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What a thunderstorm last night! Trees falling down, black outs, millions and millions of euros of damages. Well, not where I was yesterday night. Fortunately, because as a matter of fact in the forest I was, the thunderstorm broke out, with all the lightnings and the rest, but fortunately I haven't seen/hear/felt any tree falling down. At least not on my tent. For sure it didn't make me fall asleep easily, more for the noise of the rain than the thunders themselves.
And in the morning it was even more exciting to wake up at the sound of gun shots in the neighbourhood. Ok, that wasn't a big surprise I have to say, since I knew that on the other side of the road there was the garrison of the Utti Jaeger Regiment. There is also a memorial site of the Second World War, so I even took the picture you see here above. What? Oh, yes, the Messerschmitt 109 has got a blue swastika. Well, that was the symbol of the Finnish Air Force from 1918 to 1945, after that they decided to change it in order to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings.
I spent the morning in Kouvola, which was also another new town to me, ending up in the museum quarter of Kaunisnurmi. It's a well preserved area of wooden buildings, some over 100 years old, located close to the railway station. Nowadays many of them have been restored and nowadays host several museums. One of those, the
Radio Museum got my attention more than the other ones, as amateur radio is one of my thousand hobbies. Today it was supposed to be closed, but while I was taking a picture in front of it I was approached by Kaarina, who happened to be a radioamateur herself, managed to get the keys and let me in. Downstairs rooms show the typical furniture (and radio, of course) per each decade of the last century until the invention of the television. In the picture you can see me upstairs in the room of the radio club. Very nice experience.
I dropped also by the garrison area of Kasarmimäki, nowadays in large part a University campus, where all the redbrick buildings were built between 1910 and 1914 and used as a Russian army base. And then I finally started today's cucling trip towards Lahti. Just a small detour to see Kuusankoski, known as the "paper capital of Finland" due to its long tradition in paper manufacturing. After that just a long run towards Lahti, with some annoying wind, but fortunately a more reasonable temperature let me cycle without having to drink like a camel 🙂
Day 36 – Tour de Finlande 2010: Kouvola – Lahti
Trip distance: 92 km
Actual trip time: 5 h
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