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in finland in sweden weeknotes

weeknotes, 22-23/25

in short: two weeks in sweden, with a detour through the åland islands to attend a philatelic forum. it’s been good.

i have trouble putting the experience of being here into words… i guess most of all, stockholm feels civilized — that’s the word that comes to mind. but it’s also quietly beautiful: streets are clean and parks are taken care of, everything is green and birds we hadn’t seen before crossing our path with their broods in tow. the nights are barely nights and the light wakes us up very early, but it’s hard to mind when everywhere we look there’s light shimmering in the water. we scored a house swap within walking distance of most museums, a cozy place with overflowing bookshelves. the owner became a mini penpal of sorts, emailing often with questions about recycling, the lack of black people in the south of portugal or the range of electric bikes. it felt like a pleasure, through and through.

we saw the vasa ship and the postal museum, and revisited dear old friends that we’ve known for 20 years, each of us settled into a different country. they look the same, only now they have cute kids that speak different languages and look a lot like them.

åland felt pretty special. the ferry is a whole thing — comfortable cabins, supermarkets, live music, restaurants and gaming rooms for the children… the trip lasts 5 hours but it flies by. mariehamn itself feels human sized — you can walk it from end to end. we grabbed some bikes from the hotel and cycled around, into the wetlands and across tiny islands. i’ve always liked islands, the size of them, the geography and terrain. åland has the kind of islands that are just a smooth weathered rock jutting out of the sea — the kind that tove jansson used to spend her summers in (the kind i dream about sometimes, when i’m tired of the world and want to escape). it feels like half of sweden or finland has a hut somewhere, on a island or in the woods.

maybe i’ll write more about the trip at some point… i have some sleep to catch up on, to prepare us for a busy month ahead.

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in finland stationery sundays

cool finnish stamps

aaaaaah, finland. the land of moomins, delicious cardamom rolls, sauna… and brilliant stamps! there’s the postcrossing stamp of course (one of the first to honour the project), but here are a couple others that i particularly like.

the veggies stamps are a fun issue. you pick a veggie on the left, stick it on your postcard or letter, and then decorate it with stickers from the right side — like playing mr. potato head! the combinations are endless and the result is always a different and fun stamp!

i love this stamp sheet! to celebrate the country’s 100th anniversary last year, the finnish post invited all citizens to upload their photo and then made these sheets of 10 stamps with lots of mini-portraits on them. they scrambled the photos from sheet to sheet, so they’re all different and people have to look really closely at the sheets or the mail they’ve received to find theirs! isn’t that a cool idea? our friend kati found her photo on the stamp below :)

and last but not least, this magical moment at the finlandia stamp exhibition last year, in which their mini-volunteers at the kids section helped us become part of a stamp!


that was so much fun. the kids were super nice, spoke perfect english and even gave us lollipops at the end! :D

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in finland in morocco one second everyday

one second everyday — may 2017

may started in morocco, skipped to finland and then came back to the southern sunshine again.

highlights: more morocco. painting my hair for the first time. seeing lots of postcrossing friends in finland (and meeting some new ones) + visiting the new finnish postal museum. giving a few talks about postcrossing. and eating looots of korvapuusti! :D

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analogue wednesdays in finland

analogue wednesday #16

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from our warm summer days in finland, last year.

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foooood in finland

trip to a finnish supermarket

just before this unscripted summer hiatus, i was about to write one last post about finland – the obligatory trip to the supermarket. it’s always one of my favourite parts of any trip :) here are some things that drew our attention:



it’s funny how many moomin or angry birds-themed things you can find in a finnish supermarket!