Today me and my family got back from Ruka in Finland. My wife, a fan of sci-fi serie Stargate, met some soulmates on the Net. This group of German, English and Finnish women, stayed at our place in 2003, and for 2004 they decided to have a "mini-con" in Finland. For our 2 kids Finland meant seeing real snow and learn how to do some down-hill skiing.

We were told it might become 20 degrees Celcius below zero or worse, but during our stay it never dropped below -11 degrees. The hotel-cabins were perfect, as were the slopes. Not to crowded, close to the hotel, nice layer of snow.

The first day it got dark while on the slopes, it took me some getting used to to find out it starts to get dark ar 2:30 PM at that location!

Besides skiing we rode a husky-sled as well as a reindeer-sled. I would love to have stayed in the ice-hotel, but didn't manage to arrange that. Most women in the group did their part of Stargate-watching. And so it was a nice getting-together. Anybody reading this that loves skiing: consider Finland next time!