Finland, Tuuri, The Country Village Shop

This is a blog about compassionate travel. In my opinion being compassionate and dedicated is also fun. According to research, people who work to enhance the wellbeing and health of others live longer and are happier.

Sometimes people should just visit palaces that make them feel good. In many countries, there are such places where people plan to go to spend a day just for the experience of it.

One experience in Finland you should not miss is a visit to the world's largest country village shop. I can just imagine what is on the people's mind when planning their trip to this particular store.

It is a real shopping extravagance. Even for an experienced world traveler who has seen the largest department stores packed with customers, visiting Tuuri in July can be an overwhelming experience.

It seems that most of Finland, half of Russia, Sweden and many other European countries are represented there on any one day. The restaurant lunch production alone is a huge undertaking.

I was told that the buffet alone serves well over 1000 lunches on any day during the summer season. It is cheap, easy and delicious. They even have the most wonderful vegetarian variation to the buffet. I was so impressed.

The only thing that resembles country living in this place is the entrance to shop where you
walk through the old stone barn to the shopping street. The restaurant is also situated in the
old barn. It is very atmospheric. Otherwise the store is dedicated to kitsch.

The castle looking front of the building is a hotel and the food market. The other part of the huge store is the department store where you can buy anything and everything.

The enormous lucky horse shoe resembles the original horse shoe that was situated on the original door. The Finnish word 'Tuuri' means 'luck' in English. It is the name of the Village where the shop is situated.

The shop was originally founded by the brothers Keskinen. Vesa Keskinen, a son of one the original brothers, who is the Managing

Director loves Disney's Donald Duck. This dedication is reflected in his business attitude. Even his house next door resembles the Duckburg building design.

The owners are really astute business people. There is a railway hotel, a free caravan park, where the customers can park their mobile homes and a lot of free circus and tivoli businesses on the side. You can find markets on every corner.The whole village shares the customer base. Everyone prospers.

One should perhaps think of the whole place as a circus. It probably needs a few days to experience the whole thing.

We only had a fee hours, but I am sure that when next time is Finland, we'll be back. If nothing else, we definitely want to see what new extravagance has been created while we were away.

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