Hello, Scotland

Work calls for a visit to Glasgow. After the conference I will be spending a few days in Edinburgh, as well. See you in a rough week or so. :c)

Images courtesy of Wikipedia.

Two new Dutch friends

My curiosity-filled excursion into Dutch wines continued with a bottle of white wine from the Limburg region that followed me home from our last trip to Holland. This one I discovered in the Gall & Gall liquor shop in Magna Plaza shopping center, Amsterdam, where one Dutch red wine and one Dutch white wine lay on the shelf. The sales clerk said he had tasted the red and did not like it. I took the white. It turned out to be a Rivaner from the Hoeve Nekum winery, Limburg. The Rivaner grape is a cross between Riesling and Chasselas, and is also known as Müller Thurgau in Germany. It is supposed to taste flowery like a muscat, but I must say my palate tasted mostly citrus, herbs and even a little sparkle. It ended up on a picnic on Suomenlinna fortress island during the Les Lumiéres festival, and was a perfect choice as a fresh summer wine with lots of flavor.

Another friend for life is the Sueterie Rosé from Hof van Twente in the Twente region of Holland. As the website does not state what grapes it is made of, I have to rely on a newspaper article according to which the wine is made of Cabernet sauvignon and two new hybrids, Cabertin and Pinotin. However the origin, the outcome is a wonderfully crisp and light rosé that smells of raspberries and tastes of strawberries. Yum!

Midsummer on the balcony

Happy midsummer, and sorry about the silence, dear readers. My excuse is again the same: work currently absorbs all my inspiration and none is left when I get back home. Unfortunately for you, my blog has remained silent a record-long time, but fortunately for me, I am seeing some good progress with my project at work. :c)

However, I have been tinkering with a few things here at home. My husband tinkered together two hardwood trunks for the balcony, so now we finally have seating for four people.
The electric barbeque fits perfectly on the side, next to the power point.
Today I also bought some gerberas, lavender, daisies and a little laurel tree.
My hope is that both the lavender and the laurel tree will survive the winter, the latter probably indoors.

Couch trouble / the outcome

Finally, finally we have a new, fresh couch upholstering, synthetic material this time. This time we hope it will last longer, as well. It looks and feels promising, and does indeed stay dust-free, in comparison to the cotton cover. The color of the upholstering is Copper, with black threads and copper-colored threads, making the actual color a shimmering chocolate brown. I personally think the dessin gives the couch more edge.
Although end is well, all is well, unfortunately I must utter a few words without praise about the Innovation store in Helsinki. Even if the reclamation itself, decision making process, and delivery of the new upholstering went smoothly, there was some serious trouble in the Helsinki end of the chain. We were informed of absolutely nothing: no message about the processing status of our reclamation, nor the decision, nor the delivery date of the new upholstering, delays in the delivery, nor the actual arrival of the upholstering, let alone any information about delivery to our house. Absolutely zero service, we had to call them every single time to inquire for the status of our couch. We had also been promised that the shop would change the upholstering, but in the end the delivery guys had no tools to remove the legs (?!) and my husband did it by himself.

It is unfortunate that a reclamation should be handled this way; one would think any disappointment in a product would be properly tended to. I think I will have to write the company and ask them to check the service in their Helsinki shop. Such negative feedback is too bad, especially when the designs and products are very nice.

However, end is well and all is well, and we are happy with the outcome. Although in the future we will think twice before doing business with Innovation Store Helsinki. Shame.

Party of three

Such a stylish lot, aren't they? Cheese knives from Hackman.

Our new bed

Well, here it is, our new bed, with the headrest mounted. From order to finish, the process spanned five months, mostly because the bed had to be shipped to Finland from Holland, the actual manufacturer being German. Perhaps you can see from the photo that the old mattress is 10 cm too short. As soon as we have the time we will pick up our new futon mattress and overlay. My sleep is already oh so much better, probably due to the fact that we now have a bed with a straight bottom, instead of a center support several centimeters too high, creating a ridge in the middle... my goodness did it sore my shoulder in the end. And the best of it all: no more cats hiding under the bed, chomping away on raw meat. (Which they know is forbidden. Ugh.)

As you can see, our bedside tables are now way too tall, and only fit in sideways. This is the most narrow bedroom we have ever had! I guess that leads us back to the contemplation (read=quarrel) about decent bedside tables.

Hiking in the back corner of Holland

Last week my husband and I hit the road for a day's walk on the Pieterpad trekking route that stretches from Pieterburen in the north to St. Pietersberg in the south, a total distance of about 500 km. The route snakes through the easternmost part of the Gelderland province, known as the Achterhoek, or the "back corner", a lush, sleepy, forest-scattered countryside just before the German border. Our day trip took us from Laren to Vorden, a distance of 15 km. The whole trip is divided in twenty-some day trips. Good guide books provide maps, sights, as well as bed and breakfasts and camping grounds for the avid trekker.
Holland has barely any untouched nature except for a few national parks, so most of the Pieterpad is culture landscape. We did pass through a substantial pine forest on our way.
The Staringskoepel pavilion was built by a lady who wanted to enjoy her privileged life outside by the river Berkel...

.. and to get there we had to cross the river on a hand-pulled pontoon.
Birds nesting in an old scale. It fit a mommy and three or four almost full-grown chicks.
We ended our hike at the castle in Vorden, surrounded by clouds of lovely rhododendron and azaleas in bloom. Vorden is half-way on the route to St. Pietersberg in Maastricht, close to the Belgian border. There the most zealous hiker can connect to a network of international trekking routes that takes him or her all the way to Nice, France, and the Mediterranean coast.

Art in Amsterdam

Greetings from sunny and summery Holland. We spent one day sauntering around Amsterdam. One stop was the graphic design & typography book shop Nijhof & Lee on Staalstraat, and lunch stop for the day was lovely Zushi, with fresh sushi and other Japanese snacks.
The actual reason for our visit was the World Press Photo exhibition in the Old Church. The collection of photos was also a collection of stories, sometimes lacking the quality or composure of a masterly photograph, but justifiedly appreciated for the amazing, sad, shocking and happy tales they have to tell of wars, losses, wins, sports and everyday life.The Old Church is located in the middle of the Wallen, or the (in)famous red light district. The district itself is quite crowded and safe even in the evenings, and I have seen tourist families walk along it both daytime and night time, just for the sake of curiosity. The church is built in the 13th century, and over 10 000 bodies are buried under the floor, many marked with stone floor tiles, some newer, other old and worn. To be buried in the Old Church was a great honor, and so the names are often pompously marked with family crests and beautiful scripture. Sometimes even death skulls.
A visit to Rituals cosmetics and household products was a must, as well, as a visit to the Droog Design shop, also on Staalstraat. Droog Design is a Dutch design collective with wonderfully out-of-the-box ideas (more of them here).

Off to the land of beer and cheese

... and this time we are even equipped with a travel guide. Perhaps it will inspire us to visit places we always talk about but never get to see. I will be back next week. Happy weekend to all of you!

All the places in the world

When either one of us dreams of a distant place worth visiting and takes a deep sigh of reverie, my husband and I have a laconical way of telling each other to "add it on the bottom of the list". Meaning the ever-growing, never-ending list of places we would like to see on this little planet. After getting the book 501 Must-see Islands I realized how hopeless the dreaming was: if I could visit two islands a year, I would still need to live to be 250 years old so I could see them all - and that's just the islands, never mind the cultural heritage sites, national parks, deserts, old trade routes, extreme destinations...

In await of a trip to soothe my travel-bug-infested blood (blame it on my family), I would like to present a few destinations or routes a little less traveled - at least by westerners or travel guide writers, and certainly never by me.... some day that will change... a girl's gotta have hope, right?

Inca Trail
The age-old trail from Equador to Chile, trekked by the Incas who didn't even know the wheel and only had llamas to help them carry the packings. The classic path, a three to four-day trail, carries from Cuzco to Machu Picchu.

St. Helena
This one is my sister's idea (and fault). St. Helena is among the most inaccessible places in the world, unless you own a plane or a ship, of course. Best reachable by the British royal mail ship RMS St. Helena. Together with Ascension Island, it is located smack in the middle of the Southwest Atlantic.

Hindu kush
A mountain range stretching from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and into India. I have seen so many beautiful pictures of Pakistan. I truly hope there will be a time of peace when I would feel welcome and safe to visit that gorgeous country. Katie Melua wrote a lovely song with the lyrics "you set me free, as if you'd taken me halfway up the Hindu kush".

Silk Route
Another ancient trade route, this one stretching from Xi'an in China to the middle East. Along the way rose the most amazing civilizations and cities such as Kashgar and Samarkand.

Queen Charlotte Islands
These islands on the west coast of Canada belong to the boreal rainforest stretching all the way up to Alaska. The sitka spruce and other gorgeous trees are legendary for their vast size and age - or were, at least before the lumbers came. Even more legendary was the golden spruce, a naturally golden, mutated sitka spruce, viewed holy by the Haida indians. Whales and birdlife and the extremely rugged and rainy climate add to my fascination of the Queen Charlotte islands.

Cook islands & Niue
My love for South Sea islands probably began when I read of Pippi Longstocking's adventures on the Kurrekurredutt island with her fat, white, Swedish father as chief (children's book classic by Astrid Lindgren). A few years ago I read a wonderful book called Blue Latitudes: Boldly going where captain Cook has gone before (by Tony Horwitz). It was interesting, too, telling about the voyages of captain John Cook and comparing the modern impressions of two mildly conservative (read: no backpackers) travellers with the logs of captain Cook and the shores he must have seen. While it laments on the sometimes deteriorating effect of the Western culture on the South Pacific island life, it left me googling for islands as far from home as possible on this planet. Cook island sounds like they have good food and Niue... well, it just kind of has a soft and pleasant feel to it... Reminds me of a friend who wanted to visit the Seychelles because it reminded him of "sea shells".


Images courtesy of Wikipedia

Luna vase

Eero Sairanen created a really interesting concept for a vase. It appears completely different when viewed from different angles. The vase is called Luna and is manufactured by spHaus in Italy, and assumedly Innojok in Finland, although I could not find any information on their website. Has anyone seen this vase in a shop? I would like to have one myself, it's absolutely gorgeous and would go well next to my Double Bubble light.

Wine tasting in the rain

Last Saturday was Europe Day. In all honesty, I would not have known it, were it not for the mail I got about a wine tasting organized by Viini magazine and importers of European wines. The week before lavished us with sunshine, and come Saturday, well... it came very gray and wet indeed. Since my sister and I do not melt in the rain, we decided to be sporty and go wine tasting anyway, one stylishly dressed, the other practically, so we balanced each other, right? I was glad to notice a whole lot of other brave hearts had come to the same conclusion and showed up despite the rain.

Some new acquaintances I really liked:

Grüner Veltliner Ried Loiser Berg from Austria. A nice, sparky and flavorful white wine.

Pasqua Bardolino Classico from Italy. Made of the same grapes as Amarone, one of my absolute favorite reds, however, much lighter - and more affordable.

Inycon Shiraz Viognier from Sicily. My new favorite, the Shiraz Viognier blend. I have only had Australian ones before, but this is very nice, as well. Amazing how you can get such a good outcome by mixing 5-10% of crisp, full white wine with a full red. My sister wondered if it was perhaps the outcome of a poor wine farmer's mistake to dump a bucketful of white in a barrel of red?

Châteauneuf-du Pape-Domaine du Vieux Lazaret from France. Lovely soft with aromas of plums due to the Grenache grape.

My sister headed for the sparklings such as the champagne Louis Roederer Brut Premier and the lovely lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Amabile il Fojonco. I guess it was easier to taste the flavors of a sparkling in cool weather, compared to poor red wines shivering in the cold...

Kotonadesign

How cute aren't these designs by Finnish Kotonadesign (kotona = at home)? So simple, yet so stylish. Sometimes I wish I had come up with things impressively simple and elegant, and this concept is one of those things. Oh well, someone had to think of it first and make it real, right? All products are hand made and sustainably produced in Finland.

Color play

If you find yourself close by Lohja, take a look at the exhibition Color Play, displaying photography and weavings by two Dutch-Finnish artists. Open 12-24.5. in Kässän talo, Virkkala.

*edit: one photo and one weaving sold immediately. Hurry up for the best pick if you are thinking of buying art.

Remember the cheese slicer?

Remember the poor Iittala Collective Tools cheese slicer that split in half? We sent it back to customer care. Promptly, a week later, we received a brand new slicer in the mail, along with a letter apologizing for bad quality and thanking us for the opportunity to correct the situation. Curiously, the new slicer feels lighter, it has sharper edges around the handle and a slightly different blade. This one seems to be perfectly welded, or made out of one single piece of steel.

Perfect service from the behalf of Iittala, I must say. And customer care such as this somehow seems so very rare in Finland.

Odd occurrences

My most sincere apologies for the quieter times! What can I say, except for to give you the age-old excuse of work clogging up the smallest sources of time and inspiration. I am in the middle of finishing up a project and I need to focus on it for a little longer. To bide your time, I offer you an odder piece to read:

Lovely Bisquits wrote an interesting and humorous post about odd visitors to her blog, arriving after looking for specific information on Google. I have sometimes amused myself with the same pastime, and with the danger of stealing an idea, I decided to share with you some of the oddest search terms leading to my blog.

What can be thrown in cardboard waste?
Well, I am happy to hear somebody got the answer to this question from my blog.

webshop aluminium shelving mushrooms
Wonder what kind of mushrooms this person had enjoyed while surfing for aluminum shelving?

Stylish litter box
Still searching for that one myself... Help, someone?

Souvenir of Holland
Perhaps such souvenirs can be found between the posts in this blog, if one looks around carefully.

Happy weekend everyone. I promise to be back as soon as I feel a little less wringed when I return home from work. :c)

Roses

Lovely friends brought us lovely flowers to enjoy in the lovely spring sun.

Freedom of Creation

Freedom of Creation, also known as FOC, is a Dutch company producing gorgeous lights and home decor accessories. Most lights are designed by Janne Kyttänen, a Finnish designer fascinated by mathematical patterns in nature, such as spirals found in corn, sunflowers, pine cones, and leaves circling a stem (known as the Fibonacci number series for math enthusiasts). The lights are made by applying a thin layer by layer, creating a wonderfully fluid-looking object surprisingly tough to the touch.

The natural aspect pleases the scientist in me, and I am in love with the cute little table version of the Palm light (second from top). I can very well image two of those on our new bedside tables to-come...

Confusingly enough, there is another designer in the same company, named Jasse Kyttänen. Alter ego, perhaps? ;c) His handmark can be seen in the lovely Spin lights, depicted on top of this post.

We are the world

A while ago, the husband got us a Samsung Blu-Ray player. We tested it with watching a gorgeous nonverbal movie called Baraka. Images all over the world, interweaving cultures, religions, man and nature, were a powerful reminder of how beautiful our planet is, and how in the end we all are one kind of people, living our lives on this big blue ball, no trouble at all... (last bit by Peter Gabriel :c) ) Recommended as first aid to anyone suffering from never-ending travel fever. Although I must confess it made me want to see more beautiful imagery, like watching a perpetual screensaver...

Futon shopping in Turku

Last weekend we spent a sunny Saturday afternoon in Turku, looking for a futon for our new bed. We ended up buying the one we tried elsewhere as well, with cotton, latex and cocos fiber by Ekomat (Babelfish lingo warning in the English version of the site!). Service at tiny Futon Shop Turku was excellent. They are also worth a visit if only for the collection of lights.

As the mattress will be of custom size, we are facing yet another month's wait. We began with having a delicious lunch with good friends in restaurant Sergio's.

Last but not least, some more doors from the old town:
PS. Since the door pictures just keep accumulating, I have now added a separate label category for any fellow door fans. :c)