View from the lake

Finland is the country of thousands of lakes and a few of them are in Ähtäri :) Seems like every cottage has a view over a lake. And of course every cottage must have a boat pier, because you have a boat, at least a rowing boat if not a motorboat. And what more, the lakes in Ähtäri are all very long, so they are perfect for driving a motorboat at full speed for quite a long distance and enjoy the speed.

In April, when I visited Ähtäri for the first time, the lakes were all frozen and we drove snowmobiles on lake Hankavesi. So I decided to experience the same speed on the same lake only this time on a motorboat, on open water and on a warm summer day. 

I've written in my previous posts that Ähtäri has a factory making aluminium motorboats. Well, actually Ähtäri has 2 aluminium boat factories :) One of them is Fiskars Boats producing Buster boats right by the lake Hankavesi and the other is Terhitec producing Silver boats. They arrange free test drives with their newest models every summer. I planned to test drive just one of them, but I ended up trying both companies :)

I registered for a test drive at the zoo camp ground info desk, because they operate the test drives. The boats themselves were at the hotel Mesikämmen boat pier. Our guide was Joona Puntala. He was really good at speeding and doing tricks with the boat. He tried to get the boat flying but fortunately it stayed in the water and we stayed in the boat :) Maybe next time I'll try a floatplane, but not this time. This time I decided to enjoy the view on the water.

our guide Joona

The weather was perfect: it was warm, the sun was shining and the traffic on the lake was virtually non-existent, so we were the kings of the lake :)

First we tested Silver which was faster than Buster because it was a bit smaller, so it took up the speed in no seconds! At first I was sitting on the passenger seat but soon after Joona handed the steering wheel over and asked if I wanted to try. Well, of course! I had driven motorboats before, but this one was extremely easy to navigate and turn. Wow! Absolutely fabulous! Compared to snowmobiles then motorboats are like toys :) You have to be physically fit and strong to drive a snowmobile, while a motorboat requires neither strength nor muscles...well, brains would be useful :)

Silver engine

The second boat we tested was Buster. A bit bigger than Silver but that means also a bit more stable. When the maximum speed for Silver was 38 knots (=68km/h), then Buster wasn't much slower with its 35 knots (=63km/h). As I mentioned before, the lakes in Ähtäri are super long, therefore, it is possible to drive at full speed for quite some time. Of course, you have to be careful not to knock over fishermen boats and pass them at a safe distance :)

Buster engine

The prices of the boats can be found on their webpages, but in general, Busters are a bit more expensive than Silvers: more money for more horse powers :) Hmmm... talking of money. Some people have spent a fortune on building their villa on the shores of Hankavesi:

where is the boat pier?

I've written before about Pytinki manor by lake Hankavesi. Well, the manor is actually being sold at the moment. So if you have a spare 3,3 mln euros, then you can have it :) You'll get 700 sq metres of living space with 130 000 sq metres of plot in total with a wine cellar and all the adjacent buildings. Not to mention the ghosts. They're included in the price :)

beach house (?) by the lake and the manor house in the background

Next to Mesikämmen Hotel, which is located right by the lake, there are beautiful luxurious villas called Naava Resort. They comfortably fit 8 persons per house. One of them has even a terrace jacuzzi and a private boat pier. A weekly stay in one of these villas during high season could cost about 1800€, but it's for 6 nights and 8 (sic!) persons. What a deal! Now look at the villa's big windows, or should I say glass wall :)

On the other side of the hotel there is the zoo campground and it has its own beach with a water slide:

So Ähtäri Zoo offers camp ground for travellers with their caravans (RV-s) and those travelling by car. The latter can stay a night in a tent or a cabin. The whole camp ground is stretched along the lake shore. Nice :) The camp ground has a huge grill house, a kitchen, toilets and showers for the use of the visitors. Not to mention a sauna. How can a Finn live without a mökki sauna? There is even a mini golf course right next to the water slide, a bit run-down but, hey, there are real golf courses less than a kilometre away :)

I've mentioned in one of my first posts that I live in Tuomarniemi which is not very far from Inhaan Tehtaat (that's where the Fiskars Boats operates) and Pytinki (the 3,3 mln € mansion). My apartment can be seen through the trees. Ah no, it's not the boat shed on the shore, but the 2-storeyed building in the back :)

Here you can see, how long the lake (actually, just one of the many lakes in Ähtäri) is and how perfect it is to drive in full speed:

Eyes wide open

Quite often we think that anything we haven't met before is unusual, extraordinary, anomalous and out of this world, but actually we just haven't seen or heard about it. It can be pretty mundane instead :) That's it! So we discover new things every day, for ourselves, and draw a tick next to an item in our discovery list. Awareness is one thing, knowledge yet another. Quite often we're too lazy to find out the truth behind "anomaly", strange and surprising things we encounter, but we still share it with others with a hope that somebody will, might even share the knowledge with others.

The other day I ran into a plant which usually is green, but this little baby was purple as purple can be :) It was growing close to the oldest building in Tuomarniemi.

Some findings are pretty, some scary. But even these scary ones complement the nature and the surrounding. The other day on my way home from work I saw a skeleton of a bird (?). The scull in the middle and the bones of the wings (?) on both sides as if it had stretched out its wings before it died trying to get off, go back to where it belonged -- into the sky. Scary and pretty at the same time.

Having cycled the same road day after day, you eventually remember every inch of it. So when one day something unusual appears by the road then it definitely strikes your eye. I saw a draisine (FIN: resiina) by the railroad the other day on my way to work. It looked really old, hand-made, built of scrap metal and wood. I found it weird as it had appeared there overnight and it had a well-oiled chain despite all the rust on all the metal parts. This kind of manual vehicle was used by railroad maintenance workers until about 1950-ies, so it was more than anomalous to see it in 2013.

The Finnish VR uses the most comfortable passenger trains, yet, as appears, also vehicles that should be in the museum. Their webpage claims that they are "a modern service company". But the key may lie in the following sentence I found on their webpage: "VR Group is an ecofriendly, versatile company with responsible operations, offering transport, logistics and infrastructure engineering services". The draisine is eco-friendly indeed, as it is made of recycled materials and produces no carbon emissions whatsoever :) The draisine was gone by the time I went back home from work. I guess it went back to work :)

In one of my previous blogs about history and architecture I wrote about a mysterious mansion called Pytinki in Inha area of Ähtäri. It is located on the grounds of an old metal factory (called Fiskars) which is still working and making for example aluminium Buster fast boats. The mansion looks magnificent in its new Renaissance style though built as late as 1899. They say it's haunted and many people have seen strange things going on in the mansion. As it's quite close to Tuomarniemi, right by the lake Hankavesi, I decided to see it for myself.

The sun was setting and there was not a gust of wind. I passed the boat factory and then all of a sudden it was there at the end of a forest trail. It was an incredibly pretty red brick building with a nice tower on one end of the building overlooking the lake, but kind of desolate, not a soul (read: living human being) moving around. It was well-kept and well-protected with warning signs everywhere that it was a private territory and anyone trespassing was filmed (and taken away?). I'm sure the security video clips would have the ghosts on them, if they had any in the mansion :) People say curtains move and a girl in white dress visits the tower at nighttime. To tell you the truth, I didn't see any ghosts, neither anyone moving behind the windows nor moving the curtains. Well, I wasn't there at nighttime, was I? :)

The Finnish company Fiskars bought the Inhan metal factory in 1917, but before that it belonged to private persons. In 1841 a lawspeaker (FIN: laamanni) Erik Gustaf Roschier bought the area and established the ironworks factory. The factory has been functioning in the original field since then. However, the ownership of Pytinki mansion is clouded with mystery. Nowhere on the grounds could I see the owner's name. When I asked around, no-one seemed to know exactly. As far as I understand, the mansion is protected by the Museovirasto (Museum Office in Finland), yet it is not open to the public. It could be. No doubt, Ähtäri town would get itself a wonderful pearl, a true treasure to attract tourist.

I came to Ähtäri with eyes wide open and I found quite many "pearls" that still need to be polished and then displayed in full grandeur. The haunted Pytinki and Vääräkosken Kartonkitehdas are definitely among them. Should there be a ghost-tour in Ähtäri? Hmmm...

Tastes

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Finland? Reindeer? Snow? Lakes? Forests? But what TASTE comes to your mind when you think of Finland? To me Finland tastes of liquorice (FIN: lakritsi), rye crispbread (FIN: näkkileipä), reindeer meat (FIN: poronliha), squeaky cheese (FIN: leipäjuusto), cloudberry (FIN: lakka) and lingonberry (FIN: puolukka).

Finnish kids grow up eating lakritsi. Supermarkets sell liquorice candies in hundreds of varieties and packages. They put at least some liquorice candies in "normal" candy packages as well, so that tourists (read: non-Finns) would at least try the famous salmiakki even if they've managed to find a package without the infamous "black candy". The Finnish confectionery makers know how to make you eat liquorice. If they are lucky enough they'll make you even eat the salty liquorice (FIN: salmiakki). If not in the candy form then in a chocolate bar, ice cream or vodka. But you'll be definitely tricked into at least trying some liquorice :)

ice cream

sweets

vodka coctail

If that all is not enough then try salmiakki in the form of a powder that you can put into your cake mix or smoothie :) or have some chili with your salmiakki candies. You can have it all in Finland:

something for extremists

When you have tasted the latter, then you can say you know how Finland tastes :)

näkkileipä
Photo: wikipedia

Finns cannot live without rye bread and it's eaten with basically every meal. Finnish kids grow up eating rye crispy bread. They love crispy näkkileipä with cheese (preferably lactose free) on it for their snack.

reikäleipä
Photo: wikipedia

The tradition of dry bread in Finland goes back far into the history. The way bread was made divided Finland into the east side and west side. In Western Finland bread was baked only a couple of times a YEAR. Then it was dried. The bread had a hole in the middle (FIN: reikäleipä), therefore, it was easy to hang it up to dry. So old Finns used to eat stale bread throughout the winter season. Nowadays it is sold fresh, though :) Ähtäri has its own bakery Körkkö that sells the reikäleipä...fresh, made of traditional and old sourdough. It's not difficult to buy a sourdough bread (FIN: hapanleipä) made of 100 year old "starter" dough in Ähtäri. For example, also an Ähtäri organic food store called Gaija sells them. Want to try fresh but old in roots rye bread?

I haven't seen salmiakki bread in stores yet, but I bet it's just a matter of time until you can buy black salmiakki bread :)

poronkäristys
Photo: www.suomalaiset.de

Next to traditional meats Finns also eat reindeer meat. You think poor reindeer...well, people eat horse meat as well, and dogs :) There are people around the world who eat even more weird meat. Actually, reindeer meat tastes as any other game meat. Just don't think of Rudolf the Reindeer that pulls Santa's sleigh, then you're all fine. Have some rye bread, mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam with it. The dish is called poronkäristys :)

By the way, poronkäristys and reindeer meat muffins taste heavenly at Valkeisen Loma tourism farm. I've written about them in my very first post. They have 6 reindeer in their reindeer park. NB! These reindeer are not eaten, they are solely used for sleigh rides in wintertime :)

juustoleipä
Photo: wikipedia

As I've mentioned before then Finns like rye bread. They like it with cheese, but also the weird cheese called "leipäjuusto" or "juustoleipä" (ENG: bread cheese or cheese bread). The cheese is first curdled and then baked in the oven and looks like flat bread, hence the name. It squeaks against your teeth when you bite it :) Beware, you may get goose bumps all over you!

In the past the bread cheese like rye bread was dried and stored for up to several years. How did they eat that rock hard cheese? Well, they used to heat it up by the fire and then it must have softened up enough to bite it.

What's with the drying food up in Finland? The old Finns must have had really good teeth :)

The bread cheese is usually eaten with cloudberry jam or fresh cloudberries. Talking of cloudberries, they grow plenty in arctic tundra but also in the mid-Finland where Ähtäri is. Right by the Karhunkierros road that circles Ähtäri Zoo there is marshland where you can find the sweet yellow cloudberries:

lakka

The forests at Ähtäri Resort are full of lingonberries (FIN: puolukka), the same berries that Finns usually eat with game meat. Both lingonberry and cloudberry are considered "superfoods" as they contain many useful vitamins and minerals, therefore, they are used in many dishes in Finland: porridges, jams, juices, liqueurs, sweets, and what not. But hey, what is better than picking some fresh berries in the forest and putting them straight into your mouth, right there, where they naturally grow. Mmmm...you can't beat that to any preserve made out of them :)

puolukka

You can come to Ähtäri Resort by RV caravan (there is a big caravan camp ground by the zoo) or your car (there are many cottages and a big hotel right across the road from the zoo) and it's easy to book a room or a whole cottage here.

Welcome to Ähtäri with many tastes!