Urban wildlife

Having spent the highlight of the Finnish Midsummer in pouring rain we are now living summer in hot sunshine.

Today for the first time this summer I saw people down the beach, in the water, swimming and the water temperature has not been the topic this summer yet, until last week.

We have about ten hedgehogs visiting the yard every night, about as the number might be even bigger but ten is the largest number having been present at the same time. At the same spot many squirrels also feed together with small birds and a couple of hares, and in the winter I even spotted a fox one night. So maybe the urban elk in Turku was not so strange after all.

Talk about urban wildlife!

Died passions?

How can one thing that I used to be so passionate and conscientious about just die?

No interest in blogging anymore it seems even though the occasional ideas keep on popping up...What is it that make routines, that are safe and sound and keep us going, one day turn into a boring compulsory thing?

I mean, I love to write and to tell stories and just looking out the window I come to think of at least three things to blog about. Watching the news is even better, especially on days when nothing major has happened in the world and the news are filled with little things just in order to say something, just anything.

Like the other day when an elk was loose in the middle of Turku with hunters and police looking for it all over. Well, they never found it as it just vanished from sight, probably into the woods to never make the same mistake again.

See how easy it was, still it seems so hard to get it done...

Crimean war fought also in Finland

The spring is here and a lot of things have lately been occupying my mind but none of them worth to blog about really, nothing to keep me ticking.

I was just surprised to hear about that the beginning of the Crimean War in the 1850´s actually began here in Finland with the British fleet supported by the French fleet entering the Baltic sea attacking various cities on the coast with a lot of shipyards were destroyed by fire and some Finns also getting killed. But then Finland was a part of the Russian empire and thus considered the enemy.

Updating family history

Well, I am finally trying to get back to normal routines after my father's memorial.

After an intense meeting with long no seen relatives and an update on who's who in your family at the memorial seems kind of surreal and getting back to normal seems almost impossible. So many things were stirred at the bottom of the profound seas of long ago lived lives of dead relatives as well as just recently lost father. The compulsory polite chatting with coffee and cake can sometimes be quite ennerving.

To tell you the truth his death has not as yet affected me in any way, just a minor out burst of tears all of a sudden, as somehow I feel I already lost him three decades ago when he left to work far from home and the father I knew as a small child never returned home again. Of course he was still there for me, but never in the same way as before.

I wonder if his death ever dawns upon me ...he just kind of left on a vacation that will last until the end of my own days.

Grieving father's death

Life has its' own strange ways, my father just died early Sunday morning, and being abroad he will be buried there so there will be no burial service back home.

Kind of sad, realizing that you can die any time.

At least he died, even though all of a sudden and without any warning in a heart seizure, lots stock and barrel, he went when he was ready as he mentioned to me in our last phone conversation...

Less Northern lights

There haven’t been many sightings of Aurora Borealis in Lapland this winter.

According to the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, the scarcity of northern lights is due to very few sunspots. Last time the sun was last this passive in 1913, nearly 100 years ago. Apparently the sun’s activity runs sun in cycles, and you can´t predict the length of these cycles. Well, I can vouch for that, last week skiing up north I had no glimpse at all of northern lights what so ever. But the skiing trip was nice, getting a change from the normal routine.

Skiing, good company, good food and wine, some snow sledging and relaxing, that makes at least this woman fit for fight again. And eventually, dating.

Wham bam!

Well this dating seems to be an odd business here in Finland.

You go for a date, hit it well off and go for a second date with dinner in a restaurant and it still seems fine so you settle for a third date. He invites you to his place for dinner and he cooks before your eyes. You are romantically wined, dined and seduced and everything still seems fine the next day and you set date for a third date but then nothing, just a cowardly text-message saying he is really sorry but he wasn't really turned on. ?!?

He did not turn on? Why the romance then, champagne and all?
Just "Wham, bam. Thank you ma'am"!

Well, I guess I can not judge from just one experience but my female friends have told me the same story. A couple of nice dates then it all of a sudden ends, usually with no explanation at all. Are the Finnish men just players, or is it just me who tends to meet them? And I am not even a blue eyed blonde!

So, I guess I am still single but I guess I am not dating for the time being...