A new chain, yoga and two routes

From Oulu Katja and I continue to cycle south, following the coastline of the Baltic Sea. The weather changes from "sun everyday" to a mixture of everything. We have storm twice, rain, sun and clouds. But also the wind changes from South to more or less North. So sometimes we are pushed. Also the light changes, it is time to have a flashlight because it is now sometimes dark at night. That's strange after the earlier light nights in the North. After six days we reach Vasa/Vaasa, where we decide to have a break for a day while surfing the couch of Mirva.

In between we make interesting contacts and choose new places to sleep. We spend one night in a bird watch tower. That night a storm rises and the entire tower is making noise. Not much sleep for us. The next day we meet a fisherman who invites us to stay at the beach next to his house and who tells us stories of the life of a fisherman and a seal hunter, all with a vocabulary of about 50 English words.

The more South we go, the more holiday houses are placed along the coast. Then we enter the Swedish part of Finland and we are happy to be able to read more signs and informations. Even the architecture is very similar to Sweden. In Nykarleby/Uusikaarlepyy (Swedish/Finnish) we surf the couch of Marcus, whom I met via Couchsurfing.com and who provided me in advance with a lot of information about cycling routes in Finland. He even cycles a few hours with us. One more night "wild camping" with a lot of lighting and thunder very close to us and then we reach Vasa/Vaasa where we find a couch to rest a day. The first morning starts with a yoga session with teacher Mirva, my first yoga lesson ever. I totally liked it.

Katja and I make plans for the next legs of the journey and we decide to split up again. Katja goes straight to Helsinki. I will stay another day in Vaasa and will then follow the coastline and go across the Åland islands to Sweden again... At least, that's the plan at the moment.