Savonian Colour

« Finlandia Hall looms over the city like a giant glowing iceberg. The tower on the right is the National Museum of Finland. »

I managed to survive 3 days in the woods (a few random photos) with a few colleagues about an hour north of Kuopio in a place called Tahko which is some sort of sporting resort. I'll refrain from calling it camping since we had a cabin with not only running water and electricity, but network as well. We took a canoe trip around the lake on the first day which made me a bit nervous since the water was cold and I think I was the only one who had ever been in a canoe before. We also took a 4 hour ATV tour of the area which, in spite of being a bit of a macho sport, turned out to be really fun in the crisp, sunny autumn afternoon. The vendor took us to dinner in Kuopio one evening, at a place called Musta Lammas, reportedly widely known in Finland, and had one of the nicest meals, both in food and company, I've had in a very long time. The autumn weather has been bizarrely gorgeous and the news is reporting that it's a 'once in 60 years' kind of unusual and we couldn't have had better weather. The area around Kuopio is beautiful with the fall colours but there's also the very present paper industry with mountains of toxic byproducts and sluice ponds which mars the landscape and reminds you that books and paper come at a high price.

On our way back home, we stopped in the Kuopio market and bought some kalakukko from the definitive bakery in Finland and the Savo region, the Hanna Partanen Bakery. Finland has a formal written language, but then you find out that there are something around 80 major dialects of spoken Finnish, with the most different of them all being the Savonian dialect which you get the idea of by reading the instructions on how to eat your kalakukko.

Otava is a love sick puppy lately. All of the other male dog owners around the park have also been commenting that their dogs are girl crazy and we are wondering what's going on. There is a little miniature dachshund that Otava has taken a ridiculous liking to the exclusion of all others for some yet unknown reason. It's embarrassing. :) And his birthday is Sunday, not today as previously noted since I was thinking that the 9th was Friday. I'll be making him a lovely meatloaf cake for the occasion.

And Jarkko played Nyt Koodataan (Now I am Coding) last night which I thought was pretty hilarious and, even if you don't know Finnish, you can probably guess the words anyway. Supposedly it was a big hit a few years ago during the boom years but, now with the boom gone, IT has become even less rewarding than an internet bubble sweat shop.

Random internet searches for things can turn up some surprisingly unrelated but still very cool results like a page about the Päijänne water tunnel that supplies Helsinki with water, supposedly the longest continuous rock tunnel in the world. The same page also has a diagram of the Salmisaari underground coal project which is pretty interesting as well.