It's time to hit the road, so to say

For me, there aren't summer holidays without a journey planned somewhere. Idling at home is not my ideal way to spend time and that's probably the reason why I'm not even eager to take my holidays from work. Nevertheless, this year, being forced to remain in my country I needed to compensate for this lack of opportunity and try to make something out of the summer holidays. Exploring my country is something we have been planning, even though so far it would be only for a one-day-trips. 

One place I always wanted to see was the city (or town if you want to be more precise) of Hämenlinna in south Finland. The city is not really far from Helsinki, but for some reason, I always found it easier to fly to a farther destination, rather than taking the car and drive for a hundred kilometers to reach a closer location. 

Nevertheless, this is what we did this time, as our first journey to discover the beauties of our country. As I said driving one kilometer north from Helsinki, you will easily reach Hämeenlinna a city with 68000 inhabitants in the historical province of Tavastia.

This is the oldest city located in the inland of Finland and it's famous for being the birthplace of the composer Jean Sibelius and the medieval castle.

The first human settlement in the area was recorded during the Viking Age (793-1066 AD) and the castle was built in the 13th century to secure the Swedish power in central Finland. A village was built around the castle to provide services and goods, but only in 1639 was granted the status of "city" and in 1862 the first railway was opened to connect Hämeenlinna with Helsinki.

The city isn't at all anything big, and people who travel to visit it, generally do so for the medieval castle, the military museum, and the Jean Sibelius museum. 

Like every castle in the past, its construction date is uncertain, as it was built in stages. Most certainly it was completed by the end of the 13th century. 

One important goal of the Swedish expedition had been to link the province of Häme more tightly to the Swedish kingdom. 

This aim, which was influenced by foreign policy considerations, required the maintenance of a strong military fortress. Of equal importance, however, was the desire to tax this relatively wealthy region, and thus to set certain demands concerning the exterior forms of rule.

The oldest part of the castle is known as the fortified camp. This included a square-shaped greystone wall, with defensive towers at the northern, eastern, and southern corners. 

The view from the top floor of the castle is charming as it is the whole building itself.

This has been one strange month, where I could dedicate just a little amount of time to blog and being on any social platforms. This because I've been busy with the new release of my novel, about which I'm going to talk about very soon!

I hope you enjoyed this journey in my country and will see you soon for new adventures and news about the life of a Wandering Writer.

Take care!

A garden can become a place to surprise you

It's not like I woke up one morning, and they were there, but I knew something was growing, and that was also something I've never planted myself, or at least that was something I didn't remember having purchased for my garden.

I'm talking about two bushes of roses.

I always loved those flowers in my life, and they've always had a special place in my garden:

Yet, when I moved first in this house and the garden wasn't at all set, I planned a special place for them, together with other species of flowers to create a lovely bouquet of colors and scents. Now, I also know what kind of roses I've chosen, and white roses weren't much on the list.

A few years later, something started to grow, and I was wondering whether it was one of those roses which I thought they died out and found new life from the roots I hadn't remove, or they were something new. I didn't eradicate then because they were not harming, and they filled up nicely the empty spaces. Now, thy never made any flower, so I was really wondering about their origin and their specie.

I did wait, and meantime, I kept trimming them every fall and spring. They were growing nicely yet no flowers.

This until this summer, when finally they started to bloom and to show their beauty. White roses:

Indeed those were roses I've never planted myself; the only explanation is that the seeds have been brought to my garden by the wind or the birds.

I was pleasantly surprised and happy to see them blooming after many years of just having the bush. I cannot say which kind of specie they belong to, as I haven't purchased in the first place, but I believe they make a great addition to my garden.

Once again, when you let nature help you with the choice of flowers for your garden, you will undoubtedly get fantastic surprises.

Do you have a garden? What do you plant there?

Stay safe and tuned!

Traveling the country

As Coronavirus restrictions force us to plan our holidays at home, the need to escape the four walls seems almost unbearable. Here in Finland, as the new cases dropped further, shops and small businesses begin to reopen their activities, although the authorities still suggest safety measures to be in place until the availability of a vaccine.

For the Wandering writer, those have been hard times, but the rediscovery of the beauties of my country made it worth spending a few words to bring everybody to a virtual tour.

Today, I'm going to bring you to a small town in southern Finland, Fiskars.

What brings Fiskars to be famous, is the fact that it has been the birthplace of the most successful and prolific factories, producing knives, scissors cutleries, and kitchen appliances. It's one of the oldest companies in the world to be still at the top of the market in the country makes it a success story.

But today, I'm not going to talk about the factory, but of the lovely place from where everything originated. The town was founded in 1649 and developed around the ironworks founded by a German gentleman, Petter Thornwärste, which also produced copper. The development of the industrial community was fast, producing, since the beginning, various devices, from kitchen utensils to transmission devices. 

The village was annexed to the municipality of Raseborg.

Nowadays, the village is an active center of Finnish art and design, with just 600 inhabitants in its center. It's a popular place for artists designers and artisans, and particularly in summer is a popular tourist destination.

The town is immersed in a quiet natural environment, and we were very lucky to find a sunny day for our visit:

A cup of coffee on the socially distanced cafeteria, at the shadow of the trees, crowned the hours spent on that charming place.

Although our plans for retiring in a warmer climate remain, I know I will miss those neighborhoods. Therefore, I plan to enjoy them for as long as I can. This means that, if you stay tuned, I will bring you some more of those peaceful and charming places.

Take care, and stay socially distanced.

An alternative Midsummer in Finland

Midsummer fest is, for those living in Scandinavia and Finland, a very important day to celebrate. The long, dark winter days are gone and forgotten.

Yet, the midsummer, bringing to the whole country an endless day, is more than a reason to celebrate.

As a general rule, people would gather at the park for a picnic. They will go swimming in the sea, take long saunas, and enjoy the light, which is something more valuable than money or any material possession.

This year, however, the parks are looking like an ordinary day in summer.

No big gatherings, no cafeterias full of people, no grilling or meeting at the beach.

For once, people will have to feel glad to be allowed to gather with their families in their gardens or going in the woods, avoiding popular places, reaching the summer cottages, and enjoy what nature can offer.

The official midsummer day is the 20th of June, that is today, but most of the people will celebrate on its eve.

So, indeed the pandemic reshaped the way people are celebrating the holidays, but this doesn't necessarily mean that they quit having fun, or honoring old traditions.

To tell the truth, the change we've experienced is not completely a disaster. Perhaps it's a positive reshaping, discovering that we don't need to spend our money uselessly to be happy. All we need is to connect with the few people who really mean something in our lives and have fun.

Perhaps we will learn how to enjoy life with simple things, even with a walk in nature.

Concerning me, I will celebrate the midsummer today, and I will take this chance to drive with my husband in the nearby cities, to discover something new about the country I'm living in.

Next time I will show you something more about what I've discovered about Finland. Perhaps the Wandering Writer is back on the road.

Next release and cover reveal

Time's flying and things get a bit on my way, particularly when it's time for a holiday.

The funny thing is that, for the first time in my working life, my supervisor could ask me to postpone my holiday, and there were no problems with it.

With that, we 're reaching another point, which is the complete flexibility of my free time.

Not being able to travel, I should call it time off.

Of course, there are also positive sides to not being able to leave for a journey, and those are, besides saving money to be allocated somewhere else, more time for me to write and nurture my garden.

Big projects are going on concerning both sides of the business. 

One is nurturing my spirit through the garden activities, and the other is transforming those positive thoughts on the writing process.

Therefore, I'm pleased to announce that the process worked so far and I've been busy creating the new cover for the next mystery novel.

The title:

The Man From The Mist.

It's a mystery novel where a young man, Dave, who lives his gray life in the almost complete invisibility and anonymity, will have to stand up for his right and to defend the only person who offered a friendly relationship. However, there is something from his past, he appears having forgotten, and a mysterious man appearing every time the mist is rising will force him to remember.

Here is a short teaser for the novel:

I'm also working on other promotional videos to be released.

Here's the cover I'm planning to use for the book.

As usual, from the original version that was created in the beginning, this is quite an evolution, but this is what happens generally. You start with an idea and you have no idea where it will bring you.

So the question is where now it will be released?

Being in the hands of the editor, I presume it could be ready by the end of this month. Nevertheless, I'm planning to put it into a pre-order and see what is going to happen.

Stay tuned, stay home, stay safe!

Not giving up the hopes

As here in Finland Spring is considered over, at least if we're asking the calendar, the weather isn't really warming up. We certainly shouldn't be surprised about it, as I can count a few years when we kept the summer clothes mothballed until further notice. Yet, this year, also the weather forecast seems to add insult to injury, as they keep forecasting the arrival of the summer "within a couple of days."

Now, if this couple of days were indeed days and not months, I wouldn't mind.

Nevertheless, having been blessed with a very mild winter, when it didn't snow at all, the plants in my garden didn't suffer at all, and after a slow start, all the flowers are blooming once again. Due to social distancing, we won't have any garden party. Regardless of this detail, I am still glancing at my yard, wondering whether there is anything I can improve. Until last year, weed was my problem, until I saw how some bugs seem to appreciate their presence. Therefore, this year, instead of eliminating it, I've considered blending it into the garden, planting other random flowers to match.

The result is that now I have many flowers in a meadow-like garden. Today, was also one of those days when the only inspiration was to take my camera and go out, and so I have some pictures to show you.

I could get the shot of a duck's specie which is classified as endangered. It was a pleasure to see a male chasing one female on the riverbank.

On my wanderings, I couldn't take my eyes off this beautiful tree:

And on the way home, I had to stop to listen to a charming singer giving all his best to that special song:

Before entering a magical place where to lose myself:

I hope you all had a relaxing weekend and will be ready to start once again the rat-race tomorrow. Take care, and stay safe.

As we are reaching the half of the year

Well, what do you know? We are almost in the middle of this year. Five months have passed by, and honestly, I don't know when it happened. What I do know is that, just a few days ago, I was wondering what the new year would bring, dreaming about my summer holidays.

That was before the lockdown before, slowly, we saw airline companies canceling all the scheduled flights and sending refunds for the booked holidays.

After five months, we've seen a radical change in lifestyle as the whole world tried to adapt to a new normal. Although we know this is going to pass, we don't know how long it will take. 

This uncertainty brought us to rethink the whole structure of our society, not just the small one that directly affects us, city, or country wise, but globally.

We also experienced something incredible: the recovery of the natural balance of our planet. With the restrictions imposed on production and transportation, people began to understand the difference between need and desire.

Perhaps we reconsidered what is right to desire and strive to achieve, and what instead is better to leave aside. The pandemic reached where all the warnings from scientists failed.

The question now is: will it last?

Will humanity remember these considerations, once the emergency is over, or will they thoughtlessly continue following the false god of greed?

Posterity will tell.

What we can do, instead, is try not to forget this important lesson, and respect our planet also when we're not forced to do so. We can write a reminder for the better times of how the skies looked prettier once the smog cloud dissolved. We could write a note of the beauty of clean waters in our rivers, lakes, and seas. 

If we need to give up something, maybe it's going to be for the best, and it doesn't mean restricting our freedom, rather ensuring every single creature on this planet with the same rights.

There's a vital rule we need to remember before yelling that we're been stripped of our rights, and that is: your freedom stops where your neighbor's freedom starts. This doesn't include only fellow humans, but every single living creature.

With this consideration, I greet you until the next time.