Summer Cottage by the lake

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Day two
Friday 22st July, 2011
near Jyvaskyla (pronounced – Youh-Vas-kou lah)

The light here has seriously messed with my head.

I fell into an exhausted coma local time 9pm last night. It was still daylight. My body clock at that stage said 4.30am – nearly 48 hours on about 3 hours of sleep.
I woke sometime later, feeling refreshed, looked out of the window and thought that dawn is breaking, I’ve had a good night’s sleep. Looked at the clock- 12.30AM.
Went back to sleep, woke up. It was lighter, so I thought must be morning. No, 4.00am. Well, being awake, I thought that I’d do a bit of writing, I wondered about the yard and took about 100 photos of the lake in the early morning light with the mist gently rising off the mirror still surface. The lake is about 50 meters wide at the entry point with reeds lining the opposite shore and pine and birch trees behind them. I went for a swim for about an hour in the refreshingly cool water and saw a squirrel clamber up a pine tree for a pinecone, and scamper down again.
The light here is so different. All day long I feel that we are in late afternoon, about 4pm. Even at 9 in the morning. The light is softer, warmer. The sun is lower in the sky, and shines from the south, which is also seriously messing with my sense of direction. There’s also no sunrise. The sky is still light at midnight – the kind of light we get just after the sun has dropped below the horizon. In Townsville that lasts for about 20 minutes, here it lasts all night long. That’s probably why they call Finland the land of the midnight sun. DUH!.
We went strawberry picking yesterday morning. Gathered a 10 litre bucket of strawberries from a farm which allows people to pick their own. We were also able to gather our own new potatoes, and I was able to get my hands into the dirt. It was a very warm day, about 30 degrees, and after the hard work we jumped into the lake to cool down and refresh.
Later we drove into Jyvaskyla and went to the town market, brought fresh vegetables and had a finnish meat pie and coffee for lunch. Puffed pastry folded over a thin meat filling – imagine a meat filled Danish type thing. Delicious. The market was a series of temporary stalls, set up In the town square. Lots of fresh produce; huge amounts of strawberries, freash peas, blueberries, raspberries, carrot,s new potatoes…and some other stuff. Food vendors were plentiful, and townspeople were sitting in the sunshine, talking, eating and enjoying the day.
A large group of men, all senior citizens, were sitting around a table, pontificating loudly on the state of society. That doesn’t seem to change anywhere in the world.

In the afternoon, more family arrived, two cousins, Mia and Anu, and my uncle Pekka (Peter). Mia has a beautiful 10 month old son, Aaron, just starting to walk and all smiles.
WOW. I have cousins…

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Photos

The sauna cottage
this is where i get to sleep