Here and there: Sixteen - Finland

I'll be back, is what I thought after only a few days in Finland; I loved it immediately.

Nope, I didn't (and still don't) speak the language but I don't need to, I have family there who do. I didn't really know what to expect but it exceeded any expectations I could possibly have had and since my trip there I've wanted to go back - which was going to happen until the flu took over the world and my airline canceled the trip.

My brother Hive account@tarazkp lives there with his wife and my niece who I love so much and desperately want to see again. She's probably going to be my personal interpreter when I'm there because I want to spend all my time with her...and if she isn't with me then the one word I know in Finnish isn't going to get me too far. One can only use the word, "hei" so many times in one conversation. I also need to Australianise her...you see, she doesn't like Vegemite and that just won't do.

I was chatting last week on WhatsApp with Hive account@eveuncovered who also lives in Finland and we were planning some stuff to do together when I'm up that way - I asked her if she'd cook for me (she's a legit cook) and she agreed; it was more of a suggestion than a question, but one she was happy to agree to. We have a lot in common, Eve and I, and we're looking forward to catching up.

I was there in Summer and I think I'd like to go back in winter to see it first-hand, I think it'd be incredible...I may need to borrow the the correct winter-appropriate clothing though, it gets fucken cold up there. Eve suggested a forest walk in the snow...I'm down for that for sure, something I've never done and I'd also like to do some dog mushing (sledding)...that looks cool!

There's another catch up required and that's with Hive account@insaneworks, another legit Finnish lass who, like Eve, is talented with the camera and being fucken legit in general. I envisage a catch up for all the abovementioned together, dinner maybe, and they can all speak Finnish so I don't know what the fuck they're saying behind my back. Fuckers. Should be good though.

So in this post is a few snaps I took. I have loads more but a lot of them have my niece and others in them so I'll not share them here.

Finland was amazing to me for many reasons, not least of which is that my family live there, and the vistas were quite stunning. I know we tend to find the unknown quite amazing and what we see around us everyday often goes unremarked but I felt comfortable in Finland and I think I could live there...although ask me after my ass has frozen off after being there in winter and I may have a different opinion.

One thing that was odd to me was the daylight hours in Summer...the image above (the forest) was taken at "night" - 11:30pm - and the sun is still shining! Fucken weird as fuck. We'd gone for a walk around the lake and it was so strange to have the suns rays beaming through; yep, I had to have my Oakleys on. In winter it'll be the other way around, maybe only around six hours of the sun being up and if I'm up north it may not crest the horizon for weeks...so yeah, weird. I'm sure I'll find something to do in the dark though.