Finland, Finland, Finland, it's where I want to be

Thursday, 26 July

A lake. A lovely lake. 

The last two days, barring a short (but still too long) visit to the island of misfit fuckery, have been mostly drive days through Finland. The drive hasn't been anywhere near as scenic as Norway. Gone are the dramatic, soaring mountains and deep fjords, replaced with kinda straggly pine forests, interspersed with lakes (Finland has over 100,000 of them) .

And with great lakes, comes giant mother effing mosquitos. Seriously, they're  the size of March flies and they  mob you. 

Also, apparently wolf-men aren't allowed to pee here. 

However there are some similarities. Like the Norwegians, the Fins seem to be obsessed with painting their houses a deep burnt red colour. I think that there would be widespread chaos and a Scandinavian identity crisis if the colour ever stopped being manufactured.

 It is also WARM!! Today we saw the temperature skyrocket to 25degrees, and after the last few weeks, I now completely understand why the English get naked the second there is both sun and temperatures in the mid-late teens. After single-digit temperatures, *everything* feels warm, and the desire to absorb as much sun as possible makes nudity appear to be  a perfectly reasonable way to celebrate good weather. Nb. Don't worry parents, there aren't any nakey (yes, I mean nakey. I think  it is a grossly underutilised and hilarious word) photos of me that will be cropping up on the Internet. It was only 25degrees for about 10mins before the universe sensed my happiness and promptly clouded over and became windy.

We aren't doing as much in Finland as I had hoped -our only full day stop is Helsinki , which is a bit disappointing, but simultaneously, it is quite a small country, and since my Lonely Planet book is locked up underneath the bus, I can't actually tell whether there are many other essential Finnish sights that I am missing out on.

We stopped in a university town, and decided to celebrate rejoining civilisation with a night out. After hopping through a variety of English and Irish pubs, we managed to find some locals to take us to "somewhere good".

So we ended up at a Tiki Bar.

Sour cider? Solution? Sugar cube and honey.
DISCLAIMER: This apparently doesn't work for bad beer.  

It was actually a lot of fun, and we even had some darkness (for a very little while). However Now-Lucy is questioning why Past-Lucy felt the need to come home at 4am, when she was aware that Future-Lucy needed to be up at 8am. Past-Lucy is such a dud.

Tonight we're going to get into Helsinki, and I anticipate the driving won't be as bad as the other days, since I fully intend on sleeping for the entire trip.