If I can't see you, you don't want to see me.

The train ride from Oulu to Jyväskälä brought us out of the thick forests and into the lakes regions. There are more than 185,000 lakes in Finland, many with cottages and saunas at the water's edge. My father's parents came from two small towns, Kivijärvi and Viitasaari, each about an hour-and-a-half drive north.

Although most of Finland is has relatively flat terrain, there are a few hills. It was easier to put tunnels through the granite hills than to lay tracks and build bridges over the lakes and wetlands. (A fact which may or may not be related - both of my grandfathers worked in granite quarries when they first settled in New England in the early 20th century.) When the train goes through a tunnel, it compresses the air which, then, seeks the easiest places for release - in your ears.
A couple of  notes about 'green Europe':

• We flew on Finnair. With my coffee, I also received a small, plastic-wrapped packet containing sugar, a plastic spoon, and (I am not making this up) a small plastic bag, labels Waste. The Waste bag was inside a small plastic bag of its own. It was a self-generating waste production and disposal system.
  
  
• The train toilets (how can I say this delicately?) empty onto the tracks. It's a bit unnerving to look down and see the tracks below. We are very grateful that buses don't have this feature.

Our travel agent had pre-arranged taxi drivers to meet us at the train station. We were embarrassed to discover that the Jyväskälä train station is right across the street from the hotel. We loaded the suitcases into the trunk of the cab. The cab driver made a U-turn. We unloaded the suitcases from the cab.
A couple of notes on taxis in Finland:

• All of the cabs were new, luxury cars such as Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, or Audi. No aging Crown Vics here. We asked one driver why the cars were so new and nice. He said that tax and safety laws made it impractical not to have newer and safer cars, which often meant sturdy sedans such as Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, or Audi.
• A few years ago, four cab drivers were murdered in Helsinki. Since then, most cabs have cameras that record the passengers. 

Jyväskälä is a college town. Even in the summer, the city is full of young and wanna-be-young people.

The sidewalks in Jyväskälä (and in Oulu and Helsinki) designated lanes for bicycles and pedestrians.
When I first saw the sign, I said, "This lane for pedophiles."
The downtown streets are broad and many are for pedestrians and bicycles only. The middle of one street had 100 or more bicycles in and around sets of bike racks; few, if any, of the bicycles were locked.
In our whole time in Finland, we saw just a few police cars and no police officers patrolling the streets. We'd seen news reports about Romanian pickpockets, but never did we feel unsafe.
On our first afternoon, we walked through the city center and up a hill, the Harju ridge, to the University's sports stadium. The paths up the hill were steep in places, winding through old growth pines. From the top, we had a good view of the University and of the nearby business and industrial parks. That afternoon was also our warmest, with temperatures near 25C.
Back in our room, we discovered that we didn't have an English-language news channel. Other hotels had either CNN or BBC. There were channels in English (detective shows and other dramas from the UK and Oprah, Conan O'Brien, Friends, and The Simpsons) with Finnish subtitles. In addition, they had French, German, and Russian channels.
The newspapers carried a few familiar comics.

 

I'll leave the translation as an exercise for the reader.

On Tuesday, we walked to Alvar Aalto Museum, where we saw samples of his furniture, watched a short film (in English) about his life and work, had our coffee break, and bought some nice things in the museum shop.
Afterward, we continued our walk, this time along the short of Lake Jyväsjärvi. We were scheduled to take a cruise on the lake, but opted out because a) even though the sky was clear, the wind had picked up so the waters were choppy and b) I'm a bit superstitious about anything billed as "a three-hour tour."
We wandered the city for the rest of the day and had an early supper at an outdoor restaurant, giving the meal time to settle before we had sauna.
We decided that we'd go without bathing suits this time. Again, there were separate facilities for men and women. Sort of. There were separate changing, shower, and sauna rooms, but, in the back, there was a lounge with hot tubs, comfy chairs, and a TV. Without my glasses, I went through what I expected to be the sauna door. Fortunately for others more than me, no one was in the lounge area. On the way back to my proper place, I noticed that there was a basketful of bathing suits that one could wear to this semi-public place.
The sauna itself was ok. They had music, some kind of French Europop drek that had no business being in this sacred space.
The next morning, the cab driver met us at the hotel, made another U-turn, and delivered us to the train station for our return to Helsinki.