Family skating in the downtown Helsinki

Aapo got a pair of skates from my wife’s sister-in-law’s brother’s children — almost from relatives that is. The weather has not been favouring us, as the temperature has stayed a couple of Centigrade above zero. Our local ice rink has no cooling systems, so it is available only when it has cold for a week or so.

Fortunately, city of Helsinki has gratuitously opened an ice rink in the shock middle of Helsinki downtown, in front of Ateneum museum and next to the train station. This is now third or fourth winter they’ve erected the rink on the square, but we have never visited it. Until today.

I went to migrate Sanna’s company’s servers, and Sanna and Aapo started learning skating — to be honest, Sanna is a good skater. For Aapo, this was the first time.

After starting the migration, I packed Niilo to our stroller and headed to the rink. There is a nice café next to the rink, and it was surprisingly empty at eleven in the morning. Aapo and Sanna skated for a while, then had a drink with us, and off they went to skate again. I retied Aapo’s laces, and suddenly he felt much sturdier on the skates…

At noon, they started Zamboni to resurface the ice and we had to leave back home. Next time, I’ll try be on skates with him. It sure looked a lot of fun.