Are you ready for some more?
Never boring when I'm around, you should know that by now, right?
Here we go - again!
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PART II
Not so relaxing trip to summer cabin
These following events took place in Lapland, i.e. northern part of Finland, quite a long time ago. One of our family's summer cabins is in this small island in the middle of the lake. I used to manage a night club at that time so I always worked until 5 am. And since the sun doesn't go down in Lapland on summer time, we often drove to our summer cabin (2,5 hrs drive) after work (this was in August so the sun set only for a short moment before I got home from work).
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| This beautiful little river you pass by on your way to the shore.. |
It was about 7-8 am when we started to approach the area where the cabin is located..
It's not an easy road. At first you need to take the highway, for about 150 km then small country side roads for about 20 km and then the last 10 km to the beach it's barely a road, almost more likely a beaten path. You can only drive like 10 km/h so that you don't break your car.
Finally we made it to shore, where we had our little boat waiting for us. By the time we had packed everything to our boat I asked "where is that black bag of mine, with all the clothes?" What bag? The black one!!
Oops! I guess that is still in my living room as I didn't take it to the car, neither did my other half
Right. This means I'd be spending the next 3 days in this small log cabin without any other clothes than those I had on me... (let it be known that there is no electricity there, it really is basic fisherman's cabin that was built about 60 years ago but that is what's so fabulous about it, true primitive nature and living!)
Ok, I guess I'll survive...
Lesson learnt, drive that only route you know, where there aren't any rocks etc.
(In order for you to understand this story completely, you need to understand that since no electricity, no charging mobile phones, not that there was any connections either...)
On the following day it was time to go home. We were really tired and slept late and all of a sudden I hear, "It's one o'clock." from the radio (In Finnish that is "Kello on yksi.")
We had radio on basically all the time when inside the cabin and fell asleep it still on..
What?! 1 pm?
We needed to get up, start quickly washing dishes, cleaning up the cabin etc. as I was supposed to be at work at 6 pm and we had to drive home etc..
We didn't have time to heat up any water so I tried to wash the dishes in a cold lake water with not much success, only result was irritation. My partner in crime, so to speak, went to start the chain saw to cut more fire wood as it was unwritten rule that there needs to be dry wood in the cabin when you leave it. Well, with our luck, of course there was no gasoline left in the chain saw!
Lesson learnt: make sure you have enough gasoline with you!
It was a very stormy, windy day and further we got with cleaning up everything and packing up the things we had with us, the worse the weather got. Finally, we had done everything and sat down for "take of coffee/tea" as we called it. It's actually quite calming to have a cup of tea and listen to the radio when there's a storm outside.
Then we hear: It's 11(am) o'clock (in Finnish: Kello on yksitoista.)
Pardon? It was 1 o'clock (i.e. 1 pm) already ages ago?
---In Finnish---
1 o'clock = kello on yksi
11 o'clock = kello on yksitoista
9 o'clock = kello on yhdeksän
So, they all sound quite similar when pronounced quickly and if you don't hear it properly.
I had heard it all wrong! All that hassle for nothing. We got up hours too early. Right.
Since the weather was so bad we decided to leave anyway.
Easier said than done.
Namely, the island is surrounded by rocks and one needs to row for the first say 10 meters off shore in order to be able to start the engine without actually breaking it to rocks. Unfortunately, the stormy wind was so hard that no matter how much we kept rowing, we basically went backwards!
At this point I was getting desperate, is this a nightmare? I must be dreaming, all this can't be happening... so we actually had to slowly move (drag) the boat to the other side of the island (with my dear late dog, Ricky, shaking in it, as even it, poor thing, was scared due to the weather). Finally, we got to take off.
But now it's not just heavy winds, it starts pouring, we were soaking wet within minutes and we had about 15-20 min boat ride ahead of us in a lake with some major waves...
I was shaking it was so cold, luckily at least I had my dear dog to lean on, he kept me warm a little.
I was actually so soaking wet that even my undies were red because I had a red jacket on! And as you remember, I had no clothes to get changed... and we had that 2,5 hrs drive back home.
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| View from the summer cabin's window, on a beautiful day, may I add! My absolute favorite place for relaxing. |
What a trip, right? At least it's over, right?
Not quite.
For you who don't know what reindeers are like: they go in packs and walk (or run) around where ever they want to. If they see a car, you can't predict what that animal does next, is it going to run around like a headless chicken or is it going to jump on top of the car.
Sometimes they just speed up in front of the car, stay on your lane, don't even understand to jump into the woods, they just block the road and poor driver is forced to drive slowly as long as this beautiful (but, sorry, little stupid) animal gets it, the car can actually hit it! Even hunk doesn't do the trick!
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| Hurdle of reindeers just walking around in Saariselkä, in a hotel's parking lot. Tthey just don't give a damn about anything or anyone. You got to respect that. |
I still love that little summer cabin so much and have had amazing time there even after that trip but that one I'll never forget, not because it was so great but because it was so eventful!
My dear, late grandfather really was smart to leave that for us to use, but boy did he know how eventful trips to that place can be!
More bad news, oh, no, sorry I meant... weather
Somehow, some years ago I was well known for my bad luck with weather.
My friends and family started to even joke around at some point not to go with me anywhere as it was pretty sure that some kind of natural disaster will happen.
Mallorca
Once in Mallorca, I and tens of others were relaxing and sunbathing by the pool when all of a sudden the staff came out yelling at us something in Spanish, we didn't quite get them but understood that we have to get inside immediately. Only 5 minutes later this typhoon hit the area. Sun lounges, tables, chairs... they all flew in the air as if they weigh nothing - and boom, over the fence they went, to the ocean... the entire pool area looked as if a missile had hit it, all gone. It took about 15-20 minutes to destroy pretty much everything! I don't even want to think what had happened if we were still there. Good thing we got warned!
Once in Dominican Republic..
It was my second visit there and I, specifically, wanted to go there since it was so beautiful and the weather was perfect.
The island is beautiful, no denying.
But the weather, well... not so much this time.
On our second day we went for a walk and it was drizzling, which I found a bit annoying as it was, after all, only our 2nd day and, obviously, I preferred sunny weather, coming from Finland (wherein it was winter and way below zero, like around -15 C).
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| Pool area, drops coming down already, that's why it's totally empty... |
We walked around and my frustration started to increase as I really missed the sun so I exclaimed:
Ok, that's it, since it has to rain, why not just let it all out! B-R-I-N-G IT ON!
Big mistake! On that same second the heavy rain started - and I don't think I've never been that wet within seconds! It was literally as if someone just dropped 10 buckets of water on me within seconds. You couldn't even see a thing in front of you.
Out of 9 days of our vacay, 6 of them was raining cats and dogs. I should have kept my mouth shot. (Which is NOT an easy task for me, I'm way too talkative and opinionated for that!)
Well, once again, lesson learnt - do not wish for more rain!
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| What a beautiful day our last day there was... |
We didn't have a GPS, only a map but the route was quite forward, we had 2 choice; the scenic ocean road or the highway, of course we chose the road by the ocean.
Mistake No. 1. It was a grey, rainy day, no proper views.
We passed one crossroads where there was a tunnel, and we saw a car there, floating! The tunnel was half full of water. We kept driving as our route didn't go that way.
Mistake No. 2. When you see places flooding, turn around!
We saw streams of water coming down from the mountains, and these streams turned into small rivers that went across the road we were on. We drove through the first one. Then the second one. It kept raining.
Once we saw a third one we realized that Mistake No. 3 was to go through even after we saw these streams turning into rivers. The third one was so wide that it has bits and pieces of buildings floating towards the ocean (and the actual road started to disappear), all that junk was probably from villages on the mountains.
At that point we realized that if the current was so strong that it moved pieces of small buildings, it would probably twitch our car along with it, straight to the ocean.
We started to freak out a little... (well, a lot) and quickly turned the car around.
By the time we got back to the second stream, it was almost as big as the other, we almost got trapped there - I don't even want to think about it as we had children on the back seat, so we pretend to keep calm but we were scared, I admit.
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| Sunset the day before the pouring rain, you can see those dark clouds approaching... |
On the following day, when the sun was out again, we had a chat with the diving instructor who told us there was no point in going snorkeling or diving because of the weather was so bad the day before.
Then I confessed that I was quite known for bringing bad weather with me. I told him about my trip to Mallorca and he says; No way! It was you? He was joking I guess, but then he told us that his friend lost his sail ship on that typhoon and that's why he remembers it so well.
For a moment I felt guilty, because I had bad luck with weather this poor guy had lost his boat.
What can I say? Oops, sorry, my bad!?
Besides, it's not my fault the weather gets bad sometimes and I just happen to be there at the same time, right?
Not working out!
As some of you probably know, English is not my first language and it causes sometimes strange, or maybe more correct word would be embarrassing situations.
There was this one (out of many) time I was in Australia and just chilling on the beach...
This day on the beach weather was quite windy and those of you who've been in Australia, know that when you're on the beach on a windy day, the sound of wind and waves crashing the shore can be loud.
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| On the background you can see Surfer's Paradise. That's where all this happened. |
So, I was waiting on my friends and this guy comes to me and I was having hard time hearing time because of the above mentioned reasons.
We did chat a little though and I heard him asking if I worked. I told him that, yeah, occasionally, so he asked "Where?" So I explained him that in this small, beautiful little Italian restaurant by the promenade.
I was a bit surprised as he quite soon just took off. Not that I minded as I wasn't interested in him but it was nice to have a chat with someone, I like meeting new people.
However, just later that day I realized the reason to his strange behavior. He had asked me whether I work OUT - not whether I work!
Oh, no! This crazy Finn had just made a complete fool out of herself!
I hoped I never see him again (I didn't) as that was so embarrassing! He must have thought; Wow, this chick is fit, but absolutely, insane. I did, after all, responded to his "work out" question that "I do, in a restaurant."
Not my brightest moment! ...and I consider(ed) myself relatively smart person.
Ok, maybe next time if I don't hear properly what someone's saying I keep repeating "Pardon me?" for as long as it takes so that I hear every single word.
Lesson learnt again: Listen, make sure you understood the question and just then respond!
(But no worries, I am totally able to laugh at myself and my mistakes, we all make them, why not just enjoy them then? We all need a good laugh at times and I get those more than enough with my eventful life, now that's for sure!)
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Ok, let me tell you, this doesn't happen anymore, lately weather has been pretty good on my trips, so don't worry, you don't have to leave the destination just because I may be coming to same place!
To be honest though, I can't promise if you and I travel together, that it's going to be happily boring trip where nothing happens, as things just seem to happen to me, but that's what makes life so wonderful, events, things, people, destinations, adventures that you can remember even years later!
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Maybe not the most exotic adventures but not to worry, there's more to come!
Make sure you come back next week for Part III, more stories of my life that I live to the fullest...
I promise you my adventures are everything but boring - even the smallest of trips can turn into adventures when I'm around. Happy life! Let's live, not just dream of living!
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...End of Part II - to be continued!
