Who is coming?
Confirmed:
- adi (full time)
- bene + ladybear
- danitah (full time)
- FinMan
- nick-o-matic (full time)
- Orcc (weekend)
- Raven (Wednesday - ???)
- roope (weekend)
- Spef (full time)
- Stini (Friday - ???)
- Suharice (weekend)
- terb0 (3 nights or something)
- veezay + Antti (fullish time)
- Zero + non-Elmer friend (weekend)
- Zweq
- vender
- axxu
- Kortsu
- TL
- Lousku
Especially for people coming from other countries or more faraway parts of Finland I would recommend to do some local sightseeing. I did my best to create a semi-comprehesive list of sights to you. Because of corona this guide is partly not valid at the moment.
Koitsanlahti village:
Parikkala sculpture park (2km)
- http://www.patsaspuisto.net/english/ | http://www.patsaspuisto.net/
- Seriously a must see for everyone, a world-famous place
- A masterpiece by our local Michelangelo. He created a huge sculpture park into his own yard and allowed people to visit there for free. Now he is dead and there is a small voluntary but recommended entrance fee
- https://www.iloinenpässi.fi/
- Local food and souveniers
- For example bison burgers (there is a local bison farm, mb poss go there too)
- Signs that tell you not to go any further to the border zones
- Do not go any further
- https://www.facebook.com/marjatilahallikainen/
- Berries and berry products
- https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koitsanlahden_hovi/
- https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanhan_Su ... oitusmaat/
- Mainly for those interested in history of (Eastern) Finland
- I think only poss to eye ouside now
- https://maurikin.blogspot.com/2015/06/p ... smaa.html/
- Mainly for those interested in history of (Eastern) Finland
- https://www.visitparikkala.com/ | https://www.visitparikkala.fi/
- https://www.rautjarvitravel.com/ | https://www.rautjarvitravel.com/fi/
- http://www.visitpunkaharju.fi/en/ | http://www.visitpunkaharju.fi/ | Punkaharju has notably beautiful roads on ridges inbetween lakes, just driving there is an experience
- http://www.uimolansavusauna.com/
- Public sauna on Wednesdays (7€/person), a private sauna is 140€
- We will probably go there on both Wednesdays
- http://www.saimaansaunaseura.fi/?page_id=16
- Public sauna on Mondays (7€/person), a private sauna is 230€
- https://www.kollaa-simohayha-museo.fi/en/home | https://www.kollaa-simohayha-museo.fi/fi/etusivu
- Kollaa battle was a famous battle during the Winter War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kollaa/
- Simo "The White Death" Häyhä was probably the most famous WWII sniper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4/
- http://www.papinniemicamping.net/index.php/en/ | http://www.papinniemicamping.net/index.php/fi/
- a beautiful place, but just one example of cottage/camping possibilities here
- poss rent cottages much closer, even in Koitsanlahti/Parikkala
- https://www.simpeleenantiikki.fi/in-english/ | https://www.simpeleenantiikki.fi/
- Entry fee (10€) limits quick visits for authentic local farm antique souveniers
- https://www.visitkarelia.fi/en/ | https://www.visitkarelia.fi/fi/ | North Karelia (Joensuu area)
- https://www.gosaimaa.com/en/ | https://www.gosaimaa.com/fi/ | The general area of lake Saimaa has very good swimming / camping / hiking possibilities
- https://operafestival.fi/en/ | https://operafestival.fi/
- A famous opera festival in a medieval castle in a small island
- https://www.instagram.com/visitlappeenranta_official/
- https://www.lappeenranta.fi/CityOfLappeenranta/ | https://www.lappeenranta.fi/Lappeenranta/
- Poss stay in my apartment for night (I live there)
- Beautiful harbor area and historical fortress
- Good swimming / camping / hiking possibilities
- There is also a possibility for visa-free cruises to Viipuri (Vyborg) and event to Saint Petersburg
If you are not coming by a car or carpooling you should first get yourself to Helsinki by plane or ferry and then take a bus/train.
Trains from Helsinki:
https://www.vr.fi/cs/vr/en/frontpage
Price 19€ (if you book early) to ~50€ (if you book late).
Busses from Helsinki (Onnibus):
http://www.onnibus.com/en/index.htm
Price ~10€ (if you book early) to ~20€ (if you book late).
Only the 17:00 departures go all the way to onion farm (rest of them stop at Lappeenranta).
Busses from Helsinki (norm busses):
https://www.matkahuolto.fi/fi/
Price 19€ (constant price (I think??)).
Optionally, you can also fly to Lappeenranta if the few flights that exist match for you:
Arriving flights
Departing flights
If these options work for you, Lappeenranta would be the most convenient option. You basically get out of plane, show passport and get through quick security check (Lappeenranta airport is more like a bus station than an airport), take a shuttle bus or walk to train/bus station (they are close) and in one hour you are at onion farm.
You can even arrive from St. Petersburg. There are busses to Lappeenranta and Imatra and you can get a train ticket all the way to onion farm as well (train change in Kouvola).
After you are in either Simpele or Parikkala, someone will pick you up. Simpele is preferable if you come from the south. However, not all trains stop in Simpele since this year, so you might have to go all the way to Parikkala. But all the busses stop there.
If you come by car, there are two possible gravel road routes to our farm, shown on the map. However, if you are coming from Parikkala direction or go to Parikkala to do shopping, please avoid the one small bit of road drawn in this map. It is being maintained by a local farm, and they collect fees from villagemans that use it (it is norm system in Fin countryside). However, we don't pay anything to them so we should avoid traffic which can be related to us on that road.
Competitions and schedule
Last year I was happy to see many very well-organized competitions, even with custom playlists. I hope the trend continues and we will see some very well-made competitions. I am now preparing some with custom playlists myself as well However, last year there were so many competitions that it was difficult to fit everything in. This will be fixed for this year with an official schedule with strictness unheard of since the nazis:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
As you can see there's still very much room for your competition (I did basically only put there just my competitions and BB though). When your competition has been put to the schedule, please prepare it very well so that it will not exceed the reserved time (unless it is the last competition of the day or something).
Improvements to lodging
It would be nice to get more sleeping space, especially if the amount of participants grows (which I am hoping for). Also if it happens that there will be more mosquitoes it might not be poss to sleep in the hayloft. I am thinking of possibilities of renting some buildings in our village within 1km or max 2km radius and/or putting few beds to some other not-so-cozy buildings in our farm like the ex onion warehouse. What do you think about these ideas? Also in our village we have some hostel-type services if you want to have total peace and are willing to travel something like 3km and pay for it yourself. For mega luxury lodging there are rentable lakeside cottages.
Photo project (help appreciated!)
I am planning a project of gathering a list of the all-time most important FEM photos, and then decorating the höyloft with them. I am thinking of mostly hanging them on some horizontal ropes (the amount of wallspace is limited). At the moment I am thinking of having at least all the modern FEMs as the scope but perhaps this could be extended to 04 and 05 FEMs as well? Also I need suggestions about appropriate amount and size of the photos. The cost of ordering the photos depends on those things, but the amount could be hundreds if just possible. Perhaps there could be photos of different sizes? At least the group photos could be made pretty big.
I started making a list based on links to the Markku's FEM photos:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RlG ... sp=sharing
In general this is not a small project by any means if done really properly, so I would really appreciate if you could start help me on that. Instructions for people that would like to help:
- please add your photo suggestion under appropriate subsection as a link
- if there are some nice videos, it is possible to take a frame of a video, upload it somewhere, and then put the link to the frame to the document, again under approprite subsection
- if you have suggestions to some photos that are not in the FEM photos, upload them to somewhere and make some "Other" subsection
- let's try to have all people represented (except those who don't want to be included)
- in some photos it might be a good idea to modify them a bit by cropping, adjusting lightning and colors or by adding some text like naming all the people in the group photos or adding some funny caption or a funny quote or some important information related to the photo. it can be some comment or caption from the Markku site or something else. it would be incredibly awesome of someone could do that kind of stuff and upload the modified photo
- you may add any comments, for example a keyword "BIG?" if you think the photo should be ordered in a bigger size or tell if photo needs cropping or other adjusting
- please try to preserve the correct ordering of the photos
Shirt project (help appreciated!)
FEM is badly lagging behind PEM at least in shirt game. Let's try to take them over. These ideas were already discussed in discord:
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[11:36 PM] danitah: Imo i will see if i can make fem shirts at work for all attending :owocat: should get some discount at least
[9:21 AM] danitah: I believe making identical shirts (same logo in front) would be quite cheap for me with discount. Imo it would be best to personalize each shirt with nick etc but it might be too expensive. Problem is that we have a minimum order quantity of each label, i think it's 15. Maybe it's pos to make an exception though.
[11:20 AM] nick-o-matic: morn. dani works at shirt printing???? :D
[3:52 PM] Orcc: I think money can be arranged if print nicks too
[3:55 PM] nick-o-matic: yes sure. should think of some system. just buy shirts for all increasing participation fee or just do it as a separate expense per person if all dont want shirts
[4:03 PM] pawq: I think we just added a fixed shirt price for whoever wanted it at pem
[4:03 PM] pawq: but can't remember exactly :thinkbear:
[4:03 PM] pawq: shouldn't be a problem either way, I'm sure many would gladly pay
[4:19 PM] lousk: imo pay tisk to draw them manually
[4:27 PM] Orcc: Don't forget Kopaka's hand drawn logos
[4:27 PM] Orcc: I've seen them go on ebay for $50 000
[5:18 PM] nick-o-matic: good ideas
[5:18 PM] nick-o-matic: everyone could also paint their shirts themselves at fem
[5:18 PM] nick-o-matic: or could order eol shirt shirts
[5:41 PM] pawq: I think eol shirts on the front of fem tshorts would be sik
[6:11 PM] lousk: prolly shouldnt do them all the same way... e.g. some of them are kinda drawn from the side and others would look fine just pasted directly
[6:12 PM] danitah: i dont exactly work at shirt printing, we make heat transfer labels. but we have machine to put it on that i can use. my idea currently is to make basic shirts for everyone for free, then optionally ppl can pay to get custom with their eol shirt and maybe nick [team logo]. i dont want to increase base cost of fem and want everyone to get shirts.
[6:14 PM] lousk: liek this one doesnt really wörk https://elmaonline.net/images/shirt/11
[6:14 PM] lousk: dame no embed, well its jons shirt for the lazy
[6:15 PM] danitah: ye some shirts might need some editing to look oke
[6:18 PM] lousk: also nat trivial decision how to upscale tiny bitmap to a shirt, and prolly diff methods suit diff shirts
[7:24 PM] nick-o-matic: yes very prob-le-matic
[7:24 PM] nick-o-matic: but if someone wanna take the job it would be sikk
[7:25 PM] Kopaka: maybe some 8bit ish aesthethic
- eol bmp shirts or nicks or something else or a combination depending on the case?
- how to deal with the costs? invidual payments or no?
- are there ppl who do not want to have shirts and therefore possibly save some money?
- in any case somebody is needed to make the designs