The first night we went to Alex’s house and had a great night. We had dinner with his family and then us young ones went to the sauna. It’s a true Finnish (wood-burning) sauna. You spend about 3-4 hours “doing the sauna” wherein you go between the 90 degree Celsius sauna and jumping into the chilly Baltic Sea. They even do this in the winter, when the Baltic Sea is quite icy. They also like to have a few drinks while in the sauna, which ends up having quite the effect since you are sweating so much while in there but also consuming alcohol.
Saturday night we went to Johanna’s house. It is only accessible by a 20 minute boat ride, so we parked the car and then took her speed boat out to the small island (about 10 homes) where her place is. Her place is quite different from Alex’s, which was very modern; hers has been in her family for generations and it is much more of a ‘cabin’ feel, but it was great. Her house is in fact the only one on the island that has running water (toilet, etc), if that is any indicator of the age of these homes. Her place consists of the main cabin, a smaller side cabin, a garage type of thing with ping pong and whatnot in between the cabin and the water, and a sauna right near the water. This is all dispersed over a good amount of land, so it was very outdoors-y, which was great. While walking out to the sauna in the middle of the night I looked up into the sky and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars in my life, it was beautiful!
At Johanna’s we had a crayfish party, a traditional summertime activity in Sweden. You eat crayfish and take breaks every now-and-then to sing a traditional Swedish song and then take a shot of schnapps. Due to crayfish being actually quite little food but a struggle to get at that little bit, you get quite tipsy by the end of this 2-3 hour long dinner of crayfish and schnapps. We had a group of 10 people at the crayfish party, making for a very fun and festive night followed by some intense games of ping pong and then relaxing in the sauna.
The weekend at the archipelago was great. Their two places were very different moods, which was cool to experience. I really enjoyed the sauna and would love to maybe have one someday in my home. I got to meet yet another very warm and welcoming Swedish family at Alex’s and then some very fun Swedish peers at Johanna’s, which was great! The weather ended up not being perfect (first day too choppy to water ski, second day rainy in the morning and then too chilly later to get some sun) but other than that, it was a great time seeing how the Swedes spend their summer.
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