friends – Nokisuu

Tallinn

27.7.202528.7.2025 julkaissut Nokisuu

In mid June I visited Tallinn, Estonia with my girlfriends. In March I suggested we’d go for a hanficrafts shopping trip to Karnaluks, a huge shop with three floors full of all kinds of things for knitting, sewing, beadworks etc. So in June we finally did go.

Me and H stayed the night while K had to go home on Saturday night bc her mom is over 90 and K didn’t want her to spend the night alone.

In the morning we took the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn and in Tallinn we first took our bags to the hotel for safekeeping.

Me and H booked a room in Metropol Hotel which is nicely located between the harbour and the city centre. The hotel was nice and clean and quiet and on the other end of the building is The Metropolitan Hotel+Spa which is it’s own complex.

Then we found the right tram stop as Karnaluks is located a bit further from the city centre. The tram rout took about ten minutes (three stops) and it was easy to pay with contactless payment. We spent couple of hours enjoying everything crafty, I could have stayed longer but my friends were already waiting for me for a while.

After visiting Karnaluks we went to dinner to ViruKeskus, it’s about five minutes walk from the hotel.

The dinner was very good and we enjoyed some frozen mojito Margaritas to cool off. Afterwards we took a stroll in ViruKeskus shopping centre and then walked to one of the most well known cafes in Tallinn called Maiasmokk and then we walked K back to the ferry.

Maiasmokk is the oldest cafe in Tallinn, it dates back to 1864.

H and I did a bit of grocery shopping before heading back to the hotel and putting our feet up. After a while we started looking at the Spa’s adverts in the room and went to book some treatments for the morning.

On Sunday morning after the breakfast H went first to the Spa and then me. We both had a kind of feet massage, her’s was a bit longer than mkne, but it was so nice. I also had my eyebrows done and it was pretty nice.

Next to the hotel there’s a Kalev shop, Kalev is Estonian chocolate factory and much better than Fazer imo. They had some nice chocolates for sale so we did some shopping. Then we went to ViruKeskus to the big bookstore which was awesome.

Paper bag from the book shop with text ”I read” in Estonian. It’s almost same in Finnish.

Around noon we took the tram to Telliskivi, the artsy side of city. There we strolled around for a while and looked around the huge second hand market before we decided to go and take the tram to Kadriorg Palace and park.

We walked in the palace grounds for a while but it was a pretty hot day so we ended up in a very nice cafe which had probably been a gate guards house earlier.

Then we took the tram back to our hotel to get our bags and went to the harbour side for dinner and a walk through a grocery shop before the ferry trip.

We had nice weekend trip with girls and I might take another day trip to Karnaluks shop in the fall (if I run out of yarn 🤣).

It was nice to start my summer holidays with this short trip.

Happy new year

3.1.20243.1.2024 julkaissut Nokisuu

I have been pretty tired all autumn and also busy so I haven’t been much here. I’ve been way too much in Reddit and on Twitter but I hope to start doing more ’live’ things now as the spring approaches.

I feel like I have only been to work or going there or going home from work lately and it’s not good. I’m a bit worried how this beginning year will go, I’m a bit bored at my work and now my colleague has the last training to do for her studies which means that I’ll probably need to attend to more work than previously.

I managed to read or listen to 111 books last year. I blame Chief Inspector Gamache for that partly because I found the books by Louise Penny so charming that I couldn’t resist reading the ten first of them during November and December. Of course I read other things too but these were like drug to me.

Anyways everything is fine, eldest son spent all of December in Japan and just came home on New year’s eve. Middlest son was here for the Christmas and left back to Central Finland with his gf today and youngest one keeps mainly to his games these days. I managed to get him to movies, before Christmas we saw Wonka which we liked very much and after Christmas we and hubby went to see Napoleon which was okay.. the costumes were really awesome and the cinematography too.

Earlier this fall I went to see the new Kaurismäki film called Fallen leaves and I can recommend it. It’s on board for the best motion picture category in Golden globes’s and the female lead actor Alma Pöysti is nominated in Golden Globes too. It’s a lovely movie of two people in the sidelines. Go see it if you can.

So I hope to get better at updating this blog too. If you want you can add me in Goodreads too, here’s a link to my profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5830297-susanna

Oh and if you want to you can follow me in Instagram, my nickname there is also nokisuu as in so many other places.

End of May and others

29.5.202330.5.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

Adding a trigger warning here, this post talks about death right at the beginning.

I think last time I mentioned I was going to Stockholm with my friend M. Unfortunately they all got Covid and we debated about going as she was already healthy again before our traveling day was approaching but her mom was in really bad shape and we decided not to. M’s mom had Alzheimer’s and weighed only 36 kilos so she didn’t have the resources to pull through and after a week she just faded away. M said it’s really weird now since they have a lot of free time with her dad now as they used to home care for her mom.

Today as I was looking through the most well known Finnish newspaper which has a lot of obituaries every Sunday (M wished she’d get the latest Sunday paper because of her mom’s obituary) I noticed a familiar name among other obituaries. My old colleague whom I used to call my work brother had lost his brother in March and his obituary was on the paper also.

After work I went to meet my colleague and tell him I was sorry, his brother was just two years older than me. We chatted a while since he knows me and DH and the boys so it was nice to catch up. He said his brother had been ill for a long time but as he lived with their parents and took care of them it’s kind of hard for him now to do everything on top of his work (they were/are both bachelors).

On other news Middlest son’s girlfriend enrolled to pursue her studies in Jyväskylä so they’d move together and first it looked like it was not going to happen since the English IT-courses she’s enrolling had over 3700 people wanting to start and they only took 25 students but she made it and now in July she’ll be moving to Jyväskylä too. I’m so glad. Since Middlest son will be making a career in the Defence forces it’s important that he’ll have a girlfriend who is willing to move where the DF sends him.

What else? I spent three nights at the summer cottage with eldest son in mid May and it was very nice. The weather was very warm and I swam in the lake for the first time this year, the water was +18C degrees and so nice.

The Eurovision Song Contest was very good too this year and so exciting! Finland with Käärijä’s Cha Cha Cha came second and as someone said Finland won but Sweden holds the party next year so it’s all good. We are very proud of Käärijä 🙂

The Mayor of Vantaa (my hometown mayor and also our next door neighbour) Ritva Viljanen gets a kiss from Käärijä. She almost forgot to give the flowers to him 🙂 I just love this picture.

In about three weeks I’ll be on my summer holidays at summer cottage but before that I’ll begin an online course about Elements of AI in Open university due to my boss’ recommendation. We can do the course on our work hours which is good.

I think this is all from me now. See you later alligator 🙂

I’m waiting for the album to come out in September.

P. S. Maybe next time I’ll upload the cat video I made on the video course I took part in April.

Long time no see

23.3.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

I just saw that I haven’t been updating since January, almost two months ago. Sorry for that but Finland has been chosen as the world’s happiest country sixth time in row! Let’s not let that bother us anyways.

Nothing much has happened, mostly just the normal everyday life sucks all time. I’ve also been reading more lately and have already finished 25 books this year. And now as I remember again this blog base doesn’t show my Instagram feed for some reason on the right side bar but you’ll find me under name nokisuu there if you want to see piccies. I have some troubles with adding them on these posts (no idea why) so it’ll be easier if you go there.

I’ve been on a live music concert since my favourite Finnish artist Ismo Alanko published a new album and there’s a series of gigs. I bought tickets as a birthday gift for my friend Heidi, we danced 2 and a half an hours with Ismo and other people and it was awesome.

Last weekend I had Friday off so I browsed three museums before my osteopathy appointment and it was fun. The museums were the Zoological museum, Kiasma – The contemporary national art gallery of Finland and HAM – The Helsinki city art Museum. I especially loved the Zoological museum because when I was a child we lived quite near to it and I used to spend a lot of time there and so have a lot of happy memories. My osteopath is leaving to work to Canada soon so every time I make a reservation for her it may be the last one.

On Saturday I went to theater with my old friend from library school. There’s a contemporary author Tommi Kinnunen who has written several novels about Finnish women during and after the war times and this play is based on his book ’Defiance’ and it tells the story of five women who ended up to Narvik in Norway with the German troops and how they walked home from there when the Germans left and they were supposed to be taken into a camp as war criminals but they escaped. I really liked the novel and it was very well adapted onto stage so it was quite nice except someone in the audience had a stroke and it caused a bit of excitement.

Afterwards we had nice dinner in a restaurant and talked about everything going on in both of our lives and it was nice to catch up.

The Eurovision Song Contest is coming up too and Finland’s representative is dividing audiences here and there. I myself find the song Cha Cha Cha funny and the rapper Käärijä is a very down-to-earth-kind young man, he is so sweet and level headed. Once again Finland is on the bookies lists in the top but as you might know Finland is always on the top, it just depends which side you start from. I myself hope this time we’d win, it’d be so great!

Here is an article about Käärijä winning the UMK contest if you’d like to read more. I’ll add the song at the bottom of this update. I don’t know how you all feel about the songs this year but I think Finland’s song is the perfect party anthem, it tells a story of a man who needs to drink in order to relax enough so he can go dancing and be himself. So a lot like Finns.

On other news yesterday evening was a parent-teacher meeting at youngest son’s school and it was nice. His teacher is very nice and we had a chat after the communal meeting and since I’ve been a bit concerned if he has any friends it was a relief to hear that he does. Later at home I asked him and he just said that they are pretty much all footballers which is funny as he doesn’t care for football much. But everything is quite good atm here.

I have a lot of free days from work and they must be used before May so next month I have one whole week at work. Also both me and hubby have the week before Easter off so we thought we might drive to summer cottage to have a look how it’s been there but it’ll be just a day trip. Later in April me and Mareetta are going to Stockholm for two nights as she’s having a 6-month-leave from work. I might update after that 🙂

Next week (on April Fool’s day) we are having the Parliamental elections here and it’s looking pretty grim, the far right Finns and Social Democrats (Sanna Marin’s own party) are off to a duel. It’ll be a very tight win for either one I fear. More about the elections here.

Enjoy Finland’s party anthem! There’s one with subtitles too in Youtube but the video is not as good imo.

Quick one

31.10.202231.10.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

This is just a quick post because I realized that October is ending and I haven’t written anything since mid-September.

I have been busy at work but as the school’s here have a so-called Fall leave in mid-October and my workplace is a school so I took the week off.

As DH didn’t have leave I went to summer cottage with eldest and youngest son. We managed to get the cottage warm even thou I forgot to take newspapers with us. We had nice time, went to sauna on both nights and managed to do the couple of things we were meant to; turn the row boat upside down and put locks on the barn doors.

Me and DH need to drive there once more since I forgot to close the fireplace dampers… Don’t ask how.

Then I took youngest son to Stockholm by ferry and it was nice. We had good food, ate breakfast at Mr Cake and visited our fave shop Scifi bokhandeln in the Old city. We also visited the Stockholm City public library’s main building which is very pretty.

About Mr Cake, if you’re familiar with the name Josef Fares or Fares Fares, Swedish actor and director brothers, Mr Cake’s owner Roy Fares is their cousin. I must say the Fares’ brothers movies are quite funny and I think Fares Fares was in the Westworld too.

Now we’ve turned the clocks towards wintertime and darkness approaches in other ways too.

I wonder what will happen with Twitter so I made myself an account on mastodon.social. You’ll find me there by this alias too, as I’m everywhere with it.

Here’s a pic from last night. My friend and I did a short roadtrip to seaside and Tammisaari and enjoyed the views.

Some March musings

27.3.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

Today it’s the 6th anniversary of my Mom’s passing. Today it’s also the day Middlest one moved out of home to the NDA dormitory first and next week he’ll be getting a flat in Central Finland. So it’s not always the sad memories to go by.

Middlest son is going to move to a ’right of occupancy’-apartment. Since we haven’t been able to travel these past two years we’ll loan the needed money to him and then he’ll pay it back in some years. The apartment is about 49 square meters, has sauna and balcony and is located next to a lake on second floor. He’ll have about 1 km to the city centre via the bridge. I’m glad he got the place (since I found it) but we’ll need to buy everything starting from bed sheets. We’re planning to go see the place around April, before Easter weekend.

DH is getting better, he’s in not so much pain anymore but he still naps some hours per day which is good. I had to go to talk with a nurse at my work health care since I begun to feel so overwhelmed and it was good I did. I feel much lighter.

Youngest one had the enrollment to high school and he applied first on the Middlest one’s school. I hope he gets in as it would be a short biking or bus route to take and also Hubby works next door so he’d get a ride every now and then too. It’s one of the hardest ones to get in to, a sort of elite school, because it’s the University training school for teachers but it’s also top rate studying. The final results come in Mid-June.

Last week I went to movies with youngest one to see Moonfall. It was so much fun, no logic and totally unbelievable but very good for relaxing. We enjoyed it a lot.

I also went for a ride with my friend Mareetta, we drove to Tammisaari and then watched the sun down in Inkoo harbor and the moon rise at Kaivopuisto in Helsinki. We had lovely day in wonderful spring weather and great food.

January gone

5.2.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

It’s already February and I’ve been lazy updating.

I’ve been at work since Jan 10th when my holidays ended. We’ve been in the closed down house alone with the janitors and some teachers. The Helsinki city Education decided that all adult hobby groups go teaching ’via net’ except Finnish for foreigners and so the kids schools have been open but elderly people have sat at home, most of them vaccinated too . We (me and my colleague) have been giving digital IT help via phone and also helped teachers with their lessons and other stuff. I must say I’ve been on the verge of depression due to this last closure and some of our clients said the same.

Luckily since Feb 1st we are open again and the teachers can decide themselves how they want to keep their lessons. On the beginning of March all classes will return to classes.

Hubby had a small infection in his tubes (due to the kidney stone) and he got meds for it and is now better. The tube is bothering him a bit and it’ll be operated on Feb 18th as both of the doctors who knew the procedure were sick which delayed his operation.

Eldest son was skiing in Lapland two weeks ago and managed to break his wrist. As it was Sunday he had to go to the private clinic there which did a good job but it cost 720€. He paid it with his student loan and we gave him the money afterwards. The private clinic had said he needs to show the wrist to a doctor here and last weekend he had been in the HUS hospital twice for X-rays and then on Monday he had seen the surgeon. The surgeon had said the plaster isn’t enough to keep the bones still so they operated his hand today, he got metal plates inserted and they’ll probably be permanent.

Middlest son came home a week ago, he was camping with other army guys in forest for three weeks in Northern Finland. Since then he’s had one day at the garrison. On March he’s moving to Central Finland as his pilot training in the Air Force begins. We’ve been searching for flats there, mainly ’right of occupancy’ apartments as it’d be better for now as he’ll be there about three years and so he made a request of one which looked really nice. I said to hubby that I’d like keep the flat as a summer residence if we won’t sell it when middlest one leaves the place.

Youngest one turns 16 next Tuesday and we are thinking of going out to dinner next weekend with the whole family. Due to hubby’s condition I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask people to come to our house right now, we can have cake later with youngest one’s godparents at home.

Youngest son is trying to decide between high schools as the enrolling time gets nearer at the end of this month. We have managed to get him to apply for some schools nearby that have great reputation, the final results come back on June which is still far away. I hope he’ll get into the first one (which is the one middlest son went to) but the rest are not bad either.

We’ve had a real snow fall last weekend and this weekend. Me and middlest one have done the shoveling and Sirius enjoys playing in the snow, she’s so funny.

I’m so relieved that I finally received the Christmas gift Michelle sent me on Dec 14th. I was worried it had gone missing so I asked an old acquaintance (a message board friend) who works at the Postal services if he’d help and then the package was found and I got it yesterday! Thanks Michelle, I’m so happy ❤

Today is our National Poet’s day = Runeberg’s day, he is celebrated with a small pastry that holds his name. Mine was vegan and very good.

What a week

25.12.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

It’s been the kind of week you just hope it’ll end safely.

On Monday at work we were wondering why there is a smell of smoke. We checked every place but this time it wasn’t our building. It was the largest coffee roastery in Helsinki which is situated a block away over the football field. The smoke was pretty heavy and as I went to lunch the air was grey with smoke even some blocks further from the fire. Funnily our nearest work lunch place is on the Main fire station next to my work, there were many people from my work having lunch and sitting a bit longer in a smokefree place. I did a short walk a bit further to get some clean air, since we didin’t have clients anymore it was okay to stay a bit longer. The fire continued to Wednesday when the fire department finally got it out. Here you can see a video footage of the fire.

I felt like a smoked ham after work but I met a friend after work in the city centre. We changed gifts and it was nice to have a chat and nice cup of coffee after all day inhaling smoke at work.

On Tuesday the smoke didn’t get indoors anymore but as it was last day before my days off I didn’t much care. I left early as I went to dinner with my friend Mareetta. She had some trouble coming to pick me up from my work as the fire was on one of the main entryways to the city centre. (In twitter someone compalined the fire trucks being on the bicycle lane…) We drove to the seaside to take some pics of the sundown and then went to eat to a shopping centre.

On Wednesday I had my first day off and as youngest son had a short day at school we went to movies after his school to see the new Spiderman : No way home which was very good, we really enjoyed it. The new Dr Strange movie looks good too.

Eldest son was coming to spend the Christmas with us so hubby went to get him and they did some last grocery shopping. In the evening DH started to say his tummy ached a lot and then he threw up from the pain twice and finally around 10pm he was in so much pain he was just crying with pain on the sofa and I said I’ll call the Emergency Services and he said yes. So I did and they send an ambulance to assess the situation, at this point eldest son was already sleeping as he had an early morning next day. The ambulance crew took hubby to the hospital for a check-up and I was left with my old traumas (from when my dad died) to spend the night badly. Luckily eldest one slept through all of this but middlest and youngest one were still awake when hubby left so they were a bit tired too.

On Thursday around 10 am DH got out of the hospital and middlest one went to get him. It was kidney stones and the doctors had decided not to operate as it’d be a too big an emergency operation. Instead he got great painkillers and they’ll call him in for an operation soon, then they’ll blast the kidney stones so they come out more easily. Hubby still has pains as now the stones have moved downward but he’s able to do things at some level. Boys were great help, they carried the Christmas tree indoors and did all the things DH usually does.

This has put a bit of dampening on our Christmas but not much. Yesterday after dinner both elder boys fell asleep as they were so stuffed and we gave gifts later. I had bought the new Abba LP as a gift for DH and me, it was awesome. Even Sirius came to listen to it 🙂

I watched Die hard with middlest son and went to bed around 1am. Today I napped an hour on the sofa and then read a book. Now I’m planning to watch Die hard 2 or Jumanji 2 or Jungle cruise which I have yet to see.

Smokey day, I was on my way to lunch (next to the church).

The fire is where you can see the blue lights

I hope this year will end soon and nothing extreme happens next week. I’m quite done already.

Fall holiday’s over

23.10.202123.10.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

I’ve been on holiday this week. As I work in the City Education organization we’ve got the same holiday schedule as schools and so I took the whole week off and it’s been nice. I haven’t done much but that’s all right too.

Last weekend me, hubby and youngest one took a long awaited cruise to Stockholm. We have these huge ferries that sail (run?) from Helsinki to Stockholm and back during the night and then you’ve got a day in the city there, for us Finns it’s Stockholm and for Swedes it’s Helsinki. They are called shopping cruises bc the ferry has a huge tax free shop and people buy a lot of alcohol from the ship. We buy a lot of candy and some cosmetics. I linked our ship Silja Serenade there, it’s been about ten years since we last took a Silja Line ship bc we’ve been using Viking Line since hubby did some work for them and got rewards.

In Stockholm we visited the Abba The Museum in Djurgården, it’s such an awesome place for one who has grown with their music. After the museum we took a ferry to Gamla Stan (Old City) which has one of the best scifi bookshops in Europe and it’s on our ’visit every time’-list. I bought only three books this time and one dvd. Oh and a wall calendar for next year. Then we walked to the newer city centre, the main shopping street has a nice candy store where you can buy traditional Swedish polkagrisar (= peppermint candy).

Since I had already told hubby I wanted to have a coffee (fika) at Mr. Cake cafeteria we went there and luckily managed to enter at a time the queue wasn’t very long (a short while afterwards the queue went out of the door to the small square). From the cafeteria we walked back to the ferry and were there in good time, about an hour before the departing time, which was nice.

Hubby had Monday off work which was nice. After we had come home and let the cat out we unpacked our bags. Middlest son had left on Sunday to Tikkakoski for a flying thingy and came home on Tuesday. On Tuesday I did a short walk in the forest as we had walked about 15 km during the day in Stockholm and my legs were a bit stiff. On Wednesday it rained all day and I read all day, I finished ’The Shadow of what was lost’ by James Islington and felt sorry I had even started the book. I can’t recommend it to anybody. Oh and I did bake cinnamon buns, they were good.

On Thursday my friend Mareetta and I drove to Tammisaari again. On our way there we did an expedition to a funny little shop called ’The Greenhouse effect’ which has all kinds of awesome stuff to buy and then we drove to Fiskars village. We had a very nice lunch in Tammisaari and then drove back via Fagervik (it dates back to the 17th century) and Kirkkonummi new library, only we didn’t go in this time. It looks like I’m going with Mareetta to Gothenburg in mid-November, it’ll be nice.

On Friday we had horrible weather, rain and very windy. I had my osteopathy therapy session in the city centre and then I met youngest son in the Eastern shopping mall, he needed new clothes and he wanted to buy new cell phone with his gift money from the confirmation day. In the evening we watched couple of episodes of Buffy with him.

Tomorrow I’m putting some bulbs on the ground so we’ll have tulips and crocuses next spring too.