We spent the day at the Ankkarock Music Festival. It’s in Korso, about 30 minutes by tram and train from Jen’s place. Here’s a picture of Jen and I baking in Finnish sun in the “beer tent” area, for lack of a better name. There was no tent, but they did have plenty of picnic tables set up, so we could rest our feet.

You can see that my extended-arm self-portrait technique is improving. This one was taken with Jen’s little point and shoot digital camera, which is far less wrist-breaking than the 10D with battery grip. In the photo you can see the main stage on the right, a bungee tower sticking out of my head, and many trees surrounding the park. You can see some food tents on the left. The vast majority of them were selling “kebab,” which is a Turkish thing made of sliced beef-product (not sure how much is beef) on rice with veggies and a broth on top. It’s pretty tasty, actually, but it was difficult to understand why the Turks have nearly cornered the Ankkarock food market. If you looked hard enough, you could also find some greasy-looking Chinese food, deep fried chicken cutlets, soft serve ice cream, and a type of mash made from potatoes and bits of sausage.

We had planned to stay until around 10pm so we could see The Rasmus, which is arguably the most famous Finnish band on the planet. You might remember that we saw The Rasmus in Toronto last November when Jen was visiting, so it would have been a nice symbolic thing to see them again here. However, we just didn’t have the staying power. There were a number of crap bands playing for the hours leading up to The Rasmus, and the rain was starting to fall. We had spent all day at the park already (we left Jen’s place at about 11am) and we had completely overshot our food budget (not that we had one, but damn… festival kebab is expensive). We decided to leave at about 8pm and beat the drunken crowds to the train station instead of waiting around. I can listen to The Rasmus on my MP3 player instead.