The End of Summer 2020

Summer after Midsummer has been time for gradual recovering from covid19 restrictions. Being still somewhat careful we avoided crowds and public transportation. The first and only trip abroad was top Tallinn on the less than half full ship.

Above the roofs of Tallinn at the bar of our Hotel 

During our cottage week we met relatives, including my parents and sisters. Meeting elderly people was quite risk free in the outdoor environment.

Summer pleasures...

The generations meeting

Three sisters

Northern Karelia offered some nice places and moments for us as we travelled near our cottage. One of our day trips was directed to Möhkö through Öllölä and Pörtsämö – some nicest Finnish names for places. Öllölä is a distant village which has become a suburb of the town Joensuu. The urban atmosphere is totally absent there though. Pörtsämö is an old wilderness orthodox cemetery by the lake. There one can also see kropus the “tomb houses”.

An idyll of Öllölä stream

A bear trap. The old folks say if he is persuaded to drink moonshine with honey he will start yell oddly and that's the right moment to go to kill the beast. The iron spikes will help the task.

By the Öllölä stream

At the kropu in Pörtsämö

On our we we visited Maukkula hill in Ilomantsi. We stayed our Midsummer here with our American friends 8 years ago. Now the generation has changed but we were very friendly welcomed.

Meeting super friendly animals at the kyyttö farm in Maukkula. Kyyttö is an original Eastern Finnish cow.

A view from the Maukkula hill

Möhkö is an old industry village in Ilomantsi where iron was made of ore called limonite which is lifted from the lakes. My grandgrandfather was a director of the factory in early 20^th century. There is a factory museum in the building he and his family used to live. There are even full size dolls representing my ancestors.

My grandgradmother seems to play Ständchen by Schubert

My grandgrandfather has some religious text to be read.

The shower room called Ryöppy, used also by our later generations even though our family haven't lived there since the first decade of the 20th century

The main building called Pytinki

Another trip was made to Jänisjoki district. Jänisjoki is a not-so-big river from the lakes of Kiihtelysjärvi to Jänisjärvi and finally to Lake Ladoga in Russia. The size of the river is perfect for paddling which is interrupted quite frequently by the hydropower plants. Anyway the views along the river are quite picturesque. We also made a little walk to quite unknown gorge area Sitkansola.     

A view to Jänisjoki

A view from the power plant

With the younger generation

At Sitkansola with my brother in-law

Sitkansola

As so many other people, we also made some short-term trips from our home in Espoo as well. One of our new finding was Fagervik manor and mill in Inkoo. The place has maintained its beauty of gone centuries with red wooden buildings, a small (private!) church and a romantic park around the main building – which unfortunately was also only in private use.

Another manor we haven’t visited earlier was Laukko manor near Tampere. The manor has a long history being the main place of the famous and powerful medieval Finn Klaus Kurki. The manor is connected to the folklore poem Elinan surma. Nowadays the buildings are from much later periods but the manor has been important also later. The manor has its not-so-good reputation treating the workers poorly which made them strike in 1905 – leading the owner of the manor stop the strike very brutally.

White-tailed deers were released to Laukko dinstrict resulting the even today growing population of animals, also called Laukko deers. The increasing and spreading population also dramatically increase the amount of ticks in Finnish forests.

Laukko deer  seen in Espoo

Nowadays Laukko is in use of tourism and there are numerous art exhibitions in the buildings.

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laukon_kartano

At the Laukko main building

We stayed the night in Tampere and visited the museum Vapriikki in the old industry area in the center of the town.

By Tammerkoski, the rapids which engined the old industrial town Tampere

Tampere is called Finnish Manchester

My personal travel bureau seems to prefer wide views these days

From Tampere we continued our Häme tour to Kangasala, Hauho, Längelmäki and Asikkala where we had our dinner in Pulkkila Ridge which crosses the Lake Päijänne.

The medieval Längelmäki ruin church - even then they made bad quality every now an then. Because of fear of collapsing it was abandoned centuries ago. 

By the Lake Päijänne at the Pulkkila Ridge

During covid19 age even shorter trips felt relevant. One of them was a visit to Senate Square in Helsinki city which was modified to a huge food terrace instead of the parking place for tourist buses. The idea was from Major of Helsinki and it got quite a lot resistance from religious and other conservative people – in fact the square has been a place for mass happenings from the 19^th century. The idea seemed to be fine and now there have been talks of going on the practice also after the covid19 crisis.

At the Senate Square

The nearest manors can easily be reached by bike. I visited Espoonkartano in the beginning of August but my interest was mostly the nature of the two tiny Mankki and Gumböle Rivers joining together near the manor.   

By the Mankki River rapids 

  

Biking is a good way to see and enjoy the nature – we live between the fields and forests. One of my bike trips was also directed to municipal carpet wash place. One of the fellow wash ladies told she has always left her carpets dry there – no carpets stolen so far. I was not so fearless – and no stolen carpets in my yard, either.

Washing carpets

And now the report of the beginning of the harvest time:

I was luckier than last year to pick organic strawberries – even if I was too late there at the noon.

The day happened to be our wedding anniversary as well.

The blueberry situation was also much better in the forest than last year but I ended up buying the rest of them from the person I also bought then last year.

My goose berry catch was big enough but they seemed to lack some of their normal taste.

My aronia catch was half of what it usually is. The bushes had also grown quite high so I cut them first and picked the berries from the twigs.

Mushrooms: A disaster!

We don’t’t have sunflower fields but there are such ones where people can pick them and donate some euro to the people who own and maintain the fields.

An interesting thing also happened in late August. The National Theatre has a project ”Todo sobre mi madre” on the basis of Pedro Almodovora film and I was invited to tell about trans people to support the view in the production. My role was mostly to tell about myself, but we had very long discussion about identities, representation and the words used. The problem is the identity spectrum of Finnish trans people is not equivalent to Spanish ones. One of the main reasons is we have public and very affordable process to correct the body while in Spain the funding is sadly organized with prostitution in many cases. While the customers mostly prefer male genitals there is social pressure to delay the total physical process. This fact reflects also to identities and it is not always easy to make a distinction between transvestites and trans women.  The actors of the trans roles are cis people and were very pleased to get information about these things. We asked if they have asked trans actors for these roles and they replied they had tried without any success.

Coming from the National Theater, a jugend style building behind me

No the new semester has taken off. While the covid19 situation had got worse we are advised to minimize the contact lessons. In a way I’m happy about it while I can skip the trip to campuses, almost one and half hour twice a day. I still have to go there for some practical studies. It is quite hard to teach 8 hours masked in constant excess of carbon dioxide. But I will bravely stand it, this is my last semester before retiring.

At the campus