Scandinavia

The next day the breakfast buffet was a lot more quiet, not the madhouse it had been yesterday. After breakfast we fetched the luggage from our room and packed it into our car which had been parked in the parking garage of the hotel for the last three days. We had to pay € 17.- per day for the parking, making € 51.- in total. After that we left for Tampere. But first we visited Aura's parents. Aura is a Finnish friend of Hilleke from the time they both were exchange students in the States (also see the travelogue of our trip to the US in 2002). Aura and her family live in Oulu and we will visit them in a few days from now, and she had asked us if were willing to visit her parents as they wanted to see Hilleke again after so many years. So we could easily fit the visit into our schedule as we have to arrive at the camping in Tampere after two o'clock. And the camping is only a 170 km drive from Helsinki. They live in one of the outskirts of Helsinki and after half an hour we arrived at their house. Also both of Aura's sisters were there. We had a very enjoyable morning and afternoon and we had a great lunch with a lot of Finnish delicacies. Also Ciska had a great time looking for berries in the large garden. Time flew by and at three thirty it was time to say goodbye. So we left for Tampere. The road between the two cities is a four lane highway all the way so just after four o'clock we arrived at the camping. This camping, the Härmälä camping, is situated at a lakeside, south of Tampere. We had made reservations for it via the internet and that all had worked out well, so a quarter of an hour later we could move into our cabin. It turned out to be a lot smaller than the one we had at the Randboldal camping in Denmark. But it had a fridge and also a small boiling ring, but no running water. But we already knew that from their website. A lot of the other cabins on the camping were occupied by noisy, beer-drinking youngsters. We hope it will be quiet this night at a decent hour. Also, almost on the front porch of our cabin, there was a group of very noisy gypsies, constantly shouting and screaming at one another like they must be heard on the other end of the camping. As we didn't do any shopping today we had dinner at the small restaurant on the campground. It is a pizzeria and the only things they serve there are pizzas. So even Arjan had a pizza although he is not really fond of them. In the course of the evening it indeed turned out to be very noisy on the camping. Ciska was complaining, she couldn't fall asleep because of it. Officially it should be quiet around 11 pm, but considering the amount of young people shouting and screaming and also because of the loud gypsies we were afraid that that wouldn't happen. But surprisingly around eleven, a group of man started to walk around the camping to urge people to be quiet. We had a little chat with them and it turned out there is some kind of festival in town and a lot people attending the festival are staying at this campground. According them, normally it isn't that noisy at the camping. They hope that most of them will leave Sunday as the festival will be over by then. Because of the noise we went to bed rather late. Also because of the light, around midnight you may easily read or write without extra light on, you don't really notice it is that late already. And also because the temperature at that time of night is even above 20 degrees centigrade.