wanderlust

Ski Jumping Championships

After a bit of internal debate I (Troy) decided to call in sick for my last 2 shifts cleaning.  Sure I lost 2 shifts worth of pay - but the Finnish Ski Jumping Championships were happening around the corner about 1km from our apartment!

For months we've been looking at the ski jump wondering if any crazy bastards actually use it.  It's pretty massive - photos and the videos just can't capture the size.  I would say it's at least the size of a 20 storey building from the top of the ski jump to the bottom of the pit.

So we went - we watched - and we got cold!  We're still not used to this snow and ice thing. There were gaps in the crowd on the viewing slopes - hmmmm we discovered that it was because you couldn't stand on snow/ice on steep sections (almost did some ski jumping ourselves).

Here are some photos and videos from the event:

And to give you an idea of size - here is a picture with a magnified section of the top. Keep in mind that the building on the right side of the picture is about 9 storeys high as well:

The journey home

Hi everyone.  This is a short and practical blog entry just letting everyone know our travel dates for our return home to Brisbane. Our itinerary is:

Leave Jyväskylä: Fri 15/Feb

LEAVE HELSINKI & FINLAND: Tues 19/Feb

Berlin: Tues 19/Feb - Fri 22/Feb

Dubai: Fri 22/Feb - Sat 1/Mar

Frankfurt/Wiesbaden: Sat 1/Mar - Wed 5/Mar

Karlsruhe: Wed 5/Mar - Fri 7/Mar

Konstanz: Fri 7/Mar - Thurs 13/Mar

Switzerland/Vals: Thurs 13/Mar - Sat 15/Mar

LEAVE EUROPE FROM ZURICH: Sun 16/Mar

ARRIVE BRISBANE: Tue 18/Mar

How to skate...

After a beautiful day skating under a blue sky on the ice we have mastered the art of skating.

In this blog post Mij demonstrates correct skating technique - pay attention to his graceful and fluid strides.  We think we'll be ready for some competition skating in the next few days:

But really - we managed to stay upright (most of the time). And we ended up skating for 3 1/2 hours and several kilometres.  Here's the real footage:

How to make a snowman, woman, person or thing

While we were in Oulu it finally snowed.  Not much, but enough to make some snow creatures.  We had to use most of the snow from the garden - but we did it.

Here's a video demonstrating the fundamental technique of snowball rolling.  As you'll see the snow sticks to the snow ball which gets bigger and bigger - until you have some building blocks for some impressive snow creations...

And the results:

   

  

First major snow!

We had a very light dusting of snow a few weeks ago - but this is the first substantial snow.  Yayyy - just in time for us to go to our delivery job this morning and walk around outside!

Unfortunately it will probably disappear within the next day - the ground and air temperatures are still too warm BUT it's a sign of what's to come.

Sauna, Snow and 24 hrs of darkness baby!

So six months on, you may be detecting a theme, Summer is over and Winter is waiting around the corner like an angry old nanna with an icy walking stick ready to whack us into a frozen wonderland, much like Narnia, pre-Pevensies... if you catch my drift... keep back Ice Queen, we have a few weeks left of sun... surely.

Anyway here's some great Finnish exports to keep you warm during the long  months of November and December... when you're feeling depressed about all that sunshine and +35 degree weather, you can visit this page and think about us living it up in the North Pole... eating Turkish Delight... with Angry Santa...

Rare Exports:

Helsinki Complaints Choir:

 

 

 

yikes:

It just keeps getting better...

Where the bloody hell are we?

A few of you have asked exactly where are we?  Well we're in Central Finland about 300km north of the capital - Helsinki.  If you look on this map we're sort of horizontally in the middle - about a quarter of the way up to the north pole.  Click on the map for a larger version

The city is called Jyväskylä - pronounced Yoo-vas-koo-lah.  Jyväskylä is a small city of 85,000 people with a greater district population of 165,000.  The city is a significant university city and a big chunk of the population are uni students.  Just recently (August) the whole tone of the city changed as students began flooding back after the summer holidays.  All of a sudden public areas are busy and the average age of people in the street seems much younger.

The city is in the middle of forest and the lakeland district and there are lakes EVERYWHERE.  They were all gouged out by glaciers during the last iceage.  Climate wise - it's quite cold but much warmer than would normally be expected this close to the arctic (kept warm by streaming ocean currents).  The coldest recorded temperature in Jyväskylä is -38.5 degrees celsius and the warmest is 33,3 - wow that's a range of 71,8 degrees difference...

Anyhoo - check out the map and drop us a line...

or have a look on the city webcams... Jyväskylä Web Cam

Sauna, Salmiakki and Sunshine... 24 hours a day baby!

Well, it’s been a long time coming but we have finally decided that we have enough time in our frantic holiday schedule to post a few details about life in Finland and share some of our adventures, antics and candid shots… So strap on your Reindeer boots and grab hold.

Check out our personal blogs on the menu bar to your left, or visit some of our Pals through their blogs also listed below. We've also updated the gallery... oooh exciting...

The Whirlwind Tour of Europe

Once upon a time in a land far far away…

Two boys embarked on an arctic adventure…