Our Adoption Journey to Kazakhstan: Lappeenranta 2013

Lappeenranta is a small city (population 70,000) located on the Eastern extreme of Finland - essentially right on the Russian border. Although situated on the shore of Lake Saimaa (the fourth largest lake in Europe), it does connect to the sea and is a major transportation port. After Helsinki, it is the second most visited city in the country (those Russians!). While small, it is well-developed, right on the waterfront, with trees everywhere (i.e. really green). The dock/port area has numerous parks and restaurants all along the waterfront.

The purpose of this excursion was to attend yet another conference. This particular conference, a meeting of the Finnish Operations Research Society, was being orchestrated by conference organizer extraordinaire, our good friend Mikael (who we first met on our 2008 trip to Armenia) – Lappeenranta being his home university.

To get there, we took the 3-hour train ride from Helsinki. Zoe loved the train travel components of our trip! We reserved seats in the special family car adjacent to the children's play area and she was able to spend several hours reading (they had a good library) and playing with the Finnish children on board. As in other similar situations, language proved to be no barrier as Zoe joined right in with the fun and games. She even brought one little girl back to our seats and introduced her to us. Very cute.

After dropping our bags off at the hotel, we immediately went out to dinner with fellow Canadians Yuri, Jody (whom we met in Istanbul two years ago) and their two children, Lexie and Cole, ages 10 and 7. Yuri, who was also attending the conference, is a friend from Toronto's “other university”. Their family was taking an extended trip through Europe and had rented a lakefront cabin for their stay in Lappeenranta. Fortunately, Zoe, Lexie and Cole hit it off immediately and our post-dinner activity was a walk to a playground down by the beach. Subsequently, Sara and Zoe spent much of the duration of their stay partaking in numerous activities such as swimming, horseback riding, and exploring the area in the company of Jody, Lexie and Cole. We were all so impressed with Lappeenranta and so thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company that everyone became convinced that we should all either live here permanently or plan for extended sabbatical stays sometime in the near future. Needless to say, we had a wonderful time in Lappeenranta.

On the work side, it proved to be a busy portion of the trip for Julian (and for Yuri). The conference was held over three days at the university. The campus was about 7 km from our downtown hotel, located right on the water. As with much of Lappeenranta, it possessed the feel of lakefront cottage living. The first day was a doctoral consortium (essentially a mini-conference for PhD students where Julian gave a 1.5 hour talk/presentation). His recent switch to using cartoons and provocative pictures instead of slides full of baffling mathematical equations provided appropriate comic relief for everyone. The consortium was actually held in the university sauna (brilliant thinking by Mikael!) - essentially an extremely modern, large, fully contained cottage right on the lakefront which included a dock that sauna users could employ in their subsequent leaps into the lake in order to cool off rapidly (some behaviours that the Finns take for granted appear rather peculiar to the outside observer).

After a full day of presentations there was an on-site barbecue (and sauna) and social gathering that accompanying family members were welcome to attend. By the way, none of us "oldsters" were silly enough to sauna - that was left to the much younger crowd. It proved to be a very nice day all-in-all. In addition to Zoe, Lexie and Cole, there was another 6-yr-old girl, Blanka, in attendance. This “gang of four” all had considerable fun partaking in an exploration of the surrounding woods and lakefront area. Blanka is Hungarian but also spoke German (her family recently moved to Germany) and had just started taking English lessons the previous week. While she spoke virtually no English, the children had no problem communicating and became fast friends.

The main conference got into full swing over the next two days. Julian gave two talks including a keynote presentation. The keynote went over very well and one of his Finnish colleagues speculated that one of the things that he talked about (using transsexuals as an illustration for mathematical models) would come to be repeated as standard fare for Finnish PhD students in their own presentations over the next 2-3 years. Always good to have made some sort of impact (even if they will now have no chance of ever getting jobs by doing this).

The conference dinner was held at a historical, lakefront establishment - a refurbished, former Casino that Catherine the Great used to frequent in her heyday. Zoe’s babysitter for this night was Julia, the beautiful, energetic 15 year-old daughter of our hotel’s manager. Rather than staying in the hotel room for the evening, Julia and Zoe headed out (with our permission) to a nearby playground before returning for a round of air hockey in the hotel’s staff room. Needless to say, Zoe loved her babysitter.

With the conference over, we returned to Helsinki via the train. Upon arriving, we felt somewhat like locals as, rather than following the flow along the platform into the main terminal, we took the unmarked elevator in the middle of the platform down to the underground walking tunnels that the local commuters take to reach their platforms...emerging into a park away from the hustle and bustle of the station. We then walked through the park and over the bridge to our hotel (the same one as earlier in the trip), were recognized by the manager (impressive given that this is a busy business hotel) and were in our room within 15 minutes of reaching the city. Helsinki now seems to have evolved into one of our "familiar" destinations and we feel we could easily live here. After quickly freshening up, it was up to the business lounge balcony for a cool drink in the afternoon sun before we made a circuitous walk along the river/seafront via the back way to arrive at the main port/market/tourist area. "Dinner" was simply sandwiches and drinks on one of the floating restaurant establishments in the harbour prior to turning in for a relatively early night in anticipation of our impending travel day back home.

Our two and half weeks in Scandinavia provided an absolutely wonderful mix of work and play for all of us. We all thoroughly enjoyed the entire trip. Finland left an outstanding impression on all of us – Zoe included. Rest assured, we plan to return!

At the train station, ready to roll!

In the train's playroom.

A see-saw that also spins - you would never see one of these in liability fearing North America!

A statue of any sea creature must be hugged!

The four playmates in front of the University's sauna at the conference BBQ gathering.

Not a bad view for an all-day conference venue.

Four happy playmates. They had so much fun together!!!

Lappeenranta had a children's "traffic park" similar to the one at the zoo in Reykjavik. There were roads, intersections, traffic signs, and even a roundabout all covering a sizable park. The kids loved it!

At Jody and Yuri's lakefront cottage, a truly beautiful setting.

Fishing at the lakefront cottage.

The kids taking the boat for a spin.

We left our swimming clothes at the hotel but that didn't matter.

We missed horseback riding this time around in Iceland, but we located a farm outside Lappeenranta that raises Icelandic horses AND offers riding lessons. We signed up! Zoe's lesson began with catching the horse and leading it into the barn.

Grooming was next.

Words of endearment for Prins.

All saddled up and ready to ride.

At one point in the lesson the instructor had Zoe ride backwards in the saddle. The explanation was lost in translation but we all had a good laugh about it.