stockholm – Nokisuu

Quick one

31.10.202231.10.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

This is just a quick post because I realized that October is ending and I haven’t written anything since mid-September.

I have been busy at work but as the school’s here have a so-called Fall leave in mid-October and my workplace is a school so I took the week off.

As DH didn’t have leave I went to summer cottage with eldest and youngest son. We managed to get the cottage warm even thou I forgot to take newspapers with us. We had nice time, went to sauna on both nights and managed to do the couple of things we were meant to; turn the row boat upside down and put locks on the barn doors.

Me and DH need to drive there once more since I forgot to close the fireplace dampers… Don’t ask how.

Then I took youngest son to Stockholm by ferry and it was nice. We had good food, ate breakfast at Mr Cake and visited our fave shop Scifi bokhandeln in the Old city. We also visited the Stockholm City public library’s main building which is very pretty.

About Mr Cake, if you’re familiar with the name Josef Fares or Fares Fares, Swedish actor and director brothers, Mr Cake’s owner Roy Fares is their cousin. I must say the Fares’ brothers movies are quite funny and I think Fares Fares was in the Westworld too.

Now we’ve turned the clocks towards wintertime and darkness approaches in other ways too.

I wonder what will happen with Twitter so I made myself an account on mastodon.social. You’ll find me there by this alias too, as I’m everywhere with it.

Here’s a pic from last night. My friend and I did a short roadtrip to seaside and Tammisaari and enjoyed the views.

Daytrippin’ yeah. Again.

15.4.202215.4.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

I feel like I mainly post about my day trips and I don’t even do them so much. So funny!

Last Saturday we (me, DH and youngest one) drove to Jyväskylä to inspect middlest one’s new flat which was very nice. It had many cupboards and the rooms were spacious and the balcony was lovely. While the men assembled some Ikea furniture I unpacked the kitchen things and uploaded the dish washer with the new dishes. We made a list what middlest one should still buy, i.e. dish washer tablets and so on and then we had dinner in the city centre. I called my cousin and we decided to go to her place for coffee and bring something to go with it.

My cousin’s little boy (5) got a bit scared when we showed up as they have been low contact with people since he’s a ’heart child’ with HLHS. Luckily he got over his scare in a short while and later played card game with youngest one while we chatted with my cousin. It was nice to see them too 🙂 Afterwards we drove middlest son to pick up his car from the garrison and left for home via the local chocolate factory shop.

This is the lake from the summer cottage city centre.

At work the week (three days) was hectic as we have a strike looming ahead. It was supposed to begin on the Tuesday after Easter but it was postponed two weeks. I’ve never been on a strike, they’ve always been cancelled for different reasons so I find this very interesting. I’ve promised to go to my old work place as a picketer for a day with our head shop steward.

On top of these strike news I got news that I was selected with my colleague and our Media teacher for a Erasmus+ for a week in Limerick in May. I’m flabbergasted to say the least, I never expected to get chosen but my lovely boss said I should apply and I did and here we are! I’m so excited!

DH had one of his summer holidays still left and as they are lost if not used at the end of April we took a one-day cruise trip to Stockholm. I got a day off and youngest one too and on Wednesday evening we went to the ship, ate well and did some shopping and in the morning we woke up in Sweden. After breakfast we walked to the Viking museum in Djurgården which was very interesting. Afterwards we took a ferry to the Gamla stan where I did some book shopping and then we had coffee and cake (”fika”) and then we slogged back to the cruise ship. The weather was smutty, drizzling but okay. Back at the ship we had dinner and this morning we were back home.

Both eldest and middlest son were home so we had dinner together and I baked a Key Lime pie which was very good.

I’m trying to find us a summer cottage where we could be as we want to. I don’t get along with my SIL and it’s getting harder summer by summer to stay civil, not that we ever see but my brother is the in-between-man and I don’t think it’s fair, besides the boys are getting frustrated too as they’d like to go to cottage more than they now can. I found one place which would be in my price range and contacted the seller about going to visit the place next week but he hasn’t answered yet. It’s a three-hour-drive but it looks promising. I’ll be going there with eldest one to inspect.

A summer cottage right outside Helsinki, behind one of the most famous Helsinki summer restaurants called Klippan

Small island Lonna and behind it Suomenlinna (Sveaborg), the church tower is light house too

Nice Easter flower arrangements outside Nordiska Museet

I don’t seem to get pics to gallery mode anymore and now I’m too tired to look into it. Maybe it’s all right as it is. Here’s a song for you, I really like Ben Folds but then I kind of forgot him for a while.

Fall holiday’s over

23.10.202123.10.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

I’ve been on holiday this week. As I work in the City Education organization we’ve got the same holiday schedule as schools and so I took the whole week off and it’s been nice. I haven’t done much but that’s all right too.

Last weekend me, hubby and youngest one took a long awaited cruise to Stockholm. We have these huge ferries that sail (run?) from Helsinki to Stockholm and back during the night and then you’ve got a day in the city there, for us Finns it’s Stockholm and for Swedes it’s Helsinki. They are called shopping cruises bc the ferry has a huge tax free shop and people buy a lot of alcohol from the ship. We buy a lot of candy and some cosmetics. I linked our ship Silja Serenade there, it’s been about ten years since we last took a Silja Line ship bc we’ve been using Viking Line since hubby did some work for them and got rewards.

In Stockholm we visited the Abba The Museum in Djurgården, it’s such an awesome place for one who has grown with their music. After the museum we took a ferry to Gamla Stan (Old City) which has one of the best scifi bookshops in Europe and it’s on our ’visit every time’-list. I bought only three books this time and one dvd. Oh and a wall calendar for next year. Then we walked to the newer city centre, the main shopping street has a nice candy store where you can buy traditional Swedish polkagrisar (= peppermint candy).

Since I had already told hubby I wanted to have a coffee (fika) at Mr. Cake cafeteria we went there and luckily managed to enter at a time the queue wasn’t very long (a short while afterwards the queue went out of the door to the small square). From the cafeteria we walked back to the ferry and were there in good time, about an hour before the departing time, which was nice.

Hubby had Monday off work which was nice. After we had come home and let the cat out we unpacked our bags. Middlest son had left on Sunday to Tikkakoski for a flying thingy and came home on Tuesday. On Tuesday I did a short walk in the forest as we had walked about 15 km during the day in Stockholm and my legs were a bit stiff. On Wednesday it rained all day and I read all day, I finished ’The Shadow of what was lost’ by James Islington and felt sorry I had even started the book. I can’t recommend it to anybody. Oh and I did bake cinnamon buns, they were good.

On Thursday my friend Mareetta and I drove to Tammisaari again. On our way there we did an expedition to a funny little shop called ’The Greenhouse effect’ which has all kinds of awesome stuff to buy and then we drove to Fiskars village. We had a very nice lunch in Tammisaari and then drove back via Fagervik (it dates back to the 17th century) and Kirkkonummi new library, only we didn’t go in this time. It looks like I’m going with Mareetta to Gothenburg in mid-November, it’ll be nice.

On Friday we had horrible weather, rain and very windy. I had my osteopathy therapy session in the city centre and then I met youngest son in the Eastern shopping mall, he needed new clothes and he wanted to buy new cell phone with his gift money from the confirmation day. In the evening we watched couple of episodes of Buffy with him.

Tomorrow I’m putting some bulbs on the ground so we’ll have tulips and crocuses next spring too.

Visiting Stockholm

26.10.201926.10.2019 julkaissut Nokisuu

By request I’m updating about our trip to Stockholm. Stockholm is a nice city, Sweden’s capitol. Stockholm and Helsinki have nice ferry cruises between them and on the cruise you can buy tax free shopping so it’s very popular in both countries I think. Finns buy cheap alcohol and Swedes the other things. The ship leaves on the evening, arrives to destination in the morning and leaves again in the evening so one has about 6 hours to visit the capitol cities at each end.

We usually make the cruise every spring and fall and use the VikingLine since hubby does some IT-things for them in the company he’s working. In Stockholm VikingLine is located a walking distance from the city centre and the shopping streets which is nice. The Stockholm Fotografiska is also on the route from the dock to city if it interests you. If you are a walking-kind of person the SiljaLine is also on easy walking distance but the underground trains are also easy from their dock.

This time we took a small ferry from Viking’s dock to Djurgården since it’s easier to travel between the small islands and walking to Djurgården takes almost an hour. Djurgården has many places to visit, i.e. the ABBA museum, Gröna Lund’s amusement park, Junibacken for everything Astrid Lindgren, Skansen’s outdoor museum and other things (i.e. Christmas market), Nordiska Museum and the Vasa Museum which we wanted to visit this time.

The Vasa museum consists of the ship Vasa which sank on it’s maiden voyage about 500 metres after leaving the dock. It was found in the late 60’s and now it’s been under conservation about 50 years. I’ve visited the Vasa first time in 1982 when it was still sort of outdoors experience, there was only a light shelter around it.

This time we spent few hours in the museum and then walked to the Old town which dates back to 13th century. I just adore it but it’s choked up with tourists (I don’t blame them). It has many nice little shops and cafeterias and it also hosts my favorite shop in Stockholm: The Sci-fi Bookshop. It’s a must for me since I can find books, films and tv-series there which are not available in Helsinki. There’s also lots of role playing games and things for them and anime and so on.

Finland and Sweden share a common history since Finland used to the Sweden’s dependency until Sweden gave it to Russia and that is probably why Finns feel a sort of envious towards Swedes. Sweden has also managed to avoid wars the last two hundred years unlike Finland.

Last December I spent some nights in Stockholm with my friend Mareetta. We were going to see BoyGeorge perform since Mareetta is a huge fan of his but the concert was cancelled. Mareetta got us invited to the shadow-Nobel literature price evening as she is a great fan of Alexandra Pascalidou, a Swedish columnist, television hostess and author, and we’ve been to watch a theater programme by her in Gothenburg.

Mareetta introduced me to a wonderful cafe called Mr. Cake in Stockholm and now also in Gothenburg. If you want to enjoy really great cakes and light lunch go there! We had cake overdose with Mareetta one night when we bought cakes to go so be careful. The ’Mr. Cakes’ themselves are Roy Fares who has made several cake books and is a cousin to film director Fares Fares and Mattias Ljungberg, several times awarded confectioner.

One other nice cafe is located in the Old town and it’s called Sten Sture, who was a real nobleman in the 15th century and the Lord Regent. The cafe is next to the Nobel Museum and it’s in the basement floor of the house. It used to be a prison in the 18th century. Unfortunately this time we couldn’t visit it since they were under construction, maybe next time will be better.