MAY 3 - Pack out of Green Star Hotel and hoof it to the train station, as a few snow flurries start up. It is a long way north to Oulu, with a transfer in Seinäjoki, taking all of the afternoon. The countryside is nearly identical to that seen further south, except that slowly we see larger and larger patches of snow.
The art of Richard Scarry seems fairly popular in Finland. This particular coach on the train has a mini-playground upstairs.
Today’s route: (A) Vaasa, (B) Oulu.
It is almost 19:00 by the time we dump the bags in the apartment (in theory an airbnb but I booked it on another site). Here we are searching for somewhere to eat, which ended up being a Syrian restaurant. Like many storefronts, the grocery store in the background shows pictures of food on the blacked-out windows. The entrances to business like this are often small and not even really visible from a distance.
We decide to watch a children’s show this evening that is integral to Finland: The Moomins. It is a cast of cartoon characters originally created by a Finnish illustrator in the 1930’s, and was eventually produced as a TV show later, including in Japan. The two white characters resembling hippos below are meant to be trolls, but friendly ones.
A few of the Moomins characters, on a chocolate egg seen in a store. There is a Moomins theme park in a city close to Turku.
