Here's my city, Leiden, where I was born, raised and still live.

I'll post more pics from my new town later.

That's really beautiful, Maria. Finland is one of the places I'd love to see in my lifetime, along with Sweden and Norway. I've never been to Scandinavia. I almost went to Jyväskylä in August on a business trip, but that fell through, unfortunately. I'd love to see the Northern Lights! Must be absolutely beautiful. Well, one day...

-TeeJay

Thanks for reminding me. I'm actually pretty poored at it all. :embarrassed: Dreaming of places far far away. Warm places.

My pics must make you all think Finland is just full of small towns but both of my home towns are in Lapland. Lapland was pretty sparsely populated to start with and the last couple of decades it has lost a lot of residents for lack of work. It's a shame really. Rovaniemi is the biggest city in Lapland. And I think that is the southest place to see the northern lights. The arctic circle is there too. And Santa! I'd actually love to move there. Always feels so magical to be there. That where my ex-bestfriend S lives now..

Um, some places that come to mind if you're planning a trip to Lapland.

* Sodankylä is best to visit at summertime. It's really beautiful then. And the sun won't set at all. And there's the the filmfest in june. Wintertime is pretty darn dark and depressing but if there's no clouds, you'll never see a clearer view of the stars and northern lights. If you're into nightlife there's few clubs and bars, pretty crowded in the weekends. There's two small skiing resorts in Sodankylä; one (Kommatti) is about 5km from the downtown, the other (Luosto) about 50km. In Luosto there's also a nice spa and hotel and amethyst mine. You can buy beautiful souvenirs in Sodankylä.

* Larger Skiing resorts are at Ylläs http://www.yllas.fi/?deptid=8951, Levi and Saariselkä. Each have spas too. I think Levi is the most popular and there's been a lot of development last few years. New hotels, cabins and such. Didn't find a good site about Levi and Saariselkä. There's also some smaller skiing resorts that I can't remember now. But Finnish skiing places are no Alps! Anyone who has skied at the Alps, most think these are all pretty tiny.

*Rovaniemi offers an urban view to lapland. That's where the main airport is. I think they're making flights to Levi too nowdays. At Rovaniemi there's also Arcticum (cool museum kind of thing), Santa Park (amusement park inside a mountain right at the arctic circle), and what else.. Well, here's a link: http://www.visitrovaniemi.fi/VisitRovan … nglish.iw3

* Oh, and some distance away from Rovaniemi there's a zoo called Ranua with lots of arctic animals.
There's another zoo called Ähtäri about 2-3 hours of driving from my home.

* Trains won't go norther than Rovaniemi. If you choose to use public transportation, there's lots of nice busses to sit in. for hours. Don't ever do that one with kids... Well, atleast the views are nice.
I think in the winter time there's a train from Kemi to Ylläs for the skiing people. I heard about it one year but don't know anything more about it.

* If you choose to come visit the lovely city of Tornio, You'll need to fly to Helsinki, fly a smaller plane to Kemi airport and then I can come pick you up. It's about an hour flight Helsinki-Kemi. By train that takes about 7-8 hours. Nice way to spend a day.. Some finnish sceenery. Lots of fields and woods. And cows and horses if you're lucky.
* Kemi is pretty dull. Just the huge snow castle in the winter. There's a harbour. beautiful view to the sea and nice ships, all kinds. Maybe someone there grew a brain and offers boat trips for tourists. Gotta ask. Oh, and there's the Icebraker- ship Sampo. You can go visit it inside.

* Tornio is a growing border town. Twin city is what they're calling this nice place now. The Swedish town Haparanda is right next to it. They're building us a joined downtown now. Lots of places to shop. There's lots of beautiful sceenery (nature and old houses), and you can go rafting at the Kukkolakoski. Oh, and there's lots of war memorial signs all over the town. Not that I'm into war, they're just really hard to miss. And ofcourse you can climb the hundreds of stairs up to the water tower (one of those war signs in the tower too sayng it stood there 1918 and served as a post) to see the whole town at once. There's an elevator too but it's broken a lot.
*Um, what else.. You can meet me! Come with me to our summerplace, really old house that survived the wars. You'll be trapped there with us without electricity and running water but enjoying the clean air, beautiful view and the traditional sauna. Well, it's not toally without electricity, we have a generator so we can watch tv. Oh, did I mention the old fashioned out house as in no wc. :rofl: Tempting, huh?

And about Norwey..
If you'll ever go to Norway, I recommend an island called Senja. It's just out of Tromso. There's a huge bridge from Tromso to Senja. I spent three weeks there 1998. It's so beautiful you would never believe it. And there's lots of sights in Senja. The ocean is different color in each beach. And there's this smaller island at the north side called husö (hus=house; ö=island in norge). It's 1km long and it's full of houses. And I saw these cute tiny whales there.
http://www.infonorway.com/regions/troms/senja.html

Here she is.  In the rain (surprise, surprise, lol!).  You can see the Space Needle in the background- lower lefthand corner.

A closer shot of the Space Needle, on a sunny-er day.

This is my apartment complex after a snowfall.

A white water torrent crashing through a gorge of rock in the Cascade mountain range just east of Seattle.

A hazy pic of Mt. Rainier south of Seattle

Mt. Baker, north of Seattle

A cruise ship, heading north to Alaska I expect.  Those are the Olympic Mountains in the background.

A Puget Sound Ferry boat, with a slight glimpse of Mt. Baker on the far left

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, crossing the Puget Sound from the mainland to the Olympic Peninsula south/west of Seattle

Some autumn colors in a park in a suburb just east of Seattle

Quest Field at night, home of the Seattle Seahawks, reflecting off the Puget Sound (pic taken from the bow of a ferry)

All pictures taken by me with my camera.   

-TeeJay

The old bridge winter:

The old bridge summer:

Here's a view to the north from the water tower. My house is actually in that direction, on the other side of the river, somewhere middle of those trees.

You can almost see Sweden in this picture over the town:

Hey, I was a trainee in this bookstore once:

On more pretty pic:

I'll stop bugging you now.

Mainstreet Sodankyla:

A vocational college. I studied here too:

The most beautiful thing:

Winter pic from up high over the downtown:

... and if you tought THAT was a small town, I was actually born 20 km off that place in a smaller town that has about 330 citizens. Here's a summer view over the lake:

And here's a treat for my german friends:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodankyl%C3%A4

As i you were really interestead! Sorry for getting too much into this..

http://www.msfilmfestival.fi/fpage.php?lang=1

Here's a link to the gallery about last summer's festival:
http://www.msfilmfestival.fi/galleria2008/

I went to this school grades 3-6. I even played some ball on this yard:
http://www.msfilmfestival.fi/galleria20 … ge_24.html