Scandinavia

Sunday, July 20. Luckily last night was not as noisy as the night before and when it's ok, the coming nights will even be more quiet. At around 9 o'clock we got up, we have a lot of kilometres ahead of us today. After breakfast we left. But before we were able to leave we had a discord with our back neighbour. Yesterday evening or last night someone had parked his van behind our cabin. Normally not a problem, be he had parked it in front of our car so we were unable to leave. So when we had finished breakfast Arjan started to inform if someone knew who owned the van. But nobody knew. Then Hilleke thought that they might be sleeping in the back of the van although it had no windows in the back, but there was a cable running from an outlet into it. So Arjan banged the backdoor and he immediately heard a response coming from within the car. He asked if they could move the van a bit so we could leave. A few seconds later a man got out of the car and he immediately started to became abusive and rage why we were banging his van. They turned out to be from Scotland and probably were still halfdrunk from last night. Arjan stayed quiet and let the man rage. Also our neighbour was alarmed by all the noise and urged the man to calm down. After which the Scotsman also started to abuse him. Angry as he was, he pulled the cord from the outlet and ordered his companion (who we never saw by the way) to move the van. As soon as the van had moved he started to shout again that we should leave immediately with our car as that was the reason why he had to move. But we had to pack some things and we did so quietly. In the mean time they had moved their car to the washhouse. Weird guys they have in Scotland, but we'll assume that they are not all like this madman.

After packing our things we left for our daytrip towards the coast. We wanted to visit Rauma which is a long drive from Tampere and in a country with only a few four-lane highways it may take some time. Around noon we arrived in the old town of Rauma (Vanha Rauma). We walked around through the old, medieval part of the town. In the past it has never been destroyed by fire so there are still a lot of very old wooden buildings present. Most of these old buildings are still beings used as a house or a store. Its a very fascinating quarter to wander around. We also gathered some information about Rauma and surrounding places from the Tourist Info. We also asked if they had internet, they didn't, but they directed us to a café across the street. There we had something to eat and drink and that also included a 15 minutes internet connection. Unfortunately we were only able to read our mail, for some reason it was not possible to send any, neither were we able to upload our website. Maybe we can do both tomorrow in Tampere or when we are with Aura in Oulu. After this we again walked through a part of the old town before we left. We still wanted to see the sea. We still hadn't had a chance to see it from Finland, not even when we arrived in Turku. And we have to admit it is rather difficult to get close by the sea. On the map the roads seem to be along the shore, but in reality there is no sight of any water. Finally we ended up north of Pori near Reposaari on an island. At the end of road there is a restaurant at which we had something to drink and from which we had a nice view over a bay of the Gulf of Bothnia. After a short rest we left again, back to our camping. Near the small village of Kullaa we had dinner, very cheap this time. A warm buffet including drinks for about €28 for the three of us. Around eight thirty we arrived at our cabin. A lot of guests had left the campgrounds this day, so it should be much more quiet the coming night.