Day 16. 55pages, 23,048 words.

I’m going to pre-write this little snippet for the weekend, just because the subject came up. Today we were supposed to be going to pay a visit to Jumbo to see if they have a washing machine for a better price than Gigantti’s web-store. Because oh yeah, our fifteen-year-old washing machine just died. But everything’s closed today, so it’ll have to be tomorrow.

As an amusing side-note, it went crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash and smelled strongly of burning plastic, but it still cost us €120 for a repairman to come and say “yeah, that’s broken”. On the plus side, he was helpful because his notes might help us get insurance money. Still, that’s a decent percentage of the cost of getting a whole new machine and having the old one carted away. And I just realised this blog post is about buying a washing machine and making insurance claims, and that’s far more grown-up than I’m ready to deal with right now, so I’m going to stop.

Time to show off my home village a little bit.

Nygårds restaurant; a couple of street names that I have no Earthly idea what they mean; Trollberga; This Way To The Giant Butterfly; kotitalo. Unfortunately I’m lying about the Giant Butterfly.

First, because I keep promising Aaron, here’s a street-sign by way of a teaser. I was amused, when I first came to Finland, by the “Trollberga” feature. I believe I even said “mmm … trollburger” more times than was strictly necessary. ‘Strictly necessary’, in this case, being once. Maximum.

Anyway, Trollberga is the closest thing we have to a tourist-trap of historical interest, and is in fact a tractor museum. I call the above a teaser, of course, because I haven’t actually walked up to take a proper picture of the place yet. That can wait until another slow weekend.

Left to right: house, farm sheds and greenhouse, sauna (currently out of use and work-in-progress).

I was walking Wump and Toop over to mommo’s house, which you can see here on the hillside. Lovely old farm building, and that morning was one of the coldest we’ve had so far this autumn. Anyway, that’s the place.

Scenic Sotunki.

Back in the other direction, you can see the rolling fields of Sotunki. Horses, the occasional deer, and frozen ditch-puddles all the way home. Which is why I had time to take pictures, because Wump had a lot of ice to stamp on.

Into the skogen.

Earlier on, a couple of weeks ago I think, Wump and Toop and I went for a little hike in the woods up behind our house. Here you can see that Toop has greatly improved in the field of staying upright, and this is a challenging course for her. You can also see, but may not fully appreciate, just how adorable her leopard-print bunny-hat is.

I assume it’s going to be vertical at some point.

Lest you think it’s all forests and fields and wilderness, however, please note that sometime in the near future, we’re going to have a … thingy. I don’t know what it is. A phone tower? A TV broadcasting wossname? An Illuminati signalling station? Well, whatever. They’re building it on the edge of the forest and it might actually mean our side of the hill gets TV reception or mobile network coverage. Which would be nice.

Anyway, that’s all I have for today.