After a long — too long — pause, I’ve added a few travel reviews from my past travels. Due to my workload, I haven’t been able to focus on Nomadig.com as much I’ve wanted to, but I try to work less during the next year. Probably that won’t happen, to be honest with you, but at least I’ll try.

Now published reviews are from our recent trip to St. Petersburg, and I’ve got some pending reviews for Stockholm that we’ve visited last January, and of course for München and Salzburg — I’m currently writing this at our temporary apartment near Kolumbus Platz in München.

Mama Roma is a chain of small Italian restaurants in St. Petersburg that offer excellent value for the money, and work especially well with children not familiar with the Russian cousine.

We visited one of their restaurants on Vasilevsky Island, on delta of Neva, and were very happy with the food and the service. The waiters have really limited English skills, but there are English menus available. Knowing a few Russian basic words, like “voda” for water, helps you to get everything you need. The service in general is very helpful, albeit the language barrier can be problematic sometimes. A lot of pointing, waving, and drawing in the air helps.

The food itself is delicious and the portions are large enough to satisfy a bigger hunger. The menu is pretty long, and all typical Italian foods are available.

www.mamaroma.ru, Sredniy pr. V.O., 6, Vasilevsky Ostrov, St. Petersburg, Russia, +7 812 328 0639

A friend of mine who had lived in St. Petersburg for many years recommended Stolle for any and all quick and tasty eats. The café chain that has several stores around the city is focusing on traditional Russian pies; heavy in filling (and fat), delicious in taste.

We didn’t try the café part at all, just bought a piece of pie as a late snack in the hotel. The pies are not small ones — we had half a portion and fed four people (two of them kids) with it and ate second time, too. The available pies depend on the season and your luck, we had excellent salmon and onion pie — there were a couple of other choices available, too.

The clerks do not speak that much of English, but they are ready — as Russians in general, it seems — to go lengths to help you with the purchase.

www.stolle.ru, Vasilievsky Ostrov, 1st Line 50, St. Petersburg, Russia, +7 812 328 7860

Sokos Hotel Palace Bridge is an ideal solution if you are spending a few nights on pleasure in St. Petersburg. It has big and well-maintained rooms, an excellent breakfast buffet, and a top-notch spa. The hotel is operated by a Finnish hotel chain that has three hotels in the city.

The rooms are typical business level hotel rooms; nothing fancy, but everything just works. The bed is good, and the room is big enough to fit an extra bed and a crib. The breakfast buffet that is included in the price is the best I’ve ever encountered so far. And trust me, I’ve ate breakfast in numerous hotels. Both the quantity and the quality of the items is astounding.

The spa is probably the highlight of the hotel. There are almost ten different saunas, one ice room, hot tubs, cold tubs, a huge swimming pool, and a children pool. All of this free of charge in the morning for hotel guests, and around ten euros per person later during the day. The spa was spotlessly clean, everything worked like a charm, and the different saunas were fun to experience. I didn’t know that there is at least five different variations of steam saunas.

The only downside of the hotel is the location — it’s about fifteen minutes walk to Nevsky Prospect and the city centre. Fortunately there are restaurants and services around the neighbourhood, too, but shopping possibilities are limited to groceries.

www.sokoshotels.fi, Birzhevoy pereulok 2-4, St. Petersburg, Russia, +7 812 335 2200

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.

As the frequent readers know, we visited St. Petersburg for a few days about a week ago. In Finland, Easter is a four day weekend, which is perfect for local travels. In Russia, Easter is celebrated later due to their Orthodox calendar, and thus it was a normal weekend there.

Russia requires visas from Finns, so you just cannot go there at a whim. Instead, we prepared the trip for two and half weeks beforehand. For example, we sent our passports to the travel agency that took care of the visa formalities for us. Fortunately there are such services, because just filling the visa forms was pretty complicated deal.

Our train departed Helsinki at 7.23 in the morning, so the day started pretty early in Espoo. For some odd reason, we were not that tired — maybe the excitement kept us going throughout the day. Our return tickets were also to the morning train, but I managed to change them at Helsinki railway station. Some people had cancelled their trips, and we were lucky enough to get seats to the afternoon train.

The train ride takes about six hours, but it was almost an hour late due. There were just so many people on the train that the border control took more time than usual. Riding the train with kids is easy, as long as you have a DVD player with you. When things got too reckless, we fired up a Chip and Dale disc and both boys were instantly silent and staring at the screen. The train took through Carelian Isthmus, former Finnish territory. It was in a pretty bad shape, muddy roads, small huts, and msotly forest. It used to be one of the richest parts in Finland before the wars.

The train stopped at Vyborg, but we were not allowed to go out. I’ve been once there for half a day, and it is very beautiful city. Now we got to see glimpses of the city while the train stayed at the station.

When we rode a taxi to our hotel — price agreed beforehand — the vastness of St. Petersburg dawned to us. We rode more than 15 minutes, and didn’t cover even half of the inner metropolitan area on our map.

The hotel was splendid; the room was big, the bed was comfortable, and the spa was really gorgeous — eight different saunas and several types of pools. Boys loved the place and we visited there every morning — the morning swim was free of charge. Also the buffet breakfast was excellent, one of the best I’ve ever had in any hotels.

We spent the rest of the first day strolling around the local area, the hotel is about fifteen minutes from the epicenter of the city, and tried to find some groceries. St. Petersburg shops are quite non-descript, for example, there are no brand names for the stores, just “Products”. Also the difference between cafes and restaurants is very blurry. Fortunately we had some guidance from a local expert, a friend of mine that had lived in the city for years. Without his instructions, we would have been pretty much lost with some places.

Saturday was a shopping day. We tried out the local metro that runs very deep under the river delta — the escalators were an experience of their own. We surfaced on Nevski Prospekt, visited a number of stores, and found nothing to buy. Except for a few plastic cars for the boys. There were a number of luxury shops, some western brand stores, and a few local ones, but none of them offered anything that we wanted. Weird.

On Sunday we visited the Hermitage, a former palace and now a museum. There is a good collection of modern art, a roomful of Picassos, for example, and czar residences in their full golden glory. The amount of gold and glitter is staggering.

While walking from the hotel to the museum, we saw a small car being parked on a park alley next to the museum — and the driver promptly pulled a bear from the backseat! We quickened our steps but tell boys not to run while walking past the bear. Out of ordinary things seem to happen in Russia, I would not even think to drive with a bear in car, or at least put it in the trunk of a wagon car.

Monday was a travel day, so we had only a few hours to spend before the train departed. We walked to the Peter’s and Paul’s fortress located on small isle on river Neva. The fortress was in surprisingly good shape and made a lasting impression to the boys with its thick walls and cannons. There was a space museum in one of the bastions — a pleasant surprise. The museum was a real bargain, and very interesting in general. The only complaint was that there were not that much English texts in the exhibition.

The train trip was pretty uneventful, the train was full and we didn’t have adjacent seats. Fortunately, we could switch some places and could stay pretty close to each other. The train was late again, but not that much as on Friday.

The whole trip was really pleasant, and we would be eager to do it again. Several people have asked about our experiences, and are considering going there. I can heartily recommend the city and the train connection. Riding the train was way better than flying, as there were no security checks, no hassle at the airport, and no arbitrary rules of what to pack and what not to pack. It should get even better at the end of the year, when they roll out the new fast train service between Helsinki and St. Petersburg, cutting the travel time to three and half hours.