Taina on the road, part 1.

First cute cats, Kiki & Lissu.

After cat-overload it's time to think what really happened during the week when I was away from home. Fireworks? Explosions? Something really awesome? Not exactly, but lots of great time with the best of people :)

Thursday morning at 7 o'clock. Nea & Moona were awake, I was not.

My visits to Kuopio always include a short trip to Siilinjärvi, because my brother and his family as well as my grandparents are living there. I really love my grandparents and it's interesting to talk with them, but they surely know nothing about vegetarian food. Last time I was offered salami pizza ("but isn't it vegetarian?") and this time pizza with minced meat, shrimps and tuna ("this is supposed to be vegetarian for sure!"). Nothing beats the local hamburger place (which serves vegetarian hamburgers) after the visit to my grandparents house ;)

Kiki was using her laser gaze to shoo off the intruders. So we decided it's better to leave Kuopio behind and head to Syvänniemi.

Syvänniemi is a big yellow old house. With lots of flying things like mosquitos, wasps and frisbees. There were some nice catches...

...and misses as well.

One morning we all (me, Juha & Arash) woke up quickly because there was a huge wasp in the room. We all ran downstairs (Juha first!), but after gathering enough courage Arash was brave enough to go back and annihilate the wasp.

Our juhannus consisted of smoke sauna, cooking food and pancakes, raising the flag, seeing the bonfire and while other were already sleeping, I was watching CSI. And I drove a car in the morning for the first time in 3 years!!

Arash concentrating on pancake making, it's a hard work!

At 18 o'clock it was time to raise the flag. My grandmother and Tuula took care of that :) When my grandfather was still alive, we used to sing "Siniristilippumme" (our blue cross flag) when we got the flag up in the pole, but now we skipped the song. In my opinion the song is way too patriotic and I don't want to die for the flag of our country as it says in the lyrics!

"WTF just happened here!"

We also had two dogs spending the time with us. Luppa is an old lady, who can't hear much, so she occasionally barks in a very loud voice. Onni is a small boy, who pees in a girl style. Both are friends of everyone :)

Being on the countryside is fun for a while, but it's hard to imagine living there all the time. When I was small, I used to go to the neighbours cowhouse to take care of the animals twice every day and those times were the highlights of my childhood! But there are no cows anymore, no cats, no dogs.

These days Syvänniemi means peace for me, endless board games, old Finnish songs on the radio, sleeping easily in the quiet room, TV programs meant for elderly, sauna every day and MOSQUITOS!!

We also played the best game ever in Syvänniemi, like we play every time we spend time there. It's called "Treffipalvelu" (Dating service) and the main goal in the game is to try to pair men and women. The higher their heart beat is together, the better points the dating services are going to get. This time the most challenging thing was not to get good pairs, but to help Arash with the Finnish words of the game! It must be nice to play something where you don't understand the words you're supposed to use... It was lots of fun anyway :D

Part 2, where Taina travels to Espoo, Helsinki and Tallinn, is coming later.