Wednesday 26.5.2010 - The Rotary Clubs of Naantali and Meri-Naantali and Nousiainen    
   Arriving to Naantali to Bridget Inn, Kaivokatu 18, Naantali, which wiil be t
 A sightseeing walk in the old town of Naantali and lunch in restaurant Merisali by the sea.
 Transport to Kuhankuono (Kuhankuono hiking route). The program there will consist of a 3 mile walk and meal outdoors with the rotary club of Nousiainen

Today, we visited Valmet automotive.  Valmet is where Katja from the Finland-to-Oklahoma team works as the EA to the CEO.   Valmet is the only place that manufactures Porsche Cayman and Boxters outside of Germany.  Finland is very proud of this fact and they should be as Porsche is very strict in their standards (as they should be given their price) and those that are made in Finland actually score better in quality than those from Germany - even given their reputation. 
(On a side note, this is consistent with what we've seen throughout the country - with only 5 million inhabitants, they don't have many companies, but those that they do are top-notch - of course, including Nokia.  I had a site visit to Technip Offshore - a manufacturer of deep water drilling rigs.  As is typical in today's business market, Technip has been acquired and is now French owned, but was previously Finnish.  Though rigs can be built cheaper in Asia, Technip has maintained the Finland operations because of the superior quality.  During Hurricane Katrina, the only platforms NOT lost in the gulf were those built by Technip's Finnish plant.  Additionally, we later visited STX (you'll hear more on this later) - the largest builder of luxury cruiseliners in the world.  Of course, this shipyard started locally as a Finnish company years ago, but is now Korean owned.  Once again, boats can be built cheaper elsewhere, but the quality doesn't compare so the best boats are still built in Finland where the top talent is.) 
OK, back to Valmet - it truly is unfortunate that we were unable to take any pictures inside Valmet - (I'm sure the five of us looked pretty threatening to their trade secrets) - this place was most men's dreamland as Porsches floated over our heads one after another down the assembly line - every color, hard top, soft top, fancy-schmancy wheels, etc.  Each vehicle was custom-made to order and each vehicle varied from that ten feet in front and behind on the line.  The huge robots used to assemble much of the body of the car were amazing - quite large, nimble, and eerily human-like in their motion.  Humans still manipulated much of the small details of the cars, but they have over 70 robots today. 
In addition to these two Porsche models, Valmet is in first production of the 'Karma* for automotive company Fisker-Karma.  This is a cool-looking, fancy hybrid, until we were turned off by the steep price that is proposed - $80,000.  For those of you crazy/wealthy enough to buy this, they're coming out next year so keep your eyes open!
Finally, Valmet also manufactures high-end electric golf cart/Smartcar sized vehicle called  Think - City.  This is an all electric vehicle - takes about 8 hours to charge.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to drive a Porsche, but we did have the opportunity to drive a Think!
Following our Valmet visit, our host picked us up and took us to the town hall of Mynämäki where we met the mayor.  We find it interesting as we've met two Mayors to date and they've both been quick to let us know that they're appointed not elected - but we've learned that the town council consisting of the strongest political parties is who appoints the mayor, so they are actually quite political and as such popular or unpopular as any other politician. We heard quite a bit about his viewpoints on energy, consumption, and conservation.  While we didn't agree with the majority of his comments, it certainly was interesting to hear his point of view. 
We headed to kill time in a Finnish grocery store then a sandwich/coffee shop - not so different from Panera Bread.  We enjoyed coffee and tea and then headed and presented to the Mynämäki Rotary Club's dinner meeting. 

  We began today with the luxury of sleeping in since our program didn't start til 11:30 am.  Amy and I have been so sleepy lately, so we took advantage of the extra time to catch up on our sleep.  We began our first program of the day at a local private health care center, "Laitilan-Terveyskoti" in Laitila.  Terveyskoti in Finnish translates as, "Home for Brothers".  There are currently 23 rehab centers in Finland that provides rehabilitative care to those who have served in the Finnish War.  We were informed that the spouses and widows are also cared for here, which we felt was pretty cool.  Marine Rapala and Paulina Iiskala were our gracious hosts at the center.  We began with lunch in the cafeteria where we sat and enjoyed live music with the facility and patients.  After a tour of the facility and a short presentation we headed for the sauna- let me just say this was unlike any previous sauna experience.  We had to first shower with a special shampoo and then place a mixture of mud all over our hair and bodies before we went into the sauna.  We had to remain in the sauna for 30 minutes ( low setting), while the staff brought us refreshments. We looked so ridiculous that we couldn't stop laughing at each other.  We took pictures, but we can not post them until we have a chance to censor them-believe me when I say, "We looked hilarious".  Next we walked to Vakka-Suomen Musiikkiopisto, the music school of Laitila. We enjoyed a music presentation and tour of the classrooms.  Heli Laaksonen, a famous poet, has a studio in the school where she writes funny poems on female issues in a local dialect.  We really enjoyed listening to the children play for us.  Later in the evening we gave a presentation to the Rotary of Laitian, where we enjoyed dinner and conversation.

We left our Rauma host families this morning and headed by van to Uusikaupunki.  We were quite curious why we needed to leave Rauma so early when we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves and our host families. However, after we arrived at Uusikaupunki and met Marita, our host for the day, we were happy we did. We checked into the Hotel Aquarius for four nights of bliss.  Lynn and Aimee were roomies.  Amy and Robynn were roomies. Jill got her own room.  After settling in, Marita gave us a walking tour of Uusikaupunki.  We enjoyed lunch at a local resturant where we were able to order our own food - no buffet here!! We each ordered an original pilsner that was brewed at the local Uusikaupunki brewery.  After lunch we headed back to our hotel just in time to watch the weigh-in for the local fundraising fishing contest.  The boat with the most Pike, by weight, was declared the winner and won the prize of a brand new fishing boat.  In case you haven't learned by now, Finland has a woman President and not all Rotary clubs allow women in their clubs.  With this in mind, you wouldn't believe how excited we were when the winning boat was three woman!!!

The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying the hotel sauna and pool.  Later that evening, we walked down to the restaurants along the sea for a drink and some dinner.  We debated over which restaurant had the best menu, but finally decided and went inside to find a table.  Luckily for us (unluckily for the kitchen staff) we only had 10 minutes to place our order before the kitchen closed.  Since we thought we were REALLY hungry that night, we made our own Finnish buffet right on our table and we all enjoyed a fabulous dinner of mushroom soup, shrimp Caesar salad, chicken Caesar salad, nachos with feta cheese (none of the orange cheese sauce), fillet of beef, and a pizza.  Yes, we shared, and no, we didn't finish it all...but our leftovers made a great midnight snack and breakfast the next morning!!

A Day on the Viking Cruise Ship
This is a ship which goes from Turku port to Stockholm, Sweden. Our agenda included a day from Turku to a point between there and Sweden, and then to turn back around and come home. So, we weren't quite sure what to expect...I'm not sure anything could have prepared us for what was to come.

Part 1
As we entered the boat at 8am, a drunk man wearing only a shirt and whitey-tighties was being escorted off the boat. Next we rushed with our hosts Raimo and Helena (who are amazing people) up to another buffet smorgasbord, just another in a long long line of this style of dining. AS you can imagine we were experts in that experience. Then we moved onto to the exploration of the boat, where we saw many slot machines, gaming tables, bars, duty free shopping, saunas and hot tubs. Since the boat is really more lively in the evening we decided to have a seat in a bar area and write postcards and some of our group had some bloody marys. Some of the first real American bar drinks of the trip, they get rave review!
That concludes the morning part of the trip.
The afternoon livened up with some group Karaoke. Lynn has a really great voice and decided to entertain us all with some Norah Jones "don't know why" and Whitney Houston's " I wanna dance with somebody".

Here is Lynn singing and Raimo dancing, the first Finnish man brave enough to dance on stage with Lynn, way to go Raimo!!


Part 2-The story continues
After some fun karaoking, we then disembarked from boat #1 midway bt Finland and Sweden and hopped right onto the next cruise home. So, as things were looking more lively for the evening trip back, we decided to try another round of karaoke, in another location. This time Lynn got up to sing a classic " I will survive", everyone loves that song, the perfect sing-a-long in the US and Europe alike, right?
NOPE, not our new crowd. Lynn literally SURVIVED the worst karaoke crowd in history, she sang her heart out, did a fabulous job while a room of completely stoic folks stared dead pan at her the ENTIRE song. Oh, well she's a trooper and she had managed to WOW the audience in the first boat. We knew because of their great response and the fanfare we recieved that afternoon as we walked around the boat. Thanks Lynn.

Part 3- Cheetah and the Bandit
Many of our facebook friends have already been introduced to this duo but for those of you who are not, here it goes.

Introducing Cheetah and the Bandit!!!

Cheetah on the left Bandit on the right. Though Cheetah was a fascinating performer and I could only catch him in a photo from the side, due to his stealth and cat like moves, we were SO much happier to hear bandit sing, because he unlike Cheetah had a really lovely singing voice .

Well, the day ended with a few cover songs from the band, a bit of dancing by our hosts, Raimo and Helena and a drive back home, where we relaxed around the hotel and then crawled into bed, awaiting the next days big adventure. Though, after a day like that we felt...surely, we had seen it all.

Today we traveled to the Vuojoki Mansion. The Empire-style Vuojoki Mansion was designed by the acknowledged architect Carl Ludwig Engel (1777-1840) and represents the most prestigious architectural heritage in Finland. The Mansion centre consists of the main building and its annexes, the greenhouse and other outbuildings as well as the park and the cultivated areas.

Previously known as Vuojoki Castle, the mansion’s current, elegant design was created in 1836 by architect C.L. Engel. The work was commissioned by Lars Magnus Björkenheim, a Finnish iron works magnate.

Today, Vuojoki Mansion, one of Finland’s architectural treasures, is owned by Eurajoki Municipality and leased to Posiva Ltd, while the Vuojoki Foundation plays the key role in preserving and publicising the mansion’s cultural heritage. The Foundation also sponsors research, development and educational work associated with the mansion’s historical legacy.

Our tour guide showed the grounds of the estate, including a version "English" garden complete with a river.  We were served lunch here and learned that it was a very common place for locals to eat lunch as well.  As always, lunch was very good.

After lunch, we toured the Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) nuclear power plant. Mikko, a local Rotarian and TVO Plant Manager, gave us a brief introduction to TVO before stepping out for a meeting.  Hannu then finished the presentation and gave us a tour of low and intermediate nuclear waste depository.  The depository was deep within the earth and the waste is kept in containers in the rock.  The contamination area was not the most pleasant smelly and we all joked about our future children being born with 3 heads or spare limbs. However, Robynn and Jill wore radiation detectors and any radiation we experienced during that time was less than the radiation that a person receives on a typical Finnish day on the surface of the earth. I think we're all safe :)  We finished our time at TVO with good conversation, coffee, tea and cake.

We had a great site visit on Thursday - we went to Pori Brigade.  One of the Brigade Directors is a Rotarian and he met us Thursday morning to tour us around and show us Finnish army life.  We arrived at 9:20am for our tour, and our host was scheduled to be on a 17:00 flight from Tampere (over 1 hour away) headed to Afghanistan.  He spent the entire day with us until he had to change into his traveling fatigues and leave around 15:30.  Amazingly, he was as cool-minded as I've seen any leisure traveler a few hours prior to an overseas flight - much less someone headed to a hostile warzone!  He was a fabulous host who helped us understand military life in Finland.  The five us learned about Finland's required military service for all men.  We had heard of the requirement since our arrival, but didn't understand many details prior to our trip.  I had lots of questions - starting with "as a country who hasn't participated in a war in 100 years, why do you still require military service?"  Our host's answer was refreshingly honest - "because we share a 1300 km border with Russia."  One of his colleagues quickly jumped in with the response that they also are active in humanitarian aid through International Peacekeepers abroad.  He agreed and we all got a laugh as he acknowledged that his answer wasn't the official/politically correct response.   In our American eyes, it was the best response we could have heard rather than a canned one!  Our Brigade hosts taught us a new word - "conscripts" - referring to the young men "drafted" to serve their 6-12 months rather than the men and women who voluntarily enlist for a career. 
We were joined by our cohost, Paula, a young social worker who oversees the 200+ International Peacekeepers deployed from Pori Brigade on international missions - primarily to Afghanistan, Somalia, and Chad.  Finland seems to be a strong presence in overseas peacekeeping support.  
Next, we went to the canteen for "Thursday lunch".  Pori Brigade has served the same lunch for decades and is "historical".  We had really scrumptuous pea soup (with mustard and onions).  We were thrilled to have a "normal" sized meal since 99% of the meals we've eaten are served "smorgasbord" style so we eat A LOT here!!!  Lynn and Aimee had coincidentally discussed pea soup with their hosts the night before. 

We visited the barracks of the conscripts in the 1st Jaeger (Finnish Rapid Deployment Force) - the top group in the brigade who are most likely to serve overseas.  Their barracks don't vary much from those of our forts in the states.  
Finally, we visited the brigade's health center where Lynn saw a military ambulance similar to that which her father has restored. 
This was a great site visit!!

Today began in the new town of Rauma.  We met our new host families and prepared for our day's programs.  We first toured the Aijansuo Hockey Arena where Rauma's professional hockey team, Rauman Lukko plays.  We viewed all the private boxes that were individually decorated.  One of the boxes included a sauna, which parties can enjoy while watching the game-NICE!!  Later we received a guided tour of Old Town Rauma by Johanna Suokanto.  We visited old homes and churches where the architecture was unique.   We walked around all the historic streets and had ice cream in the square.  We ended our tour at The City Hall, where Johanna spoke briefly on the key points of Rauma over coffee and snacks. After lunch everyone went home to settle in with their new host families.  I went straight to the Physiotherapy Center downtown Rauma, where Rotarian Jukka Karenius's son Toni and wife Anna own and manage.  I was given a tour of the facilities and introduced to all the staff.  I even participated in Anna's Zumba class-where I discovered that I have 2 left feet ;).  Since chiropractic and physiotherapy are quite similar fields of practice, Jukka felt it was better that I stayed with them so we could discuss more on our work.  I was very grateful to Toni and Anna for opening their home to me and allowing me to tour their facility. :) R

Toivontalo-means "Hope House" in Finnish
Lynn and I visited this place for those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. We were met by Anne Babb, a wonderful woman who runs the house, she had also arranged a group tour with some other women from Wales, Scotland, and the US. They are all here bc their husbands work at TVO, the local nuclear power plant. We enjoyed the tour, meeting new friends and as we left feeling...well, hopeful.

Rotary-the official presentation
We met the local Rauma group and gave our typical presentation. It was a lively group, a yummy lunch and at the end we were given a compliment by a Dr. in the group who said we "had the best GSE presentation" he had seen in 6 years. YAY for us.

Sauna and Summer fun at the cottage
Lynn and I had the same host and they took us to their summer cottage for the night. We had a super good dinner, a spin out on the boat in the sea, and then of course sauna and a freezing dip in the water. I'd like to give a special thanks to Henrick our captain, Johannes for translating the concept of the show Punk'd to his parents, Pekka for being a great conversationalist, and Mari for being the best hostess ever and making us feel so welcome!