Catch Up with the International Golf tournament -- these photos didn't get uploaded before. When I finally did it one by one, and clicked "publish", the next step came up in Finnish....Go figure!!! We had a great time there, Tarja's family treats us like kinfolk- and we love being with them.

A view of the Harkonen summer cottage near Parakkala.

Sauna at Harkonen's plus rowing boat.

Hapi is making the first hole of a five hole golf course for the International Tournament.

The dogs are digging up hole #1 of the International Golf Tournament five hole course..:-)

 Hole #2 -- quite a tough course after all...

 Tarja's got it!

 Axel is learning...

Hapi is dead serious about this game.

 But, when it rains, stand under the overhand and get out the bow and arrow!

Hapi is serious about this, too!

Marjuska and Alex inside summer cottage.

Neighbor has his bonfire ready to start!

More "Phinnish" Photos -- this time at summer cottage and Midsummer

 Taru-Maija on the way to summer cottage for Midsummer Holiday.

 Nadi, her handsome Tartar husband.

 We have arrived at summer cottage -- here is the view from the cottage to the lake.

 Here is the view from the sauna/lakeshore to the cottage at the top.  As you can see, there are lots of trees, mossy boulders, and other such growing things.

 This is called the "Midsummer Rose" because it always blooms at midsummer.  There are these rose bushes all over the place, and, predictably -- in bloom!

 Near the campground is this historical village -- lots of these wooden windmills dotted the horizon in days gone by.  The Finns are preserving as many of them as they can. Wood was the building material of choice, with good reason....

 At the campground where we have gone (now twice) for celebration, wooden statues are all over the place -- some painted,some not -- and there is an annual contest for the best one.

 This is 2011 first prize winner.  They must be done within a certain time frame, from a single piece of wood, and using only a chain saw.  Amazing...

 Local Finns roasting their own lenkke-makkara. We had ours waiting at home...

 The bonfire starts...

 See the tongues of flame licking at the sky?  It looks much darker than it was, but I liked this version of the fire....

 Two pseudo-Finns at Midsummer!

 Kurt took us back to summer cottage via water -- there are so many lakes here you can't count them, and they often connect to each other.

 Colorful rowing boats along the way -- every summer cottage has at least one rowing boat -- for fishing in the lakes with either a cage or a net.

 Kurt's boat -- as we arrived at the cottage.

 Taru-Maija and Tommy roast our l-m sausages for Midsummer.

 We CELEBRATE at our cottage...Kurt, Nadi, Arie, and Tommy.  Arie is T-M's sister, Kurt, her husband, and Tommy, her youngest son about to go into mandatory military service -- 9 months -- then on college.

Sunrise?  Sunset?  Who knows -- it is just a beautiful place to be at a beautiful time...

Our International Family in Finland

 Finnish International Family:  L to R - Vessa-Pekka (on the way to space), Veikko (rugby player), Topio (pharmacist in Norway), Juhani (married to Moscovite), Taru-Maija (our daughter), and Airi(two years traveling abroad).  What a family!

 Tarja Harkonen, Vaughn, and Taru-Maija Heilala -- the same trio from 1982!

Three generations of our "family" -- Marjuska - Tarja's daughter, Tarja, Vaughn, Taru-Maija and Benjamin (born on Vaughn's 51st birthday), Taru-Maija's son.  The daughter, Mai-Schenai is not pictured, but is equally beautiful and intelligent.  (It is a Grandparent's job to brag!)

Leaving one Finnish daughter, and visiting another...

We left Savolinna with sadness, but approached Jyvaskyla with gladness.  Both Tarja and Marjuska drove us to Taru-Maija's house, and we enjoyed seeing the two girls together again. It had been nearly thirty years since they were together in Oxford...they all look just as they did then, but now they are mothers of young adults -- just about the age they were when we all met.

The first day we spent just resting, washing clothes, and getting caught up in general.

Our daughter, Taru-Maija, is the most international person I know.  First, her parents made sure the children all understood that there was a world beyond Iisalmi, Finland. After their Father died, their Mother traveled and worked.  She and Topio went to China to do medical missionary work.  She went to Australia. She visited Mongolia. She lived the international life they wanted the children to know.  They sent each of the six children to London, England, for a week, and a month in the southern part of the country. It worked! Taru-Maija's children had their overseas experience in Malta, and they also visited us in Oxford when they were elementary school children. Their daughter, Mai-Schenai, in her brief 24 year life, has an extensive list of countries visited and/or lived in. Son Benjamin is on his way internationally as he prepares to study in Singapore next fall.

Topio, a pharmacist working in Norway, had spent time as an exchange student in Ohio  and married a Ukrainian woman. The oldest daughter, Airi, and her Surinami husband, Kurt, spent two years of their early married life traveling the world and both volunteering and working wherever they were.  Then, they settled down in Holland for a few years before returning to Finland.  Kurt was so impressed with the Finnish culture of supporting family (the government gives a stipend for each child in the family while they are living at home - until they are 18) and education. (Tuition for the colleges is basically free for all kids.)  Their education is extremely good, and Newsweek had it right when they evaluated Finland as the most livable nation in the world.  Never mind the cold winters; the health care, education, workforce, and economics are the best.

Juhani's (brother) wife is from Moscow, and she is Jewish.  Veikko (another brother) spent one year as exchange student in the United States, and because it was so good, he decided to stay one more year and work.  He wanted to bring a car home -- a silver anniversary Corvette.  It is still running and Veikko lets his friends use it for weddings, etc. He is a bachelor who loves to play rugby.

Taru-Maija was an international student, and worked as a tour guide for Finns traveling to both Turkey and Bulgaria. She married a Bulgarian whose roots go back to the Tartars.  He is a liberal Muslim, and grew up under Communism. We have learned so much from him about the world he knew as a child. They were married in 1985, four years before the Iron Curtain fell.  Living in Finland has admittedly, had its challenges for this central European whose father and sister left Bulgaria and lived and worked in Istanbul, Turkey. Taru-Maija used her extensive language skills as a planner of international conferences in Jyvaskyla.

The youngest brother, Vessa-Pekka, has a job that has taken him to many countries in Europe, but he has traveled extensively in Asia as well. He takes the travel bug to extremes: his Father was a Star Trek fan, and so, in his honor, Vessa-Pekka will be one of only two Finns to soar into space on the Virgin Galactic flight in 2012.  This suborbital, 3-4 hour flight will be the ultimate in "outside the box" traveling! 

I admire the internationalism of this family, the "universal" look to their children, and their intelligent approach to learning about other cultures.

On with our story.  We drove three hours north of Jyvaskyla to Iisalmi, where the Heilala summer cottage is.  Turning into the place, we felt at home: nothing had changed in 24 years.  The big cottage, where we sleep and eat, the several smaller cottages (built by their Father with the kids as they got bigger), the outhouse, where I first saw the poster of Lenin (her brother got a copy for me to take to my office.  For the students of mine who are reading this, they will remember Vladimir Lenin in his classic pose!) And, of course, the sauna, looking much the same as it had more than a half century ago when it was built.  The forest was the same, with the birch trees still sporting the branches that will be bound together for use in the sauna, the same with those huge stones, boulders in fact, that are growing moss and becoming ever so slowly part of the soil, and the same again, with the small and beautiful flowers -- blueberries in bloom, currents in bloom, and sometimes, just wildflowers in bloom.  It is so natural, and everyone should have a place like that to go when one needs peace.

The next day began the Midsummer Eve celebration.  The Finns get a three day holiday when the longest day of the year comes...they go to their summer cottages on the lakes, for sure; go to sauna, and stay up for the burning of the bonfires.  This pagan tradition is to scare away the evil spirits, but in modern days the Finns use it as a good excuse to celebrate and drink beer or Finlandia Vodka.  Remember that the sun does not set - or at least it is below the horizon only for ten or fifteen minutes -- what that means is that the sky is dusky and not dark.  You learn to sleep with an eye mask, or hope your cottage has "room darkening" shades.  Twenty-four hour days mean that you don't have a "time" to eat.  You just eat when you feel like it.  We ate our traditional "bread fish" (the small fish are piled high on each other, then wrapped in rye bread dough, and baked in the oven until they are done.  You slice the bread, and eat the slices of little fish and bread with some butter on it.  Add to that the tomatoes and cheese, and you have a holiday meal!) and drank our Finnish beer, then went to the campground we had visited 24 years earlier.

Iisalmi is a town about the size of Oxford, but without a University.  At the campground, we watched others grilling their lenkke-makkara sausages then sat down for a short beer before the bonfire.  A young Finn sat next to me, and when he heard our accent, just got so excited, because he had spent time in Michigan!  He couldn't get over an American couple coming to this small place in central Finland for Midsummer! We had fun comparing notes with his experience and ours with our "kids".

The fires were lit, and people gathered around the big haystack shape.  The sun was setting in the sky, and people were mostly quiet.  When the fire began to die down, folks began to disperse to their tents and campers, and we set out on the boat owned by Kurt.  (He and Airi do not own a car; just bicycles and a boat.) Believe me, sailing across the lakes at 2 am on a wonderful sunlit morning is sheer delight to those of us south of the nordic areas.  You will see the pictures, but you need to be able to do it yourself!

This was a highlight event of our visit to Taru-Maija -- but the true highlights are when we are sitting around in their living room, with the two of them, and their young adult children and a fiance mixed in.  That's what this visit is really about.

 The view down the canal from Lappenratta to Vyborg on the canal. There were 8 or 9 locks to go through to get down to sea level at Vyborg.

 Note Vaughn, Marjuska, and Taru -- as well as the Finnish flag.

 Vaughn and a "kid" and a "grandkid"!

 Deep, dark, forbidding woods -- you can see nothing after the first 5 or 6 feet.

The menacing watchtowers of Soviet times.  Last time we saw these, we were in the sights of an 18 year old with a Kalashnikov aimed at us.

 From a ride down the Neva River and on side canals -- remember Peter wanted to make St. Petersburg the "Venice" of the North.

 The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, with the Red Sails boat.

 A closer picture of the Red Sails boat for the celebration.

 The "front door" of the Hermitage, Peter's Winter Palace.

 A view from the Kissing Bridge.

 The first staircase you see inside the Hermitage.

 Just another beautiful building in St. Petersburg. They are all over the place.

 The lighthouses for the port -- the red columns you see.

 

 Revolution Square -- just watch "Dr. Zhivago" again, and you'll see what happened here.

On the way home, we Kindled a Scrabble game -- but our opponent, "Al" (whoever he is) cheated and won.  I couldn't figure out how to challenge his word.

Phinnish photos, Russian ones, too...plus the International Golf Tournament Candids!

For some reason, I have spent at least two hours downloading the photos, and it won't go onto the blog...will keep trying...

Greetings from the Land of Thousands of Lakes, endless days (at least on June 21) and an International Golf Tournament

We arrived in Helsinki after a journey of two hours Cape Town, SA to Jo'burg, SA -- 12 hours from Jo'burg, SA to Amsterdam -- two hours from Amsterdam to Helsinki, and then from there we had to drive four hours to get "home" to Savonlinna, near the Russian border to the east.

Our daughter, Tarja Harkonen was there with her daughter, Marjuska, and we hugged all around and cried.  She had come, with a group of other Finnish students of English, to Ole Miss in 1982 and she and another Finnish student lived with Vaughn.  We have remained very close for all these years, and had visited her and her family in 1987.  This was a "rerun" of that trip, and too long overdue.  But the years between just vanished when we got together in the car, and it was like we had just been separated for a few weeks.


We spent the next day washing clothes and recuperating.  Just kind of "hung out" and began getting to know Marjuska.  We are hoping the fates will bestow a semester at UM for her, too, and she is eager to do so.  


The next day we arose early (and I mean "early"!) and left at 5 am to drive to Lappeenranta where we boarded a boat for a canal cruise to Vyborg, Russia and on to St. Petersburg.  The trip was delightful, going through eight or nine locks before arriving at the town whose name and identity shifted several times during its history.  Vyborg (Russian and Swedish) or Viipori (Finnish) has changed hands so many times, it is hard to keep up...however, since the end of WWII, it has belonged to the USSR and later the Russians.  Finns still call it their own.


On the last trip to Vyborg, we went through an ominous admission process with the Communists.  Remember, we were traveling with a Finnish group -- and we were the only Americans.  At the border, we were warned NOT to smile as these 18 year boys with Kalashnikovs concentrated on our passport pictures.  There were threats of being held "forever" if we were found to have rubles on our person when we left the country, and as we drove on, periodically there were towers with armed soldiers aiming their guns at us.  A most threatening experience.

Then, arriving at the Beryozka shops, we supplied ourselves with the Stolichnaya vodka to brush our teeth with.  The water in Leningrad was reputed to be "not good", so we used a combination of Crest and Stolichnaya for all the times we brushed.  Not going to be a big seller on the toothpaste/cocktail market.

And then, the road was edged with forests.  In the Journal article, I called them "the forests of fairy tales:  deep, dark and forbidding", and they were!  You saw no signs of life.  There were occasional bus stops along the way, but there were seldom any people.  Just that endless, menacing forest.

This time was different.  We drove on the "new road", one that was peppered with mileage signs to St. Petersburg, gas stations, and more cars than you could count at one time.  There were trucks and every brand of auto in the world, including the Hummer limousines!  I was so excited to see the changes.

We arrived in St. Petersburg to 5 o'clock traffic the likes of which we last saw in Kuala Lumpur.  Six lanes of vehicles replaced the vast emptinesses we had observed when there in 1987, people were crowded on the sidewalks -- SMILING people -- and there were shops everywhere.  This place was alive.  It was gorgeous.

Under Communism, money was spent on the military complex, weapons, and equipment for war. There was nothing expended on the beautiful city that Peter had created.  For over 70 years, this incredibly handsome place had languished in neglect, and it showed.  Vaughn and I were both enamored by the place in 1987, and agreed that if ever the Russians put some resources behind the rehabilitation of the city, they would be sitting on a gold mine.

Well, in advance of the 300th anniversary of the city in 2003, Vladimir Putin put lots of rubles behind a renaissance of St. Petersburg.  Today the 17th and 18th century Rococo buildings are being revived for a new life in the 21st century, sometimes even housing indoor malls. But the architecture of the city will simply take your breath away.  It is magnificent.  Everyone should make a journey to this place. You will feel as though you are swept back in time to when Peter was Tsar.

We spent the first evening in the city on another canal cruise, sailing past the Hermitage, the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and a myriad number of interesting buildings, including where the first "beef" stroganoff was created.  It was the celebration of their White Knight and Red Sails holiday -- remembering the legend of the young girl who rebuked her lover because she had a dream that her husband-to-be would come down the Neva River on a ship with red sails. So, he left, made lots of money, and bought up all the red silk he could find, and put them on his boats.  Maneuvering his way down the Neva with his ships of red sails, she saw him, they were married, and lived happily ever after.  In our first trip we had seen a group celebrating this by asking each one of the people gathered to tell of their dream for White Knight and Red Sails holiday.

The Hermitage was on our list this time, and as we had not seen it in '87, we were eager to enter those gold and white rococo halls and climb up the staircase to the museum rooms.  Our English speaking guide was delighted to talk to us of the changes since the fall of the USSR, and we spent as much time discussing that as seeing the vast number of Russian holdings. What an exciting tour!

Our visit to St. Petersburg was so encouraging.  Even though there are major differences in our governments and philosophies, the Russians are recouping their pride in themselves, they are smiling, and it makes us feel good.

When we returned from Russia, we spent the day at the summer cottage with Marjuska and Tarja and her parents and brother and family.  We had visited the same summer cottage on our earlier trip, and had our first REAL sauna experience.  Almost all Finns have a sauna, in their apartments, in the multiple dwelling buildings, in their homes, and in their cottages.  People of grandparents age were born in the sauna (the cleanest place in town!) and when they died, the body was bathed in the sauna. You wonder why the skin is so beautiful on these women?  One word answer - SAUNA!  You sweat all the dirt out!

The sauna begins with building a fire in the stove. There is a pan of stones on top of the stove where one will throw water on and cause them to steam (Loyly).  Birch branches are used swat yourself or your partner so as to stimulate the circulation (and to get even for any disagreements you might have), ease sore muscles, relieve mosquito bites, and even, if you are lucky, it will dispense with depression.  One enters the sauna "buck naked" as we say in the South, and sits there for a while.  If you are lucky, you have some sausages boiling in water with you while you are there, and your beer is cooling in the lake.  It is a "sacred" place, and sex is not discussed, even though males and females (coworkers, friends and family) may go to sauna together.  This is a place above the carnal world.  It is an integral part of the Finnish character.  They understand it, they live it, and I would have a hard time adjusting to the "community" aspect of it.  Otherwise, I love the experience.

Anyway, you get out of the water, cool off in the lake and have your sausage and beer...then is when you know "life is good".

There are over 2 million saunas in Finland and only 5 million population. There are almost as many summer cottages as there are people.  These folks take relaxing to a new level.

Anyway, we had a great time with our entire Finnish family at the summer cottage, even though this time we did not go to sauna.  Tarja's brother, Hapi, laid out a five hole golf course on the shores of a beautiful Finnish blue lake. The holes were green paper cups set so as to be at ground level. The dogs kept digging them up, running away, then chewing them to pieces. But we persevered; we all tried to play a round of golf.  I gave up after 1) missing the ball, 2) hitting the tee while avoiding the ball, 3) hitting someone else's ball, 4) hitting a tree, and 5) hitting the ball backwards, all on the first hole, After that, I became the "documentarian" as the rest played.  The international championship was actually shared:  Marjuska won the first hole, and Vaughn won the second.  Third, Fourth and Fifth were rained out.

Wait 'til next year!

What a chatty post.  I need to shut up for a while. More (if you want more???) later.

bulletin, bulletin, bulletin....animal corrections

Well, I wasn't paying attention, I guess -- when Weihan pointed out the Kite -- which I thought was an owl...and the animal that I snapped as we pulled away from the lodge was not a kudu, but one that looks like it  -- the male Nyala.  Thanks to the owner of Shumbalala for that information.  One more good thing about this lodge -- they do know their critters!

We just returned from St. Petersburg -- will write more on that later, but as I awoke this am, my mind returned to the bush -- and I hoped the hippos, the elephants, and all the other animals were happily crunching their morning meal -- and that other folks were as lucky as we were to be able to share those visions...

What a trip!

The last of the bush and on to the Cape of Good Hope

 Note the birds eating the ticks on the giraffe.

 The kudu was just roaming around the lodge when we left.

 Our last sunrise over the Drakensburg Mountains.

 Leopard - close up.  The most elusive of the big five.

 Looking over the olive estate.

 Vaughn and I learn about olive oil "tasting".

 Entering the olive estate -- 46,000 trees.

 Yolanda at the home of one of their health care patients.

 The tablecloth over Table Mountain.

 The prison at Robben Island - where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of the 27 years.

 Mandela's cell.

 The best olives in Africa! Certainly best selling.

 Same last sunset. I just got as confused as I did the other day when I put two rhinos on the page...

 A resident of Robbens Island.

  A hyena in the grasses at the preserve.

 One of the darling children that Yolanda serves in Mitchell Plains.

 The back side of Cape of Good Hope.

 Twenty-nine years, and still loving it!  Our anniversary spent there...

The shacks that are in Mitchell Plains.

I had downloaded about 20 pictures -- and they went away -- so I got lazy and just quickly put these up because we leave at 5 am tomorrow for St. Petersburg, Russia.

Next blog will be on the upcoming trip...meantime, Tarjua and her daughter Marjuska are doing a great job of entertaining us.