Mökki Weekend

I spent last weekend in a Mökki (summer cottage). It's very common for Finns to have a cottage that they retire to for summer holidays. They are always located someplace rural, usually a forest and with a lake nearby to jump in after sauna. The one I stayed in checked both boxes, being situated in the middle of nowhere with its own private lake.

The cottage

It was quite a random thing to end up in a forest for the weekend. On Thursday night while in a club I was asked by Nina if I wanted to go and I agreed (I always agree to things when drunk), so on Saturday morning me, Andrew and Jenny set off from Helsinki on the bus. After much worrying about when we should actually get off, we found the right stop, in the tiny town of Suomusjarvi.

Our first dinner in the cottage

After a very strange breakfast in a very strange diner, we met with Nina (who had arrived there the day before) and set off on the 1-hour-plus trek to the cottage along the country roads, carrying all our heavy shopping and beer. We arrived to find a charming wooden cottage and the other occupants waiting for us.

Barbecue by the lake

There were 16 of us staying in the cottage. Four of us were from Helsinki, another two we knew from the erasmus language course and were now staying elsewhere and the rest were from Turku and Tampere. There was a wide range of nationalities - German, French, Lithuanian, Latvian, Hungarian, Russian, Polish, Italian, British (obviously) and one Finn!

DVD watching

After a quick walk around the nearby forest we headed back to the cottage to cook dinner and grill sausages on the barbecue by the lake outside. We then spent the evening drinking the entire supply of beer for the weekend and watching Finnish movies on DVD.

The scenery was quite spectacular

The next day we went out to do some real exploring. We walked through the forest, around the nearby fields, climbed a hill, nearly fell down it, explored an abandoned farm and went searching for mushrooms and berries. Later that evening we used the food collected from the forest for cooking.

Star-gazing on the roof

We were supposed to have returned home Sunday evening, in time for classes on Monday morning. However, everybody wanted to stay an extra night. I had an important class the next day and had to hand in my coursework so it was a difficult choice to make and I think I made the right one...I chose to stay!

Andrew with the radioactive drink

That night we ran out of beer again, despite buying more and resorted to experimenting with the drinks we had, making as many different colours as we could using the blue vodka. I think I won with my bright-green creation.

The group (minus 4 who had left just before)

We stayed pretty late on the last day, until about 6pm, then headed back to the bus stop. The others tried (unsuccessfully) to hitchhike home and ended up taking a later bus. I was back home by 10pm and had to rush to submit all my assignments by the midnight deadline.

Enjoying the countryside

Overall my time in the mökki was amazing. It was a great experience, one of the best I've had in Finland - I met some great people and did lots of things I'd never get to do back home in London. Just lying on the roof of the cottage at night, staring at the stars and the full moon, listening to the wolves howling in the distance. Considering I rarely spend much time in nature these things are just amazing to me. I enjoyed it so much I intend to do it again - there's another cottage weekend in a couple of weeks!