More about Helsinki from Latvia

More about Helsinki from Latvia

Wednesday, June 12

Jim knew where to go to get stuff for breakfast this morning – just 2½ blocks down our street and on the right.  He managed to pass the small grocery store because it was set back from the street and had a large delivery truck blocking it from view.  He went an extra block and realized he had gone too far.  He succeeded in getting things we both liked, though.

 We had rain on and off for most of the day, but it was light, so we just did what we had planned (well, we usually only have a rough plan each day).  As we wandered, Ardith saw a shop with interesting chairs in the window.  One was half price for just a bit under $1,000.  

There were fun things by some other shops.

Also, there was an “ecocar”, but all the description was in Finnish.  Jim would like to know more.

Our first stop was the most unusual church in Finland and rivals anything elsewhere.  The Lutheran Church, known formally as Temppeliaukio church, but known to most as the Rock Church was built into a rock mound in the late 1960s.  Its acoustics are marvelous – we can attest to that after listening to a pianist perform.  The church is almost invisible from the outside, but awe inspiring on the inside.

We headed from there toward the Sibelius monument.  Jim normally has a marvelous sense of direction, but managed to head off twice in wrong directions.  He suspects that there was some strange geomagnetism inside the Rock Church that altered some circuits in his internal GPS.  The good news is that it that led us past a wall with figures of people carrying out their jobs.  This was on the face of a building of the College of Business of Aalto University.

 It was perhaps a mile to the Sibelius monument, but a pleasant walk despite the showers.  There was a nice “park” in between lanes of a major street.  The dirt path was easier on Ardith’s ankle than concrete paving.  The tree canopy kept most of the drizzle off us - no umbrellas here.

Jim managed to find a time between groups of tour buses to get a few good shots of the monument, but probably only had a minute of people-free time.  He spent his time waiting out the masses to think through some shots to try.  He had to redo some shots because he discovered he had raindrops on his lens. 

Jean Sibelius is Finland’s most famous composer.  His most popular piece is Finlandia.  A section of that work is the melody for “Be Still My Soul” and other hymns and is like a secondary national anthem for the country.  At the time it was written – 1899 – Finland was under control of the Russian Empire, so the work was most often presented under alternate titles like Happy Feelings at the awakening of Finnish Spring.  The monument consists of 600 steel pipes – abstractions of organ pipes – in a wave form.

At the edge of Sibelius Park, we saw a pretty pattern formed by pebbles, mosses and Maple seeds (aka whirlybirds).

Also in that park is an intriguing statue of a woman named Larin Paraske.  We were intrigued enough to look up who she was once we got back.  She was a famous oral poet who had memorized over 32,000 lines of verse, much of her own composition.  A man transcribed much of her work and it is still read today.

 We tried to see the concert hall, but it was being used for a concert.  We did get to appreciate the lamps with hands for heads in its grounds.

Just outside was an older simpler building with a nice garden in front of it.  As Jim lined up his shot, a couple dressed in traditional costume walked in front.  It turns out there was some sort of 2 day historical event taking place starting in a half hour, but nearly all the description was in Finnish.

Just a few doors down from the very traditional place was a very modern commercial building.

Across the street was the National Museum.  Ardith was too sapped by her pain to endure that, so we walked back to our room together.

Once there, Jim looked up the National Museum on the internet.  While the regular exhibits would have pleased him, he saw that there was a special exhibit of maps!  He headed right out to the museum.  He brought a street map with him, but didn’t use it, since he figured out where he had gotten in trouble earlier.  He purposely used different streets coming and going.  He had brought along his Smithsonian ID and thought he might get in free or at a discount by using it.  It turned out there was a sign saying “Museum is free today”, so it wasn’t needed.

The maps were from the collection amassed by a famous Finnish explorer, A. E. Nordenskiöld, who made 10 of the earliest explorations of the Arctic, eventually discovering the Northeast Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  He collected over 24,000 maps from before 1900, many of them extremely early.  Jim was enthralled. He spent close to an hour with that exhibit.

He was impressed with the display showing how different map projections are logically done.  The models of Earth and transparent geometric shapes really made that difficult subject easy to see.  It was hard to get a good picture, due to the nature of the lighting, but you can get the idea.

The rest of the museum was quite good and quite extensive.  From the outside, the building looks like a large-ish church, but inside there is nearly as much exhibit space as in Jim’s Natural History Museum.  A new “permanent” exhibit showed glimpses of Finland in the decades from 1900s to 1960s. Folks really liked getting in behind the wheel of the VW Beetle and watching scenes play by while they "drove" it.

1930s

 

1950s

 

1960s

Some other things that Jim especially liked were a set of Grandfather clocks, but he thinks they should just be called Grandclocks since one is in the shape of a woman.

 There were lots of traditional costumes, furniture, etc on display.

Jim was drawn into a collection of distaffs. These are pieces used for spinning thread, usually from flax.  There were about 100 different ones on exhibit.

One of the dollhouses there was easily constructed.  The “builder” merely adapted a cabinet, filling it with nice furniture and two stairways.

There were decent sized rooms explaining the Lutheran and Catholic churches and their influence on local culture.

There was a “basement” level containing treasures like coins and silverware.  Jim was the only person in the rooms down there – no guards, even!

On our first expedition out of our room 2 days ago, we passed a Nepalese restaurant.  Jim kept bringing that up and Ardith finally agreed to have a look.  She liked the decor, looked over a menu and decided it might be worth a try.  It was similar to Indian food, but less spicy.  We both really enjoyed our meal.

At the entrance to our hotel was a signboard telling people how things worked - remember, there is no front or staff other than cleaners.  It is in 6 languages, but they have the labels for English and Russian mixed up.