Posts Tagged ‘moomins’

For the first half of our wedding we travelled to Finland. I do me “we”! All together we took a contingent of 17 people there. Elina and I flew out in advance to spend some time in Helsinki.

We stopped by Stadi Talkers Toastmasters club and then checked into Hotel Haven. Haven is my favourite hotel in the world. However, Helsinki is the only place we stay in a luxury hotel, so there isn’t really any competition. But it is really nice. I couldn’t blag us a suite for the wedding, but they did give us a celebratory box of chocolates!

Moomintroll looked very pleased to be back.

We then headed off to have dinner. The first time we were in Helsinki we had seen Ravintola Nokka but decided it was too expensive. This time, we were here for our wedding though, so decided to splash out. It was awesome. The best food I have had in Finland.

Below is a panorama from our dockside meal.

On Tuesday we visited Helsinki Zoo who had elk this time, and in the evening meet up with my family for a steak at Goodwin. We spent the day with them on Wednesday when we visited the island of Suomenlinna.

On Thursday we set off on our own again to visit Moominworld, before having lunch on a riverboat in Turku and meeting Elina’s mum for dinner in the evening. We even had time to stop by the yarn shop.

Then on Friday, we headed up to Pori to spend a day on the sandy beach up there, before having a late lunch in the town.

James took this photo of the beach.

Saturday was the big day itself. I will write that up separately.

We spent Sunday touring the lakes around Laitila, going for a dip in two of them and making use of the beach sauna too. Trouble was ahead when Norman managed to lose his glasses in the lake, but Dr Barr came to the rescue by managing to dive down and find them – and they laughed when I said I would go fetch the PhDs…

Helsinki was good, but relaxing over in the west was one of the best parts of the trip. We’re already eyeing up summer cottages for when Worfolk Limited makes its IPO.

After years of talking about Moominworld we finally managed to schedule in a trip. It was not easy. We visited on the 20th of August. It closed for winter on the 23rd of August. Short summer.

You park up round the back of a petrol station and then get a bus over. Or at least near it. It’s not very clear. It drops you off and then you wander over this little park, down a harbour side and eventually over a bridge to the island where Moominworld is located.

As the bus pulls upped, one little kid screamed “Moomin! Moomin! Moomin!”. As Elina pointed out, if he was that excited about the arrival of the bus, he was going to have an epic day. Simultaneously, his parents were going to get rather sick of the word “Moomin” quite quickly, and then be forced to endure it for several hours more.

In fact it seemed that everyone there had small children. Except us.

We went to Snufkin’s Camp for story time. There were quite a few kids there listening to the Finnish version, then they all left and it was just us and Snufkin listening to the English version. Good news for me, though I think Elina felt a bit weird at this point.

Next door they have a napping area. This consists of an area shaded by trees filled with bean bags and hammocks. Why don’t more places have this?!? I have long campaigned for business hammocks in the office but what Mumminworld had surpassed even my expectations.

They have lots of buildings to explore, including the four flours of the Moomin house, and all the Moomin characters that you can take photos with. They also do shows every half an hour.

I also had my first entirely Finnish-language conversation. I asked for two tickets, she told me the price, I said “card”, she said yes, I paid, she gave me my tickets and I said thank you. Hardly Academy Award winning dialogue, but a conversation none the less.

In summary, Moominworld is awesome.

Last Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tove Jansson. She died in 2001 and is best known for creating The Moomins. In 1966, she received Hans Christian Andersen Medal for it. She also wrote an array of adult novels, but that kind of thing wouldn’t really interest me.

She also drew quite a few cartoons mocking Hilter, so it’s nice to know that not everyone in Finland was a collaborator ;).

The Moomins were originally comic strips, but if you are from the UK, you probably remember them from this animated series:

If you are ever on the south west coast of Finland, you may want to visit Moomin World. It is in Turku, which is two hours drive from Helsinki. Be ware though that it is only open in summer – which is quite a limited period in Finland. Though they also open briefly in the Christmas period too.

To celebrate her birthday they did a special event that included discounts on loads of stuff including free entry for people over 100.

I love my Moomins Valentine’s card :D.