Testing the elements

Time to put our hard pants back on for some serious weather. We decided to head to Finland to check out some Scandinavian delights; snow, er .. snow, and World Cup ski jumping.

First up was 2 days' skiing in a small resort called Messila near the ski-jumping venue at Lahti - 100km north of Helsinki. Given the generally low-lying hills in Finland this suited me fine as a bit of a beginner - with pretensions of intermediate on a good day. Shaun managed to find some boots to fit him (and some reindeer with mashed potatoes for dinner) and we were good to go.
On the Saturday night we bundled up and headed across to the ski-jumping international teams event. After a close battle between some of the world's best, the Finnish team narrowly lost out to some high-flying Austrians. Fantastic.

Apart from the jumping, crowd highlights were the ready availability of hot sausages wrapped in paper with mustard for snacks and - the cheerleaders (?) I am also happy to report on the faithful observance of a time-honoured sporting ritual - yes, even a World Cup ski-jumping event in sub-zero temperatures attracts streakers .. (see below).

Overall a great event and highly recommended. On Monday morning we headed to Helsinki to be met by unrelenting snow. The city seems like a good place to explore but, given the weather, we decided to go on a relaxing cruise out on the harbour.

Our destination was Suomenlinna - a sprawling military fortress built on six linked islands in the Helsinki harbour and (now that we have been to the audiovisual display on the island (nice and warm)) we can report that the fortress - built by Sweden in 1748 to contain the Russian expansion - was essentially the reason the city of Helsinki was born. Its an interesting place full of history - and a lot of snow.

M