Juhannus

Juhannus is Finland's celebration of Midsummer (equivalent to S. João in Portugal) and it's their most important holiday after Christmas. During Juhannus Finns flee from the cities into wood cottages near the water. This year I was fortunate to be invited to celebrate Juhannus in Finland with 20 people from all over Europe.

My trip didn't start the best way, my first flight (to Helsinki) was delayed 40 minutes. Upon arrival I had to run full speed to my next flight's boarding gate barely arriving on time to find out that flight was late 40 minutes. Life has its ironies... From Helsinki I flew to Tampere from where part of our group drove to the eastern coast, somewhere around here (google maps).


We reached a peer and took a boat to my friend's cottage which is in small island with some other 10 cottages.


The cottage has no running water or toilet but it has a sauna! The toilet was located outside in another sort of cottage. And it has a window so one could contemplate nature while he did his thing :) Quite relaxing!


But life in the cottage implies working, usually before doing sauna, or as the Finns say sauna Hiki (to sweat before sauna).


Here is a boulder we dug up to move it to the lake. It took some 5 or 6 of us, a couple of heavy metal rods and two logs used as levers and a hour or so. But after that hard work the sauna felt sweeter :)


Juhannus is all about tradition, so we had Karelian Pies for breakfast (pastries filled with rice and covered with egg butter).

We also had our Juhannus birch tree.

On Juhannus night we did a big bonfire near the sea, of course.

We also had 90 liters of Sima, a typical Finnish homemade brew ranging from 5% to 9%. Very pleasant and refreshing :)

And on Juhannus day we had pea soup! Not the best tradition...

Another Finnish tradition, the vihta, made of boughs of birch tree it's used in the sauna to beat oneself on the back for relaxing the muscles and calm the skin after some mosquito bites (which were huge there). We ended up beating each other not very gently :)
After sauna we usually went to swim in the sea which felt quite good. We usually alternate between sauna and sea some three times. Here's the access we used to dive in the sea.

We usually would this till quite late. At that latitude it never really became dark so we never quite knew what time it was... The sun rose at 4:30

The rest of our cottage life was relaxing, some traditional games, some barbecues...
Enjoying nature...

And of course, drinking.