[My brother, Richard, is a great world traveler and an awfully punny writer. But his missives from the road — this time for him and his intrepid wife Beverly, it's 7 weeks away: Five weeks cycling from Finland through to Lithuania, then a week in Israel with our family and some friends who'll be there celebrating, then a week in Iceland — are often quite good, IMO.

[When they rode along the Danube a couple of years ago,  I wished he could have published his dispatches. So this time around, I'm publishing them, here. It's off the usual topic, but for some, that may even be good news. 

[I hope you like them. You may have to struggle past his punning — I've had to for years — but he provides plenty of information and a practiced traveler's point of view. If it weren't for those puns....]

Travelogue 1 - Starting with the Finnish

By Richard Prager

I'm a dinosaur. Going extinct. My phone is dumb, I don't check Facebook very often, and I don't have hundreds of friends. Rather than communicating via FB or Google Docs or texting or blogging or tweeting, I'm still just sending emails. How quaint and/or primitive. May as well write some letters, have some monks copy them by hand, and give them to someone on horseback to deliver.

These travelogues are back by popular demand. I enjoyed writing about our trip along the Danube from Austria to Romania a couple of years ago, and one or two people mentioned that they enjoyed what I wrote. So make that: "back by overwhelming demand." This is the first of several to come as we travel to several countries this summer. What the hell? It gives my twisted mind something to do. Make that: "my twisted mind is always doing things, and this is an outlet for the output." Maybe I can make you laugh or chuckle or, more likely, groan.

Finland. Imagine a place where all the people have fins. Getting in line with a pointy dorsal in your face is no picnic, I'll tell you. But seriously, these are Finns, not fins. So why do we put two n's in Finn and Finnish, but only one in the first syllable of Finnland? And why do some of us call a five-dollar bill a fin (apparently from the Yiddish word for five) or a ten a sawbuck? These are the big questions that interest me.

I know so little about this Nordic country, which is technically not part of Scandinavia. Who decides these things? For instance, who said that New England would include six states including a New Hampshire, but not a New York or a New Jersey?

Finland became an independent country less than a century ago. I had no idea. It was part of Sweden for several centuries, and Swedish is still an official language here. All the signs are in both Finnish and Swedish. The city we're headed to today is called Turku in Finnish and Abo in Swedish. Signs for it say "Turku/Abo." More people in SW Finland speak Swedish than Finnish, due to the proximity to Sweden and the history of the area. Who knew? For most of the 19th century, and up until 1917, Finland was part of Russia. Helsinki isn't too far from St. Petersburg. You see some Russian around, but not much. But you don't see much rushin' around, though. People take their time.

Why it's called Finland: There are at least two or three theories. The one I like is that there's a lot of swamps here, and one of the words people use here for a swamp is Finn. It's related to the English word fen, meaning a meadow/wettish green area. There's one of these in Boston, and the path near it is called the Fen Way. So there's a connection between Fenland and Finnway Park.

This is one of those places where there's an abundance of vowels. A lot of a's and o's with umlauts and lots of double u's, as in Uusikapunki, a coastal city northwest of Turku. "Are uu feeling lucky today, punki?" - famous quote from Dirty Harry.

Quick, name a famous Finn, or anything Finnish at all.... How'd you do?

Nokia is Finnish, and so is Finlandia vodka. Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer in the 19th century. He wrote a symphonic poem called Finlandia around the turn of the 20th century. It was a source of national pride at a time when the Russian regime was suppressing Finnish nationalism. I thought it was the national anthem, but it turns out that's called "Maamme." Maybe "Mommy", as in our motherland? 

The only other Finnish guy I'd heard of is Paavo Nurmi, aka "the Flying Finn." I read about him in a book I had as a kid, a book about sports heroes. Still remember stuff from that book after 50 years. Nurmi won a dozen Olympic medals in the 1920's in middle and long-distance running. Later, in 1952, the Olympics were held in Helsinki. The stadium is still around, and you can go up to the top of the Olympic tower for a view of the city.

Finland is sometimes called the Land of the Midnight Sun. We haven't seen the sky get dark here yet. It's still twilight at around midnight, though sunset is around 11:00. Sunrise is about 4:00 AM. Finland's also sometimes called the Land of a Thousand Lakes, like Minnesota. In Finland's case, I read, there are more than 18,000 lakes, and about the same amount of islands. Wow.

We had a great day in Helsinki with the brother of one of our Connecticut friends. He married a Finnish woman and now has lived in Finland for four years. He led us around to a lot of nice spots as we biked around the city. Coffee by the water was lovely, and we had a great cruise for a couple of hours around a bunch of beautiful islands, with a jazz band on board. Reminded me of Maine. Helsinki is pretty nice. We saw the Esplanade and the outdoor market and the harbor and three pretty impressive churches. Yes, if it's Europe, there must be a cathedral to visit. One church was Russian Orthodox with the onion-like domes, and another was really interesting - carved into rock underground with windows/skylights all around at ground level. We took the rock for granite. It was impressive.

There was free entertainment all over the city, even on a weekday. It was the 4th of the July, but not a holiday here, of course. We saw:
an Elvis impersonator with his band a choir dressed in folksy leather, singing a 50's song. 
a Grateful Dead-like band. 
a trumpet/accordion duo a group of young Asian people dancing, not quite Gangnam-style, but modern video-style.
a guy juggling a big knife, a flaming torch, and an apple which he ate while juggling.
and get this, a bra fashion show - I kid you not. It was up on a terrace, which looked like it had a restaurant on it, with the models introduced as they came onto the runway. Each one wore a fur vest, then opened the vest to show her bra. We watched from the street below. I'm not kidding.

Hell sink-ee. Heaven rise-ee? Does it smell in the underworld? Yup, hell stinky. When is a Finn not a Finn? When he's a Huckleberry! Why is it that I still get pleasure from such stupid jokes now as I did when I was a boy? And, as I know my sister would say, "Very finny, Rich. Ha ha."

The food stalls/market (a place like Quincy Market in Boston) featured lots of fish, especially salmon, and lots of reindeer - reindeer steak, hamburgers, meatballs, etc. I wonder if Santa approves of this naughty diet. Apparently, reindeer are abundant in northern Finland, aka Lapland. July is the hottest month of the year in Finland. And yesterday's highs were in the 60's, with a low in the 40's. Feels good in the sun, and so much better than the 90's we left at home. In the summer, Finns head for the beach. Gotta cool down, y'know, from temps that can even reach into the 70's!

It's easy to tell that they have long, cold winters - lots of saunas (guess they invented them?) and parking lots with places to plug in engines to avoid freezing the block. They also have slot machines everywhere to kill time and waste your money. And we learned that those can afford it will escape to the Spanish coast in the coldest months, as Northerners escape to Florida.

Every time we come to Europe, we wonder why the US doesn't have more bikes, and better public transportation. Bev wakes up thinking that we'd have solar highways by now if Gore had become president in 2000.....(he invented the internet, after all). The towns here all have separate wide sidewalks for pedestrians, cyclists, and the occasional moped. The small town we're in today also has free wifi.

Another interesting thing about Finland: Testing shows that the Finnish are among the best students in the world. Usually at or near the top with South Korea, Shanghai, Taiwan, Switzerland, etc. As a teacher, I've been curious about this, and read a book or two and listened to a podcast about this. The funny thing is that nobody can really explain why the Finns score so high on academic skills testing. They spend fewer hours in school than many other countries, and do less homework, too. But their scores have slipped in the past five to ten years, and nobody can account for this either.

We took the train from Helsinki to Turku. Turku is the second largest city here, and used to be the capital. It's pretty big, with a huge market square and lots of cafes along the river. We rode our bikes from our room in an Air Bnb to Ruisrock, a big annual music festival. When we pulled into the secure bicycle parking lot, there were more bikes than I'd ever seen in one place before. Ruisrock is a three-day event, but we just went for one day. It's held on a peninsula near Turku that used to be the royal hunting grounds. There were five stages with several performers at each from late afternoon til about 1:30 AM. There were thousands and thousands of people on a beautiful day. We were able to walk around in the woods, go to the beach, and watch the World Cup on a big screen at the water's edge. It had already been a day or two since we'd left home and I hadn't lost anything yet (didn't even leave my passport on the plane like I did a couple of years ago), so I lost my backpack. We went back to the places I might have left it, didn't find it, and then went to Lost and Found where it had been turned in! Nice that someone helped us out :)

The music at the festival was mixed, and we didn't care so much for the heavy metal. The rap was OK, but what we liked most were artists that reminded me of Bonnie Raitt and Mick Jagger. Overall, it was great just to be enjoying the day and the carnival-like atmosphere, complete with lots of vendors and games. It surprised us that people left litter everywhere. The few tables for eating filled up with empty plates and uneaten food. Bev found it disgusting, but then she's probably sensitive to any lack of cleanliness since she lives with such a clean and neat and considerate person, right? We biked home between 11 and midnight, just as it was getting dark.

Got an early start the next day (rising before noon, and heading out before 2:00!) and then biked between five and six hours to Salo. The route follows the old King's Road, used centuries ago for carrying messages from city to city in Northern Europe. There were good bike paths next to the road for most of the way, but the path disappeared about halfway through the ride. No worries, though. Bev just stopped a real cyclist, the kind with the young, lithe body, Bianchi bike, bike shoes and spandex shirt with ads on it. His name was Klaus.

Klaus heard where we here heading, and showed us a back way he knew to avoid traffic and get back on the bike path. He even biked slowly so we could keep up with him for a few kilometers. He was a nice guy, trilingual in Finnish, Swedish and English, like most young people here, as all three languages are required in school. We wished him luck with his digital video marketing business. He was certainly the right person at the right time for us, almost like a saint had appeared. I like to think of him as Santa Klaus.

Some Finnish words... Hi = moi (rhymes with boy). Nice to meet you - Hauska tavat.a Bye bye = hei hei. Where's the toilet - Missä on vessa? Thank you (much) - Kiitos (poljan). Water - vesi. Beer - olt. One, two - yksi, kaksi. Open - avoinna. Week - viikko. Restaurant - ravintola. Milk - maito. Bike - polkupyörä. Market square - kauppatori. Egg - muna. Finland - Suomi. Cognates: kirkko (church), Amerikka, kahvi (coffee), salaatti, bensina (gas)

We thought we were going to have a pretty flat ride in Finland, staying near the coast in the southwest, but we were sadly mistaken. Like a roller coaster...un du la ting...with some hills so big and steep I had to get off and walk. Not Bev, though - she's tougher. The problem with these bikes is that we go slower than with previous bikes. Not a lot, but enough to make a difference. So when we rode about 50 miles yesterday, it felt more like 60.

Most of the houses and barns are painted red with white trim. We see waves of grain, and yellow fields of rapeseed (Related to broccoli, cauliflower, and mustard, but what's up with that name?). Some apple trees and sheep. Scotch pines, quaking aspens, sugar maples, spruces and birches. Lupine, daisies, and clover. Could be the Adirondacks or Canada. Big country, only five million people.

We thought we had a short ride of about 25 miles today, but it took us 3.5 hours. We also stopped for a while at a 14th century castle (one of the three European C's: castles, churches, and cafes). When it was built it was surrounded by the sea, now it's a mile and a half inland. People explained to us that the land here has been rising since the last Ice Age, coming back to its full height after being weighed down by tons of ice. What will they think of next? Finally made it to a beautiful seaside village in the early evening. Then we had to find a place to stay.

The lovely thing was, as so often happens, that people were happy to help us out. They looked up timetables and maps and asked around if they knew a place we could stay. A woman who spent a year in Indiana asked a young woman if she could help us find a place, and she called around and found one. She said it was better than her regular job, which was kind of boring and included cleaning toilets "and stuff like that." It turned out that the place was another eight miles away, and we arrived about 10 PM. We ended up at this amazing farmhouse with a big living room, kitchen, deck, and teddy bears on the beds. The joys of bicycle travel.

After most of a day of biking and taking a train and biking again, we took the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia. Before getting here, I didn't know how to pronounce it. It's like this: Rock rock to Boston, Rock rock Tal linn, Rock rock to Joey's house, We all fall in. Hei hei for now...