But how do you empty the huussi?*
There are one or two things about cottage life that the city-slickers just don't get
By Anna-Stina Nykänen
Being at the cottage is not the same as living in town. It is for precisely this reason that cottage life is so wonderful - and so tough.
If you have only previously experienced cottage life from postcards, then there are countless surprises in store.
If you have visited someone else's summer cottage, then there are still a number of little unexpected pitfalls lying in wait.
If as a teenager you have heartily loathed every waking minute at the cottage, you will have to learn it all from scratch in middle age.
Those who live in the country, those who rent out holiday homes, those who act as janitors for the cottages of others, and those with real experience of the life as it is lived, will all tell you the trek back to the land is strewn with large toe-stubbing stones.
BOAT
If the rowing-boat at a rental cottage chances to be missing the bung in the bottom when the tenants decide to go for a spot of midnight fishing, the urban guests will go and wake up the landlord. It will not occur to them that there are bits of wood lying on the ground next to the beached boat that could swiftly be whittled into shape for the purpose.
The city-bred holidaymaker also does not grasp the fact that it is a sound idea to remove said bung from the bottom of said boat when it is pulled up on shore, since if it happens to rain overnight and the bung is in, the boat will fill up with water.
Boats are not tied up properly, nor are they pulled far enough onto shore, because the urban cottager does not believe that the boat is going anywhere. After the thunderstorm that breaks in the early hours of the morning, it can take a good long while to relocate the boat, especially on a healthy-sized lake like Saimaa.
The cottage visitor calls on his mobile from the middle of the lake to report that the outboard motor has died on him. There is nothing wrong with the engine, save perhaps the inability of the ship's captain to open the feed line to the extra gas tank.
WINDOWS
No, not the operating system. The urban cottage-goer cannot get his head around the idea that one doesn't keep the windows open at the summer place in the summertime unless they are equipped with mosquito netting.
ANIMALS
Your urban gottage-goer suffers from mice. He or she does not understand that in the autumn months fieldmice will slip inside the cottage, using main force if necessary. This is part of country life.
The urban cottage-dweller will get spring-cleaning carried out by someone else (this is outsourcing) if possible, because he or she fears mice. If mouse-droppings have appeared on the floor of the cottage during the winter, he or she will not dare to clean them up himself or herself. The mouse could be lurking in there somewhere, after all.
He will pet and feed and mollycoddle and generally take care of the neighbours' dogs and cats all summer long to the point of nuisance, without thinking quite what happens to them when he leaves.
The livestock on one farm were scared stiff of the daughter of the family who owned the neighbouring cottage. She squeezed and petted and kissed the animals till they feared for their lives.
If a lamb slips through the fence and out of the sheep enclosure, the vacationer will panic. He will wake up the farmer in the middle of the night to rescue the prodigal animal, and will not believe that a creature with herd instincts just isn't going to wander off by itself. A lost sheep is a terrible thing for the city-dweller.
One family spent an idyllic holiday at the cottage. The next year when they returned, they discovered there were some snakes around. They (the family, that is) fled screaming, and never returned.
DRINKING WATER
The city-cottager doesn't even dare drink well-water, but carries his own bottled water along with him.
He thinks the well has been contaminated, because the water isn't clear. He does not know that you need to clean out a well once in a while.
Then again, sometimes your plucky urbanites wil drink lake water without having the faintest idea of how filthy it is.
SWIMMING
A woman who had bought a cottage imagined it would be possible to swim there every day. She was disappointed. She never swims there, because the water is "ice-cold". Besides, people smell bad when they come out of the lake water.
City-cottagers believe cottages should always have a sandy beach. A squishy muddy bottom to the lake brings shrieks of horror, as do reeds and other water-plants brushing against bare legs in the water.
ASHES
A cottage tenant emptied out the ashes from the wood-burning sauna stove into a bucket and tossed it behind the outhouse. The hot ashes and cinders from the previous night's sauna set the tinder-dry pine underbrush ablaze. Fortunately help was close at hand: only a few trees went up.
Raking out the ashes from the fireplace or sauna stove is for many an insurmountable task. Some urban housewives have been known to get the vacuum cleaner out and hoover up hot ashes when cleaning up cottages after a week's rental.
DAMPERS
A man who used to live in the country bought a cottage. The family were constantly complaining of headaches whenever they stayed there. It turned out the fire-dampers were pulled out wrongly. The family were permanently suffering mild carbon monoxide poisoning.
A first-timer complained that the cottage was awfully draughty. He didn't know that sort of thing happens if you leave the fireplace smoke dampers out all the time.
One cottage holidaymaker called up the local janitor because he couldn't make the fireplace draw properly. He believed that he wasn't up to the eccentricities of an old chimney built by the local brickie. The janitor politely pointed out that the damper-plate was completely closed.
GETTING THERE AND GETTING AWAY
It comes as an awful shock to the cottage-vacationer if one cannot drive into the yard, right up to the cabin door. He cannot carry his things as much as a few dozen metres.
A city woman was shocked on travelling to the cottage owned by her new partner. They went BY BUS (!). Then there was a walk along a forest road and through the forest, after which they jumped into a boat. When they finally got to the island, they had to climb over a steep rock with all their belongings. Shocking!
A city-cottager cannot imagine that you do not just "pop out somewhere" from the cottage.
WASHING UP
Washing up at the cottage is often something that has to be done by hand. Water must be heated for the purpose.
Hence many city-cottagers prefer to use disposable plates and cutlery at the cabin.
The downside of these is that sausages very often slip off the plate or fork and tumble to the ground. Not to worry, they can be washed in the lake. Or then again, they can be washed down with beer. This is regarded as a great joke for the urbanites.
TELEVISION
One holiday village of cottages lost seven TV sets in a night, because the urbanite tenants didn't have the nouse to unplug the set from the wall when a stiff thunderstorm front blew through the area.
ELECTRIC SAUNA
One landlord installed limiters on the electric sauna stoves in the cottages he rented out, so as to guard against their being heated up to the maximum in the specifications. Weekly tenants would keep the stove on for six hours at a stretch, even if they didn't ever actually set foot in the sauna itself. When the stove is going full blast and is "dry", the panels in the steam-room get baked like crispbread.
OUTHOUSE
The bog. Your average urban-cottager isn't about to go stumbling around to the outhouse in the middle of the night. Who knows what's out there? He will prefer to relieve himself in a bush around the corner. By day, he drives to the nearest Esso and buys doughnuts at the same time.
The city-cottagers' kids would rather sh*t in their pants than risk the terrors of the outhouse.
FELLING TIMBER
The urban cottager can be relied upon to call for back-up when toppling even the most laughable of saplings, sometimes even a bush.
Or then again he may casually take hold of the chain-saw he once saw someone using on one of those lumberjack competitions on TV, and rip it into action.
At this point the uncooperative tree falls on the cottage roof, and the tenant THEN calls for assistance.
REPAIRS AND RENOVATION
The janitor gets a request to come and do some renovation work on the cottage kitchen. When he arrives, all tooled up, he discovers the nature of the mission: a piece of skirting-board in the kitchen has come adrift, and it must be nailed back in place.
HEATING
A cold, damp cottage does not heat up in a trice. This is a serious shock to the urbanite system.
First wood must be collected.
Then the fire must be lit.
Then the door has to be kept open a good long while to clear the smoke blown back from the fire. The chimney was damp, too.
By the time the heat-retaining wall of the fireplace has warmed up nicely and is radiating heat out into the room, and everyone is feeling toasty-warm, it is time to go home. The mice are left to enjoy the warmth.
DRESS CODES
The cottage vacationer sets off into the forest in open-toed sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt.
A few moments later he scampers back and complains that nobody can survive out there because "you get eaten alive by the mosquitoes" and the branches of the wild raspberry and bramble bushes tear your shins to shreds.
WOOD-FIRED SAUNA
Tricky. The urban cottager cannot use a small wood-fired sauna stove correctly. It is not like the big old thing at the swimming pool, where you splash a lot of water around and shut the door after you when you are done.
With a small sauna, when you are finished, you should put on a couple more logs and open up the window a bit. Otherwise there will not be enough residual heat to dry the place off.
This sort of careless dampness means a city-cottager can ruin even a decent sauna in a couple of summers.
GARBAGE
At his last cottage, the vacationer conscientiously paid the waste disposal charges and took the rubbish to the place specified for it by the local community.
At his new cottage, however, the community have not arranged such a place. He does not pay any local dues.
Instead he takes his bags of garbage to the dumpster behind the SIWA mini-mart in the nearby town. Judging by the teetering pile of plastic bags coming out of the top of the dumpster, so does everybody else.
One thing the urbanite cottager does not realise is that the sweet scent of rotting marinade at the cottage garbage area attracts animals. Any bear worth his salt can pick up a whiff of it at a range of as much as ten kilometres.
SHRUBS AND FLOWERBEDS
A city-dweller bought a cottage that came blessed with some wonderful bushes and flowerbeds. The bushes pined and the perennials all died off. "I suppose they don't get enough sunshine?" asked the guests in some embarrassment.
The urban cottage-owner invests a good deal of money in shrubs and flowers. He doesn't quite get it that they won't survive if people only visit the place at odd weekends.
FIREWOOD
Curiously, firewood does not appear in the cottage woodshed all by itself. The cottage owner has to determine where the wood is to be acquired from, how it is to be chopped up, and how it is to be stacked.
Split logs for firewood cannot just be piled up by throwing them into a heap. They have to be stacked almost individually, one upon another. A sloping pile will inevitably fall when it is most inconvenient.
Wood to be used for the fire or the sauna must be cut down and split before the leaves have come on the trees. It's no good felling a tree on Midsummer Eve when you discover the woodshed is bare.
LOAFING
The vacationer wants to be at the cottage doing nothing - kicking back in the hammock. This is not possible, since life at the cottage is by necessity laborious.
In the cottage environment one has to do three times the work before being able to hang loose and tune out.
If you can EVER do that.
Fortunately, help is at hand. The rental cottages at holiday cabin villages often come equipped with a thick file that provides the basics.
The landlord will also walk the tenant carefully through all the things that the individual cottage requires to keep it happy. It is worth tossing pride to the winds and asking him everything and anything that comes to mind.
As an owner of a cottage, things are a little more difficult. Knowledge must be sought actively. But not everything is revealed on the Net or in guidebooks. There are smart pamphlets and manuals, but there is a clear market opportunity for a kind of all-in Cottage Life for Dummies publication.
There are nevertheless manuals on building, guides to waste disposal questions, instructions on how to clean up your well.
Then there is the outhouse. The loo is a BIG ISSUE in the country. You can get information on this outer inner sanctum from Käymäläseura Huussi (the Global Dry Toilet Club of Finland), for example. We've even included a link.
Large tasks at the cottage can of course be outsourced, like in any good business organisation. Paid cottage janitors and all-round superintendents will help with this, that, and everything under the sun.
In Southern Savo alone there are around 140 entrepreneurs in this particular category. Hardly surprising, really, when you consider that there are 43,000 cottages in the area, and that around half of them are owned or used by people from the Greater Helsinki district.
The South Savo region (which takes in Mikkeli and Savonlinna and some of Finland's finest lakeland scenery without being oppressively far from the fleshpots of the south coast) is currently engaged on a "Cottage Dreams" project that is designed to win over hearts and minds and make the area a favourite for holiday home-owners.
Some of the cottage janitors work in much the same way as the service and maintenance companies found in urban apartment buildings. They come on call, do a job, and disappear.
But the best super is someone who lives close by. At his best, he is a permanent support person for the vacationers. He can be called whenever and wherever, even to ask in advance what the local weather-prophets are promising for the weekend in Puumala.
The bottom line is that the more hopeless the vacationers are, the more bread (and jam) they bring to the local rural community.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.5.2005
Note: The huussi, from ulkohuussi, or outhouse, represents one of the tougher obstacles for the urbanite in search of rural bliss. Whoa! No bidet-shower, plenty of mosquitoes and inquisitive flies, and an endless supply of old copies of Apu and Me Naiset. Little wonder some of them point the BMW in the direction of the nearest Esso station instead.
More on this subject:
 The dream of the summer cabin lives on
Links:
Global Dry Toilet Club of Finland
ANNA-STINA NYKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-stina.nykanen@hs.fi
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