Rymättylä Herring Weekend

Last weekend we visited our good friends Kristiina and Irene in Rymättylä near Turku. On Friday we met a gender scholar to negotiate about the article to our magazine. The we walked a bit along the Aurajoki river banks.

It was almost six p.m. before we arrived Rymättylä. It is a tiny place in Turku Archipelago and their house is situated by a very narrow sea gulf so there wasn’t too much wind. The evening was quite warm as long as the sun was still up but after that the temperature went down rather rapidly. Because we live on quite northern latitude it didn’t happen until nine p.m.   

We had bought some Swedish herring for barbecuing. Normally all the herring we eat is salted because it has been caught far away in Atlantic. Actually the old Finnish herring fleet has been just in Rymättylä in Röölä harbor. We do eat fresh herrings but they are sub species Baltic herring. We found out that Atlantic herring tastes a bit milder than our domestic version. Baltic herring has been poor people’s food but we all think it is delicious – as well this foreign ones were.

Saturday was a warm and sunny day and we devoted to avoid any major activity except sun bath and nice intelligent talk.  I got my first bikini tan lines – unfortunately they were the red ones. Although the sea didn’t look very appealing (rather like Finnish pea soup…) we swam many times with no symptoms of poisoning.

In early evening we had to go to fetch water for sauna because the well of the house is in bad condition and the sea is salty – though not as salty as the oceans. So we went to Röölä harbor to fetch water. It turned out that there has been a “Pirate market” in that day. There were some stalls where we were enticed to buy some exotic things as Himalaya crystal salt, containing 81 elements. I thought there aren’t that much non-poisonous elements so I willingly skipped the offer.

After visiting some other seashore places we went to heat the sauna and barbecue some entrecote with vegetables. I had no problems with falling asleep after staying outdoors the whole day.

Sunday morning was almost as warm as Saturday but there were some wind that made the weather not so hot. At noon a front of clouds appeared to Northern sky so it was a good time to thank our hostesses and head for Helsinki.