The Finland Files - Week 1
So, our time in Leeds has ended but our adventure has just begun. Our last day in Leeds consisted of cleaning out the entire flat and donating basically two thirds of our possessions to a charity shop. We spent our last evening eating Chinese takeout up at Hyde Park from our favorite takeaway joint (exactly 100 steps from our front door) Luciano’s/China Diner.
We had an incredibly early start the following day and did a final clean/donate before marching through the city to the bus station. After a quick stop at University of Leeds and Unipol to drop off the keys, we were off. Two buses and eight hours later we arrived at Gatwick airport, and spent our last few hours in England enjoying the local cuisine…Costa.
We then boarded the Norwegian Air flight to Helsinki and after a smooth sailing flight we arrived in Helsinki airport. But our night did not stop there, oh no, we had to wait for the first train in the morning, which meant sleeping in the airport! In actual fact Helsinki was voted one of the best airports to sleep in, but in our experience, for those sleeping on the outside of the security gate, not so much. There were some really nice spots with dim lights and long chairs but naturally they were all taken. So we found a nice set of chairs close to the train station exit and whilst Madison slept I caught up on my book, the Lord of the Rings. We had planned ahead by packing muesli bars and breakfast bars…but after around 20 hours of transportation, I couldn’t think of anything dryer to eat.
At last 7:01 arrived and we caught another two trains to Karjaa where we finally met up with our Workaway host Nina. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Workaway, it is a similar concept to Airbnb only you pay in your time and assistance to the host in return for food and board (You can check it out here). For us, we chose a beautiful organic farm and summer café in Finland which Madison had actually spent a week at last summer. As we don’t have anywhere to be until next year, we decided to spend the entire month here at Café Ivan & Alexander on Krämars Farm.
After a quick nap and a good feed, we got straight into prepping for the café’s opening on Saturday, painting signs, putting out tables, vacuuming, dusting and meeting the chickens! The next day was equally as hectic, I don’t think we left the kitchen the entire day, baking meringue cake, my gluten free vegan brownies, gluten free carrot cake, cinnamon buns and gluten free blackcurrant fudge (all equally delicious).
Our hosts Nina and Morton, and their son Jakob have been incredibly accommodating with helping us settle into the farm/café life. We also met the Workaway team for this month, Justus, from Washington State, United States, Ellie from Barcelona, Spain and Valentina from Leon, France. It’s been great to compare cultures and see what each of them bring to the Workaway experience.
Finally the opening day arrives, and the morning consisted of making A LOT of frosting for various cakes and then Madison, myself and Justus headed to Ingaa to advertise the café at the farmers markets and buy ingredients for our dinner (tomato, spinach and chickpeas curry-yummm). It was an incredibly busy weekend at the café, with Sunday proving to bring just as many customers as Saturday’s grand opening. After Mads and I handed over the café to Nina on Sunday afternoon, we decided to go for a bike ride around the local area…which TMI having not ridden in a while, my butt is still hurting three days later.
Madison and Justus have started up a running club in the morning and so naturally I get an extra half an hour sleep in. But with my extra brain power gained from sleep-ins, I have managed to learn a little bit of Swedish and Finnish. Oh yeah, I should explain that…there is a relatively small community of native Swedish speakers that were born in Finland and so in Finland they speak both Swedish and Finnish (and usually also English) interchangeably.
It has been raining for the last two days, which isn’t ideal for the café, but amazing for the crops and vegetable garden as it has apparently been quite a dry season so far. We are currently waiting for the next batch of carrot cake to come out of the oven and the cinnamon buns to rise a little before we pop them in the oven. Also slightly unrelated but we are also working on our destinations page today for all of England and working on our latest vlog, so stay tuned. Anyways, that’s all for now, thanks for supporting us…
With love R xo