Scandinavia.

Now as many of you may know, Finland is not part of Scandinavia. I think the distinction is that it's part of the Scandinavian agreement for free mobility and other parks but it's not geographically part of the Scandinavian peninsula. I just looked at a map and it's a little sketchy.. because of all the land in between. But you get the idea. I had been living in Finland for 7 months and I had never been to Scandinavia. So Jackie and I set out to explore Norway and Sweden.

We first took a train from Tampere to Turku. Took the boat from Turku to Stockholm. Flew to Bergen from Stockholm and took a train from Bergen to Oslo, before flying back to our respective places thereafter.

I managed to see old friends in each city. We met Christian in Stockholm and he accompanied us to Bergen, where we stayed with Elisabeth for a night and got to enjoy her company the next day as well. Then Jackie and I sailed solo to Oslo where we got a most sophisticated tour from Andreas and stayed with some family friends who I hadn't met before, but who made us feel right at home: Jeni, Daniel and Andrei.

So without going into too many details, I can say that we saw some beautiful places in the company of wonderful people!

And as the most random side-note, during our last morning in Oslo, we assisted at a Starfish funeral. While walking along the harbor and stopping to laugh at a kiss-and-sail sign, I noticed a starfish had died on land. I found something to gently lift him with and threw him in the water. [Now I'm really hoping that he wasn't alive and that I killed him. But it seemed pretty obvious that he was dead.] So I took a few pictures of the occasion and I have no idea why I felt compelled to post them, let alone mention this on my blog.