I’ll visit Tallinn, once again. The Estonian city is so conveniently reachable by ferries leaving every hour, and there is plethora of good restaurants, historic places, and things to do and buy in the city.

This trip is mostly for the family, we’ll probably spend some time in our hotel’s spa and then visit Tallinn Zoo. Some good food and maybe a pair of shoes or a shirt would be the icing of the cake.

My holidays for the summer are now over, as there are no planned trips and work has already started. The end of July is typically silent time in Finland, so I’ve got plenty of time to work on the items that didn’t receive that much attention during winter. The pace will quicken early August, so there are two weeks to clean the desk.

In fact, I’ve been working for the previous week while Sanna was having her turn with kids in Taivalkoski. Last weekend we had a family reunion in Kuopio, I arrived by train to the city and Sanna drove from Taivalkoski. We spent some quality time in the annual housing fair (Asuntomessut) and found a good BBQ restaurant called Ravintola Hiili. All in all, very relaxing weekend.

It is our last full in München, and fortunately there is not that much of things to do anymore. I need to go and pick up a shirt that has been altered to fit me — typically all collared shirts have too long arms for me. Also there is a couple of items that I need to show to Sanna to get her opinion.

Then we maybe visit the English Gardens and stroll around the city. The weather has been nice for a couple of days, a welcome change from the constant rain of the previous week.

The last thing on our list is to finalise packing. We have already sent one big suitcase full of stuff (mostly Legos from Legoland) with my parents to Finland last week. They brought the suitcase empty — in fact, it contained two smaller bags — so there should be enough space for the stuff we’ve bought here. As there are four ticket holders in family, we can bring up to 80 kilos with us. That should be plenty.

We’ve been in München almost two weeks now, and the region has offered some exceptional experiences, and also some lowdowns. Weather has been the culprit for the most of the lows, as it has been horrendous — raining several days on a row, almost constantly. This combined with surprisingly low temperature has made any longer trips outside the apartment a bit too taxing. I was expecting a better weather than in Finland, and fearing for constant sunshine and temperatures over 40C. The first week was good, but the second just horrible.

But let’s move to the positive experiences. The city is pretty compact, and surprisingly easy to navigate for a medieval town. There have been a plethora of shopping possibilities, and we have put our credit cards into use. It is not that much cheaper compared to Finland, but the selection is so much wider. For example, I’ve found a few multistory stores that sell only male clothing. I’ve never seen such male shopping palaces in any city that I’ve visited so far. I’ve added several critical pieces, including shoes, ties, and shirts, to my clothing portfolio.

We’ve only visited one museum in München, as we’ve spent weekends outside the city. Deutches Museum was an extremely large technology museum whose collections are in par with Museum of Science in Boston. The tour around the museum was both educational and fun, and the boys liked the whole place very much. We had to drag them out with promises of buying something from the museum store… These promises were found false later, as the shop didn’t sell anything worth buying for two small boys.

This week, we’ll pay a visit to BMW museum. Yes, there is one here. In fact, BMW is from the region and a big player locally. Almost half of the cars on the streets are BMWs, the rest are Audis, Mercedeses, and Volkswagens. Some Peugeots, Fiats and Volvos can be spotted, too. But not many Japanese.

We rented a car — got a 740D BMW that was luxurious to drive — and visited Neuschwanstein fairytale castle in southern Bavaria. The castle was built, and never finished, by Ludwig II — the king of Bavaria — at the end of 19th century. The castle in Disneyworld has drawn a lot of inspiration from this place.

If you visit the region and have a day off, go to see the castle. It is located on a peaceful and very beautiful countryside next to the mountains, and offers breathtaking views and very nicely done interiors. After walking through the castle — that was inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner — and thinking of the money spent there, it is no wonder that Ludwig II was declared not capable of ruling his country.

The castle is not finished, as work stopped pretty much immediately after Ludwig’s death. Still, the finished parts of the castle are something unique and well worth the trouble of getting there.

Another dream-like destination nearby is Salzburg. The old town is extremely pretty, and easily accessible with foot. The city has the biggest fortification in Europe on a nearby mountain that literally rises from the walls of the town. The ticket to the castle includes a return trip on a funiculaire car — another option is to walk about 30 minutes to the summit. The castle is huge and offers great views over the city and the neighbouring countryside.

We visited Salzburg with train; the trip took around 90 minutes and costed like 100€ for two adults and two children. The train station is not in within the old town, so you have either to walk for 15-20 minutes, take a taxi, or a local bus (2 €).

Third good destination, especially for families with children, is Legoland in Günzburg, about 100 kilometers west from München. The easiest way to get there is by car, speeding on the German highways that do not have any speed limitations — I was driving 170 kilometers per hour and cars were zipping past me all the time. Unfortunately, Germans seems to be really eager to build their highways, as there was a number of roadworks. Speeding like 80 km/h was not the experience of German highways I was looking for…

Anyhow, Legoland is a good place to spend a day with kids less than 12 years of age. We happened to be there on a rainy day, so there were practically no queues at all. The park didn’t show its best due to weather, but we purchased Legoland rain ponchos and were able to enjoy the day despite the elements.

If you a Lego freak or a parent of one, prepare to shell out money in several places. We bought a number of Lego boxes and also two different sets of individually picked bricks.

Compared to other Lego parks I’ve visited (London and Carlsbad in California), German version had the best restaurants. Portions were huge and tasty. Not anything like the crap we ate in the UK. The rides themselves are pretty much the same in all parks with some variations, and the miniland has somewhat different theme — so once you’ve seen one park, you have seen them all. But kids just love them.

I’m writing this in Munich, in our two bedroom apartment that serves as our home for a few weeks. Sanna got a chance to visit European Patent Office for three weeks, and I’m running our private kindergarten during that time.

So far, I’ve mostly spent my time with visiting several small grocery stores and cooking. Every single store has been smaller than a typical Finnish supermarket, and none of them has sold everything we’ve been looking for. I’ve bought some cheese from one store, fresh vegetables from another, and rice from third. This feels so inefficient.

Besides “shopping”, I’ve been playing with my kids. We’ve spend some time in a local public pool — that had superb settings for children; I didn’t have any chances to dip into water, though — and playing football on the pavements. We bought an inexpensive and small replica of the football World Cup ball from the nearest sports store and it has been kicked around intensively.

We’ll do some real shopping tomorrow when we visit the main high-end shopping street — I’d like to buy a pair of shoes or two — and then on Sunday we dwell on culture by visiting the fairytale castle on Neuschwanstein and a museum whose name I’ve forgotten (but Sanna knows it).

My parents will arrive on Monday for a few days, and we’ll visit Legoland on Tuesday. I’ll try to provide more reports later, as I should have more time to write to Nomadig.com than before.

My life has been recently ultra-busy due to a couple of projects within Exove — maybe more about them in another post. Anyhow, the frequency of my posts in Nomadig.com has dropped, and nowadays I need specifically mark some time in my calendar to be able to write something here.

Today, however, is an exceptional day; I’ve been able to do all kinds of auxiliary tasks and even write here without too much distrations. Aapo is swimming with Sanna, and Niilo is napping. This calm day was a result of a mini-holiday in Tuuri and Oulu. We returned home last night, and today has been a day with no agenda nor hurry.

Talking about our trip, we left towards Oulu on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday was a national holiday, and then I used my first holiday day since Christmas on Friday. We drove to Tuuri, a shopping center in middle of nowhere. We’ve been there earlier, so we knew what to expect. We drove around three and half hours in the car, and then spent some time in eating and shopping before checking in to the hotel. As the next day, Thursday, was a national holiday, we spent the time and our money wisely on Wednesday evening.

The logic behind Tuuri works, we arrived there to spend a night and spent around €400 to stuff, groceries, food, accommodation, and gasoline… Everything was a bit cheaper than in Helsinki, so we made a good bargain. But still somehow the final bill was astoundingly big.

On Thursday morning, we continued our journey to Oulu. Sanna has graduated from the University of Oulu, so she has a number of friends in the city. We had two French visits on Thursday, and then had a couple nights accommodation on third couple’s home.

The weather was really magnificent during Thursday and the whole trip. A burst of hot air arrived from Southern Russia to Finland, and the constant sunshine and temperature of 24-27C made the days feel like end of July. We didn’t complain. Kids has extremely good time goofing outside, and we parents could relax in the patio and enjoy grilled food.

I spent half of Friday morning in meetings with customer prospects and potential partners — Sanna met one of her friends and their children in a park while I was gone in the meetings. Rest of the day was spent again on the patio. Saturday was a shopping day, and we met Sanna’s mother in Oulu. I found a few books and more Legos (we bought some already from Tuuri), so the day was a splendid experience shopping-wise.

As the weather was hot, we had decided to leave on Saturday evening, so we don’t get baked in the car. It was a wise decision. Children felt asleep in less than five minutes after igniting the car, and we could drive in piece and quiet for an hour or so. We stopped twice, and were in Espoo around midnight. One of the easiest drives from Oulu ever.

Today, the good weather has continued and we’ve been spending the day in the garden. Not bad holiday, not bad at all.

We have been pondering on travelling near and far recently, but none of the trips have been so straightforward that we would have decided to take it. Instead, we’ve been a limbo for a while. But that ends soon, as we’ve booked a trip to St. Petersburg on Easter. The city should provide enough things to see, a lot of exotism, and some shopping possibilities, too. And it is a few hours train trip away. No need to queue at the airport, no security checks, and passport checks in the train. Should be good.

I’ve been in the city once back in 1998 and rest of the family have never been there, so it is mostly undiscovered turf for everyone of us. With two full days, we won’t discover that much. The basic idea is to spend one day with museums and such, and the other day shopping and strolling around Nevski Prospect.

Our hotel has a full-fledged spa (not a day spa that is), so we’ll probably spend some time there, splurging in the pools and trying out different saunas.

I, Aapo, and Niilo visited my parents in Polvijärvi, North Carelia, during the previous weekend. I had some training business in the nearby town of Joensuu, and it was handy to bring in the boys and bunk at my parents house for the weekend. Everyone won: boys saw grandparents, grandparents saw boys, Sanna got some time of her own, and I could bond deeper with the boys with this special dad-sons excursion to the wilderness — or something along those lines.

We took a train from Helsinki to Joensuu, and had our seats in a children car — an excellent choice, I must say. Aapo and Niilo spent most of their time playing, reading, eating or watching DVDs. I fixed three issues in a customer project, and read a couple of Aapo’s comic books. As the train left in the morning on Saturday, we had plenty of time in Polvijärvi after my dad picked us up in Joensuu. Saturday evening and Sunday was spent playing in snow — there as a slide built by my dad — and just fooling around the house.

I boarded a bus on Monday morning and rode to Joensuu. Boys stayed in Polvijärvi. The training / seminar took six hours, and after that we had a family reunion in Joensuu — my parents and sons picked me up, and we headed to the airport. Apart the waiting time — that was kept hectic by Aapo — the flight was uneventful. Both Aapo and Niilo sat obediently on their seats throughout the flight, and behaved well also on Helsinki-Vantaa airport where Sanna was waiting for us.

The flight was the latest one leaving from Joensuu, and well beyond the normal sleeping hours. Maybe the boys were so tired that they didn’t have energy to argue and to do mischief. Or then the flight was so exciting experience, as I was not sitting with them but on the other side of the aisle.

All in all, the trip was way better than I though it would, especially as all practicalities were so smooth. Next trip is probably middle-April, hopefully my good luck continues…