After following Riikka's and Liisa's recommendations both concerning the best ice cream in Helsinki (serving is so big we postpone our lunch by two hours) and a very nice route out of Helsinki, where we visited the Seurasaari open air museum (https://www.kansallismuseo.fi/en/seurasaarenulkomuseo/frontpage), we ride through forests and pastures on a very extensive and extended bike path network. It feels like riding through open nature but we are actually crossing Finnlands second largest city, Espo. We arrive at Annika's mother's place, who greets us with coffee, pastries and the offer of an already warm sauna and to spend the night at her place before we proceed to the coast. As it has started to rain again we gladly accept this offer and have very interesting conversations with her and one of her grandsons, on Swedish and Finnish language in Finnland as well as the role of the sauna in Finnland. On the next day (I slept straight until 11:00, finally in a dark room and without other people) we cycled another 20km to Marcus' - Annika's brother's place: a beautiful new wooden house right on the shore. It feels like a lake but is actually part of the Baltic sea. We very much enjoyed the peace and quiet, only a deer walked up to the window had a quick look at us and proceeded with its grazing and ocasionally a couple of swans with their young swam by. We again enjoyed the Sauna and quickly dipped into the sea, but it was really only a dip as the water was still very cold.
We were about to leave when Markus arrived and told us a bit more about the house and the region including that this part of Finnland belonged to the Soviet Union for quite some time after WW2. We then spent the rest of the weekend with Maarit (Annika's sister) and her husband Tom and their three sons, learning a lot about school and the military in Finnland. On Sunday we visited Hvittraesk together by bike, an impressive complex in the 'National Romantic' style which three famous architects built for themselves in a time when Finnish nation-building was at its height. It was really interesting to see the Finnish rural traditions (which we had just learned about in Seurasaari - incidentally one of the Hvittraesk artists was also involved in creating this museum), interwoven with typical art deco elements as we know them from Brussels of Vienna and many parallels to Riga, which also expanded considerably in this time and was similarly occupied with nation-building. We also learned about the famous guests and the relationships among the three architects and their families (including divorce and remarriage) - a dimension we might witness or experience in our own communal living project as well some day.... After a nice coffee and cinnamon buns (my first truly Scandinavian ones) we took a swim in Hvittraesk lake, much warmer than the ocean!
On Monday after some initial updates of this blog with the help of Maarit's computer we went back to Helsinki, visited the rock church and spent a very nice supper with Tony (initially from Britain) and his Finnish wife. Tony saw us driving out of Helsinki and took a photo of us, sent it to a biking friend indicating he found our bike interesting and was quickly referred to our website, we assume by Arto, the Finnish Pino Hase dealer, who had met us upon our arrival.... We learned a lot about Helsinki and Tony and Kristina tried out our bike...
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In the Seurasaari Open Air Museum
Big question after the Sauna: Do we really want to dive into the cold Baltic Sea?