Day 9: Rovaniemi

We woke to grey skies again – quite heavy rain showers and chilly air temps.  We packed up roughly and headed off for breakfast – which consisted of generous amounts of the usual – tho whole wheat porridge was different, but very yummy.  Proteined up with omelette – and carbed up with croissant with jam!  All good!
We are both suffering a little from our midnight walk last night –we didn’t get to bed until after 1:30 – after walking around in the daylight at midnight. It was great to take photos at midnight without all these silly tourists getting in the wayJ

We went over to the shopping mall and bought some souvenirs for posting and organised a letter from Santa for a little special girl I know!!  Then loaded up bikes and headed downhill back to Rovaniemi city.  Our plan was to find a laundry – an ongoing issue – but failed.  They don’t do same day delivery and there’s no coin laundries in Rovaniemi!!!  There’s gotta be somewhere to make a comment about that.  We got back to railway station, stuffed our things into lockers and went to the café to have lunch. (with wifi!)  Mushroom soup with breads, salad, juice & coffee sorted me out, while Karina scoffed down the Dish of the Day – sausages wrapped in bacon and mashed potatoes.  She said they were pretty good too!  We’re storing energy for our big day of riding in Sweden!!

Nice bike path in Rovaniemi

Then we went off looking for the cemetery where Karina’s great grandparents lay.  This took us off on a nice bike ride – we must say we have been lucky since lunchtime – no more rain – still pretty chilly, but we are getting tougher.  Tho the mossies are still a bit tiring!  Anyways, we rode along a bike path, far too far – but it was very pleasantly lined with wildflowers and heaps of pilfinks and sädersäla to keep a birdwatcher happy!  We eventually decided we had missed the turn, so we chucked a uey and headed back to town.  We could see the Orthodox Church spire, so we headed for that as I wanted to see that also.  The young girl in there eventually worked out where the cemeteries were, so after looking thru the rather new - but very nice church -  we headed off, past the university to the No4 cemetery. 



So lets get past this lake first...





Orthodox Church, Rovaniemi

 

The Pulpit

An interesting mural

small scale stained glass

Church interior - quite modern

Pipe organ up the back - as usual

Car or bike park at Cemetery 4, Rovaniemi

Typical rock wall around cemeteries

Ville & Hilda's gravesite

After the head stone was cleaned

Then the sun came out

At the front gate to Cemetery 4





Flat tyre No 1

Just a side note of history on Rovaniemi. There's nothing much old left in Rovaniemi. At the end of WWII, the Germans razed Rovaniemi to the ground basically. They were leaving just ahead of the Russians arriving, so didn't want to leave anything left for them.  Hence even the churches were burnt and I guess that's why the Orthodox Church is pretty bland, it was built in 1953 and lacks all that old charm of faded painted wallpaintings and heaps of lovely stained glass. 


Anders had told us the row number – E8 – so we were easily able to track down the site for Ville Juho & Hilda Oikarainen. There were new summer flowers planted but the lichen was starting to cover the names and dates, so we spent some time cleaning the face of the stone, to make it easy to read the dates. It was sad to that they had died within 3 weeks – or maybe that’s how she wanted it. Or were they both ill with something… it was in 1949 that they died, so they had survived WWII. They were both relatively young, 66 & 61 –but times were different then. It was so good to track down this site.

Pizza - Finnish style

So we have come back to the railway station, after fixing a flat tyre on Karina’s bike.  We had ridden through some broken glass and she managed to collect some.  We’ve about 3 hours to wait until our train leaves for Turku – a sleeper is booked so all will be well. 

 We shall be bright as buttons tomorrow morning when we arrive in Turku – in time for a 20km dash out to Moomin land and another 20km back before lunching at Harald’s viking restaurant  - well, that’s the plan.  Will laundry get in the way of a good plan or will we just continue to float along in a haze of grot!  Who knows! 

Stay tuned and all (well maybe not All) will be revealed!