Pielinen, Karjala and Finland

Pielinen is big lake in Karjala (place in Finland). Pielinen provides tens of islands, different kind of boat trips, where you can even take your car with (Cruises) and there are lots of middle-sized Finnish cities around the Pielinen to investigate. For foreigners, this area of Finland, can bring both pure nature as well as high enough level hotels, motels and dining opportunities, nature and culture and place for relax and enjoy. What I didnt say is high level hotels.... but high enough. Which means that in this area there is probably one hotel, which meets business traveler glass hotel.... on the other hand, who the heck would like to spend nights in the hotel, when there is nice places in the park also available.

In some sense, there are lots of stories, which can be told, but this far I dont need to share any of those. if Koli is somehow interesting place, there are pretty good information available as well as enough picture information.

Ruunaankoski, Finland

Ruunaankoski is near Koli, just about 90 km via road by rounding big lake of Pielinen. Koli is presenting as pure Finnish landscape you can found and Koli is located in county of Karjala. Ruunaankoski is although interesting place, where you can paddle down about rapids, classified from 1-4 depending on time and amount of water. I selected my way to go all these 6 main rapids via rubber boat. With my rubberboat there was family Müller from Sweden also participating. Parents speaked pretty good Finnish also, but the rest of the family was speaking only Swedish.... well, that doesnt matter, because then I can practise my swedish as well in the safe environment.

Ruunaankoski was pretty interesting in that sense, that I was able to compare my early experiences with going to rapids with canoe and see how different it is with rubber boat. At the same time I was practising to speak Swedish as well as discussing with Pekka (the guide, who is in the picture). At the same time there was also other rubber boat, which was celebrating bachelor's party. In the first rapid, they really tried to throw the groom out of the boat, but one friend and the best man was the saldo of that.... next rapid they did agreement, that without bruses and broken nose, the groom was "voluentarily" willing to drop to rapids, he did it and we all had fun.

Aftarwards I got some kind of certificate from there, but dont know where I put that. Interesting. Well... that was probably one of the best parts in my whole trip...at least most of the memories was stored and Pekka's stories were pretty funny abot diving boat motors from the rapids... every dive they found one, but after 6th dive, they found their own :-)

Trip to Koli, Finland

Koli is one of the most famous places in Soutern part of Finland. Koli sets up some kind of standard for Finnish nature and mostly if you have lived or stayed enough in Finland, you need to visit in Koli at least once, so you know what people are talking about. Koli is in the middle of nowhere in that sense, that most biggest cities in Finland (which are not actually that big), like Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Oulu are not very close to Koli, so if you wish to visit in Koli, you probably need to plan your trip well and reserve several days to achieve Pielinen (lake) and Koli itself (some kind of big rocky hill).

For me, I thought that I would like to spend time with relaxing and figuring out about new job and old job and about past year when building a house. I thought, that I need time to relax, so I was first thinking about Lapland. I have been there so often when I was young, so I have some kind of companionship and mutual understanding with Lapland, so it is somehow like going to home when visiting in Lapland. This time I just didnt have totally one week time to travel, so I was needed to decide some closer option and if I dont remember totally wrong, from Helsinki to Koli it was probably something like 500 km or something, so in that sense very reasonable driving time. Even by using small and not so cosy, but fast enough sport car (heh heh heh).

Well... I arrive Koli and first of all I visit top of Koli with my Camera. I saw lake Pielinen (in the picture) and I saw ferry in the lake closing. Then I thought that I will go with that, so no matter where it comes from, I will came also from there... so I will drive the opposite to lake and spend some sunny nice day in the deck of that ship, drinking soda or something (beer) and watching views.... Goddamned, that I will do :-)

Later on I need to say, that I really did it.

Yamaha Thunderace 1000 cc

Like some of you might know, I have two brothers...both are talented drivers with motorcycle, but only middle-brother Timo owns motorcycle. He has fast Yamaha Thunderace 1000 cc, with maximum speed 270 km/h. With that kind of device, which has near 150 hv (horsepower), but weight is only something like 230 kg, it is interesting to feel the power when you are driving. That Thunderace was visiting in my place for one week and I liked it a lot. My previous motorcycle experience was about 15 years ago, when I had Suzuki TS 125ER Enduro bike, which I managed to hit trees and after that the engine was broken.... well.... when I was young boy, I didnt have financial resources to fix that, so in that sense I sold the bike away and most of my friends were happy, because they were claiming, that my driving is "fast and furious".... well.... during that time it might time to time be that, but age has probably bring some wiseness... or then the power of Thunderce as something I was respecting....

Anyway, that was so relaxing and liberating experience, that I defently need to think about selling away my sport car and get this kind of device to me during summer 2007 :-) heh heh