Feb 27, Wed (Zürich - Helsinki - Porvoo)

The flight from Zurich to Helsinki was ok. When we arrived it was raining a bit and pretty cold, which was a sharp change from the warmer weather we left behind at home. Passport control, bag collection and customs went very fast - I cant remember ever seeing a que at Helsinki airport. We found our first bus and it wasn't long before we were heading towards Porvoo and Leila's mum. The bus stopped about halfway and the driver explained that our next bus would be along soon. We waited half an hour for it, but I had time to talk to italian driver - it turned out he was in Finland for the same reason as I was (the love of a Finnish woman is a powerful inducement). Eventually the next bus collected us and we were on our way again. The weather was pretty awful in Porvoo as we walked from the center of town to Gudrun's flat, grey, cold and raining. Gudrun had dinner ready when we arrived and that was a very warm welcome. Leila and I went for a walk into town to have a look around. There wasn't anything interesting on at the movie theatre so we headed back to Gudrun's. That evening we watched one of Anneli's old video tapes (Conan the Barbarian) until after midnight.

Feb 28, Thu (Porvoo)

Spent most of the day working on the laptop. Leila and Gudrun both went into town on separate shopping/exploring trips. Outside it snowed and then rained a bit, very grey skies. The girls came back for a late lunch and then dragged me out there to go find a bottle of wine for tonight's dinner. Although it wasn't raining there was a bit of a breeze and this made the outing very, very cold. I took the opportunity to buy a razor for myself. At the Alko in town we selected a light pinot noir and then headed back as directly as possible. Gudrun prepared a very nice Salmon dinner and we polished off the bottle between us. Watched Dirk Bogard in "The Servant", which Gudrun thought was too disturbing.

Blue skies and not too windy. After breakfast we packed everything up and went out to the bus stop where we waited for our ride into Helsinki. We said goodbye to Gudrun, although we would see her again in a few weeks for Easter at the Winters' place. During the bus ride into town the sky clouded over and started looking very grim again. We got off the bus in Helsinki's new underground bus depot and dragged all of our clutter several hundred metres to the train station where we stashed it away. Our first order of business was to have lunch with Anni, a friend of Leila's from way back (I remembered us meeting her, in precisely the same circumstances, on one of my first visits to Finland with Leila, which surprised them both). We had a light italian lunch together and I listened to them catch up and reminisce. Outside it had started to snow pretty seriously. After lunch we said goodbye to Anni and headed directly to Stockmans where I bought myself a stettson hat. We then headed back out into the snow and wandered down to the harbor to look at fur hats for Leila (but she didn't find anything she particularly liked). Leila was exchanging text messages with Elina about where to meet for dinner, I really wanted to go to Zetor's again but when we went there to book a table we were told that it was full up. Leila and I went to a bar (Old Hat) to have a beer and wait for further instructions from Elina - who sent us to go find two other places which also seemed pretty full up. It was getting close to the time that Lara and Martijn would be arriving from Zurich so we went to the trainstation and sat down in a cafe/bar (Vltava) to wait for their airport shuttle. I casually put my phone on the table and left it behind when our friends arrived. Lara liked my hat and Martijn said it made me look Hascidic. We stashed their bags near ours at the station and then went off to show them a bit of Helsinki, big church, the harbor, the market hall (where we had munkkikavi), the park and then into Zetor's to see if we could get a place anyway. Amazingly they squeezed us in there somewhere and it was great! I really like Zetor's because its like nothing else in Helsinki, very pastiche rustic tractor bar. Elina joined us soon enough. After lots of great food and more very dark beers we decided to go and get a drink at the Moscow Bar. Unfortunately the Moscow was closed for a private party so we went up to the Torni bar instead and enjoyed a highrise view of the city at night. After one drink there we all moved on to a student bar closer to the railway station to have a final tipple. Just as we were deciding to go to the train I realized that my phone was gone. Fortunately, I remembered I had left it in Vltava and sure enough they had it. Leila was asked to put in the pin number to prove it was ours (I was elsewhere looking for it while she questioned the bar staff), but instead she showed them her photograph was the background screen - pretty convincing. With minutes to spare we said goodbye to Elina, retrieved our luggage and boarded the 9.52pm night-train to Yllasjarvi. After we packed our gear into our cabins the four of us walked through six or seven carriages to the restaurant to drink tea and nibble on fruit pies. Around midnight we retired to our rooms and tried to sleep (the beds are actually ok, but imagine sleeping in a constantly rattling tin room, it helps to be exhausted).