Khrys weblog

No, it isn’t the name of a fort ;) but that of a monastery. Not just any, actually, Valamo is the only orthodox monastery in the Nordics. You won’t find very old buildings there, because they used to live in that part of Karelia (Karjala) annexed by Russia during WWII, and had to move and relocate their “activities”. In fact, nowadays Valamo is in Russia, and New Valamo in Finland, in Heinävesi, located north of Savonlinna. It takes a bit over an hour of driving from there.

The trip itself is quite interesting, as this area has a lot of lakes, one of which you need to cross with a ferry, and nice and typical flowers along the road, called “Lupinus polyphyllus” (Lupiini in Finnish):

Before getting to the monastery, you can stop by at the convent of Lintula, but there isn’t much to see (and I think the souvenir shop was more expensive) … but the trees are really nice along the main building and behind it (sorry, it wasn’t possible to take pictures of those with the rain).

That photo is taken from the entry point, at the monastery of Valamo. The building on the right is the restaurant where I found the food interesting (but not expensive, so go ahead and get a good lunch there), as they serve both some Finnish and Russian specialities.

If you then turn left, you’ll find yourself facing the most impressive building of the monastery : the church. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good picture of it myself, this one is from their website :

I have a few from the inside though, but I don’t want to spoil a visit, so I’ll put only one :

Anybody who has visited an orthodox church knows how highly decorated it can be. If I had to compare, I’d say that this usually is much more decorated than a catholic church. At least that is my feeling. In a catholic one, you’ll find fancy windows, perhaps some paintings ; in the orthodox, windows are not so fancy, but icons and paintings should be found in quantities, and a lot of gold colour every where. Which is actually funny if you happened to visit a Lutheran church just before, as simplicity is the policy in those, and make you feel the contrast even more …
This is from inside the old church, a simple wood building (again, I’ll put only one) :

Valamo welcomes visitors, and has two guest houses. As I found this one very typical of a Finnish building, I took a picture. You’ll find a lot of this kind of houses in the country, of different sizes of course, but same architecture, same material and often same colour too :

If you walk down to the lake, you’ll see a very curious tiny building, that might be a chapel, but I’m not sure :

The site also contains a library, a wine making factory, a couple of shops. One of these shops sell old stuff for cheap price, like wood craft and candles, and in the corner, books for 1€. You can make marvellous discoveries there, and I got “Treasure Island” in English (I had read it in French only as a child), and another book including 6 famous pieces by Shakespeare, again, in English (never read that before, so it is possible that I’ll write about it). I remember there were also books in about 5 languages. The other shop is a typical souvenir shop, with all you can imagine about such place, and more. More, like some very tasty home-made honey, or home-made wine. This wine is one of the only produced in Finland, and it is made out of berries … I took all the different variants they had ! their main one at least is really good and sweet, and has been very much enjoyed in France with my family :)

Bye bye !

It is really not my first trip there, but I realized I didn’t say much about this very nice place yet …

First, about getting there (from Helsinki). I have tried a few roads, but I think the most pleasant and least busy (perhaps this is related), is the one that consists of going towards Kouvola and Mikkeli. As soon as the motorway ends, the landscape shows dozens of lakes along the road, a lot of forests of course, but also some fields in the south part, between Helsinki and Kouvola :

Mostly, fields are found in the very South-West part of Finland, but of course you’ll find some in other places, and this area (North-East of Helsinki) is one of those. Note the typical colour and material of the house.

Typical roads in Finland are well-maintained, offer relatively few curves or uphill-downhill, with those becoming rarer as you go North. They are naturally digged accross forests, so the lanscape could quickly become boring, if it wasn’t for this abondance of lakes, more wonderful as you go.

Forests in Finland are typically composed of birches and pine trees, with more of the second as you go North (but less forests and more swamps as you go really North). The annoying part with Finnish roads, are the over-protective and sometimes stupid speed limits and painting on the asphalt. No, really. It is not unusual to find a road wide enough to land a plane, straight for kilometers, excellent conditions, and an awful 60km/h sign, just for you. Oh, that and you can’t pass.

It takes about 4 to 5 hours to drive to Savonlinna, depending on your average speed and your breaks. I just hope you’ll get more lucky than me with the weather :) This was about as much sun as I got during one week :

Savonlinna is built on islands, in the “lake district” of Finland. The city is famous for its medieval castle Olavinlinna, certainly the nicest in Finland. The castle hosts every year a prestigious opera festival, attracting international tourists and singers, awaking the city for June and July. I strongly recommend stopping by, also for the local food, in particular to taste fried Muikku (vendace) and Lörtsy. Both can be found in the cute city-center market place. Lörtsy can be quite tricky, as there are two versions of it; it can be sweet, and filled with fruit jam, like the traditional apple one, or the Lakka one (cloudberry). It can also be salty, and filled with minced meat and rice, and is best enjoyed with ketchup and Finnish mustard. I would also recommend the Medieval restaurant Hilpeä Munkki, located in front of the castle, across the bay (go quickly before it gets too expensive!).

For the Finns though, there is one more reason to get there … as it is very laky area, one probably owns a summer cottage or “mökki”, where having a sauna and dips in the lake, eating sausages, drinking beer, are the main activities (but not necessarily in this order). The highlight of the summer is to appreciate a warm midsummer bonfire under the midnight sun. It is sooo peaceful there, it is easy to forget yourself !

See you !

And if he is, then there is no hope for this world … Common, Finland is known for being the least corrupted country in the world ! it is in Finns’ genes not to accept bribes ! Anybody who visited Finland will tell you : people here are way too honest ; they can’t even cross the street if the “small man” isn’t green !

In my opinion, it is more an attempt to decredibilize the chief negotiator, especially because the accusations look way too big and obvious. I mean, seriously, if you were to accept a bribe of few millions, would you ask to have it transfered normally to your main account ??? I don’t think so … more likely, you’ll open a nice and new one in the Caiman islands :) who are they fooling ?

Since I couldn’t find any serious source, I found this Serbian (!) site in English that sums up the accusations. But please remember that the most important, is what is written at the end :

COMMENT:

The above report is still unconfirmed and there are no official statements. For the time being it cannot be considered as 100% valid, until more concrete details-references are made accesible to the public.

Corruption is an endemic phenomenon in the Balkans, it will be disastrous if the aforementioned report is true; for the credibility of the international community and the UN.

Parfois, la mauvaise foi m’ecoeure. Je lisais le Monde (oui, je sais, encore de la pub), et en particulier cet article : Nicolas Sarkozy fixe les grands objectifs de son mandat. Je ne ferais pas de commentaire sur cet article, mais sur les notes laissees par les abonnes. N’etant pas moi-meme abonne, je ne puis repondre a une certaine michèle p., dont voici la remarque :

Des généralités sans plus en forme de voeux de nouvel an ! Quant à la moralité : quand NS dira t’il la vérité sur son appartement de Neuilly ? Quid des montres, colliers et autres figurant en bonne place sur les photos familiales mais non déclarés à l’ISF ? Heureusement que les électeurs ont mis hors d’état Juppé, Carignon et quelques autres ! Et Laporte ?

Madame, sauf votre respect, qu’est-ce qu’on en a a foutre ? De plus, si vraiment c’est quelque chose qui vous passionne, la moitie de nos concitoyens tentent par tous les moyens de planquer un max du FISC. Et dans cette moitie, nous pouvons compter un bon paquet d’ex-dirigeants, qu’ils soient de droite ou de gauche. Je suis persuade que vous n’en faisiez pas tout un debat pour MM. Miterrand, Jospin, Juppe, Chirac et autres Fabius … alors pour etre juste, evitez-nous les montres, colliers et mauvaise foi !

Quand a M. Juppe, ca ne s’est pas joue a beaucoup, et en tout cas, pas a la raison (je parle de se baser sur un programme, avec des remarques intelligentes, mais cela doit etre au-dessus des forces de beaucoup de gens). Plutot au matraquage mediatique sur sa circonscription … Qu’il soit vire ou pas, je m’en fous. Mais j’aurais aime que les gens le vire pour son programme, pas parce qu’il est connu. De plus, c’etait le dernier Chiraquien dans le gouvernement Sarkoziste. Vous n’aimez pas NS, mais vous virez ceux qui pouvaient lui tenir tete ??? ca n’a pas de sens.

“Et Laporte ?” bah quoi, on a bien eu un escrimeur pendant des annees … pourquoi pas un rugbyman ? c’est quoi cette remarque ? ou preferiez-vous un autre politicien bien gras, qui ne connait du sport que les matches a la tele avec une bonne biere :) ?

Qu’on ne se fasse pas d’idee, je ne suis pas partisan d’Iznogoud. Mais de la a critiquer betement, il y a un monde. Maintenant, madame (et toi aussi cher lecteur), jen esperant que vous trouverez ce post sur le net, je vous invite a laisser vos commentaires sur ce site (sans vous demander 6€/mois, je suis de bonne humeur :p ).

Hamas got basically kicked out of the government, and will have to face Israel forces soon. How did we get there ?

One possibility is that it wasn’t planned, but as some might say : “It was to happen”. Palestine wasn’t getting any financial help since Hamas won the elections, putting pressure on the region, and forcing some kind of event like this one to strike out. Except that it doesn’t make sense : it is Hamas’ partisans who took control of the Gaza area, not Fatah’s … They had no reason to take control, since they were supposed to control the whole Palestine territory through their government.

What happens now looks soooo convenient to (almost) everybody, I cannot help but think this was all planned ahead … Hamas was tricked, forced to take the arms and the highly risky step of openly rebelling, making them an easy target for international criticism. And now that they “control” a determined area (Gaza), they are more easily identifiable, and attackable. Of course, Abbas gets international support, including of USA and Israel, the least being ready to strike anytime soon.

I’m not fan of Hamas. Really not. I just think they haven’t been given a fair chance (after all, they won the elections). And these recent events were, in my opinion, so easy to tell ahead, like in a bad movie, when you know in the first 10 minutes who is the murderer. Of course, western countries (and Abbas) weren’t to wait for the next elections. Of course, Hamas couldn’t get flexible and recognize Israel. Of course Israel wouldn’t recognize them either (Hamas as the ruling party, and Palestine as a state), of course the Quartet wouldn’t give them a chance and hold all subventions. Of course.

Now, I’d like to know. In the next Palestine elections, will the ruling party finally be democratically elected (by the Quartet) ?