Leisure time: remember to bring the following according to your need

– Your own alcoholic drinks
– Condoms
– Mosquito repellent
– Other personal effects
o medicines
o phone, charger
o your personal reality shaping equipment (wand, runes, Tarot deck, crystals, etc.)
– Personal hygiene products
– Pen and paper for taking notes at workshops (optional)

Welcome to Finland!

Nature in Finland can offer a surprise or two, especially as we are going to be out in the wild.

Summers in Finland can be wonderfully warm, or not. One week it’s a heatwave close to 30 degrees Celsius, the next it’s sleeting. The beginning of September is a wild card. It can be still summer-like warm – or it may pour rain, like we say, from “Esterin perseestä” (“From Ester’s arse”). Due to unpredictable weather conditions, it is recommended to stock up with a warm set of clothes.

The summer in Finland is full of light. It starts slowly to get darker on September, but if the light disturbs your sleep, we recommend packing a sleep mask.

Mosquitoes come out in the evening. They don’t carry diseases, but the sting gets itchy. These little devils can be repelled with a mosquito spray.

Tall grass and shrubs can house ticks, particularly at the coast and in the archipelago, and they will try to attach into your skin to suck blood. Like mosquitoes, but nastier. A tick fastens into the skin with pincer-like jaws and hangs there until it has eaten. With an empty stomach, a tick is a very small, black roundling, and that’s why there is reason to examine the body carefully at the end of the day. If a tick is found on the skin, it must be removed with tweezers or at the doctor’s with special tick pincers. They should not be removed by greasing, as one often hears being recommended. Greasing causes the tick to suffocate and vomit under your skin, and this results in a risk of infection. A small minority of ticks carry the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi that causes Lyme disease, the most recognizable symptom of which is a ring-like redness that develops around the bite. A marginal part of ticks carry the tick-borne encephalitis virus; symptoms of TBE resemble a cold. Lyme disease is treatable by a course of antibiotics, and there’s a vaccine against TBE. The disease is rare in Finland, and the vaccine is mainly recommended for people who spend a lot of time outdoors, and if there’s an abundance of ticks in the area.

Vaccine recommendations and the incidence of TBE have been closely followed, and statistics from 2019 can be found through the link. No infections have been reported in the Orimattila area, and the region is not included in vaccine recommendations.

https://www.thl.fi/ttr/gen/atlas/html/atlas.html?show=tbe_riskienarviointi (in Finnish)

Sauna

Sauna! This mystifying oddity! A small, hot room into which people cram themselves naked, shoulder to shoulder. Water is thrown on the stove, and the hot steam heats up the room even more, singeing the skin. If there’s a vihta available (a bundle of birch twigs with leaves), you may notice someone whacking themselves or a friend with it. The fragrance is lush and foresty, and beating the skin with the vihta is said to improve circulation. After the sauna you dive into the lake. In the winter, you would roll around in the snow.

If you seek new experiences, throw yourself in! If you feel shy, don’t worry. Read on.
First of all. The sauna is not a place for sexual tension. Not even if it’s a mixed sauna and everybody’s sitting there naked. And not even though we’re celebrating the time of Lamproptera at the event. After all, the sauna is a space that has been considered sacred. The sauna etiquette includes proper behavior and respect for others’ physical integrity. There’s no need to be silent! Jovial chatter belongs in the sauna, and many will sip a sauna beer at the same time. It is also absolutely permitted to enter the sauna in swimwear or wrapped in a towel if nudity among strangers doesn’t feel natural.

How to sauna?

After the eclosion in the dressing room, you take a light shower to wash away the sweat and possible debris stuck on you from the forest. Grab a pefletti (seat cover) and seat yourself on the benches. The stove is hot, do not touch it. Water is thrown on the stove to add löyly (steam), and it’s always polite to ask others in the sauna if it’s alright to throw more löyly. It is perfectly appropriate to sit on the lower benches if the heat gets too intense on the higher benches.