Part 4 of the trip report of our journey to Iceland and Finland.
The last, and longest, part of our summer trip was a long stay in Finland, where my mom grew up. As stated earlier, this was my first vacation in two years, after working through all weekends from April to August in 2024 and just making trips to see Jenny’s family for Kate’s birthday and an early Thanksgiving, and going to my 20-year reunion at Rice.
After just a day or so in Iceland, I noticed how much I needed this break. I had had an inkling, but it wasn’t quite clear how stressed and overworked I was, and how I was just going from one problem at work to the next. In Iceland, I began to feel like a human again. And now, in Finland, even the stress of touring and sightseeing dropped off. It was wonderful, and now I also remembered why I so much liked coming to Finland and not really doing anything, even as an adult. We picked blueberries, went on lots of rowing trips, explored all the islands nearby, and saw the swan family on most days. We discovered lots of live clams right on our beach, and Kate engaged in a “clam safety operation” in which she dove and picked up clams that were too close to the beach, where they might get stepped on and broken, and transported them farther out into the lake.
We were blessed with the best summer weather I can remember in Finland — it rained a little bit one morning. We ate pretty much every meal outside and went swimming every day. In the beginning, the water was still a little cold and required a bit of willpower, but by the end of our stay, we could just stride into the water in the morning without hesitation. The unexpected MVP of our stay was a watermelon floaty that we borrowed from my cousin Pasi.
Jenny and I went on morning runs along the forest roads, and towards mid-July, we’d just strip off at the end of the run and cool off with a swim. I continued my trend of using the increased free time during trips to go running (I’ve done that on every visit to San Antonio, and also my last trip to Rice in Houston), and even ran another half marathon (I had run the Lake Sammamish Half Marathon earlier this year). A couple of times, I also swam to the island and back.
Our stay in Finland was different from the last few times, because my aunt Airi wasn’t staying at her mökki right next to ours anymore this year. That meant we — gasp — had to cook ourselves, but it really wasn’t that difficult. We just had to plan a little bit more, because our fridge is so small (what you would call a “dorm room fridge” in the US). We cycled through eating salads for a couple of days, then had pasta with sauce and some vegetables, followed by soup and sausages the next days.
But it was much quieter without Airi and Lasse there. Fortunately, my uncle Tapio was there most days, and everyone came in for Airi’s birthday at the lake. It was great to see my extended family again after six years, and it’s just wonderful how everyone embraces Jenny and Kate as part of their family. They just fit in, like two puzzle pieces.
We were amazed again how well the Finns (at least our Finns) know how to party. Pasi, Päivi, Sanni, Siiri, Jonne, Jenni, Kaapo, and Tiitus (who wasn’t there this year, unfortunately), were the biggest dancers at our wedding and got everyone to join them, and this year’s birthday party for Airi was equally epic. It started at 1 or 2 in the afternoon and went on for 12 hours. At some point, Jenny and Kate asked if they could go for a swim before the party ends, and everyone reassured them that there was no worry they’d miss the end of the celebration. Long after we had gone to bed, the Finns went for a midnight swim and most likely had some more bubbly.
Everything went perfectly, until the 2nd to last evening at the mökki. Kate was just changing into her nightgown when we heard a scream, and then Kate emerged, saying — with surprising eloquence: “Mama, I just realized I have been stung by a wasp.” A wasp had stung her near the belly button. We had heard something moving in the walls of the mökki for days, but couldn’t really tell what it was. Finally, on one of the last days, I spotted wasps flying in and out near one of the windows. They had eaten their way through the insulating foam and made a nest in the wall. But we had never seen one inside the cottage. On one of the trips to the city, we had bought wasp spray, and earlier that day, I had sprayed the window from the outside — I just didn’t want them to continue eating into the wood. In their dying panic, some wasps must have found a way through gaps in the wood into the sleeping area of the mökki. Most of them had died, but a few of them were still alive. And one of them on the bed was alive enough to sting Kate.
Objectively, it wasn’t a bad sting, but of course it hurt, and Kate didn’t feel safe in the mökki anymore. She slept the next two nights in a hammock outside. In fact, she stated that she never wanted to come back to the mökki ever again, a claim that she has since reduced (she’ll come to the lake, but she’s not going to sleep in the cottage). What a bummer, at the end of an otherwise perfect trip of sunshine, swimming, nature, and a whole lot of doing nothing.
Perhaps because of the wasp incident, but perhaps also just because we had been gone from home for over three weeks by now, Kate was ready to move on. We said goodbye to the mökki and drove to Helsinki, where we spent a very hot day at the zoo and the old market. It was too hot for most animals, and the bear was the smartest one by deciding to take a swim.
We met up with my cousin Pasi and his family one more time, and then it was time to say goodbye to Mummu at the airport in Helsinki. The flights back went pretty smoothly, except for some long lines at immigration and boarding at the layover in Iceland. Dr. Tapa (Jenny’s dad) picked us up at the airport in Seattle, and it was good to be home again.
