Visiting Finland and Sweden

Nordic countries are beautiful, at least the two that I had the chance to visit in October. However, I highly suggest visiting in the Summer when it's warm. October? Not so warm. In any case I flew into Helsinki to visit some friends with no real idea what Finland was, aside from it being a large Northern European country. To be honest, I didn't visit Sweden much, just Stockholm, but similar to many of the cities I visited in Finland, its astonishingly clean (at least compared to Paris)!

I think if I had to sum up Finland in  a series of words, it would be: sauna, Moomin, cinnamon buns, sausage, flatbread, vikings, and Fiskars (yes, where the scissors come from!) After getting off a trans-Atlantic flight, I wasn't too keen on any more transport, but several bus, car, metro and boat rides later I had been to Turku, Fiskars, Naantali, Tammisaari, Karjaa (the train station) and Stockholm. I think the night cruise from Turku to Stockholm would be a whole lot prettier if we could have seen the archipelagos in the daytime.

Though Finland is the eighth largest country in Europe when it comes to land mass, it is the most sparsely populated in the EU. That makes for wonderfully blue skies. Finland holds one of the highest levels of health care, standards of living, and social security in the world, and it's always a constant battle between who is happier, the Swedish or the Finish. If it weren't so god awful cold in the winter, I might think of moving there.  I guess the one thing about it being cold, is that you can always bundle up and have some warm tea, or build a fire and barbecue some sausage.

I think the second weekend in October was the perfect weekend to visit; all the leaves were changing colors and the weather, albeit cold, was not miserable and snowy yet. Though it did snow for one day while I was there!

And what about the eats you ask? In Finland, a lot of the food has heavy Eastern European influence.. aka Hungary and Russia. Meats include seafood, deer, other wild game, and even bear (if you're lucky). Milk is very important in the Finnish diet, and most people take it with their meal. One dish I primarily enjoyed were their Karelian pastries, which consist of a thin rye crust filled with rice and accompanied by egg butter (egg yolk mixed with butter). My last meal in Finland consisted of boar, pheasant, and a starter dish with deer and onion pie.

It was definitely a fun trip and I'm looking forward to my next visit. Until then, cheers!