Travelog for: Racko

Hi dear Racko!

Great to hear from you again! Geo caching is a suitable hobby for ToyVoyagers, I think! You can crawl in all sort of tiny holes. And I bet you aren't scared of spiders!

Give a big hug to Henna and all your TV-friends.

Love,

your mum Emjay

Hello again, dear fellow toyvoyagers, siblings, mom and gran and patient hosts!  And thanks for greetings, mom!

Today it rains "kuin Esterin perseestä" like the Finnish saying goes, and it is a good day to write updates!
What? You want to know what the Finnish saying means? Are you quite sure?  Just asking, because sometimes it is better not to know.. 
All right, all right, but remember, it was you who demanded me to tell! 

Litterally it means: "It rains like from Esther´s arse." Yep. Simple and logical, isn´t it? And yes, it is a genuine and wide spread Finnish saying.  If you want to hear the historical explanation too, you better ask our friend Mr Casanova, I´m sure he knows everything about it! (He usually knows everything that has to do with ars.. Hi, don´t hit me with that pillow! Ok, ok, I don´t write it!



But now to the update. Do you think I talk too much?  Some folks say I talk too much, which, I think, is an absurd idea, cannot understand where it comes from! I can tell that compared with some other toyvoyagers around here (no names mentioned) I talk very little indeed!
Ach, the update, where was I? 

Here you can observe our valiant gang, and if you are very observant, you can maybe realize we´re sitting on a boat! Yes!

It was a boat named Viking Express, and we were on our way to Tallinn, Estonia! 



I bet you cannot guess why we were travelling to Tallinn! 
We were going there because our host Henna wanted to buy a book, an Estonian book, which she was not able to buy in Finland.  Quite an interesting reason to travel to the neighbouring country, but like I´ve said before, there are probably some Moomins lost from her Valley. 
Anyway, it was a very fast trip - the going over the Finnish Gulf took about 2 hours, and then we had about four hours time to spend in Tallinn, before our ship left back to Helsinki again. 



We enjoyed the trip! We went to promenade on the deck, and it was fun, because it was so windy there we were able to lean against the wind!
The seagulls were using the wind to float over our ship, and one of them was in a nasty mood, and tried to hrm.. bombard us. It maybe had something to do with the fact that Zoe the Kiwi shouted "Hi, mate, bring us some herring, since you don´t seem to have anything better to do!" to it.   



We watched small islands to slide by Yes, thank you, dear Mr Casanova, I know quite well the islands were not sliding, it were us who were sliding, or the boat, to be exact. It was just a figure of speech! (What an smart ass..)



In the stern there was a deck bar, which looked quite nice, but when we tried to enter, there was a  guy who told us to show our papers.
Well, we all rummaged through our pockets and bags, and presented all our papers to the guy - I had a bus ticket, Momo had some caramel wrappings, Mr Casanova had about 800 love letters, Zoe had some toilet paper (unused) and Crawfish had a paper which had been round a kilo of herrings some days before, but even so the guy didn´t let us in, although he showed some interest towards Mr Casanova´s letter collection. 



So we went back in and had our own party on a window sill! Usually our own parties are the best parties, anyway! 

Pretty soon we arrived to Tallinn!



Tallinn´s name comes from the Estonian words "Taani linn", which means "The Danish town".
Denmark controlled the town after they had beaten the Estonians in the Lindanise battle 1219.
The town existed though long before, and its original name was Revala, a name which had to do with the dense population of foxes (rebane in Estonian) which lived on the caves and holes  and burrows on the hills over which the town had been built. 



After running with Henna to her precious bookshop and dragging her out again screaming and kicking "So many interesting books! Just half an hour more!" we still had some time to walk in the old part of the town.
We saw narrow medieval alleys paved with cobble stones, and lots of churches and very inviting bakeries and sweetshops.. 



The old town consisted in the medieval style of upper town and downtown.  The elite lived in the upper town, and there was also its administrative center, department of justice etc.
The common people, craftsmen and labourers lived in the downtown, and the two parts of the town were rather hostile towards each other, and no wonder too - the elite consisted of invaders - first Danes and then Germans, and the common people didn´t trust them and wise versa. There was a big, guarded gate between the two parts of town.. 



We climbed on the upper town hill slope to see the walls and towers the elite built around it to guard themselves against the people. There were many bloody rebellions and uprisings throughout the medieval period - so there was a good reason. 



But now it was a peaceful place. The sun shone upon us, and the hillside grew many wild flowers, the butterflies were flying around us, and a bunch of local drunkards were singing in a very entertaining way some distance away. A beautiful summer day! 

In middle of all this peace and beauty, we talked about weird things - why is the history of people so full of  fighting and invading? 
Well, of course we toyvoyagers fight all the time with each other, and invade the beds and swings and sandwiches and whatnot of each other - but to be serious with it and really hurt each other?  That would never do! Our fights always end in five minutes and we settle it all and be best friends again - after all - we are all toyvoagers! maybe humans will learn this some day too!



The sympatethic red bridge runs over what once was a moat. I don´t think they ever had crocodiles in it! They would not thrive in Estonian climate. 
Nowadays the area is a popular park. The moats have been turned into pools in which ducks swim around and people are feeding them.



Sadly we had to start to walk back towards the harbour and our ship which was waiting for us.
But on the way there we saw still many beautiful old buildings.
The yellow building on the left is an old school. 



I liked Tallinn, or the little part we had time to see, at least! 
Maybe we come here still another time, never know, if Henna wants to buy another book! 



We returned onto the Viking Express and climbed onto the deck to wave our goodbyes to Tallinn.



So long, Tallinn! Maybe we meet again! 

And we, my dear readers, will meet again pretty soon!
Your Racko 

Hello again, dear and ardent followers, mom and gran!
It is your favorite equine here again! 

We have arrived to the wonderful midsummer, although it seems the Finnish nature imagines it is autumn already. Everything is oddly ahead of time. 



Look the glorious lupines on the old pasture next to our cottage!

But what comes to the nature having lost its marbles.. well, usually for example the blueberries ripen here in Southern Finland in the end on July, but this year that happened in the end of June. The leaves on the trees start normally to turn yellow in August, and it´s happening already!  Some species of birds, who normally start to get ready for their annual migration in August, are behaving like that now over the fields, and even the spiders, who on normal years start to tuck into our little cottage in September to hibernate there, have started to roam in! 
(If you have very good eyesight you can see the spiders roaming towards the cottage here. ) 



We all wonder if it does mean something. An old man in the neighbour said it means that the coming winter  is going to be very cold and harsh, but on the other hand he has also told us that if there is lots of berries in the rowans and if the frogs jump high in July the next winter is going to be cold and harsh. 
So we don´t know what to think.



Of course it has its bright side too - we have already started feasting with forest berries - blueberries and the small, wild forest strawberries! 



Here we are heading into the forest (I mean, deeper into the forest - we live on the brink of it!) to pick and eat berries.
We don´t eat much anything else these days- and it is a bit so and so with the picking too - but we eat a lot! 



Nam nam nom nom mums mums slurp! 
Aren´t you starting to drool just watching this photo?



Our host Henna is picking berries into a big bucket and putting them into freezer in small plastic bags, to be eaten throughout the winter, and that is of course very smart, since she´ll have hungry toyvoyagers round her throughout the year, but we toyvoyagers pick a small bucketful each per day, and on the next morning there is nothing left - we got hungry during the night too! 



Here we are ready to head back home with our full buckets and full stomachs! 



In the long, luminous summer evenings we´ve gone for long walks onto the beautiful forests or meadows near by. 

Try to guess what is the time in this photo! Huh? 
It was taken at 23. 51! The sun  doesn´t set very low on these latitudes.



This time we were walking on a seashore meadow, where there are young bulls eating fresh hey.
Sometimes they go crazy and run like hell after each other. 



These boardwalks continue some kilometers on the wetlands, and our host Henna told us that when she went to high school, this was her route to school. 



Now we must hurry to pick more berries!
I wish you were here with us!
Kiss from Racko!