Confession : I'm running a bit behind. And by "a bit", I mean over a month. What can I say? Travelling is time-consuming. Children are time-consuming. Translation is time-consuming (but you won't hear me complaining about that, because we have to fund our extravagant lifestyle and bread habit somehow, n'est-ce pas).
First things first : a map, covering everywhere we went in Sweden, plus our route through Finland.
Our first night in Finland was a bit of a letdown.
We arrived at a campsite just south of Pello. It was the most basic campsite we've found to date (drinking water from a pump...), run by an old man who only spoke Finnish. There were blueberries, and there was a lake, so everything seemed fine to us.
We managed to communicate with the owner in a mix of words in various languages plus hand gestures, and handed over our cash. So far, so good.
Two hours later, however, once our tent was up and we were more or less settled, a man appeared with a message from the owner. He told us that the old man had misunderstood our request, and that it wasn't 40 euros for two nights, but 40 euros a night - despite the sign at the entrance signalling the contrary. Damien took the man to see the sign. The man then went away, only to come back five minutes later to tell us that it was 40 for us because our tent was too big.
(At this juncture, note that there were only three other groups camping on the entire site, and space was not, in any way, an issue. Note also that we paid less than 20 euros per night for the excellent campsite in Lulea, which had far better facilities AND better blueberry access).
I think you can all guess what was going on. Foreigners? Planning to stay 2 nights? Let's try to get an extra 40 euros out of them.
We left the next morning. Our first mission: drive 3km north so we'd ACTUALLY been to the Arctic circle.
Next stop: the excellently-named Ii. Yes, that is "ii". The campsite was much better, and cheaper, than the previous one. There were not only blueberries, but blackcurrants, redcurrants, and wild raspberries. Oh, and a sauna that looked like a dragon, although we didn't get chance to try it out.
Culinary discovery: vegetable pancakes. We got some carrot ones and some spinach ones. Pretty good, may attempt at home.
After Ii, we drove down to Oulu in time for mass on Sunday morning (there are very few Catholic churches in Finland, so you go where you can), then east to a place that will henceforth be known as The Middle Of Nowhere, or TMON for short.
What will happen to us in TMON? Why is it called TMON? And what does half a duck have to do with it? Answers next time...
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