The walking and biking paths in Espoo and Helsinki. The swimming beach in Espoo. Salmon soup. Fazer. Long evenings with lingering light past 11pm.
There were a couple of things I did not enjoy. The hot weather. Windows that you could barely open - so no ventilation inside our top floor apartment that got baked in the sun all day long.
I am not sure how to feel about people being very direct in letting you know you were doing something wrong. I thought I missed that... But it sometimes made me feel defensive. Will write more about that later.
In the photo: kids picked black and red currants, gooseberries, cherries, and blueberries.
Dasha from momofchildren.com
ReplyDeleteFrench also seem to be direct and not as smiley as Americans. Nobody as smiley as Americans. Yeah, top floor would be hot, and European windows (and blinds!) are weird. I messed up doing the laundry the other day because I didn’t close the drum in a top down washing machine. Thank gawd I didn’t break it.
Ha, yes, nobody is as smiley - so true! We saw my old school friend when in Latvia, and she kept asking about my husband - does he always smile????
DeleteYeah, I don't know what it was about windows in Finland - they were all double-pane (which makes sense in winter) but you couldn't open them more than a crack. It's quite possible there is some secret to doing things just-so and swinging them completely open, but we couldn't figure it out. And I looked at all the other apartment windows - none were open wide, so I figured this is just something specific to the window design there.