Letter to our Grandchildren

Lissankatu, 6
Helsingin, Suomi

Hi,
This is Grandma. I have been thinking about what to write to you. I decided to take you on a walk to the grocery store with me.
It is getting cold outside and windy but there are very few colored leaves so it doesn’t really look like autumn. I walked almost all of the way to the store behind a mother with two children. One was in the stroller and the other one was walking. I think that the mom must have just picked up her daughter from school. Can you tell what is on her backpack? It is a bit hard to see. That is Sleeping Beauty.
Grandpa and I do not have a car so we walk lots of places. In Helsinki you always have to watch out for bicycles on the sidewalk. Can you see the man on the bicycle? Grandpa has to remind me a lot to walk close to the buildings or the side of bridge, so that I am not in the bike lane.
I never buy very much at the store because I know that I will have to carry it home. There are lots of buses to take or trams and even a metro with only one line. Can you see the wires that give the power to the trams? They do not use gasoline like the buses or cars do.
One last thing before we go back home. Can you read the words on the side of the red tram? You say the words exactly as they are spelled. Put the emphasis on the first syllable. I don’t have any idea though what these two words mean.
This is a picture of the street sign on the street where we live. All of the street signs are on the sides of the buildings. Sometimes it is very hard to tell what street we are on. It must be really difficult if you are driving a car. There really is only one name for our street. There are two official languages in Finland. One is Finnish and the other is Swedish. The top word is in Finnish since most people speak Finnish here in Helsinki. The bottom word is in Swedish. If you look at the address at the top of the letter you will see how the Finnish spell Helsinki, Finland. They call their country Suomi.
When we get back home we climb the stairs. There is a ground floor and then a first floor and we live on the second floor. It is an old building close to the center of the city. There is an elevator but we have never used it.
We have two keys to get into our apartment. And we have two doors. The white one is never locked though. I don’t know if it has a key for it.
I will just take the few groceries I bought into the kitchen. Next time I’ll show you some pictures inside the store.