Down the Finnish west coast

I know it goes a bit slow with the recapituation of my journey home and it would be time to close this blog soon and start something new. But ok, I'll finish first the old stuff for once.

Here is part 3 of my travel back home: After visiting Yki in Kuusamo and hiking karhunkierros, I drove farther north to Rovaniemi. There on the polar circle lies Santa Clause village, the place where christmas is 365 days a year. One of the corniest places I have ever seen. My journey contiued to the Finnish-Swedish border and then in along the Torneälven northwards. Then I went back to Sweden for two days i.a. to Luleå, which I haven't visited before, eventhough it wasn't too far from Umeå. Next stop then back in Finland was Oulu, where I visited Riikka. Oulu is surely the economic and cultural centre in the north of Finland and reminded me therefore somehow to Umeå in Sweden. But Oulu is bigger and there is surely more going on during summer. Ok, sightseeing was done quite fast, but the night life is good and we went to some interesting bars. Later on Niina joined us, who came to visit Riikka for a music festival on the next day.

On friday I continued my travel to Kokkola, where I met Antti again, who came by train from Helsinki. We went then to the summer cottage of Linda's family, where we met Linda, her brother and her brother's daughter. My last weekend in Finland I could relax again. I went fishing with Antti (but we didn't catch anything), we went to a folk music festival or just enjoyed the nature. On monday then me and Antti drove to Turku, where I planned to take the ferry to Stockholm on tuesday morning. So we stayed overnight at a friend of Antti, who was a bit chaotic but a really nice guy.
With the Viking line ferry I left Finland for this time, but probably not for good. And before I would come home to Switzerland, I still had some days in Stockholm.