The Dazzling Land of Poetry

Good start for a day:
coffee from a Moomin mug.

Facebook kindly reminds me of what happened in my life a year ago: there is a picture of a palm tree covered in snow. Oh, that day… I wake up, take my Moomin mug and have some coffee. It’s -10℃, sun is shining. I need to pack my bags and drive 120 kilometers to work.

Scottish Palm Trees

I have been at home 10 weeks. During those weeks we had the polar night, some freezing nights of -40℃, snowstorm, which almost blocked our front door with a pile of snow and now these dazzling sunny days of spring.

It’s only me and Väinö up here. Timo drove to Scotland in early January. He picked up the caravan from Germany where we left it, visited a couple of good camping sites we found during the tour and took the Eurotunnel across the canal. The caravan door handle broke completely. He had to duct tape the door close. And the caravan tires collected the two screws British people had left on the road. (The same procedure as last year…) Anyhow, he made it to sunniest city of Scotland, Dundee, and to the university on time.

Palm trees in Dundee. Picture from Timo.

We learned there are palm trees also in Scotland. But they are not covered in snow. Timo is sending me pictures of blooming cherry trees and crocuses. February has been historically warm in Scotland this year. It seems something historical happens every time when our family is around - but assume it’s not the cause nor the effect, just coincidence...

Back And Forth

I have been living the tour year again and again in my mind. Not because of nightmares, but because I have been sorting out the hundreds of pictures we took. As a part of the Quickstarter campaign we promised to make a picture book of the tour. You can still order one if you want. I have also had three events in which I have showed pictures and told about our tour. It’s really difficult to squeeze up 11 months to two hours! You can take a quick tour with the videos I made from the pictures.

Giving a presentation of our tour. Picture: Tuula Lampela.

You could think we have stopped driving now that the tour is over. Well, Timo had to drive the 3800 km to Dundee. He stays about 15 kilometers away from the university, so he drives about 150 kilometers every week. Väinö takes the 18 kilometers bus drive every morning to go to school. I’m directing a poetry group and a theatre group in the city of Kemijärvi, which is 120 kilometers from our home. I go there twice a week. So, actually, we will be on-the-road more now. It’s just the same roads back and forth.

Happy Kalevala Day!

The last day of February is the celebration of Finnish national epic Kalevala. I love Finnish folk poems and have made several performances out of those. In the Quickstarter campaign we reached the stretch goal of a poetry video. That will be an old folk poem translated to English with a help of my British friends. I still need to practise my pronunciation for the video. I wrote poems to our board game Darwinning! One of them, for the fish, was made with the traditional rhythm and style of Finnish folk poems and Kalevala.

From the blue back of the waters

From the white-foamed waves of ocean

Arose the fish, golden, flaming

Bounced out the blazing pike

To greet the neverending light

To sing for the midsummer night

It’s not yet midsummer, but ,man, it’s bright and light here!

Police and MacGyver

Duck tape did not solve the problem.

We parked our car and trailer on the roadside, in Kiel. It was time to say goodbye to Nikolas and his wife Flora, have a cup of coffee in their apartment, and move on. We had found out that we have to be Nuremberg a day earlier than we thought, so we had a lot driving to do. As usual, we checked the caravan and the car. This time around, annoyingly, we found that everything was not OK: the cable that connects our caravan to the car was damaged, badly. It is too long and part of it had dragged on the ground, so part of it has just disappeared. Not good. The lights in the caravan still work, so we’ve decided we can still go on. After our coffee.

Sleepless on a motorway

We drove several hours after the coffee I got in a Moomin mug (Oh, how much I miss my Moomin mugs…), eating a Döner on our way. Around 8pm, somewhere on autobahn number 2, we turned to a “rastplatz”. Germany is full of good parking places by the road, some of them even have toilets and places to cook. There are usually many trucks - I think this is the only way to tell if the place is any good. Our parking place had no facilities but we just needed a place to sleep.

Our heater didn’t work. The temperature in the caravan was 13°c and the night was going to be cold. Timo checked the batteries. They were ok. We still had gas but not that much. Had the damaged cable had any effect? We had no idea. I was ready to sleep under extra blankets, but Timo wanted to find a new gas bottle  - or a place with electricity. So we started up again, Väinö half asleep on the back seat. Half of the lights on the caravan were out, and of course it was raining.

We stopped at three different gas stations with no help. I tried to Google all possible locations that might be helpful. We took a turn into a caravan site, just to find out it was not open. I was getting desperate. Right then we spotted a police car. In a dark and otherwise empty parking-lot of an Aldi supermarket.

Police inspection

We drove up next to the police car and I went to talk. The policeman on the driver’s seat opened the window and I found out I was disturbing their evening meal  - Döner, of course. The police officer talked rather good english and suggested we should go to a gas station near by. That place had a huge parking space for trucks, and it was open 24/7.

We drove to the gas station and Timo went to ask for gas, electricity or any kind of help. Soon I noticed that the police car had driven to the same station. Perhaps they had noticed the illegal lighting - or lack of it - on our caravan, perhaps they were just friendly or had nothing else to do. They came to check that we got help.

With help translating from the police officers, we managed to buy a new gas bottle. While Timo was installing it, I showed the caravan to the officers. Because they asked, and you don’t say no to a policeman. “It is soooo big!”, they said. I’m sure they had a memorable night shift.

My darling MacGyver

The new gas bottle did not help with the heating, though. It was way past 10pm. I was exhausted. Timo checked all possible components with a multimeter. If you go on the road for a year, you MUST have a multimeter. And some knowledge of how to use it. We also have the manual for our heating system. With their help, Timo discovered that a fuse in the heater was out. A tiny little tube of glass.

Fortunately the gas station sold glass fuses. With that little piece, the machine started. We had heating!

At half past eleven we were able to go to bed. On a parking-lot of the gas station. A noisy motorway next to us. At least it was warm. And we were in our own beds.

The only downer was that I had lost my tablet. The one where I read my morning paper and nice book in the evenings with the Kindle app. I hadn’t used it during the day. We searched everywhere. The only strangers we had in the caravan were the police officers. I don’t think they took it. It is just misplaced.

I downloaded the Kindle app and our family library to my phone. One chapter of wizard Dresden’s adventures (Butcher’s Dresden files, highly recommend)  was exactly what I needed after a day like this. His life is also quite messy. But he doesn’t have foreign police officers as friends, and a clone of MacGyver as a husband.