Snowed in, digging and other news

A change in weather”?”
According to some of our Finnish acquaintances temperatures should now be in the region of +4°C as we are approaching spring, yet we are still experiencing temperatures of down to -25°C.  That said, it is snowing less and we are getting more and more sunlight.  The days are also getting longer with around11 hours of daylight.  Below is a photo of our snowman which is very slowly starting to melt.  The poor thing has been decapitated by the sun and lost one arm.

 

Shovelling and digging
Dirkie has done some serious digging and snow shovelling as we found it difficult to walk through the back yard to the frozen water to go for our week-end walks.  Below are photos of a path that Dirkie made as a surprise for Alex (mwah!).  It took two and a half hours of digging to complete the path.

 

In the following photo one can see that although we can easily get to the frozen water for a walk, it is still covered by a thick layer of snow.

 

Dirkie has a telescope and when the winter night sky is open, it is ideal for star gazing.  So, Dirkie decided to dig another path as well as a circle to observe the stars.

 

Last week-end we experienced a severe cold front which came from the northern part of Finland.  The amount of snow that fell made it impossible for us to get up the ramp with the Snow Mobile (as mentioned in the previous blog).  Thus we couldn’t even go to church on Sunday.  Dirkie must say that he is rather proud of his snow shovelling capabilities.  Below are before and after photos of a part of our driveway which he shovelled and swept clean with a broom (and basically destroyed the broom in the process, hie-hie).  In the second photo the driveway is still partially covered in a sheet of ice, something which one cannot get rid of.

 

The cold front and snow from the north also had its effect on the paths that Dirkie made in the back yard.  He hasn’t gathered the energy yet to repair the damage.

 

The start of a shopping trip started out interesting last week.  Our garage door can only be unlocked from the outside (it is a door that opens manually).  Dirkie could not get the door open as it was frozen shut.  Eventually it took some kicking and karate moves from the inside of the door to get it open.  Then Dirkie scraped off all the ice from the frame of the door.  We wonder if that is the reason why we haven’t seen any Finnish houses with automatic garage doors.

We started a course in the Finnish language!

We decided to take a course in Finnish.  The basic course in Swedish that we did before coming to Helsinki is not as useful as we thought it would be.  Finnish is definitely the prominent language over here.  For example:  Take a look at the following photo which is of the control panel on the dishwasher.  Needles to say, it took a fair amount of time to figure out which buttons to press.  We simply pressed a button to see what happens, and then reset it by unplugging it if the machine just moaned and groaned.  The manual of the dishwasher is also in Finnish….

 

The following photo is of some food items.  Again, a basic knowledge of Finnish would be helpful to read and understand the packaging.

 

Dirkie had a rather comic experience last week in a pharmacy where some knowledge of Finnish would have been helpful.  Alex uses a product (a cream in a tube) called “Bengay” which is similar to “Deep Heat” what we use in South-Africa to relieve muscle pain and stiffness.  The pharmacist who was very polite took a good look at the empty Bengay tube which I showed him and read all the active ingredients on the label.  So where did he take me in the shop to find Bengay or a similar product?  To the toothpaste shelf!  Now we have no intension of rubbing toothpaste on aching muscles.  Eventually Dirkie left the pharmacy without Bengay or a replacement.

Animals

We haven’t seen the rabbit again, but his (or her) footprints are found fresh in the snow every morning.  We left some carrots outside near where we think it lives but it hasn’t touched it.

 

We saw a squirrel!  But it moved so fast that it was difficult to get the camera ready in time to take a proper photo.  Below is a rather poor attempt.

 

Some birds have also started to make an appearance which we think is due to the presence of more sunlight.  As mentioned before in a blog post, Dirkie put out some dog foot (pellets) in the back yard and the birds went crazy to fill their poor winter starved stomachs.  Again, apologies for the poor quality of the photo.

 

 
A rather large hole in the frozen see water
The final photos are very interesting.  Our neighbours had what we suspect was a sauna party.  They made a hole in the ice almost in front of our house and took a dip in it, probably after a hot sauna session.  We know, it’s crazy.  The following photo is of the hole.

 

As you can see, the hole is already frozen closed.  Dirkie collected some of the ice blocks which our neighbour sawed from the ice.  It gives on an indication of how deep the frozen see water is.

 

That’s it for now!  We hope everybody is doing well in South-Africa.  We suppose the weather is starting to change over there as well?  We miss you all!