Goodbye Jyvaskyla

Our last night here - and at last I can spell the name without looking it up! We had a great dinner last night with Peppi, Anne, and Tarja in a Viking restaurant eating Rudolph, Bambi, and other exotic meats, and here I am wearing one of the silly hats!

And this photo is one of my favourite views looking down the mall from the University end - I wish I had the ability to capture sound with image (yeah yeah I know it is possible!!) because the main thing that hits us whenever we see this view is the lack of noise - no loud speakers from shops no yelling yes people are talking but it just seems so quiet compared to a mall in Oz. And yes bike riding is popular in Finland especially during the summer.

On my school visit yesterday I taught a new word to the two lovely young men who showed me around - pushbike!!!

And so onto Tampere and then Helsinki and then Paris and then Sheffield! But the last photo is of two of our new friends, Anne and Tarja - will have to make sure the next pic has Peppi in it!

To our new Finnish friends

I just want to be clear that the last posting was not "things that are wrong with Jyvaskyla" but "things WE HAVE DONE WRONG in Jyvaskyla. It was not a comment on this wonderful town and people but on the hapless mistakes that linguistically and culturally ignorant Aussies like us can make when travelling!

Things to get wrong in Jyvaskyla!

1. Our first attempt to catch the bus - we thought we were so clever reading the bus timetable - which we also think is why Finland is top of the PISA results - so hard to read everyone here says "Just walk"! Anyway we were on the wrong side of the road!! Caught an expensive cab home instead!
2. Mothers' Day in Finland is a "flag day" which means flags are flown but it also means it is a public holiday and that also means that all shops are closed - yes, even the little supermarket at the end of the street!
3. Breakfast out - umm no you can't do that in Jyvaskyla - don't know about the rest of Finland but breakfast or even brunch is not something people do. Our first attempt we ended up with hamburgers for breakfast - they were quite good hamburgers but not the same as bacon and eggs! We are told that breakfast is somthing that people do for themselves; they don't go out for breakfast.
4. Eating out - generally has been a dismal failure. Apart from a lovely meal with Peppi, Tarja, Anne, Mia on one of our first nights here at Figaros our other attempts on our own have been pretty mediocre. From walking up to the local shopping centre that Mothers Day to find everything closed. Walking up yet again one Friday night to find that the only food available was pizza in various forms. Having lunch in a "mexican" restaurant last Saturday which was ok except Sandy was sick for the next two days! This last Friday night finding a restaurant quite close by on the bus route (only one bus per hour though). The food was pretty good but not licensed - imagine us without a glass of red over dinner! And now tonight - today on the bus as we drove past the harbour we noticed lots of tents, marquees, tables and benches, lots of people. We knew this was the night of Fun in the Sun all night, so we thought we would wander down there for dinner tonight - great idea except they were all finished and closed up!!!
5. Bureaucracy - headed into the bank on a saturday morning to pay the invoice for the apartment to find out well they're not open on a Saturday. We went again on Monday to find that well they don't open til 10am and we were there at 9.15! This morning, we headed into the Post Office. Their website clearly says they are open until 2pm on Saturdays, well except for this particular branch on this particular Saturday.

Jyvaskyla

Photos of our time in Jyvaskyla so far! You can see the development of summer in the photos as we move from coats to t-shirts, and the trees move from bare branches to leaves - and today they had blossom on them!! It is amazing how quickly they change. In the three weeks we have been here we have walked past nearly each day a bed of tulips - from just leaves, to buds, to flowers that are  now dying off, all so rapidly!

Jyväskylä

Ok so here we are almost at the end of our first week in Jyvaskyla. So where are we? About four hours north of Helsinki- well by train at least - this train map shows the route we took via Tampere. Tarja Nikula collected us from the station and took us to our home for the next four weeks. Apartment with large living area and kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, so much space compared to JoBurg and warm all the time! Tarja had kindly left breakfast essentials so no need to explore that first evening - even though it was still daylight at 10pm it felt like evening anyway!
Cold and Daylight are the first two impressions of the town. Even though it is spring it is cold enough for jumpers and coats, (and gloves that we bought on our second day here!) For most of the week it has been sunny which has meant the weird experience of watching people sitting outside in the sun eating lunch while we are wrapped in coats and gloves etc:-) Today Saturday is grey and gloomy and drizzly, just like those dreary Saturday afternoons I remember from Melbourne childhood winters.
And of course because we are so far north it is daylight almost all the time! Today's weather information includes: Sun rises 4:42 and sets 21:47. Length of day is 17 h 5 min. This is harder to get used to than the cold I think! Going to bed at 10pm when well, the sun isn't actually shining, but it is still light, is very hard to get used to.
Photos and the town and University next post!

TripAdvisor Review of Ivory Tree Lodge

Ivory Tree Lodge - Sorry not as good as they say it will be

Madrid slide show

Madrid

And then to Madrid! First time in Spain for me and I loved it. It was warm and sunny and calm and reasonably friendly and reasonably cheap. The hotel was great - large room in a terrific location and a real bargain at bit over AUD400 for three nights. I\ll put a slide show up of photos. Day One we arrived and after waiting for an hour! at the airport for bags caught cab to hotel and they had a room for us ready even though it was only 8am. Coffee and croissants then out for a stroll around the block, back to room for a nap and then our first of three nights eating at the Plaza Santa Ana I'm sure very touristy but certainly not as bad as the La Plaza Mayor which was overpriced with restaurant staff doing their best Lygon Street tout impressions! So each night we tried a different restaurant, two lots of tapas and a real dinner another night. The food was ok nothing to rave about but very cheap and the wine even cheaper!
On Friday we bought two days worth of tickets on the tourist bus only to discover that on Saturday they were not running because of a "demonstration". We did the rounds on the bus a couple of times and then hopped off at La Plaza Mayor for lunch and a stroll around the outside of the Royal Palace -inside free exhibition on Spanish archeology which at least gave us some idea of Spanish history.
We thought we would save La Prada til Saturday as the buses were not running and that would be our big museum experience with maybe a side trip to the Matisse exhibition at Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

Of course we realised on Saturday that it was May Day, huge parade - I'd say 100s of thousands of people but no judge of crowd size - it was fantastic experience - sandy took photos of hammer and sickle flags which we don't often see in Oz, we wandered through the army headquarters which seemed to be open specially for the occasion. Unfortunately what was NOT open was La Prada - or any other museums either. Very disappointed to have missed it and then found out later that the museum that holds the most famous Spanish painting of all, Picasso´s "Guernica", was just around the corner from our hotel and that was also closed!! S
So not much "culture| but lots of excuses to go back - and I would any day - don't know what the rest of Spain is like but I loved Madrid!

South Africa or Northern Victoria?

Look at this!! Driving back from Pilanesberg to JoBurg the country is like driving on the Hume Highway!! Until you come to a little township of course like this one.

Pilanesberg

It feels like months since we left South Africa but only one week today! So now I am online at work and at home in Jyvaskyla I will go back and retrace what we have done so far. So Pilanesberg and the Ivory Tree Game Lodge!! The park is beautiful, the animals amazing, the lodge mmmm not 5 star by any means. I've written a full review on TripAdvisor so will see if it gets published. Yes it was cold and wet but you can see we are both still smiling. I will restrain myself to just one animal photo yes that is our vehicle's windscreen in front of the rhino!