Midsummer in Finland (in English)

Hey all you beutiful people!!

I decided (finally) to write in English. You’ve been asking for this many times and a few of my lovely work mates keep saying that it would be nice to understand what I write, so here it is, my very first English blog post.

First of all I want to say sorry about my ”not that good English”. I’ll do my best and hope you understand even something 😉

Thursday

On Thursday evening we packed our luggages and took the metro to Copenhagen airport. Flight from Copenhagen to Helsinki was a bit late and I got crazy hungry-tired-grumpy-thing on the airport…I’m sorry A, you handle my madness everytime so perfectly… <3 He just knows how to deal with me when I get my mad-princess-times and makes me feel a lot better every time. I love you!

Anyway:

We landed in Finland almost one hour late (flight takes normally about 1,5 hours) and my lovely sister with her boyfriend were there waiting for us. Way home from airport took about 3 hours with car. We stopped once to eat a bit so we were home around 4 am Finnish time…I cuddled with dogs few minutes (Oh my…how I missed them) and we were so tired that we just went straight to sleep. I’m happy we travelled on Thursday so we had all Friday to do other things!

Friday

On Friday morning my mom had organized the most perfect brunch. We had it together with my family and my parent’s friends. They have 2 small lovely kids who I’ve been taking care of sometimes and I just love those two little monkies! Youngest of the kids is a girl, who likes me a lot and got super mad at A because she thinks he stole me to CPH from her. Haha!

After brunch we packed bikinis, winter jackets (Finnish summer…) and towels with us and drove to our summer cottage about 10km from my parents house. There was my mom’s parents (my lovely mummo and pappa), mom’s sister with her family and mom’s brother with his daughters. That is the same group we usually spend all midsummers and Christmas eves together too, easy 17 people around one big table. I love my big family. We all are pretty different, but that’s why I love them all! I really like that I have many cousins and I’m happy that it’s so easy to be with all of them.

I really love Finnish nature!! I enjoyed my time so much that I forgot to take pictures…Here is few I remembered to take.

If you wonder why we had piece of three inside the sauna, here’s the reason:

In Finland we have a tradition that we gather a bunch of birch branches from the forrest and make ”vasta” (that thing on a photo) of them. We bring it inside the sauna and whip each others with it. Sounds brutal but feels so good! And the smell that comes from vasta is magical.

Later on Friday evening we drove back home, had sauna again, ate again and drank a bit more beer and played some board games together.

Saturday

On Saturday morning we ate nice, slow breakfast at home. Finnish style it includes bread, yoghurt, coffee, juice and fruits (mom bought some fresh Finnish strawberries).

On the afternoon we went to meet our friends and have huge icecreams in the nearest village, Taipalsaari. The scoops were super huge!!

Noora (in the picture) is one of my best friends. I met A at her wedding! She’s writing a blog too and you can find it here.

On Saturday evening we went to one of my best friends home to drink a bit wine and chill with friends. We had so much fun but not enough time…

Sunday

Before driving to Helsinki, I wanted to stop at Lappeenranta harbour. There are small wooden ”restaurant kiosks” where people can buy ”vety” and ”atomi” which are super good meat pies. Vety is a meat pie with egg and ham, butter, onion, garlic mayo, ketchup, mustard…and atomi  is the same thing but with egg OR ham. I really love eating them, they are a part of Finnish summer for me! And with milk of course! ;)

I actually really didn’t want to come back Denmark yet. SURPRISE?! I told my family already on Saturday that I could stay for a couple more days. I was afraid of getting home sick…The worst thing was when mom started crying in Helsinki airport…Of course I started crying too. And at the gate once again. And on the plane. Again.

Flight home wasn’t that easy or nice for me. When we were departing, pilot told us that there was some problem on the plane so flight might be a bit noisy…Of course my seat was next to wing so I think I had one of the most noisy seats in the whole plane. On top of that it was super hot in the plane and felt I couldn’t breath that good so I started sweating and panicking and felt throwing up. The whole flight felt super long for me and was the hardest flight ever. But I made it. Again A was holding my hand and making me feel better and more safe.

For some reason we got 4 luggages for free from Norwegian, so I packed more clothes from my parents place with me and moved more stuff to Copenhagen. I couldn’t take evberything when I moved here two months ago so I’m going to bring a little more back every time I visit Finland…

 

Mom gave us these lovely Iittala candle cups! I just love that Kastehelmi -design…

…and these Varvunraita oven mitts from Marimekko. These have been on my wish list and I finally got them from mom!

 

Right now I’m feeling super tired but happy. I am a bit home sick, but I know it goes away in few days. That’s what it is, I think I’ll never get used to this feeling.

Love you guys, have a good week!

//Henna

Thank you A for being the best boyfriend while the whole weekend in Finland. Thank you also for reading this before publishing! I love you.