Tarja Turunen and Sirja Tiilikainen, camping friends since their childhood, recall the holidays they spent together in Kesälahti, Mäntyranta, with a warm feeling.
Tarja´s as well as Sirja´s parents were camper, and that´s why the two girls spent their holidays together living in caravans. Both families appreciated Mäntyranta because of the white beaches and the clear water.
"Since we´ve been of the same age we got to know each other and soon we found out that we had a lot of things in common," Tarja and Sirja explain. When they weren´t playing together they teased their younger brothers. Both girls had an older brother as well as a younger one.
Their memories of that time are bright and sunny, but they also recall a big storm. "Within seconds a kind of tornado raised from the lake, whirled up heaps of sand and the awnings hurtled through the air. My brother held down the awning and he was clinging to the ropes with his feet in the air. Such a storm I´ve never experienced again in Finland," Tarja recalls.
The ten-year-old girls mostly played outside. There were a lot of children in the area. The camp ground was safe and the caravans were never locked.
We played Ping-Pong, Badminton and Petanque - I can´t remember that we ever played with dolls," says Tarja. "Of course, we also went swimming in the lake of Puruvesi and we had a lot of fun there. Once we even painted our faces black using coal." (as you can see on the pic)
"Sometimes we also paid nocturnal visits to each other and stayed awake till four o´clock in the morning." Sirja recalls these times especially vividly, because she still has a pink diary in which she recorded all their activities and who had a crush on whom.
Their clothing already connected the two girls back then. Both Tarja and Sirja owned a black-yellow "bee´s dress", a mini-skirt and a shirt. This was absolutely hip at that time and both of them really regret that they don´t have a photo from it any more.

Suddenly they went separate ways

Sometime Tarja´s parents decided to spend the summer holidays somewhere else and the girls didn´t meet each other any longer. Sirja´s familiy toured through Finland and Tarja visited Lapland, Sweden and Norway. Finally Tarja´s parents even sold the caravan.
Sirja´s parents, however, continued to spend their holidays in Mäntyranta and also nowadays they´re still camper. Sirja can also use the caravan at her pleasure and next summer she´ll travel to Lomakylä in Ruoke.
"Next summer we plan to travel with the caravan, but in Ruoke we´ll spend the nights in a cottage, my husband and me."
Tarja is still longing for Mäntyniemi and she hopes that she sometime will have the opportunity again to enjoy the beaches of that area. During the last summer she did many concerts and had no holidays at all. Only once she visited the place of her childhood memories for a short time.

A familiar girl in an advertising

Years have passed by since the times in Mäntyniemi, when Sirja´s brother showed her an advertisement of Nightwish, on which she recognized Tarja.
" `You know that girl, don´t you,` my brother asked and I was totally amazed. I haven´t heard for years from Tarja. I´ve sent her a message immediately and a few days later the called me in the phone. We´ve met each other in Helsinki and since that time we kept in touch," Sirja explains.
"It was very nice to see, that we still got along very well with each other - just as it was back then. We´re still the same tattletales. None of us has changed and despite the long separation we didn´t grow away from each other at all."
Besides their friendship they´re also connected by their cooperation. Back in Nightwish times Sirja began to design and sew Tarja´s outfit for the concerts. This cooperation will also continue in the future even though the clothes will change a little bit. "Classical music, on which I will concentrate now, also demands a more classical appearance," says Tarja.
Sirja Tiilikainen has been designing Tarja´s clothes for five years now and always she´s been in a hurry with it. Sirja´s working place, a sewing shop in Eerikinkatu in the middle of Helsinki, is located well for Tarja since she´s able to stop by quickly before her journeys abroad. "Oftentimes I carried the clothes to the airport and sometimes there even wasn´t enough time to try them on," Sirja explains.
"But they always fitted very well," says Tarja, "just as the dress Sirja made for me on the occasion of the Finnish Independence Party." A lot of media people thought it was the most beautiful of all. Since that time Sirja´s talents has been discovered and also at the Independence Party of last year some dresses designed by her could be seen there. The designing and sewing of clothes almost takes up all her time, far too much of it as Tarja thinks. […]

Together on holidays

After all the stress of last autumn Tarja Turunen and her Argentinian husband and manager Marcelo Cabuli spent diving holidays in Thailand. This journey was a belated honeymoon as well, since it was the first holidays they spent together. All other travels had to do only with work. In February the couple will go to Argentina and they will travel through this country during the rest of their holidays. Sirja also wants to visit Argentina some timrja also wants to visit Argentina some time later.
Next summer and fall Tarja will stay in Finland since she will have many concerts there. Her time schedule has filled at cyberspeed.
"But I hope, that we also will find time for a rest. I would like to familiarise Marcelo with this hobby and visit Lapland with him. I have the idea to rent a caravan for some weeks and see how we like it. Later we still can decide if we will buy one for our own. We´ve already visited Lapland in autumn, but never in summer. A rent car would also be a good alternative since we don´t have to commit ourselves so much and we can enjoy our privacy." Tarja contemplates. Meanwhile Marcelo also cottoned on to that idea.