places. It's in big parts the reason why travelling long term is tolerable for me. In third place, is the luxury of routines. So far, I had assumed that these habits bring about the death of creativity. Here in Vantaa, however, I experience the opposite. The morning mocha coming out of the...

The sixth of December is not Nikolaus in Finland. There is only one man in a red coat: the Joulupukki, the Santa Claus. On the 6th of December, Finland celebrates the Birth of the Nation. The day on which Finland proclaimed its independence from Russia. In celebration of this day, there is a church service in Helsinki Cathedral, a reception at the Palace of the President, accompanied by a whole series of demonstrations. The many Finns, who don't have to dress up for the reception of the...