To cut a long story short. Saturday was spent moving bricks around. Lots of bricks. That and some shopping. Bought a larger snow shovel/sledge and a little snow shovel for the car, plus a few bits and pieces the contractors needed. We thought this would be an easy weekend! Pretty psychic purchases too.

As it turned out, it started snowing on Saturday, and snowing, and snowing and snowing. And then for good measure it snowed again all night. Pia arranged for her brother, Petri, to help us on Sunday, since it was obvious there would be some snow to clear. But on Sunday morning we left to pick him up and found about 30cm of snow outside. And drifts up to 1m deep! We drove straight out the door of the parking building and immediately got stuck. A taxi driver who parks near our car offered to help us, obviously very useful considering his years of experience at this sort of thing. He did manage to get the car out and this sort of driving seems to involve lots of wheel spinning, flying snow and some tire smoke :-). The drive through the centre of Helsinki was quite amusing. I pity the poor people who have to go to work tomorrow. Their cars are buried up to their windows in snow pushed to the sides of the road by the snow-ploughs.

It was a long and slow trip to the land and Petri could only help for the morning. He cleared the driveway while we moved other snow.  The whole house area was covered. All the hole the foundations are sitting in is full of snow and there is no sign at all of the ditch around the outside. When we had to take him back home about lunchtime we had manage to clear such a small amount we had to go back again. All I can say is that we both hurt… a lot. And the weather office says this is a once in a decade snowfall. I definitely hope so.

Some “before” pictures from Saturday… The car was sitting there for about three hours.

And the “after” pictures from Sunday… From the left, I know there is a road there somewhere. Petri clearing the driveway. Up to 70cm of snow inside the house!