Here, at long last, the Finland instalment you've all been waiting for!

After a skinful the night before, needless to say the Sunday started slowly. I finally emerged from my bed at 2pm, soon followed by stirrings from the basement bedroom, whence emerged Nea and Otto with serious cases of bed head.

Our first stop was Stockmann, Finland's answer to M&S, for a massive supermarket shop. We laid out €250 on yummy ingredients for the evening's dinner at Nea's parents' house. Did I mention that Otto is a chef? Blimey, can he cook! But more of that later.

After the huge shop we drove to Otto's ex's house and picked up Väiski the dog, a monster of a thing that is about the same size as Otto. The two of them squeezed into the back of Nea's clapped-out little hatchback and I clambered into the passenger seat, then Nea set out north towards her home village.

We had a quick stop at the Vehoniem car museum (from where one has a typically Finnish panorama of forest and lakes) for a coffee and munkki (that's Finnish for heart attack - or at least it should be: deep-fried balls of doughnut dough coated in sugar and cinnamon), then arrived at home.

The house reminds me lots of my Uncle Helmut's house in Austria: a lovely standalone property set in gardens of fruit and orchards. All the plants were there from my childhood too: red, black and whitecurrants, raspberries, rhubarb, red and green gooseberries, strawberries, and of course apples, pears and plums. It felt like home, it really did.

Otto got busy in the kitchen while Nea showed me all her photos from Australia and we had a good ol' reminisce about Melbourne. Unfortunately for me, her parents don't really speak English so communication was restricted, but we got on as well as can be expected.

After a sumptuous dinner, photos of each dish of which will be appearing on my website in due course (and there are lots of them, from reindeer carpaccio through to arctic cloudberries), we carried on drinking and laughing. A brief stroll around the village to give the dog a little exercise was followed by the obligatory post-drinking sauna, this time with a home-made vihta or vasta (the birch thing you whip yourself with - oooh yeah...).

We drove back to Tampere on Monday after doing the washing up and having a slap-up breakfast. Otto had to go to work, but Nea had the day off so we went to the Näsinneula tower, Scandinavia's tallest structure, where we enjoyed views over Tampere and lakes and trees. Soon we were getting a bit thirsty, so we visited the first of the day's many bars. In fact we were back at Teerenpeli, but this time I sampled mustikkasiideri, or blueberry cider.

It was a lovely sunny afternoon so we walked around town, did a spot of shopping, and headed back to Otto's to take Väiski for a walk. We prepared ourselves some delicious nachos, watched a bit of telly and then Otto came home. After a quick change, we resumed our bar crawl by having a round of Belgian beers at Tempo Terrace on the riverside. Then we headed to Soho, where we were joined by a couple of Otto & Nea's friends for English beers and shots. At Nooanarkki we had Finnish beer and more shots. Back at Otto's we had another after-party, and we were joined by Jone, Otto's boss. I flaked out just about sunrise and left them to it in the back garden.

And then suddenly it was my last day. Nea & I had yummy Italian panini and coffee in town, then we drove down to Helsinki. The weather was all over the place, from sunny and still to lashing with rain and blowing the car all over the shop. We listened to angry music to keep us awake (thank you Skunk Anansie) and finally I reached the airport and the sad moment of farewell.

Finland rocks! And Nea & Otto must definitely come to see me in Germany, so I can repay their huge generosity.