Tents going up and down

The world championship in beach volleyball has its’ first tournament in Gstaad, an old ski resort in the Swiss Alps. Where’s the beach…skiing slopes…maybe rained that much that there now is a beach, along the river? Somehow I always have thought if beach volleyball played on the beach in seaside resorts, but hey, they just recently played beach volleyball in the middle of Tampere City square here in Finland, and there is no beach there even though it is in the vicinity of the Tammerkoski rapids.

Summer is a very strange season here in Finland, during the winter people are more withdrawn and stay indoors most of the time but with the sun showing in the spring it changes completely. People are more open and go out a lot more and there are all these festivities celebrating different things, open air concerts in the middle of town squares and annually recurring musical festivals around the country.

It is a strange occurrence to see various tents go up on the town square, and then become taken down just in time for another tent for a second festival of some kind. Why not just use the same tent all summer along instead of tearing them down and being replaced by each other? I wonder how many times the same tents turn up on the same town square during the same summer?

I guess the weather has not been as favourable as last summer for all the festivals but at least there can be no complaints about the water levels sinking this year as the previous ones with hardly any rain at all. Even if electricity is less expensive at present than during the winter I guess that is nothing that will be noticeable in consumer pricing of the power we use anyway.

Have you ever tried smoked pike? If you have the chance do so, it is a delicacy I have never come across previously and I have not seen it sold anywhere, but we just received some as a gift from the fishing colleague of my husband’s. Being a bit prejudiced I have always thought that you should only smoke fish with high fatty levels, not dry as pike but it turns out really delicious and now I know of one more delicate way to prepare pike.