Mikkeli: why?

The three Finnish people we know all had the same reaction when we told them we were going to live in Mikkeli for a month: an incredulous "why?"

Mikkeli is a city with a population of just over 50,000. It's hard to describe the vibe there. It's kinda like one neighbourhood of a larger city, or if Truro was 3x bigger and European and had an H&M. They get tourists but it's not a top Finnish destination. It's one of many cities that touches Lake Saimaa, the fourth largest freshwater lake in Europe, and the lake with the longest coastline in the world. This makes the whole region a destination for nature-lovers. We are living 10 minutes outside Mikkeli, in a century-old house on Lake Saimaa, while I do a visiting scholar fellowship at the University of Helsinki's Ruralia Institute, which is located in Mikkeli. While I'm here, I have to give two talks about my research and just spend time at the Institute, meeting people and learning what they're working on. I'll start that in earnest on Monday.

Today we slept in until 10am (we are all still very jet-lagged) and spent a half hour trying to figure out how to use the stovetop to make coffee; it is not at all intuitive, different from every other stovetop we've ever used, and un-Google-able. Here's Brian in the sunroom after we successfully made a pot.

Once caffeinated, we drove in to Mikkeli to get the lay of the land. We found a couple playgrounds, Lucy bought an adorable hat from a market stall, we went into a mall and found a cool second-hand clothing store (so much Marimekko!), we scoped out some places to go downtown next time, and we picked up a bunch of tourist brochures. The afternoon was spent bumming around the house, reading brochures, dealing with our backlogs of email and checking in with family. We gave everyone a virtual tour, so here are a few pics of the house for you too:

I went for a walk and saw the most birch trees I've ever seen in one place. Now we're watching Austin Powers so the kids can understand why we kept saying "liquid hot magma" in Iceland. Turns out there is a LOT of innuendo, but once Brian and I commit to something, we don't back down easily. Suffice it to say the kids are learning a lot. Our apologies to whomever's children they share this new knowledge with.