Second day – Norway (Norge) - 323 000 km2, population 5 million,
capital Oslo, 1 Veterinary University.
Norwegian border, a few kilometres more
and we’re in Skaidi, where we’ve booked a hotel for the evening. The only time
we booked in advance and we almost came to regret it, because we were already
so tired 100 km before Skaidi in a place called Lakselv, but we had to carry
on. Our hotel was waiting for us. And it was worth the wait. After a few hot
dogs in the local gas station we felt alert enough to travel the remaining 86
km, which seperated us from the hotel in Skaidi. In the morning we wondered at
the marvellous views, which lay behind our window, had a great breakfast (fresh
salmon, yum) and payed our cheapest hotel bill in all of Scandinavia. Who said
Norway is an expensive country?
Skaidi Hotel
The weather is fine, Nordkap awaits –
what else is there to do, but get cracking.
My crazed travelling companions
take out their camreas once more. The driving became particularly tricky when
raindeer appeared on our way. It seemed as if there was no possible way of
going forward unless every raindeer had been snapped at least twice. There are
about 35 000 raindeer in Norway.
Fjords and mountains. Many tunnels. The
nature is peaky, but how can it be so gorgeous and colourful at the same time?
The longest northernmost tunnel of Europe.
For some reason they are building a new one outside the mountain?
Nordkap is somewhere there.
This strange old house is accompanyed by this film.
Thermometer says it’s 13 degrees outside,
but it’s rainy and windy.
We need to get our ski jackets and pants out. It’s
good that we started early, as Nordkap visitor’s centre is open only from 11.00
to 14.00 from September until April. We have only got and hour to look at the
exhibition, movie and Nordkap itself. Then again, we got vey lucky with the
weather. We might roll our eyes at first on the windy rainy mountintop, but as
it turns out, there’s usually a very thich for there, so thick in fact, that
you cannot see a in front of your feet.
We had a view like no other. We
were truly lucky ladies.
Mandatory photography.
Instead of an
Estonian flag, we have a Kalev chocolate bar in the right colours.
Pilleriin and I also take a picture with a
Spanish wine, that a Spanish colleague has given to her. United vets – Estonian
veterinarians greet our fellow colleagues in Spain.
In the parking lot we meet our
northernmost customer. Dogs are truly everywhere and we have no shortage of
work. Bonyo is a little apprehensive at first and doesn’t want to stay still in
the wind, but we get our picture. Dr. Toomet and dog in Nordkap. Hopefully we
get a similar picture next week on the Cape of Good Hope.
On our way back down the mountain we come
across a souvenire shop, where we get a quick language course from the saami shopkeeper. While jotting down these words I search the internet for some
/saami/ music and come across the same shop keeper.
Dog – biena, cat – busse, veterinarian –
shipihtdohtir, reindeer – buotsu (boazu), good – buorre, hello – hei, good bye
. mona derevan, thänk you – kiihtu (giitu).
Silvia gets her first bracelet (one from
every country) and we continue our journey to Alta.
A quick stop at a village along the way - Honningsvag. Petrol! For the next few hundred kilometres there's not one place to acquire it. We marvel at the magical views of the sea and eat at a great restaurant Kings Crab House Brasseri. Delicious soup and king crab for €50. Our waitress is a Finish girl, who we asked details about village life. Better salary for seasonal work than in Finaland, as it turns out.
Herein it would ony we appropriate to be
honest and tell the story of how someone like me came to the tundra with no map
and GPS. Already on the ship to Helsinki, Pilleriin aske me if I had some sort
of navigator, because she didn’t bring hers. I on the other hand thought that
the technology worshippers of today with their smartphones and tablets will
laugh at me if I start talking about a navigator or a map and didn’t even think
about it. Pilleriin herself has some sort of fancy smartphone, which plays the
drums and dances and Silvia also recently got something similar. Now it turns
out that they are of no use, because
“roaming” or whatever it was, is horridly expensive. To my suggestion that we
get a map (I live driving with a map) said Pilleriin that we certainly won’t
need that in Finland. We’ll buy one in
Norway. But of course that was soon forgotten. Pilleriin’s phone was dead by
the time we got to Nordkap and we started using Silvia’s. She gave us the
direction and fell asleep. Pilleriin and I chatted, took pictures and kept on
going. “Oh, what a lovely bridge”, but after the bridge we couldn’t continue
straight anymore and had to choose: Wither right or left. We somehow remembered
that we just need to go straight. We woke Silvia up and kept going to the left
while she was sorting out the GPS. “Jesus, where have you taken us?” a voice
cries from the back. It turns out we had gone 30km too far and had to drive
those 30km back and then the remaining 84km to Alta. We are tired to the bone
and the rains coming down hard.
While looking at the map in the hotel, it turned out we were onky 27 km away from Hammerfest, . The same day I told to FECAVA´s secretary Wolfgang Dohne, that we´re not going there - it´s too far and not on our way. Wolfgang was sad - that meant we could´t join the Polar Bear Society. I for one was abit relieved because knowing Wolfgang joining this society might mean running tens kilometers in icecold water or rollerskiing in tehe Norwegian mountains or jumping from a ski jumping hill without landing space. In any case it felt safer for me to say no and hammerfest indeed wasn`t on our way originally. Now as I´m googling and looking at the map it is a bit of pity that we turned back with only few kilometres left to go. But we arranged a meeting in Alta with dr. Kjell Korbi (AltaDyreklinikk)
There’s 20 000 people living in Alta
and there’s another clinic there, with one vet, who mostly treats small
animals. All of the animals in the sorrounding area are patients at the Alta
clinic. “Even reindeer?” we ask, but the answer to that is that raindeer aren’t
treated at all. But all other animals and there is no real specialising, all
vets at the clinic do house visits to large animals and treat small animals in
the clinic.
On the 4th of September, when we visited the clinic,
there were 3 doctors working. Dr. Kjell Korbi was in the operation theatre and
patient Vilge (meaning white in saami) was in the examination room. Vilge had
started feeling unhappy a few days earlier, so they took and x-ray of him and
drew blood for testing.
Vilge’s x-ray was quite interesting, even more so
considering the owner knows nothing of the dog’s first three years. Though it
is not very likely that the (probably) old bullets were the cause for his pain.
On another desk, tere’s a dog with hematoma of the ear. Just like back at home.
Even more so because a very familiar Vetscan biochemistry analyzer looks at us
from the lab. The medication shelf is also similar as are the problems.
The veterinary clinic in Alta is
independant and doesn’t belong to any big corporation or chain. Dr.Korbi has
been working there since 1979 and is the owner. The job hsa changed a lot
during the years. When he first started large animals were the main patients,
but nowadays 60-70% of the patients are small animals. More complicated cases
are referred to Tromsö or Oslo, but they have all the basics (x-ray,
ultrasound, blood testing).
We visit a museum in Alta, where we see ancient rock drawings (5000 B.C). The ticket costs about €10.
Lot of mushrooms at the museum. In Estonia we call them milk mushrooms (männiriisikas). They are very tasty pickled.
It's a pity that we have to leave Alta already. There would've been lots more to see here. Pilleriin manages a quick trip to a church called the Chucrh of Northern Lights. But only for a moment.
Back in the car we go and through Finland
to towards Stockholm. We need to be on the ferry going to Turku two days from
now, but we still want to spend a whole day in Stockholm. Therefore we need to
manage 1500 km in 1,5 days. We need to step on it. This is also worth
mentioning: in Finland and Sweden there are speed cameras everywhere, but in
Norway we did even see one.
Veterinary practice in Norway close to the Finnish border. We didn´t have time to visit. Sorry!. Next time.
We try to eat at a Thon hotel restaurant
near the Norwegian-Finnish border, which is lovely, but empty. An unhappy
receptionist says that the restaurant won’t be open until a few hours from now
and asks us to wait, but we have no time for that. We continue on to Finland.
It seems as though certain /saami/ gods have plans for us, for driving us out
of that fancy restaurant and back on the road, because right on the edge of the
border, there’s a gas station. If we hadn’t had the need to fill up on petrol,
we might have missed the small, red, tired-looing building (Harrinivan
Lomakeskus). But we’re parking to get petrol and maybe we will manage to get a
some kahvi and pulla (coffee and pastries).
There´s real a`la Carte waiting for us inside.
There’s two ways you can order your long earned for raindeer meat: the
classic porokäristus and the more
contemporary kebab. A very rare tundrafish is also on offer – it’s called rauta (Artctic Char) and it tastes like salmon,
although it is a little less fatty and more dry. Pilleriin makes small-talk
with the shop keeper and casually mentions that we’re from Estonia. “Oh,
Estonia. I have one of those living in my yard. A veterinarian.”;
“Veterinarian. So are we.” “Well, go visit her then.” We get a phone number and
directions and off we go. We were so excited we almost forgot the petrol.
Our
colleague, Eva Kenk, is just getting ready to drive to her summer house. We meet
her on the end of her road and forbid her to go any further, so we could have a
little chat. As it turns out, she came to the far north about a year ago to
fill in for a colleague on maternity leave. That doctor is back working, but
Eva has fallen in love with Lapland and doesn’t want to go anywhere. If someone
offered her a job (something with both small and large animals), she would stay
here indefinitely. Never mind that the snow comes in Novmber and melts in June,
it’s still nice. It suits Eva.
We leave Eva and turn our car around
towards Sweden. There’ about 400km left to go until Lulea, where we’ve decided
to stay. We thought we might trying camping this time. The first one, which was
very lovely and inviting, was locked and a kinf voice on the telephone said
that they don’t do anything after 8 o’clock, sorry, go try someplace else.
That’s what we did and we had more luck in the next one, where we got a key
from a box, which opened the gate and was in my opinion also supposed to open
our mökki (cabin). What we didn’t
find though was the cabin. Someone had offered us something, I was overjoyed
and didn’t even realise I had bought us a spot for a campervan. We could have
just as well slept by the side of the road. Another phone call, returning of
the keys and we headed towards the city centre. Hotel Quality took us in long
after the clock had chimed midnight.
We tried to wake up early, and get going
straight away, but we still go a parking ticket only two minutes after 10
o’clock. Lulea is beautiful, but unforunately we have no time to see it. The
city is quite old, founded by King Gustav Adolf in 1621, there’ a university
and every two years a street festival, where all diferent flavours across the
globe are represented is held. There’ also an ice-music festival in the winter.
We leave all that behind us and rush past
or through Byske, Umea and Sundsvall.
Town hall in Umea.
At Umea I take one picture of the old
town hall and in Sundsvall an impressive bridge, but it is such a powerful
construction, that the camera cannot capture it. Unfortunately there are no
veterinary clinics on our way.
In Hudiksvall we find ourselves at a market.
At the market with a dog.
Long lines of market stalls and kiosks offer us many different
products. We taste many different cloudberry jams and mustards.
We feel an irresistable
need to buy some sort of coconut and chocolate balls, but they are only seld in
a pack of six or more and we have no local money.
There is a lot of people and ther
weather is nice. We are somewhat saddened by the fact that these sort of
markets tend to reapeat themselves. Local food and handmade craft stalls are
interesting, but most of the market is comprised of cheap Chinese trash.
Exactly like at a market in Estonia, in the weird Hong-Kong malls of Finland,
at fairs where I’ve been to in different ends of the world, from Italy to Canada. That’s why we only
bought local cheese and sausage. It is truly local and very delicious, plus we
get to pay by card.
Do I need this? No.
We arrive at Stockholm by 11, just like we
planned. We stay the night at Ülla-Karin, Oskar and Flipper’s home in the
suburbs of Stockholm. Flipper, a /White Swiss Shepherd/ is very happy to see
us. Maybe, despite all the travelling, we still have a tiny bit of scent of
Estonia left on us.
His joy becomes disappointment when in the morning one of
his guests takes out the nail clippers and starts on his nails. Fortuntely tht
disappointment soon disappears and we go on a walk. Ülla-Karin shiws us the
surroundings and tells us how the people here end to their little gardens.
Anyone who wants, gets a few squaremetre of land from the governement and grows
whatever they want on it. We go and see one of those little gardens. They tried
to something similar next to the big coucnil estates in Estonia
during Soviet times. Our path leads us to a dog shelter, where there’s a Open Day as if we ordered it.
As I feel an irresistable urge to take
part in it, we decide to quickly shop at a local mall and then Pilleriin and Silvia
are of to the city centre to do touristy things and I satisfy my curiousity at
the animal shelter.
This is a big shelter, where homeless dogs
from all over Stockholm are brought together. There are about 40-50 on any
given day. Strange thing is, that microchipping is mandatory in Sweden, but
registration is not. Therefore there are a lot of chipped dogs who end up at
the shelter and no owners are found. I will repeat this here: “A MICROCHIP
WITHOUT REGISTRATION IS USELESS!”. Even more so as there is Europetnet, which
Sweden is a member of through a kennel club (Swedish Kennel Club).
Introduction of a dog looking for a home.
The shelter's clinic.
A St. Bernard, taken from a careless owner
These types of dogs end up at a shelter most often.
Each one of them awaits a home and a owner.
Our next destination is a veterinaryclinic in Alvik, which is forutnately ope on Saturdays. I get there 15 minutes
before closing time and a kind lady at the reception gives me a quick tour.
There’s 3 veterinarians, 5 assistans and one receptionist working there. The
patients are usually dogs and cats, and most problems are to do with dentistry.
There’s a long wait for those. I also find out that it is one of the oldest veterinary
clinics in Sweden.
I give then an Estonian chocolate as a
thank you and hear: “Oh, Estonia! My grandfather is from Estonia.” It turns
out, she was the graddaughter of a man from the island of Vormsi, who escaped
to Sweden after the II World War.
It’s a pity we didn’t have more time in
Stockholm. Silvia and Pilleriin got to see a bit of the town and went to the
royal castle, I would have liked to go to the cemetary and visit my colleague
Prits Jügi’s grave. Dr. Jõgi was quite directly involved with what I am doing
now.
In the spring of 1993 I got a phonecall from a colleague, Artur Gavronski
who was working at Bayer at hat time. He told me, that his friend, a
veterinarian working in Sweden, would like to visiti a few veterinary clinics
in his home country during the sumer. I had nothing against it. Prits came and
lived with us for about a month. I asked him if he had any relatives in Estonia
and if he wanted to meet them. Prits told me that he would rather spend his
time at the clinic. He had recently retired and was probably missing the work.
So he came with me to work every day, tought me and my personnel, gvae us some
very useful tips and on top of it all organised a spotfor studying opthalmology
at Uppsala University for my colleague, dr. Ülle Kell. During the evenings, he
read books out loud to my sons, like a true grandfather would.
His connection to the preset day? Prits helped us write the first constitution of the Estonian Small Animal Veterinary Association. He used to be
an active member at the Swedish society. So in a way he’s the godfather of
ESAVA. For that and all the rest I would hve liked to say thank you one more
time. Prits died suddenly during the summer of 1994. I had just visited him a
few months before and then that sad news came.
In Sweden, we saw the moon again, which seemed to have disappeared in the north. Bye-bye Sweden (Sverige), 450 000 km2, population: 9,5 million, 1 veterinary school.
We take the nightly ferry from Stockholm
to Turku.
Morning in Finland greets us with a thick fog.
As it is only 7 am on
a Sunday, we make no attempt in finding any animal clinics. It’s a pity, as it
would have been nice to visit Pet-Vet, which was one of the first clinics I
visited in Finland 20 odd years ago. You might guess that a lot has changed
after all those years and together with veterinarians Tiina ajd Tuomas Illuka
their daughter Elina is working there as well. And as there has to be a least
one Estonian everywhere, dr. Leili Lemmetti also belongs to the staff there.
A still, we turn our car towards the east, as we have a long journey across
Finland ahead of us and the clinic is only opened at 9 o’clock. Another time
then.
Mikkeli Church
Dog guards a bike in Mikkeli
In Mikkeli we drink a quick coffee. (I
love these little street and market cafés)
Now to Mäntyharju
This
part of Finland on a map looks like lace. Green is intertwined with blue.
There’s as much water as there is land. Mostly the reason behind this is
Saimaa, which is the 4th largest lake in Europe, but also many other
smaller lakes. It seems as if every Finn has his own lake. The land of a thousands
lakes. 187 888 lakes. About 33 people share one lake. Me head towards one
of those – Korpijärvi is the 116th largest lake and there are many a
finnish summer house (mökki) on its shores. Our destination is Mäntyla mökki,
where the 70th birthday of veterinarian Helena Juola is held.
Helene Juola is my teacher and veterinary mother, so to speak. It was with her that I got my first experinces in treating
small animals 25 years ago. I have described meeting dr. Juola (to her friends
Jami) in the book “Lehmästä leopardiin” (“From Cow to Leopard”).
The most important thing was meeting Jami. Sitting opposite me was a
very charming man with a groomed beard, who immediatley started a conversation
and even flirted with me a little, or so it seemed to me. I was flattered of
course. Soon after I was almost forced to swallow my fork as I found out that
the man was old enough to be my father (his daughters were a few years younger
than me) and the man’s lawfully wedded wife – eläinlääkäri Helen Juola – was overseeing
the whole conversation from a far. The following years, it became clear to me
that dr. Risto Juola was such a charismatic individual that he made many women
despite their age weak at the knees and his wife as as an intelligent woman
made no fuss of it. As this was the case with me. “Hey, I’m Jami.” – she offered
me her hand and I’m still holding on to it today. That hand helped me buy the
first vaccines and medications and smuggle them to Estonia, it picked out
and packed away as many books and instruments it could find form her clinic;
guided and tought me to do my very fisrt opertions, introduced me to other
Finnish colleagues (Heikki ja
Anna-Kaisa Nurmi, Tuomas ja Tiina
Illuka, Tuomas Kärkkäinen, Jukka Kuussaari – these are but a few) and has slowly but surely guided
me through the 20 years that I’ve ad my practice.
A good friend of Estonian veterinarians, Pekka Jäntti, performing for the birthday girl. Pekka was one of the first Finnish vets who started helping his Estonian colleagues in the end of the 80s.
Last morning swim of the year in Korpijärvi.
Next morning we’re back in the car to
drive to Helsinki. Pilleriin takes the car back to Estonia as she has to work
and we need to get on a plane to Cape Town, where WSAVA congress is held this
year.
Helsinki greets us with sunshine and warm
summery weather.
"Kappeli" outside
We have a quick snack at “Kappeli” café (of which I also have
a story to tell) and visit colleague Christoph Gerhards (Eiran Eläntohtorit). I
met dr. Gerhards a year ago when he came to visit my clinic as a representative
of Laboklin. We spoke in English, until dr. Gerhards got a phone call and much
to my surprise I heard him answering it in Finnish. After dr. Gerhards ended
the call I asked about this and found out that Christoph moved to Finland many
years ago, worked at the univrersity teaching anatomy and after that opened a
small clinic in the city centre. The clinic is indeed small, but well-equipped
and lovely. Dr. Gerhrds had just finished a pyometra and ovarian tumor operation
on a german shepherd and gave us a quick tour of the clinic. As we are leaving
he asks us to greet South Africa, where he wanted to move after university.
Somehow he ended up in Finland.
The waiting room
What is wrong with Tobias? Dr. Gerhard´s dog. Enlarged lymph nodes require more investigations.
We still have enough time
to visit our friend on Kulosaari, which is a wonderful place in the middle on
Helsinki and then it’s time to get on the plane.
Good-bye Europe!
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