A little piece of paradise – In Finland!

A while ago I wrote about our holiday plans for this summer. We were a bit sad to miss the mountain hikes this year, since Finland was calling. The plan was to do a road trip through Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Norway. Visit friends, family and some icy mountains at the Barents sea.

Did we do that? Well. Not exactly.

We were looking at maps and hikes in the Lapland and the northern coast of Norway. We even managed to buy some very very comfy and warm sleeping bags,with goose friendly down, without knowing it to be completely futile.

A few weeks before we would happily fly to Riga, in order to drive off towards Tallinn and Helsinki, my mom sent me a message. She was bounding on a jungle drum saying that the cottage close by my childhood home was coming up for sale! I forwarded the news to Waffle, more as a joke than anything. Waffle however got fairly interested about the idea of having a small cottage out there in Finland.  We decided to sit on it and wait that the cottage would officially come out to the market, see the price and then think it over carefully and thoroughly (right, as if that would ever happen when we are making decisions).

The following day there was an ad popping up online, with polished pictures of the most perfect Finnish cottage environment. The price was low enough to not spook us away.  So we send my parents to inspect the place, to see, if it was in tolerable condition and that the price was right. It was.

By then  had a pile of butterflies having a wild party in my stomach. We could buy it, we had enough funds just laying in there in the pockets of the bankers. Then again, buying a cottage had not really been a part of our life goals, quite yet at least.

Nevertheless,we made an offer of the cottage, just to see if the seller would accept it. They didn’t. They asked us to come closer to the asking price,which we did. All of a sudden we found ourselves in the middle of a pile of paper work to buy a cottage.  It had taken from no plans at all to buying a cottage a total of three days from us. Well planned, I would say.

It was three weeks to go until our holiday, and we were planning on getting the keys immediately when we would arrive to Finland. Soon we figured out,that that was pretty tight timeline to get everything sorted.

We needed a small loan. Finding time to organize meetings in banks and getting the banks to agree to such a thing in just three weeks, is not easy. But finally we managed, just in time. We had a day to spare with the money transfers, before my dad signed the sale in our name. Fairly stressful business, believe me!

Now we seem to have the shared ownership of a cottage in Finland. It stands right at a lake, there is a land of almost 4 acres with it, a boat and several huts. No electricity or running water. Sounds like a paradise to me!

That paradise “ruined” our summer holiday plans though. The two weeks we had in Finland would be spent largely at the cottage, working. Still, we were both looking forward to it, excited to see our property. Our excitement was very much shared by my parents and family as well as Waffles. Money well spent I think!

More on what happened after we got there,will follow later. Stay tuned!