Patola

Helsinki is beautiful! This country is made up of close to 300 islands, 188,000 lakes and is 2/3rds forest. It's language is closest to Estonian and Hungarian, education (including university) is free and includes all books and 1 meal a day for students.

We spent the morning cruising around some of the islands, some of which are inhabited by around 800 peeps and have their own school, churches etc. The others have dedicated functions. For example, theres a massive Youth Organisation on one and in another, there is an entire island for the naval school The red building on the island is JUST the sauna for all of them!

Speaking of saunas, when Finnish people build their homes,they build their saunas first.
There are 3million suanas in Finalnd and 5.5 million inhabitants... so that means there's room for just about everyone to get into one 🤣

Climate change definitely a thing here. 10 years ago in winter the thickness of the ice was 30cm, today its down to around 5cm.
But it's still pristine and clean with 49 bird species, flying squirrels, foxes amd of course bears. Bears are their national animal and are still responsible for many car accidents. PS it takes 8 hours to boil bear meat apparently before it is edible! There are 300,000 reindeer and every year is September they kill 100,000 of them😪

We then drove through the town, taking in the sights, which included the famous Sebellious sculpture, the great music composer. Saw an automatic pizza truck that spits out pizza in 3 mins!

Stopped for Finnish bear at ARMADILLO restaurant. Chosing off a menu is uhm... problematic.... and includes Reindeer hotdogs! Oh and interesting car number plates 😄Read more