Ildi (Hungary) and Ilari (Finland) have been on a great working trip to South Asia. They travelled by rail and road from Hungary, through Iran and Pakistan, to India. In Mumbai they met up with a Finnophile, Malathi.
They worked in Rajasthan for awhile. Ilari has gained expertise in growing Aloe Vera. They then went to Thailand, and to the Far East travelling up through China and across Russia back to Oulu, Finland.
They have a fabulous collection of photographs from all the different cultures that they met on these travels. Ilari showed some of them to me.
From the few they sent me, I chose one from their time in Iran which shows this young and adventurous couple whom we are privileged to be friends with.
Ilari was our daughter Joanna's classmate in Oulu University. They both did their Master's in English Philology. Ilari then became a close friend of our son, Jaakko. And then he has become a close friend of Annikki and me, despite our generation gap.
Ilari has worked for me in different capacities over the years. He had a very popular web page as part of our online web fortnightly - Findians Briefings. He wrote hard-hittting short articles in both Finnish and English which contributed, in no small measure, to the enormous readership of our web fortnightly.
Ilari and Ildi, jointly, have written a book, "Culture Shock - Finland" which has been published in German. It is on sale in German speaking countries. It is also available on the internet.
They are presently documenting parts of their recent travel through the Middle east, Asia and Russia. We should be reading about it in some of the leading travel publications in Finland.
Not content with this trip, they are planning their next adventure travel.
Take care, dear friends.
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