The rain has been falling on Lappeenranta since before dawn, a steady, unhurried drumming on the hotel window that seems to have settled in for the day. It is Monday, the twenty-fourth of August, my fifth day here, and the city feels different today, a little busier, a little more purposeful, as if the summer's long exhale has finally ended and everyone has remembered there is work to do. I pulled on my waterproof jacket and walked out into it, past the harbour where the boats were rocking gently in their moorings, and made my way up towards the fortress, the cobblestones slick and shining underfoot.
The fortress hill is quieter than it was at the weekend, the last of the Festival Weeks crowds gone, and the only sounds are the rain on the leaves and the occasional cry of a gull from the lake. I walked along the top of the ramparts for a while, looking out over the grey water of Saimaa, and thought about how this place has stood here for three hundred years, watching summers come and go, watching borders move and armies pass. There is something humbling about that kind of permanence, especially on a day like this, when the whole world seems to be made of water and soft light. I found myself thinking about the people who built these walls, and the people who lived behind them, and how many of them must have stood exactly where I was standing, watching the same lake, feeling the same rain.
I had planned to spend the morning at the Sandcastle, the Hiekkalinna, because today is apparently one of its last days before they knock it down for the winter. It is a strange thing, a sandcastle that is rebuilt every summer, a monument to impermanence, and somehow that felt right for this town, which has always been a place of borders and crossings and things that do not quite last. The theme this year is 'Living Sculptures', and even in the rain, with the grey sky reflecting off the wet sand, it was something to see. The detail was extraordinary, faces and animals and whole scenes carved out of the sand, and I walked around it slowly, trying to take it all in before it disappears. There was a Fazer shop next to it, and I ducked in for a warm korvapuusti and a coffee, about four euros, which felt like a small miracle of comfort on a day like this.
From the sandcastle, I walked back along the harbour front, past the market stalls that were mostly battened down against the weather, and up towards the Market Square. The square was quiet, but there was a steady trickle of people, and I noticed a few groups of young people with backpacks and orientation-week lanyards, looking lost and excited in equal measure. I remembered reading that the new LUT University students are arriving this week, and the whole city is gearing up for their welcome events, and there was something genuinely lovely about seeing them here, in the rain, ready to start their own Finnish stories. I stopped at one of the stalls and bought a lörtsy, the local fried pastry, this one filled with apple, for about five euros, and ate it standing under the awning, watching the students pass.
The lörtsy was warm and sweet, and it made me think about how much of this town's identity is bound up in food. There is the vety and atomi, those heavy meat pies named after the hydrogen and the atom, which I have been meaning to try, and there is the karjalanpiirakka, the Karelian rice pasty, which I had at the market hall the other day. And then there is the lemmin särä, that slow-cooked lamb in a birch-bark box, which I had on Sunday at Restaurant Kippurasarvi, and which still feels like one of the most singular meals I have had in Finland. The cost of eating here is not bad, a lounas buffet will run you about eleven or twelve euros, and a nicer dinner maybe thirty, which is less than you would pay in Helsinki, and the quality is consistently good. It is one of the things I like about this country, the way that even a simple meal feels like an event, a small ceremony of warmth against the cold.
After the square, I decided to walk up to the Wolkoff House, the old Russian merchant's home that I had passed a few times but never entered. It is a beautiful wooden building, painted a soft yellow, and inside it is like stepping back into another century. The Wolkoff family lived there for over a hundred years, and the house has been kept exactly as it was, with all the original furniture and photographs and little everyday objects. The ticket was about eight euros, and I was the only visitor, so I wandered through the rooms in the quiet, listening to the rain against the windows, imagining the family who had called this place home. There is something melancholic about it, a house that has outlived its people, but there is also something beautiful, a kind of defiance against time. I thought about how this town has lost so much over the years, the cities of Käkisalmi and Vyborg on the other side of the border, the wars and the evacuations, and yet here is this house, still standing, still holding its memories.
The rain had not let up by the time I left, so I decided to treat myself to a proper lunch at Ravintola Wolkoff, which is right next to the museum. It is a handsome restaurant, with white tablecloths and tall windows, and the menu is full of Karelian classics. I ordered the lohikeitto, the creamy salmon soup, which came with dark bread and butter, and it was exactly what the day demanded. The soup was rich and dill-fragrant, and it warmed me from the inside out, and I sat there for a long time, watching the rain streak down the glass and the occasional umbrella pass by on the street outside. The whole meal came to about fourteen euros, which felt fair for the quality, and I left feeling restored, ready to face the grey afternoon.
The plan for the afternoon was to walk out to the harbour again, and then maybe up to the Myllysaari swimming area, but the rain had other ideas. Instead, I found myself at the South Karelia Museum, which is housed in those old limestone artillery depots on the fortress hill. I had already been there on Saturday, for the exhibition on the history of the region, but I wanted to spend more time with the great model of Vyborg, that beautiful and lost city across the border. The model is enormous, a whole town in miniature, with every street and church and tower rendered in exquisite detail, and I stood over it for a long time, letting my eyes travel along the streets, imagining the people who had walked them, the life that had been there before the war. This is a border town, and you cannot spend a day here without feeling the weight of that, the nearness of Russia, the history of what was lost and what was kept.
As I left the museum, the rain finally began to ease, and the clouds started to break up in the west, showing pale streaks of blue. The light on the harbour changed, turning the wet stone to gold, and I walked back down to the water just to watch it. There is a bronze seal on the pedestrian street, a monument to the Saimaa ringed seal, that rare creature that lives only in these lakes, and I stopped there for a moment, feeling a strange tenderness for this place and its animals, its water, its patient people. The harbour was quiet, the summer crowds gone, and I could feel the town shifting into its autumn rhythm, the students arriving, the festivals ending, the leaves beginning, just barely, to think about turning. Ruska is still weeks away, but you can feel it in the air, that first hint of something ending.
In the evening, I walked up towards the Skinnarila campus district, out of curiosity more than anything, to see the student life that is about to flood this city. The streets around the campus were quiet, but there were signs everywhere, banners welcoming the new students, posters for the welcome fair, and a certain electric anticipation in the air. I stopped at Kampuskauppa Aalef, the campus shop, and bought a coffee and a pastry, and sat on a bench outside, watching the few students who were already there. The rain had stopped entirely by then, and the sky was a soft grey-pink, and I felt a strange sense of being in the right place at the right time, a traveler and a resident all at once, watching a city prepare for its own renewal. The rent for a one-bedroom flat near the campus is something like six hundred euros a month, which is not bad at all for a city this size, and I could see myself in one of those apartments, watching the seasons turn over the lake.
I walked back to the centre as the light failed, taking the long way along the Sammonlahti shore, where the family houses were lit up warm against the evening. The sky was clear now, and the stars were beginning to show, and the lake was a dark mirror, still and deep. I thought about all the days I have spent in this town, and all the days I have left, and about how this journey is teaching me to pay attention, to really see the places I pass through, to understand them not as destinations but as lives being lived. Tomorrow I will go to the market hall again, and maybe try the vety and atomi, and then I will start to think about the next leg of the journey, the slow drift north and east into the lakeland, towards ruska. But tonight, I am here, in Lappeenranta, on the shore of Saimaa, and that is enough. Everything I have talked about, the restaurants, the museum tickets, the little costs and pleasures, is in the episode notes if you want to find it. For now, the rain has stopped, and the lake is silver under the stars, and I am going to stand here a little longer, watching it. Kiitos, Lappeenranta. Moi. I will be back before you know it.
As I made my way up to the hotel, I passed the Old Town Hall, the oldest wooden town hall in Finland, standing there in the dusk like something from a fairy tale. The lights were on in the windows, and I could see the silhouettes of people moving inside, and I thought about how this building has seen so much, has been here since the eighteenth century, through wars and fires and all the slow changes of a border town. In the morning, I will go to the bank, maybe visit the branch on Valtakatu, and sort out a few practical things, but tonight the town is just a town, quiet and damp and beautiful, and I am happy to be a small part of it for a little while longer.