My first two days at Cudgel War
Jul. 10th, 2016 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaThe SCA camping event Cudgel War, held each year in southern Finland, has a reputation for being as much of a vacation as an event. Now that I have been here, I can see why.
The site is a truly beautiful Scout camp in the forest on the shores of a picture-perfect lake. The woods are full of ripe blueberries, which is quite a surprise for me, since at home they are never ripe before August.
I left home early Friday morning, did the two hour drive to the airport at Kemi, where the terminal is a tiny building surrounded by green grass and trees, with a small parking lot in front of it. This lot is both long and short term parking--simply tell the computer how long you are staying when you pay and put your ticket on the dashboard.
I had budgeted extra time in case of road construction or other delays, so I had 1.5 hours to wait for my flight, which meant 30 minutes hanging out with a tour group from the Netherlands who had just seen much of Lapland while we waited for someone to open baggage che k in.
When I landed in Helsinki I had just time to get my luggage, some euros, and eat some of the food I brought with me before the wonderful Kaarina, who had already been to site and set up the tents, arrived with her two youngest daughters to pick me up. She had hoped to arrive sooner, but the traffic near the airport was so jammed up there was a stretch where the limit is 120 km/h, but they could only do 20. I feel bad for subjecting her to that, but from my perspective the timing was perfect.
We stopped at a grocery store on the way to site, arriving at camp just before 19:00. I had time to get my borrowed camp cot and air mattress set up in the cute little pavilion she had borrowed from a friend for me, and had just started to get changed into costume, when she said that she and the girls were going swimming.
So, of course, I joined them. The lake is kinda cold, but no where near as cold as the lakes and rivers up north where I live, and the sauna was hot, so I spent about 40 minutes alternating between the lake and the sauna and back again. Up. Vacation.
Followed that up with some pleasant conversation and then yoga before going to bed before midnight. I slept poorly till 05:00, when I went to the toilet and considered just getting up, but I decided to lay down for another hour, and the next thing I knew it was 10:00.
So I got up and took my sheepskin to the sauna building, where I did my situps and the pushups and squats from the phone app workout that I have been not using in recent weeks since I got too busy to do both that and the workout from my personal trainer. But he failed to send me the summer workout he devised for me before he left for his vacation, so I am resuming the phone app one in the meantime.
After exercising I hopped back into the lake followed by sauna, and a second quick swim before getting dressed.
The first Saturday of Cudgel has no classes on the schedule, and I enjoyed a relaxing day visiting with old friends and new, working on sewing projects, cooking some food, listening to music and handling out flyers for Norrskensfest.
Kaarina showed me the Sistina she had written on the Mary Rose, and wow, is she good with words. She chose to write it in English, in part because Finnish (her native language) is one where grammar is indicated by changing the ending of the word, which doesn't lend itself well to an art form where one needs to use the same word/same *sound* of the word so many different times in different places in each paragraph.
Her poem read at the first glance as a well done story/ballad of king and his ship. Then I remembered that she had mentioned a sistina, and I looked again and realised that yes, the ending words did repeat in different positions each verse, yet the story flows naturally, as though there were no restrictions in meter or word use.
Later that evening she sang for us a song she had written about a raven on a garden wall and the terrible news it brought, which had many of us crying. If she is this good in English, how much better must she be in Finnish? She also writes in Swedish, German, and French. I am in awe of this women's tallents. Apperley her daughters also write songs for fun.
I went to bed well after midnight--I considered going to bed sooner, but the Styringheim/Bageholm camp is right next to mine, so when I finished yoga at 00:34 and wandered down the hill to the pavilion I noticed that they were singing, and it was necessary to go join them.
I woke up a bit after 09:00 and decided to type the above before more days slipped by. Next I will take my phone off of flight mode for the first time since arriving and see if we have a signal with which to post it and check to see if there are any urgent messages. Then I will probably work out, swim/sauna and relax with my sewing till the dance workshop at 14:00.
The site is a truly beautiful Scout camp in the forest on the shores of a picture-perfect lake. The woods are full of ripe blueberries, which is quite a surprise for me, since at home they are never ripe before August.
I left home early Friday morning, did the two hour drive to the airport at Kemi, where the terminal is a tiny building surrounded by green grass and trees, with a small parking lot in front of it. This lot is both long and short term parking--simply tell the computer how long you are staying when you pay and put your ticket on the dashboard.
I had budgeted extra time in case of road construction or other delays, so I had 1.5 hours to wait for my flight, which meant 30 minutes hanging out with a tour group from the Netherlands who had just seen much of Lapland while we waited for someone to open baggage che k in.
When I landed in Helsinki I had just time to get my luggage, some euros, and eat some of the food I brought with me before the wonderful Kaarina, who had already been to site and set up the tents, arrived with her two youngest daughters to pick me up. She had hoped to arrive sooner, but the traffic near the airport was so jammed up there was a stretch where the limit is 120 km/h, but they could only do 20. I feel bad for subjecting her to that, but from my perspective the timing was perfect.
We stopped at a grocery store on the way to site, arriving at camp just before 19:00. I had time to get my borrowed camp cot and air mattress set up in the cute little pavilion she had borrowed from a friend for me, and had just started to get changed into costume, when she said that she and the girls were going swimming.
So, of course, I joined them. The lake is kinda cold, but no where near as cold as the lakes and rivers up north where I live, and the sauna was hot, so I spent about 40 minutes alternating between the lake and the sauna and back again. Up. Vacation.
Followed that up with some pleasant conversation and then yoga before going to bed before midnight. I slept poorly till 05:00, when I went to the toilet and considered just getting up, but I decided to lay down for another hour, and the next thing I knew it was 10:00.
So I got up and took my sheepskin to the sauna building, where I did my situps and the pushups and squats from the phone app workout that I have been not using in recent weeks since I got too busy to do both that and the workout from my personal trainer. But he failed to send me the summer workout he devised for me before he left for his vacation, so I am resuming the phone app one in the meantime.
After exercising I hopped back into the lake followed by sauna, and a second quick swim before getting dressed.
The first Saturday of Cudgel has no classes on the schedule, and I enjoyed a relaxing day visiting with old friends and new, working on sewing projects, cooking some food, listening to music and handling out flyers for Norrskensfest.
Kaarina showed me the Sistina she had written on the Mary Rose, and wow, is she good with words. She chose to write it in English, in part because Finnish (her native language) is one where grammar is indicated by changing the ending of the word, which doesn't lend itself well to an art form where one needs to use the same word/same *sound* of the word so many different times in different places in each paragraph.
Her poem read at the first glance as a well done story/ballad of king and his ship. Then I remembered that she had mentioned a sistina, and I looked again and realised that yes, the ending words did repeat in different positions each verse, yet the story flows naturally, as though there were no restrictions in meter or word use.
Later that evening she sang for us a song she had written about a raven on a garden wall and the terrible news it brought, which had many of us crying. If she is this good in English, how much better must she be in Finnish? She also writes in Swedish, German, and French. I am in awe of this women's tallents. Apperley her daughters also write songs for fun.
I went to bed well after midnight--I considered going to bed sooner, but the Styringheim/Bageholm camp is right next to mine, so when I finished yoga at 00:34 and wandered down the hill to the pavilion I noticed that they were singing, and it was necessary to go join them.
I woke up a bit after 09:00 and decided to type the above before more days slipped by. Next I will take my phone off of flight mode for the first time since arriving and see if we have a signal with which to post it and check to see if there are any urgent messages. Then I will probably work out, swim/sauna and relax with my sewing till the dance workshop at 14:00.
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Vacation?
Date: 2016-07-11 04:15 pm (UTC)Love you
Mom
(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-15 06:03 am (UTC)