a trip to Finland- a mixture of shopping and sightseeing

Monday morning 7am on our way to Finland Haparanda/Tornio, it only took 4 1/2hrs with pauses inbetween, so university is longer :D

It was actually sunny all the time, just when we wanted to go somewhere for a walkout it startet to rain-typical. So we were not outside walking that much, dogs still enjoyed it, they saw a lot of new things and places, Finouks favorite was to watch the people on the camping.

I'm glad that they enjoy driving, they are always laying on eachother or watching outside the window, especially amazed by trucks.

So we arrived in Haparanda (the swedish side of the city) and the first thing we did was having lunch-guess where- IKEA :D Yes and here we go, that was actually the reason travelling to Haparanda, the next IKEA here is in Sundsvall and that would take 6hrs plus that you can't pay with euros in Sundsvall. And of course it was long ago that we've been to Finland so it was not only a shoppingtrip, of course we also wanted to see something :) So after checking in on the camping (in Tornio, so on the finnish side we unpacked the car and continued our journey to Kemi. Weather was great, but windy though.

Confusing about Haparanda/Tornio is, that they have different times. on the swedish side its one hour earlier than in Tornio. My mobile was probably confused as well, it asked me if i want to update the time to match the new timezone-nothing weird, but it didn't stop asking me and I could neither say "no" because it didn't stop asking me the same question so I actually couldn't do anything. And even when I said "yes" it asked me all the time again so while clicking on "yes" all the time it was suddenly 6hrs later. So I switched it off-funny thing: it even asked me when we were in sweden again.

So far was the trip quite funny, but I have to say the worst thing about Finland is the fact that you don't understand one single word, you cannot even guess what it could mean, starting with the word "center" in cities, it means "keskusta". Ok, I could check it before next time but come on, in almost every country you can at least understand "center".

As I know from a friend there is not really a logical part in that language. I only see a lot of i,a,ä and k, especially twice, there was only one similarity. I saw it when I went to LIDL (yeah, they have it in Finland too) where I was quite amazed, but they probably jsut tried to let the german word sound finnish? I mean come on, "braatvursti" ?? or "frankfurternakki" ??

So after long days of shopping and driving around to see something we spent the evenings on the camping, being lazy, watching tv. Dogs where quite tired as well, all these new impressions. But Finouk always takes the time to spent it with Emil, it's so cute to see them together, another kind of lovestory ;)

The second day in Finland did we spend in Kukkolaforsen where you can see rapids and a cute old village. We even had the possibility for a long walk in the sun, dogs enjoyed it :)

So besides all that nature we went to IKEA as I mentioned, actually wanted to buy new bedroom furniture for me, but for some reason they don't send beds, you have to buy it and transport it yourself. Stupid, how am I supposed to buy a bed with a Nissan Micra? Any suggestions? Or ideas why they don't send it? Bought a lot of other stuff -big stuff as well- and they send it, so why not the bed? aaah, annoying. I want my bigger bed-now !!! :-(

So back home again, continuing renovating the house but at first I've gotta sleep looooong tomorrow, my bed is a pillowparadise right now, guess Finouk will enjoy it ;)

byebye everyone, and plz pardon my english, I'm tired ;-p