Pori and Reposaari

hello again,

This is Mary.

Yesterday we left Parkano and had an hour long drive through pine forests to the town of Pori. Pori is a town near the Baltic Sea. There are about 75000 people living here. As soon as we arrived in this town, we all agreed that we could spend the entire month here. It is a beautiful river town that has preserved many historic buildings. There is a lovely park in the middle of the town, full of red tulips.

We were met by Kari Kontula. He brought us to city hall where we had a tour of the building that will be the new home for city hall. It is a magnificent home that was built in the 1800's, and has been restored to it's original condition. The deputy mayor, Kari Hannus, met with us and talked about governmental systems in Finland and the differences between the municipal, state and federal governments.

There are many social services provided to the citizens of Finland, and most of them come from the municipal government. Pori has a budget of about 5.2million €. 1 million € come from the state government, the rest comes from earnings of municipal businesses and taxes. The city taxes are around 14% ( the state is about 22%). The city must manage it's revenues by attracting young people and business to the city. This is the job of the deputy mayor. By the way, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor are not elected to office, but are hired by the council members who are elected. We spent about an hour discussing these issues with the deputy mayor. He was extremely generous with his time and patient explaining the issues with us.

We left for the Rotary noon meeting where we presented our program. We are getting better every time and the Rotary members were interested in what we had to say, especially the part about the three Finnish players on the Minnesota Wild hockey team. The Pori Rotary club is a men only club. There are still a few of these left in the world.

After the meeting we went to the University Consortium of Pori. This is consortium of 5 universities that offer classes under one umbrella in Pori. They call it academic multi tasking. They have 2700 students and 220 instructors. It is housed in old brick milling buildings on the river. It is a beautiful environment.

From there we went to our host families. I am staying with Krista, Mikko and Petteri Levijervi. Petteri is two and a half and is helping me with my Finnish. We worked on counting this morning before I had to leave to meet the other team members.

This morning we went to the farmers market and then shopping. Finnish design is amazing and we just kept saying "wow". After shopping Kari K. brought us to a yacht club on the port of Pori and the commander took us out in a fishing trawler across the bay to Reposaari, an old fishing town on a peninsula. This area is a huge port area. We saw a drilling platform on a ship that is leaving soon for the Gulf of Mexico. The platform is 15 stories high when laying on it's side. It was made in Finland. We walked through the village of Reposaari. The houses are all wooden, and the area looks like a simple version of Cape Cod. From there Kari brought us to see his summer home and then we went to the Pori City sauna. The sauna is much more than a sauna. It is more like a lodge built of logs, with porches, dining room, dock and yes, a large sauna. The team members took our sauna, once again dreaming of where each of us could build one when we return home. After the sauna, we had a fabulous dinner of several types of cured, smoked, and fried fish and several salads.

I am constantly amazed by the time our hosts devote to our team. Kari spent two entire days driving us to interesting venues and enduring our constant talking and laughing. Many people prepared presentations for us, in English, so that we can learn more about Finland. What we are learning is that this is a beautiful country with charming and engaging people.