On day two Osmo and I were going to drive up to Kuopio on a mini road trip, to take photos, and to eventually stop at his Grans for the evening.
You see a lot of coniferous trees, beautiful wooden buildings and frozen lakes when driving through Finland, but the thing you see the most on your travels is the supermarket/service station ABC. The huge white thumbs up sign seemed to fly by every 5 or 6 minutes, constantly beckoning us to join it, and experience just how perfectly each and every branch seems to look the same. Whilst most arty, guardian reading Brits dont tend to hate tescos, or asda, saving their ire for McDonalds or Starbucks instead, on a previous trip to Finland I had realised Osmo really disliked ABC. At the time I had countered this by returning the ABC signs thumbs up, and so continued this much to the quiet chagrin of my Finnish pilot.
ABC!
Prior to my trip Osmo had told me that his Gran was very nice, but she doesn't trust english people". While this did perturb me slightly, I put this down as being better than if the words 'trust' and 'english' were replaced with 'like' and 'foreign'. I made sure that we stopped off at a florists before we got there, to buy some Tulips. Sebu said this would charm any senior Finn, and assuage her mistrust.
We met Osmos Gran, Kaija (I couldn't believe this lovely woman could possibly hold a deep dislike for the English) and she made us dinner. She'd bought Kalakukko which is basically a loaf of bread with perch wrapped in bacon baked inside. Whilst it sounds weird, its actually really nice, especially with butter. According to the BBC Kuopio is home to the best Kalakukko bakery. More on this later.
The following day was Minna Canth day, a celebration of the Kuopio born, top womens rights activist and author. The only reason I know this was because Osmo found much hilarity in talking at length with his Gran about Minna Canth, due to the unfortunate pronunciation of said feminists surname (its pronounced in the same way Danny Dyer might pronounce an extremely rude swear word beginning with 'C').
To me, Kuopio was a really nice, medium sized town, covered in snow, with the blocks of flats made more picturesque by the alpine trees growing amongst them. To Osmo, I think Kuopio is probably as boring as Swindon would be to me. Still, we went out in the evening and took some photos, some of which you can see in the series Cold World on my site.
We met Osmos Gran, Kaija (I couldn't believe this lovely woman could possibly hold a deep dislike for the English) and she made us dinner. She'd bought Kalakukko which is basically a loaf of bread with perch wrapped in bacon baked inside. Whilst it sounds weird, its actually really nice, especially with butter. According to the BBC Kuopio is home to the best Kalakukko bakery. More on this later.
The following day was Minna Canth day, a celebration of the Kuopio born, top womens rights activist and author. The only reason I know this was because Osmo found much hilarity in talking at length with his Gran about Minna Canth, due to the unfortunate pronunciation of said feminists surname (its pronounced in the same way Danny Dyer might pronounce an extremely rude swear word beginning with 'C').
To me, Kuopio was a really nice, medium sized town, covered in snow, with the blocks of flats made more picturesque by the alpine trees growing amongst them. To Osmo, I think Kuopio is probably as boring as Swindon would be to me. Still, we went out in the evening and took some photos, some of which you can see in the series Cold World on my site.
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