Return to roots: driving a figure 8 and 1224 km in Finland

Time goes round 1, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Teeth, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Pier at Iso Teerijärvi, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Two, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Finally we are back at home, after driving a figure 8 shaped route across Finland, altogether 1224 km in four days. That was a bit too much for me, and apparently also for the children, who endured the long trip admirably but were really happy to return to home.

Here is a little story in photographs, a sort of symbolic description of the trip we had.

Returning to the places of childhood generated all kinds of feelings, which were impossible to put into photographs. I must say that even if photographs can represent reality, they can't represent all things of the so-called reality. At least my skills are severely lacking in trying to show how I feel about certain places, for example those where I lived as a somewhat troubled (who isn't?) teenager some 30 years ago.

In any case, the four images here are different in content and style, showing some aspects of my "travel to the roots" during the last few days. As I said, these are a bit more symbolic in content than my usual stuff, probably because I was trying to process some deep emotions about time passing, generations being replace by new ones, and old things becoming - well, old, and even older.

In addition, I took quite a lot of photographs of the children and other family members, but I'm not quite sure whether I captured anything of value there. Have to wait some weeks or months to see that.

It was also interesting to be without net connectivity for two days. It wasn't impossible, but I have got used to checking daily the status of the world from the net. I survived. In a way, this was another aspect of returning to the roots.

Update: I just noticed I have now taken over 40,000 photographs with the Panasonic LX3 since September 2008. The little camera is still going strong, although I have occasionally started to wish for a longer zoom than 24-60 mm. But the 24 mm wide lens I wouldn't change to a less wide one. Also, I realized I had forgotten a batch of 26 photographs taken during the trip. I'm not going to add any of them here or make a separate posting today, although some of the images were quite nice. But I may return to them some day.

Jyväskylä street view

Jyväskylä view, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Before leaving the town of Jyväskylä, we had a short walk in the center. It was heavily clouded, but the new snow had almost melted and the streets were drying up. Now we are in Kajaani, a town farther north from Jyväskylä. I have driven the car about 600 km in two days, the same needs to be done going back south. Feeling tired.

Update: I didn't have net connection for the rest of the trip, and my mobile phone had trouble in mailing postings to Light Scrape. And then the battery died and I didn't have a compatible charger for the E90 phone. I had an partial entry hanging here in triplicate for a couple of days. Sorry about that. Will process the 573 images from the trip after recovering a bit from driving the car for 1224 km.

Visiting Jyväskylä

Jyväskylä street view 1, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Bicycles in Jyväskylä, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

We are traveling north. Today I drove to Jyväskylä, which is a town in central Finland. I know Jyväskylä quite well, having spent some time here when I was a student, and returning for shorter visits every once in a while.

Driving the car is not one of my favorite activities, it makes me tired, so I didn't have much energy for photography. However, here are two images taken in Jyväskylä today, snapshot-type views of the town center. There was a bit of new snow on the ground, but it was already melting away. Tomorrow we'll continue towards north. I hope the weather turns better and we get some sunshine for Easter.