Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Their bodies will shiver with happiness

These photographs were taken on November 26th at Tahkovuori resort in Nilsiä, where we spent the first night of our travel. It was raining when we arrived, the temperature was about +4 °C. Walkways and paths were mostly covered by ice or tightly packed icy snow, so you had to be rather careful when walking. It was also quite dark, despite all the light pollution coming from the downhill skiing slopes.

I went for a walk to ease off some of the tension cause by the long car drive, taking photographs of the dark landscape. I walked extra carefully to avoid falling down.

A group of young men were also outside walking, with shoes that were not intended for such use, and one of them kept on slipping and falling in the darkness of a path by the shore, the others commenting this loudly, all of them being in a rather boisterous mood.

I slipped badly from my vegetarian choice of food during the vacation. Well, I'm not really a vegetarian, mostly I'm on a mixed diet, but when there is a choice I usually select the vegetarian one. Hotel breakfasts are usually easy in this regards, but roadside restaurants in the northern parts of Finland don't often offer much choice.

I still remember the time I had a vegetarian pasta which was basically thawed vegetables (that tasted as if they had been thawed a couple of times before) with some macaroni and a bit of oil on top, the dish served at a temperature in which thaw hadn't yet advanced very far.

Well, this time it wasn't quite that bad. At one roadside restaurant there was a great surprise, mushroom-stuffed cabbage rolls with lingonberry jam, and this tasted wonderful. But I resorted to meat dishes several times. Maybe this is also why my weight has gone up 2 kg during the vacation, despite getting quite a lot of exercise. Or then the reason is eating all those sweets.

(Posting title is from the poem If Feeling Isn't In It by John Brehm.)

2 comments:

Martina said...

A Happy New Year to you and your family!

I am looking forward to seeing 365 days of your photography!

LOL - I had may share of this kind of vegetarian meals, too. Shiver.

Juha Haataja said...

Thanks, Martina.

Well, of course it is not only vegetarian meals which can be bad. I remember some dishes that were as bad, and some of them were served in well-regarded restaurants.

No to speak of the time when several dozen people in the building in which I then worked got norovirus after eating in the restaurant downstairs.

May the year 2014 be good as regards food. All the best to you!