This second round of summer photos is very miscellaneous in nature; simple shots from here and there along with short commentaries. As always, click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photos (and note that this may not work if you’re not viewing the post directly).

If there ever was a cafe / bar that I never want to visit, this is it. A bar in Tampere. Check out their advertising slogan – “Crowds and cigarette smoke since 1938″.

With smoking forbidden in bars now, good luck with that slogan.


Back home, we had our own nature show for weeks. One day we noticed that a baby seagull had ended up on a narrow and steep slope between the sidewalk and a pond. The seagull lived for weeks in this dangerous place, every day venturing on to the sidewalk but luckily never on to the street. His/her parents took good care of him, so unlike apparently many other citizens did this summer, in the process congesting the emergency number and creating pointless work for the fire department, we didn’t call 112 (the local 911) for somebody to rescue the poor thing.

Then, one day, he was gone. We’d noticed a few days earlier that he was getting very good in his attempts to fly, so we’d like to assume he got away safely. Anyway, it was interesting to watch how the parents protected the little guy by diving and aiming some, umm, “organic bombs”, at the heads of passing people – and their dogs. From the safety of our home, it was fun watching people freaking out, ducking down, turning back, running away, their dogs going berserk from the seagull scaring the heck out of them etc. Good summer show and I’m glad the little fellow seems to have survived it :)

Other than that, a summer is not complete without some flowers, sunsets, sunshine and fire. One of our local sunset watching locations has a stupid general alarm siren tower sitting there spoiling the view, so that’s what the weird tower in the photo on below left is all about.

Unlike the other elements, the fire was luckily contained safely in a fireplace most of the time. I don’t know why it is so, but eating outside (not eating out, eating outside) and cooking your own food on a fireplace or BBQ is always a must during summers. I mean how else is one supposed to get the full yearly allotment of carcinogens? :P



And of course, water. Only thing is that this summer, the water was in all the wrong places; namely too much of it raining down in July. Luckily it wasn’t rainy 24/7, but it sure rained more than enough. Thanks to this, our local waterfall was always filled with water.

Naturally now in August, as if on cue from my vacation ending, a heatwave found Finland and I’ve had the questionable pleasure of watching cloudless skies and +27C weather – from the cool surroundings of the office! Damn it. But hey, that’s okay. At least there are weekends and some free time after workdays also. Who needs sleep anyway?

Still, my personal Murphy-inspired long-term weather forecast calls for a beautiful August, followed by two weeks of rain in the beginning of September, after which it’ll go back to being a beautiful fall.