Rock the beach in Helsinki

One of those great summer festivals were kept in the heart of Helsinki on the beach just 20 minute walk to central downtown "Hietaniemi". Loads of big names and heavy rock bands played here like Green Day, 30 Seconds from Mars, Apulanta, Rammstein and many more. Everything was really well organised, plenty of great food and toilets. Weather was also sunny and warm most of the time. Awesome to sit on the beach, have a drink with some friends and listen to wonderful music. Thanks Linda, Jussi, Stefan and other for an amazing festival. Guess Singapore and Thailand aren't the only places where you can get a good tan...

Chilling on the beach while waiting for the bigger artists to start playing

Apulanta

30 Seconds from Mars, this gig was much better than 2 years ago in Shanghai

 KEBAB!

 Sun setting, the festival location could not have been better

 Green Day, first time ever seeing Basket Case live!

 The perfect evening

Back to the Island - Making of a BBQ

Great to come back the fresh Finnish archipelago! Location: About 1 hour drive outside Helsinki in the archipelago of Porvoo

View from Baggholmen

For years we have used this really small barbecue consisting of a few bricks but now decided to make a bigger once since there are so much people coming over for midsummer next weekend! I went to buy 5 bags of cement and loaded the car with 100 bricks and then drive 1 hour + boat 15 mins. Was quite a lot to carry. Started with measuring it and adding some steel bars to the founding so it will hold better. After that it was just slowly placing bricks and mixing more cement. These pictures are taken in 2 days, was quite slow job but now it's almost done and midsummer barbecue will be legendary! 

The base, 600kg of rocks and cement to keep it steady 

Bringing all the stuff

 Measuring everything before starting the job

 Mix some cement...

 And we start laying the first bricks

 After about 1 hour of work we have 1 wall up already :)

 Few hours more starting to look like something

 And advancing

 Rock wasn't straight enough so had to go all Beni Benassi on it, taka taka taka

 Some bricks were also too big and needed cutting, great to do something compared to the city life in Beijing. The only thing you get to do in cities are Ikea furniture.....

The second day it already looked like this, not much more 

 Laying the final red bricks on 

 And 90% done! It started raining and we were out of cement, next weekend the rest will be done, but almost done! 

Small hut I used to live in when I was a kid

There had been a huge storm during the autumn and a lot of trees had fallen....cut the power cords too

Now we got wood for many years to come!

Tampere by night

Drove back and forth to Tampere and stopped by the core downtown to take some photos. Tampere is the third biggest city in Finland with about 220.000 people and located 180 km north from Helsinki. Takes about 2 hours to drive between the towns,

It's the brightest time of the year in Finland now, even 2 am in the night the sky is still kinda clear and bright. Next week on saturday will be the longest day of the year and the sun will not set. Also, it will be the biggest moon in decades, so make sure you look after the moon next Sunday 23rd!!! 

Tammerkoski channel

 Bridge over Tammerkoski

 Tako factory by the bridge

 The chimney is from the first paper factroy in Finland, history was made here...

 Theater bar, popular spot amongst artists I've heard...

  The theater, from central square view

 The old church by the central square

Central square

 City hall from 1890

 Tammerkoski bridge

 The first paper factory in Finland

 The old Finlayson works