Michael: This afternoon Pasi and Britta arrived at our place on their way home from visiting Pasi's parents in Suolahti (if you want to see some photos from there you can visit the September 2001 section of our badly neglected image gallery). When I got home from work we revisited what had been a great Thai restaurant a few weeks ago. We were disappointed that the service and food quality was significantly less impressive than our first visit. The mild dishes were hot and the hot dishes were mild. It might have had to do with the fact that the owners weren't there and the 'kids' in charge really weren't up to the task of running a restaurant. I think we will give it one more chance and see if they can redeem themselves.

After dinner we wandered around Tampere looking for an outdoor terrace to sit and relax in the sun. There are quite a few around but they are almost all completely full (even on a Wednesday evening). Once someone gets a table they don't go anywhere for the rest of the evening. Who can blame them? The weather at this time of the year is perfect for sitting around and enjoying some drinks while basking in the long sun drenched evenings. Eventually we found an unoccupied outdoor table at the Plevna restaurant/pub/brewery housed in the old Finlayson cotton mill.

Michael: We live in quite an unusual suburb. In 1775 King Gustav III of Sweden visited his friend Paymaster General, Baron Hans Henrik Boije at his mansion which stands, surrounded by beautiful parkland on the eastern shore of the Pyhäjärvi lake. It is now known as the Hatanpää mansion. Four years after his visit, King Gustav founded the city of Tampere. The mansion now houses the Museum of Dolls and Costumes.

Nowadays much of the eastern part of Hatanpää is primarily occupied by car dealers while apartment buildings in the west overlook the lake and parks.

In the 1970's the Hatanpää Arboretum was created on the grounds of the mansion.

Anyway we walked around the gardens smelling the roses and chasing the ducks while trying to forget about the daunting task of unpacking.

Michael: Today we moved to Tampere. What a day! Elina and I left for Tampere when the moving guys turned up to collect our 80 boxes of crap and other belongings. Elke stayed back to clean up the apartment and check that the moving guys did a good job. We picked up the keys to our new apartment when we opened the door we were greeted by a awful stench eminating from the drain in the bathroom. After dealing with that, the little one and I were starving so we went to our nearest restaurant, which happens to be part of the Finnish hamburger chain, Hesburger which is just across the road. It's not really that great but of course our fridge was empty and we were typically ill-prepared. The moving guys delivered our stuff and Elke turned up to witness the mess unfolding (I keep asking myself "why do we own so much stuff?". Mostly it's not even good stuff.)

After the guys left, we did some token unpacking before taking the bus into the center of Tampere (which is about 2.5km from our place) to check out the flower festival.

Michael: This morning Hannu picked us up and we drove about 50km to his house in Vihti, a small town of about 24,000 people to the north-west of Helsinki. For those who don't know Hannu, he works for Nokia and lived in Melbourne for about two and a half years back in the days when I was fresh out of uni. He is what you might call an ASIC guru. Anyway he lives in a really lovely log cabin in the gently sloping hills overlooking forest and farmland. There are no neighbours to be seen, at least in summer when the foliage on the deciduous trees is dense and secluding. He grows a great variety of vegetables and berries which we picked and incorporated in lunch and dinner. Hannu has a fully decked out garage and workshop where he works on his two American cars and his Honda Virago 1100 motorbike... very nice.