Delia Sherman's Blog, page 19

A Day in the Country-7/26

We spent last night in Paradise.

Ellen's brother's best friend from Jr. High married a Finnish diplomat whose family had owned a summer cottage near the townlet of Box, on a reach of the Helsinki Archipelago.  Her elder sister now owns the family cottage and she has other relatives in the area.  When a 1920's cottage came free last year, they bought it.  Because she's currently posted to the Finnish UN delegation in NYC, they haven't spent a lot of time there, but they happen to be in residenc...

Turku, 7/23-24

We've going to be living the wireless life for a couple of days, so this is not going to get posted until we get back to Helsinki on July 26.

Two packed days, and we hardly skimmed the surface of Turku.  Of course, we could have done our sightseeing more efficiently, but we prefer to aim for depth of experience over number of sights seen.

Also shopping.

Johanna A.  picked us up at Parainen, graciously stopped so we could get another tub of that celestial pickled herring in mustard sauce, and sp...

Nauvo

The last two days, we haven't done much of anything.  Mostly, we've sat on boats puttering through some of the prettiest landscape, for my money, in the world.  Firs!  Rocks!  Sparkling water!  Pretty little houses tucked back into the trees, with docks and bathing houses!  Iiiiislands!

We could have gotten to Nauvo in an hour and a half on a bus and a ferry from Parainen, but we elected to take the island cruise on the good ship Autere, which took three hours, because what the hey, it was a...

Camera query

Oh, hive mind.  I have a brand-new Panasonic Lumix camera, with rechargable batteries.  I am in Finland, where the current is not the same as it is at home.  Apple, which switches current for me, has spoiled me utterly for packing current converters as a matter of course, so I don't have one with me.  Neither do I have the manual for the camera.  Can anybody tell me if I need a converter to plug in the battery recharger for the camera?  Because it's almost out of juice, and we've got several ...

Parainen

Since I've just taken a lovely sauna and have about as much ambition as a wet noodle, I'll refer you to ellen_kushner  's exclamation-studded and utterly accurate account of our day.

There are seagulls flying by our window, and the light is turning amber.  The fish was even better than Ellen suggested, the blueberry pie (which I am entirely convinced was cooked blueberries spooned over raw cookie dough) was delicious, the hegehog booties beyond adorable (they're sitting on the desk as I type, l...

Tampere

I'm on the train to Turku, watching the meadows and the woods slide by, shades of green interspersed with flashes of polished steel that are lakes and ponds. It's another lovely day, a pale blue sky dotted with little fluffy clouds. Oh--there's a young plantation of fir trees, all lined up in neat rows, waiting to become forest. And a field of those magenta flowers that aren't loosestrife (I don't think), but occupy the place of loosestrife along the verges of the tracks and in the fields....

Finncon Report-2

Time, time.  There is no time.  As fast as I try to catch up on days past, present days yield their own delights, experiencing which takes--time.  

As does complaining about it.

We're in Tampere now, where there is an Arts & Crafts Cathedral of great and serene beauty.  Really, given our tastes and preferences, it might have been built with us in mind.  There Gothic arches married to folk-art derived decoration:  stone pine forests on the massive pillars, hand-carved pews, a very beautiful pulp...

Finncon Report

What can you say about a con with an English-language track (for the Swedes, Russians, and Estonians who don't speak Finnish, who outnumber the actual native English speakers by a large margin), fresh home-made soup in the Greenroom, fans who have read everything from Clarke and Heinlein to Marks (Laurie, that would be) and Mieville and LeGuin and Robinson, and a dead-dog party by a lake, with a sauna and all the smoked fish, squeaky cheese, and cloudberry jam you could eat?

That it was awesom...

Evening Saunas

are divine. 

Having a lovely time.  Wish you were here.  (In your own saunas, in company with your best friend, looking back on a day well-spent and looking forward to a Brand!  New!  Con!)

More tomorrow--if I haven't disappeared so far into con-land Ellen has to send the dogs in after me.

In the meantime--good night, good friends!

Jyvaskyla 1

Any con that schedules in a sauna is My Kind of Con.

I had a leisurely morning, packing and eating the hotel's princely buffet breakfast while Ellen Met The Press with Pat Cadigan, and then we piled in Tero's car with Ellen's translator Johanna and set off to Jyvaskyla, where the con is.  I don't have much to say about the drive, having slept through most of it.  I did wake up enough from time to time to notice that the terrain grew hillier, the rocks went from reddish to shades of brown, and ...