Simple Joys of a Weekend in the North | Cozy Drive, Lakes & Coffee Moments

Our slow and peaceful family weekend in Lapland filled with simple joys and cozy moments. We take you with us on a small drive through forestry Finnish neighborhood, I try new local pastry and share a funny little story about how Richard sees going to a café. Also we enjoy fresh seasonal strawberries. The weekend ends perfectly with a quiet coffee break on a bench during our cycling outing, surrounded by lakes and beautiful Lapland nature – a slow and heartwarming glimpse into life in the North.

My name is Katja. I’m originally from Russia, and in the winter of 2025 my little family and I moved from the Netherlands to Finnish Lapland — to follow our dream of living closer to nature.

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katja_inlapland/
📧 Contact: katja.vertelina@gmail.com

Would you like to practice some Russian?
Book a Russian lesson with me 🤓
https://www.italki.com/i/reft/Bcfd6G/Bcfd6G/russian?hl=nl&utm_source=copy_link&utm_medium=share_teacher

We are going to drive a bit and to have a nice walk. Are we going to buy Yafa? Yeah. We suddenly became Yafa fans. Yes. Thanks to you because I don’t really experience lots of new lemonades but I follow your lead. Our new obsession without sugar like this is how much it cost and we haven’t tried actually other tastes. There are more of them. Oh, look. What a beautiful board. Not the cheapest one, but it depicts the waterfall in this area. Oh, nice postcards. Did you prepare ice cubes for yourself? Mhm. M smart. And I got some packages. More packages. I will show you later what’s in there. Okay. I bought some something for the coffee to go. Uh can you show maybe what how it looks? I think it’s very special Finnish thing. I never saw it anywhere else. I should keep saying that my vlog is all only about bulichkas which is in Russian pastries, right? And I’m going to show more bulichkas. This is a small donut with some kind of vanilla creme cream cream filling. I bit it on the wrong side. There is no cream inside. We took a turn uh a bit earlier just next to our town because we saw advertisement about the flea market somewhere in our area and uh we want to check it out. Yes, you can see that it’s neighborhood because there are lots of post post boxes which are typically people place on the road and it means that there are houses are hidden just uh somewhere in the forest and sometimes they do placed on the road but most often they just uh like uh a bit hidden in the woods behind the trees and so that the postman and don’t have to go to each house. They just uh put all the post boxes on the road in one place. Here I reached some this cream and I think that it might be actually also mixed mixed with white chocolate. Tastes really good. Cafe. Really? Summer cafe. It’s a bit cold. Cold. Yes. I know you don’t like to sit outside. Fun fact about reert. I really don’t understand this thing but Richard thinks that if you go to a cafe then you need to sit inside a cafe. is they have a terrace with nice tables outside which most of people like and enjoy and it’s like and prefer to be outside uh like cozy with a cup of coffee or something else but the research thinks that it’s a waste to sit outside. I can sit outside whenever I want. I pay extra for coffee in a cafe to a shelter. Shelter. It’s a place of shelter. I can sit anywhere outside. Don’t have to pay €5 for a coffee to sit outside. Can I have some coffee, please? Yes. Do you want some shelter? No. That’s because I forgot to tell you. I mean, I didn’t tell a lot. Um, I bought eventually u the strawberries which I saw today at the shop. Oh, they smell amazing. They smell wonderful. These huge container is quite big. cost €7. If in her new hat, you look funny. Wow. The biggest fan of strawberries and watermelon. Another big fan of strawberries and watermelon. And watermelon, too. See you in the next episode. Episode Bye.