London has the tube. Paris has the metro. And Turku? Has the Vesibussi! The Vesibussi – which literally translates into “water bus” – is quite a cool thing. It’s a small ferry boat that runs directly from the city center to the beautiful islands of Ruissalo and Hirvensalo.
And bus really means bus. The Vesibussi (acutally there are two of them, the m/s Ruissalo and the m/s Jaarli) is part of Turku’s public transport system called Föli. That means you pay 3 Euro and can drive as much as you want within two hours. Simple as that.
But there is one drawback: The ferries only run from May to the beginning of September. So last weekend we took one of the last chances to reach Ruissalo on such a civilized way.
Celebrating Nature
It turned out that we choose the Finnish Nature Day for our little excursion. Finns love their nature, and rightly so. Since 2013, the last Saturday of August has been the official date to celebrate it.
Because the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation turned 80 this year, there were a lot of events scheduled on Ruissalo. We thought they were supposed to be open-air, but in fact everything took place in a shiny new hall at the Ruissalo Boatyard.
There we listend to a concert of the Finnish rock band Egotrippi, which was quite nice. Afterwards, a stand-up comedian entererd the stage. Of course, he spoke Finnish, so we didn’t have a clue what he was joking about…
So we soon went for our long walk back home, because the Vesibussi had already stopped operating at that time. Most of our way we were accompanied by a natural fireworks over our heads. Oh yes, with autumn we are now entering the season of beautiful skys! 🙂
