We had a brief wait for a bus and then we were off to Levi. A short ride of about 10 minutes, at a cost of 7 Euros each, which is positively cheap by Scandinavian standards! Finland is apparently more affordable than Norway. Yay! More money for us to spend on decent wine! B had to dash into our hotel's head office in the city center to get our key, and then we caught a taxi to our apartment.
On arrival, we were greeted by a beautiful sight : our stunning wooden lodge, juxtaposed against swirling tiny icicles that looked like glitter in the lamp light. Deep drifts of snow lay on either side of the road, and the nearby ski slope, which was also floodlit (Levi has 2 hours of twilight each day, and is dark the rest of the time), had a few brave souls flying down it.
We opened the door to our unit with trepidation, as the ashtray outside on the patio was full of cigarette butts. Not a great first-impression! B almost had a heart-attack when she saw the place. The $&@ers had given us the wrong keycard, and we were standing at the threshold of a unit that looked as though a hurricane had gone through it. Clothes scatted everywhere, ski equipment covering most of the floor and empty beer bottles littering the remaining surface area. Needless to say, since we are South Africans, we rifled through their things, (B put on gloves first, muttering about what pigs men are) and stole a few odds and sods. Then we phoned and made them bring us a new key, while we went to the restaurant and drank. Err, we're joking of course. About the looting, not the drinking. We never joke about drinking.
Our unit is beautiful. It looks out on the 18th hole of the golf course (as it is currently under a foot of snow, we have to take their word for it). We have our own private sauna and a fully equipped kitchen. We also have a drying cupboard, which we've Googled, and found out is like a tumble dryer, but supposedly gentler on clothes and better for the environment. It looks like a fridge - go figure!
All the instructions here are in Finnish, which means lots of fun and games for us poor English bastards. You have to turn taps (in your hand basin in the bathroom) to the left to get the washing machine to work, and taps (in your kitchen sink) to the right for the dishwasher to switch on. The sauna power switch needs to be turned on only halfway or else it won't work at all, and we still haven't figured out the radiator heaters.
Yesterday, once we woke up refreshed after an early first night, we went to town via the regular ski bus. It arrives at our apartment every 30 mins and is free to use during our entire stay. We first went off to book our snowmobiling excursion - a 7 hour trip to the Snow Village for later in the week.
Then, we were off to do some grocery shopping as we'll be self-catering. The shop is in town and about 500m from our bus stop, so we had to keep reminding ourselves that what you buy, you have to carry, unlike in SA where you load everything into the boot. So I didn't by the small beautiful concrete statues that I saw. Also wine by the box, rather than bottles. Much lighter, and not too much of a compromise as the box wine here is a million times better than the "doos wyn" at home.
It is quite interesting to try to buy things here. Everything is labeled in Finnish and packed differently than in SA. Mustard is in tubes and you can't figure out what strength you're getting. Chicken is the only identifiable meat, which makes you nervous as you don't want to buy reindeer or elk when you are looking for pork. Since we promised our godsprog Ella that we'd play with the reindeers and give them loves from her when we went to visit Santa, we didn't want to have to explain how we accidentally ate Rudolph.
Later in the day, we returned to Levi to hire snowboards, boots and helmets as it's our intention to learn a winter sport while here. They ask very personal questions when fitting you, like your weight, height, age, political views and favorite sexual positions. Quite nosy, the Finns.
B had to get bigger boots to fit her big clown feet, and a kiddie's helmet to fit her tiny head, but eventually we were trudging off across the slopes to go learn how to snowboard (or at least how to fall correctly). Our trainer was Tim, but his nickname was "Shnofflewhatsitjam". Not really, but that's what it sounded like.
To be continued...
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it sounds like such a magic holiday, keep having fun
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