Tue 12.10 Kerimäki - Heinola

Cloudy with occasional rain showers

This cabin in the forest is really quiet, it was a good place to relax.

Today we continue, after a little walk around the lake we head to Heinola. Here I will meet Juha again after 47 years, who was an exchange student with me in St. Regis, Montana from 1973-1974. He came from the Finnish capital and I came from the million-city Hamburg, and we were the "celebrities" in the 450-inhabitant village in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.

We take a detour

and circle a larger lake north of Savonlinna, have our lunch break in Varkaus.

We want to see more of the lake landscape before we drive to Heinola, where we are meeting Juha at his summer house.

The reunion after so many decades feels like we just said goodbye to each other, except that we have all grown older. The joy is great, and we have a lot to talk about. First, he shows us everything and we settle into the guest room, and because Juha still has some work to do, we first go to the sauna, which is already heated with wood and located directly by the lake.

In the evening we drink a bottle of champagne to celebrate the reunion, have a delicious dinner with a view over the lake, and talk about old times and what we have experienced in the last decades. We sit by the fireplace for a long time before going to sleep.