Christmas is coming . . . except where we are, it has arrived

After a great night's sleep, we woke to an overcast day with the promise of 22 degrees.  The Fins are amazed at the weather we have brought with us so late in summer!

There was a sighting of the Northern Lights earlier in the week, but we had not been able to see them before we went to bed, so we had set the alarm for 2:30 am this morning to get up and check again.  I was up at 1:50 am and checked, and Donna got up when the alarm went off, but this was not our time to be treated specially and we did not get to see the lights.  Bugger, maybe next visit.  😞

There are two main attractions in Rovaniemi - the Arktikum that showcases the Arctic environment and development and changing landscape, and the Santa Claus Village.  Both open at 10 am and we need to be away from here by midday.  Gee what a choice!  What to do?  Which one do you think we chose to visit??! Ha ha - hope you all guessed right!

The added bonus of the Santa Village is that we cross the Arctic Circle here again and instead of passing it on a ship, in the night, we got a chance to have one foot in each of the latitude zones!  Special.

The Santa Village is the permanent home of Santa Claus in Lapland, here in Finland.  It is summer now, although drawing closer to Christmas and the elves are busy preparing and wrapping presents and putting them in huge crates that are marked with the type of toys and where on Santa's sleigh that crate needs to be placed.  We visit Santa and tell him all about our grandchildren and how good they have all been this year.  He asks us to remind them that they must continue to be good with Christmas getting

closer.

We could visit the reindeer in their summer paddock up the back of the Village, but it was quite expensive at €40 per person!  Because we had seen reindeer in the wild as we were travelling to North Cape recently, we decided not to see them penned up here.

There are displays of Christmas from countries from all over the world and we are reminded that there are elves living under the floors who can send naughty and nice reports back to Santa at any time.

We can just imagine this place in the winter months - it would be so

special wrapped in a warm blanket of snow.  A few souvenirs bought, Santa's Post Office visited, the Iitala factory outlet visited (no purchases as we would have trouble getting them home).  Coffee and cakes later, we head for the car and our drive back to Riikka and Runo's home in Jyväskylä - 653 kms to the south and a drive of 6 hours and 35 minutes.  We make one stop for fuel en-route and drive in and out of rain, promising Riikka that we are bringing the sunshine back to them.

We finally arrive (slow weekend traffic and intermittent rain slowing) just before 7:30 pm.
Runo has smoked a salmon for us and Riikka prepared the tiniest new potatoes and salad and an amazing creme fraiche and dill sauce.  It was SOOO delicious - forgot to take photos sorry.  Dessert and coffee followed. The boys are happy we are back - dessert again - twice in the week!!

We semi-plan for the weekend.  Riikka is coming with us to Helsinki - I am so excited to be able to spend some girlie time with her and Donna.  We will first visit the timber Petäjävesi Old Church that we had hoped to see the other day, but didn't so that we could get to Jyväskylä at a reasonable time.

Riikka and Runo are visiting Australia next March and loose plans are made for us all to catch up in Sydney.

Its a long way to Rovaniemi

Last night Runo offered to be our chauffeur today for the drive to Rovaniemi.  

Is just a little drive for those of us from Australia - a mere 543.2km!  This way, we get to relax a little during the drive and Donna gets a break from being main photographer and Runo can give us snippets of his knowledge and wisdom en-route.  It is a lovely gesture and greatly appreciated.  

We meet him at their home just before 9 am and drive almost half the length of Finland, stopping for a quick lunch and fuel at a roadstop before arriving at the air-base at Rovaniemi about 4:45 pm - just in time for Runo to get his military flight back to a base near Jyväskylä at 5:30 pm.  He will then get a bus ride home that will take him about an hour!

The drive is on really good roads and we are constantly being teased by the promise of moose sightings - these signs are placed about every 500 m along the road.  Bit of false advertising really, we saw none.  Not one! 

As we travel further north, the crops change as do the forests.  The same crops are harvested, but the yield is smaller, the crops do not grow as high.  The forests also thin with the trees not having the girth or the height of those growing further south.

Runo explains that the only way that these farmers are able to continue farming is with the government subsidies provided to ensure that farming land is still worked.  When you see the size of some of these smallholdings, it is easy to see that none of them can be financially viable.  After a long, dry summer last year where many crops failed, this year has been more productive and the wrapped hay is testament to this.  

This part of Finland has a large timber growing and processing industry with much of it going to paper production and China. We pass quite a number of timber trucks, seeing that the timber logs are significantly smaller than what we are used to seeing at home.  In fact, the way the logs are loaded on the trucks reminds us of the layout of the timber frames you find in Ikea and similar Scandinavian house stores back home!

Finland is the land of the lakes and from time to time, we come lakeside with many of them.  Lots have boats resting on the shoreline, exhausted after a summer of fun-giving.  We also see lots of signs to camping spots along their shores.  Runo's parents have a cabin in Eastern Finland that the family uses from time to time.  Lucky them, although I am told that the mosquitoes can be horrendous!

At last we arrive and drop Runo off at one of the back gates at the airbase, complete with requisite mounted plane, before contacting our hosts for the night and collecting the key to their inner city apartment.  Kikki is very welcoming and friendly and has provided a good selection of tourist information in their modern and tastefully decorated apartment.

We head in to town for a bite to eat only to find that the University here is also having the O week celebrations this week.  I watched two groups for a couple of minutes - one group would sing/chant and then the other group would reply in like.  Boisterous yes, but all good clean fun from what I observed. 

As the crow flies, we are only 50 kms from the Swedish border, but we don't do things the easy way - first we are driving back to Riikka and Runo's and then on to Helsinki for the weekend.

We are off to Santa Claus Village back across the Arctic Circle tomorrow.

But before we go to bed, we are going to have a look skyward - the Northern Lights were seen here two days ago - wouldn't THAT be a bonus!