Chris Marquette Message Board

Wow, I love those shots, Anne. I'm a big fan of big trees.

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

Oh, Aaron, definatelly! Wanna hear all the things you've all found about him... I've developed a small crush for him this week. And in that thread I'd like you guys to list a lot of characteritics about his JOA character (so I can make my JOA fanfic as accurate as possibe..).. You know, the way he talk and acts and stuff.

And please, some Luke's characteritics here! And quotes? Or should the characteritics be at the JOA-board..

That would have been fun to see!

I'd want to watch that for Halloween too. Too bad the copy I have about it doesn't work. And we have a freaking Catherine Zeta-Jones- weekend on one channels this week. Just shows how Halloween really isn't a finnish holiday yet..  There's pretty much no horror movies on at all.

Well, if the Twilight books come today, that's what I'll be doing for the whole weekend. If not.. Well, I can always watch the American Crime.. followed by Captain Corelli's mandolin so I don't get too obssessed about the agony of Ellen Page..

And a new mall opened yesterday here. Maybe I'll go check it out with the kids. R is all about the new ice cream bar. Those are pretty new at Finland too..

I just ordered three new DVD's. Wow, when did I ever before buy 7 new DVD's in the same month? Never.. I'm actually a bit... ms. Pinchpenny or something.. Anyways. There was a sale at cdon.com (it's pretty much for the scandinavians, originates from Sweden) and I got 3 dvd's under 12 euros. Pretty good.

Oh, no pressure. You must be pretty stressed out. Take a chill pill!

Nice instructions, Illinois. Nice to know, even when I already got the DVD out. (edit, there's no such hole or button under our player. I'll check the back panel later. Maybe it's there. Or JTT will check. I'm afraid to touch it anymore. Maybe I'll make it worse. )
That player seems to have grown a personality now. I tried to turn the whole machine off again and it did. But it opened the drawer while doing it. And when I turn the player on, it closes again. But when I turned it off again, it opened again. So there it is; staring at me with it's mouth open. Should I call the exorcist?

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EDIT. This doesn't really belong in this thread so I'll just add here.

The problem was about the DVD. It messed up the whole player. But after running a lens cleener it worked right again with the other DVD's. Oh shoot, I've gotta play the role of a nagging customer today when I'll go ask if I could change the DVD...

Most of them are ok, and wide screen. That's a first vid there (that I saw) that's linked to that videosite. I think it's that other site's fault that it's not 16:9.

I found Amber's Babylon fields- pilot. Pretty darn creepy. I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad that the series didn't get picked up...

http://www.surfthechannel.com/info/tele … aid=174523

My feeling exactly..