SC - Tour of Finland by Jaelle

[Lillian Johnston]

I was asked to include this report to the cooks guild from Jaelle on her
recent trip. I hope you all enjoy the read.

Yours in Service to the Dream,
Nicolette Dufay
Baroness, Stormhold
Principality of Lochac
Kingdom of the West

MKA: Lillian Johnston, wife of Kelley, mother of 2 lovely girls, now aged 7
and 12, expat American living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
_______________________
- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: THIS IS REALLY FROM JAELLE (JUDY GERJUOY)

Hi everyone!

Please forgive this mass mailing, but one of the wildest things to happen to
me in my life (Out side of Tero), daddy, don't read that last sentence
please, I don't want to shock you) has happened, and I want to tell all of
you about it, with the exception of Helena who was there, but wanted to know
what I was going to tell everyone.

As you know, I am currently in Finland, visiting Tero.  And, as you all
know, I have done an extensive annonated bibliography of books on medieval
food/foodways which is in a number of places on the web, and I get people
writing to me because of it on a regular basis - say once a month. 

Well, shortly before I was to leave for Finland I get an e-mail from
Estonia. A lady by the name of Reneta had found my list, and wanted to buy
some of my books. I explained that they were my personal collection and they
weren't for sale. I told her where she could get some. She wanted to buy
them, because she worked for a medieval restaurant in Tallin (spelled wrong)
which is in Estonia.  

She wrote back with more questions, and I mentioned that I was engaged to a
man from Finland and I would be visiting him for Christmas and we were
planning to go to Estonia for the day to do shopping (that's where you get
cheap linen and cheap amber) and did they want me to come over to their
restaurant for a couple of hours to talk about medieval food.

I get an e-mail back offering to pay for my hotel stay if I would come talk
to them.  They sent a phone number (The owner is Finnish).  Tero called him
and made arrangements for rooms for not only Tero and I, but for my friends
Antti and Lea, and as it turned out, Helena as well.

We went over to Estonia on Tuesday.  We were supposed to be met at the port,
but the owner had to be elsewhere, so we took a taxi to his restaurant. For
the five of us, it totalled, maybe $10 American.

We met him, he took us in, talked to us, seated us at a table, and told us
to order.  We all ordered assorted different food, and he came back and
joined us and we talked. And we talked.

We arrived at his restaurant by 1PM and we didn't get to the hotel until
9:30 that evening.  He gave us a grand tour of the restaurant. Not only the
two floors where he served guests, but the kitchen, the cellars, everything!

The restaurant itself was amazing. Parts of the building date back to the
mid 13th century, and a lot of it looks like a 14th century tavern would
look.

Most of it is lit by candles. There are wooden cupboards to put your coats
with authentic looking hinges and locks.  The doors to the bathrooms look
medieval, though the fittings are modern (thank goodness!).

The tables and benches for the most part done correctly, and the plates,
bowls, mugs, bottles and glasses are wonderful!  They have custom green
glass glasses and wine glasses which are *very* good - more of them later.

The walls are decorated with drawings that could be from a 14th century
manuscript - with some very nice icanthus leave decoration.

All of the staff who are visible must wear medieval clothes, all of which is
above the basic t-tunic level, and some of it is very good.  A fair amount
of the staff have real shoes, which is a nice touch.

After lunch, (which included all sorts of beers, wines, and liquors, and we
were never given a bill) and the tour, we sat around in the downstairs room
of the restaurant and talked and ate and drank even more.  

The food was incredible.  Even the simple dishes, such as the barley were
excellent.  I talked to him, his wife and the cooks about medieval food, and
more about medieval food, and even more about medieval food.  His two cooks
are *very* good - they are considered among the best cooks in Estonia, and
one of them has a television show on Estonian TV.

We finally stopped talking after 9PM because I was falling asleep.  (Our
ferry left at 8AM, which meant we had to be there at 7PM.  But, we were
picking Helena up at the train station at 6:30 AM, which meant we had to
leave the house at 6AM, which meant we had to get up at 5AM.)

Before we left, the owner arranged a schedule for us, which had me back at
the restaurant at 9AM to work with the cooks on some actual recipes, and the
rest of the group joining us at 11:30 where they would take us shopping,
feed us lunch, take us on tours, and then back to our ferry.

I will admit that I was sort of in a daze.  I am a reasonable cook, but *me*
showing two top notch professional cooks how to do stuff. But, I am my
father's daughter, so I agreed.

Luckily, Lea wanted to replace one of her cookbooks (Take 1,000 Eggs or
More) with a second edition of it, so she had brought that as a gift for
them from all of us, so I had something to work from, since my books are
still in the US.

The hotel was a bit low grade by my standards, but it was clean, and warm,
and free.  But I had to be at the restaurant by 9AM, and that came to
quickly for my exhausted brain.

I got to the restaurant no more than 5 minutes late, and in fact they were
late opening, but by 9:20 I was up in the kitchen talking to the two chefs.
Their English was *a lot* better than my Finnish, but there were a few
problems in getting ideas across, but we managed.  The only problem was the
name of some of the spices, since that isn't standard vocabulary that you
use.

We made several dishes, including almond milk, and I went through the
cookbook and marked a bunch of interesting recipes for them to work with.

It was *lots* of fun watching trained cooks at work.  I had one minor
freakout when I looked at the refrigerators and freezer. The temperature
was indicated on the outside and I sat there wondering why the fridge was
set at 3 degrees and the freezer and minus 16. That seemed *very* cold to
me.  Then, this bolt of lightning hit me - *centigrade*!

We went all over town shopping.  The prices are *very* cheap.  I got lots of
amber, mostly for people who I had promised things, a doll for a friend's
daughter, and some nicknack stuff.  I turned down the snail planter that
Antti pointed out, though I pointed out that we were an infesting every
place he went.

We also went to a hat shop that did medieval and other hats. I got Tero a
cool medieval hat and Antti got a nice Cavalier one.

Then we went back to the restaurant for lunch.  We never got to order, they
just served us food.

I can't remember it all, but it included liver pate, quail eggs, lentils,
olives, pickles, bread, butter, barley again, roast quail that were guilded
with real gold (I have done that, once. It is a very time consuming task,
but
looks lovely), roast bear that was delicious, lots of assorted booze,
including a bottle of *very* good 35 year old wine, that I, alas, don't have
the palate to appreciate.

Again, we never were given a bill.

Then his wife got us into the their town council building which is *not*
normally open to tourists.  some of the building is also from the 13th
century. Even the parts that aren't, have been, in general, reasonably well
restored.  We saw lots and lots of incredible medieval things including
tiles, carving, tables, chairs, chests, etc.  

After that the rest of the crew went touring, I spent about an hour doing
Laurel work, because I was behind, and it *had* to get done. In fact, I
shouldn't be writing this, I should be working on it, but I wanted to share
this with everyone, because it was so incredible.

Then they took us to an old church. Originally built in the 13th century, it
had parts added on to it every century. A large part of it was destroyed by
Soviet bombs during WW2 and afterwards, but a lot of it has been restored,
and a lot did survive.

There, they got the church/museum director who is a professor of art history
give us our own, personalised tour of the church.  There was so much cool
stuff there I don't know where to start.  3 tripdics (spelled *very* wrong -
the three part pieces of folding art you see around the alter of a medieval
church.  Part of the classic "Dance Macabre" painting that was repainted by
the artist for them 20 odd years after he did the first one. They have the
first about 1/4 of it.  Wood carving, and heraldry, and all sorts of stuff. 

We had to leave to get to our ferry after that.  

We had asked them if we could buy some of their drinking glasses. They
weren't willing to do that, but they gave everyone but me one as a
souvenir, and they gave me a large package of 4 of them!

I have never, ever, been treated like this in my life.  For instance, while
we did pay about $28 (American) each for the ferry trip, with the exception
of the cab to and from the ferry to the restaurant, breakfast for everyone
but me on Wednesday morning, and a soda I bought during the day on
Wednesday, the only money we spent was for things we wanted to buy to bring
back.  And, the Finns were able to get tax free booze on the ferry going
back!

And, what is even cooler, my Finnish wedding feast will probably be there.
They are going to give us the meal of the century at an incredibly cheap
price.  We can arrange inexpensive housing in Estonia for those who would
like to stay and shop and tour (which is *well* worth it), and you can go to
Estonia and back in one day. The ferry which is lots of fun, is a bit more
than 3 hours each way, or you can go on a hovercraft which takes about 1.5
hours.  We can travel as a group which will be fun.  The ferry has
comfortable seats, and even cabins if people want it.  It has shopping, a
children's play area, a restaurant and a cafeteria, television, a band, game
machines, etc. 

The wedding feast will probably not be in the restaurant - they are going to
look into getting a castle instead. Somehow I don't think people will be
*too* disappointed.

So, that's what *I* did on Tuesday and Wednesday.

J

# .sig of Tero Heikkinen # In SCA Johan Magnusson Kivisuo
Ta/ 42 leathanach sa phas seo.



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