Preface
I will still try to write this blog in english, even though I will probably make even more mistakes than writing it in German and it will be less accessible to my family. But dear family we can talk on the phone anytime (and it seams like we do quite often now) and I have to train my english writing skills. So here it goes…
The Journey
What you would normaly do when you come to Oulu would be to book a flight. We decided otherwise and opted for driving to Finland with our car. Now what you would normaly do when you travel to Finland with your car is to book the closest ferry. We decided otherwise and drove as much as we could.
We had the great opportuinity to meet some good friends along the way and therefore could rest our right foot in Hamburg, Aalborg and Gothenburg (So the route looked something like this. Which not only made the journey much more beareable, it made it even pleasent and even more interesting.
Some things from along the way.
Germany
Never drive on the A7 to Hamburg. There will be a trafficjam. Everytime.
That‘s it.
Denmark
Well as boring as Denmark is to drive thorugh the more interesting things we learned and visited during our one night stay there. First of all I learned a new cooking technique which was so interesting I have to share it. It basically goes like this, you take a peace of meat, with salt and spices, and put it in a preaheated oven (250°C) for 10 Minutes. Then you take it out for 10 Minutes. Then you put it back in again. You repeat that 3-4 times and then cover it and let it rest for 30min-45min. Never had so jucy meat.
The other amazing thing we visited was, the (at that time) biggest solar thermal energy storage and central heating power plant in Denmark (because we were dining with the chef engineer). In short, what they do is, to heat up water during the summer. Store it in a really big (62.000 tons of water) and well isolated underground tank and use the heat in the winter. At first you would think that this is a stupid idea because it gets really cold during the winter in Denmark but not that sunny and warm in the summer.
The point is though that the technology is cheap, easy to service and while they still need conventional gas heating in the winter, they need 50% (!) less.
Sweden
In Sweden I was not only made aware of the existence of Smörgåstårta which is an amazing salmon and shrimp sandwich-cake. I also developed a theory why Volvo and Saab build so secure cars.
They drive a little bit crazy up here.
Also they seem to be very unfriendly on the road but that might have been bad luck on my side. The drive from Gotheburg to Stockholm was our second biggest drive, and while we were warned that the roads in Sweden would be all kinds of things, like boring, dangerous or not real motorways, it was a pleasant drive – apart from some crazy driving Swedes along the way.
Ferry Stockholm to Turku
This gets an extra heading, because it was great. The price was really cheap, we payed less then 70€ for us, a inside cabin and the car. The ferry was well in shape, very clean and with nice bars and restaurants. They had some amazing beers and even live piano music. We got on board at around 19:00 and left at around 8:00 the next morning ready for the last and biggest drive.
The thing you would not belive until you have seen it is the size of the duty free shop they had on that ferry. I swear I have never seen a shop on land with so many good whiskeys and rums. They even sold frozen meat, which explained the coolers everyone was carring.
Finland
After you leave the ferry you usally drive up to some kind of border control where they look at you passport for 5 seconds or just wave you through. Not so in Finland.
We were greeted from a poliisi officer with some finish words and "Drugcontrol, Drogenkontrolle" and a device was brought in front of my face in which I had to blow for 20s. We were than let go with a cold "zero point zero – have a nice day".
Due to my mentioned internet diet I had a lot of time between fishing, cooking and making fire for cooking (and sauna of course) to finally read some books again. While two of them where more or less nonfiction books, but nevertheless very entertaining, and the third one was a new part of the latest Star Wars series, hence very nerdy, the fourth one was kind of in between and really hit me hard.
It‘s titled Black Out by Marc Elsberg and currently only available in German, as it seams. As one might guess it deals with the scenario of a black out. Well not the typical one for some minutes or hours – because then the book would probably not be as good or better as disturbing as it is. Rather it confronts you with a European wide loss of electricity over the period of about two weeks. And I bet you have no idea what this really means, like I did not before I read this book.
Sure, we all know that our society is addicted to the magical source of power build in our walls. We hear it and we talk about it day in and day out. But at least I never thought about what exactly would not work or better what would still work – not much as it turns out.
No water, no working toilets, no gas, no internet, no telephone, no banks, no heating … for days.
The beauty of the books is that it more or less takes a dry report from the German government (it is actually based on that one) and transforms it into a vivid image of a catastrophe. The scary part is, that not only it describes the expanding catastrophe along the path of several main characters but it interlaces a lot of events that happened lately, like the long running "cyber attacks" (Flame and Gauss) or the nuclear GAU in fukushima together with technical details. I think its also worth noting that the central character is a haker (who uses windows but that is the only flaw I found in that regard).
Well, might be a good book – but disturbing?
I do not want to spoil too much of the story. But believe it or not I seriously think about a food reserve for emergencies. I already printed out the list of what is recommended by the German government. And I did start to read the news a bit more carefully about attacks on the power system.
So running for the hills everybody.
But take this book with you – it‘s a good one.
For the last two weeks the whole family, including the two dogs of my parents, payed a visit to Finland. We rented two mökkies, the traditional finish cottages – which of course both had a sauna (actually one of them had two saunas) and of course both had the sea directly in front of them. And as cheesy as it looks, this was the view in front of the mökki where @caschasan and I lived:
Of course when you visit a place that is surrounded by forest and sea with the aim to live a little bit closer to nature than usual you have no internet connection. At least our cottages had no internet access, well not even a water-connection (which is very typical, you have a sea and a well nearby). Even though in Finland you have the legal right for a fast internet connection and there is almost no spot without wireless connectivity I decided to do a little internet diet for two weeks. Because it was a spontaneous idea I had no strict rules about what to consume or to avoid. But basically I only read my private email accounts and checked the weather for the next few days when we had access to the WiFi of our lessor. And I only open emails that looked somehow important - so almost none.
What did I miss
For the first days I really missed my RSS reader and reading "the news" at least every morning. But the feeling of having to be informed about what happened in the rest of the world faded away very soon while grazing trough the wood, cooking of the fire, discovering some of the uncountable small islands and of course sweating in the sauna. Really surprising to me was that I totally forgot about podcasts, even about those I await eagerly every week like Hypercritical. The thing I missed on regular basis over the whole holiday was twitter. I am not completely sure why that is, but probably because it‘s ability to connect to friends and to share some happy moments. What also bugged me a bit was that I maybe missed some very good stories on HN. All in all it was an interesting experience to find out what services I missed.
Never the less I really enjoyed the night in Helsinki with a lot of open WiFi‘s to download podcasts for ride home and skipping over all the left over RSS items. And by the way my dad drove to the open WiFi of our lesser EVERY DAY to download his newspaper to his iPad – so which generation is addicted here?
At the end some more pictures:
Yes you really have to have some German beer with you if you visit Finland. (Karhu is drinkable though).
Some mushroom from our "backyard".