A week in the cottage and around Finland

I haven't written for quite some time now, but there is a good reason for that behavior. I had some visitors from Austria, what I already mentioned in the blog entry before. I will describe you the week and apologize before hand, if it is a lot to read ;)

Before I started my week with my friends, I had to finish the Parallel Computing Take Home exam first. We got it on Tuesday and I nearly spent 10 hours a day from Wednesday to Saturday to finish it as early as possible.

Day 1 - Helsinki / Arrival
Günther, Silvia and Claudia arrived last Saturday the 8.12, but I couldn't join so early because I had to finish my exam as I already mentioned.
So on Sunday at 830 in the morning, I drove to Helsinki to meet them. It took some time to find the hotel, because nobody told me that there are 1000000 hotels called Scandic something *g*. And it became more difficult, because Günther described me the way from their point of view when the arrived with the taxi. Unfortunately the taxi drove in the other direction *ggg*.
In the end I found it and I finally can greet my first Austrian visitors.



On the first day we walked around Helsinki to see some sights and enjoy the town. We were really lucky, because all days before it always rained the whole day, but on this day and the whole week we always had nice weather and even sunshine. You don't believe it, here is a picture (the rest of the pictures is already online):


We visited a lot of places and in the evening it was time to board the ferry to Tallinn. We decided to go to Tallinn with the last Ferry at 21:45 and stay the night on board in a cabin. The funny thing is, that it would have cost 218€ all together with 2 cabins + 4 persons to Tallinn and only 4 persons back, BUT with 2 cabins + 4 persons to Tallinn and 1 cabin + 4 persons back it cost us 66€ all together, LOOL. Don't ask me how this is possible, but it is!!
We had a rough sea and that's why Günther was most of the time of the cruise on the "sun"-deck to get fresh air and not vomiting. *gg*

Day 2 - Tallinn
At 7 in the morning we left the ferry to walk to the historic center of Tallinn, which is also on the UNESCO heritage list for it's historical value.
I can understand why it is on this list, it is a really nice town.
When we start walking through the center it was still dark and we got impressions like it would be already night. During I checked a picture I made the minute before and I saw some smoke in it. I asked my friends, who the hell blew smoke in my view.... actually nobody was smoking. In the end I recognized that something in the inside of my camera burned down, because I also had to reset it and initialized it again. The funny part is, it is still working. Here is the picture with the smoke:

We moved on to the center where we found a really cute cafeteria at the marketplace. It calls itself "Tallinn's best cafe" and I would believe it, it was really very nice with a lot of delicious cakes.
After again walking around, because still nothing has opened so far, we visited the christmas market, which is also situated on the marketplace. Of course I bought some presents for my parents. The market was nice, but Estonian didn't bargain, that was the bad part.
Of course we saw a lot of sights again, here we are on the "top" of Tallinn with probably the best view over the old town:


After lunch and again a lot of shopping and sightseeing, we went to our ferry with which we left Tallinn at 1645 to go back to Helsinki. We were very tired so we slept a bit in the cabin.

Back in Helsinki we drove up north to Lappeenranta directly to our cottage.

We rented a cottage near Lappeenranta (14km) in Mehrenlehti. It cost us 450€ from Monday to Sunday, not much for 4 persons in my opinion. The cottage and the sauna was already heated up when we arrive at 2345. The owners showed us everything and after that, Günther and I decided to have our first sauna turn at 2 in the morning. It was great, I don't know why I haven't visit Sauna earlier *gg*, yes, it was my first time in 4 month.

Day 3 - The cottage
In the morning we had the first chance to see our cottage at daylight and also the nice scenery, which welcomes us with mythic fog all over the lake. But have a look on your own:

The cottage (left), with sauna (middle) and grilling place (right):

The lake:

We went to Lappeenranta city center to do some walking, talking and shopping. But resting for the rest of the day.

On this day I brought my Take home exam to my professor, where he can have a look and tell me if a passed or not. The first thing he said was something like "..dare you, you wrote so much.." hahaha,.... yes, I had like 17 pages for 4 questions and for the first one 5 and the second one 4 pages. In the end I passed, thank god ;) But I didn't get the points so far, because he said he had to read it carefully, because I took a very different approach than anybody else. ;)

Day 4 - Lappeenranta
The plan was to see the sights of Lappeenranta. It has not much sights, so we weren't in a hurry *gg*. The morning started even better than the morning before, sunshine :)
You don't believe it, look at this picture I made in the harbor of Lappeenranta:

Ok, sunshine doesn't mean that it is warm *gg*. However, we spent a nice day walking through Lappeenranta. We visited the old cafe at the fortress of Lappeenranta, wow they had delicious cakes *gg*

We also visited the oldest orthodox church in Finland, which was the first time opened since I'm here to visit it. Ok, maybe we should have ask the group inside if they paid for the tour *g*

In the evening we went to the christmas party at Gigglin Marlin (after sauna), which was organized by the student union. A very funny night with a special appearance from a girls dance group. You maybe can guess why I really liked it *g*



Day 5 - Long sleep and Ylämaa

After a long night, we had a longer sleep, ok for some it wasn't even long enough *g*.
The program for this day was a visit in Ylämaa. It is a small town with a big mining history. Because in Ylämaa there is a rich deposit of spectrolite and other stones.

The first impression was not very good, because everything was closed and the "town" was extremely small. After some time and questions we head back to the "stone city" and fortunately the before closed shop was open now. I bought me a ring for my thumb and the others also bought some stuff. The ring is made from bloodstone. It breaks very easy, as Günther recognized after 3 minutes. He unpacked the ring, dropped it, broken *ggg*, not even once weared *gg*. But the lady behind the desk was nice enough to give him a new one for free.

After some shopping and grilling in the evening we went to bed.

Day 6 - Very long sleep and shopping
Nothing special on day number 5, just more sleep and relaxing and do some shopping in the center of Lappeenranta.

Day 7 - Imatra and Ruokolahti
We went to Imatra to see the rapid canyon. Afterwards we went to the church hill in Ruokolahti, just to visit the wooden bell tower and the church there. Which looks like that (bell tower)

After the usual sightseeing we went back to the cottage to spend the last evening there. We also walked on the frozen lake.

Today I brought them back to Helsinki Airport, where they left at 16 o'clock.
Thank you three for the visit, it was really a very nice week with you and I enjoyed it a lot.

A lot of photos of this week are online in my gallery.