More of Finland, this time from Latvia

More of Finland, this time from Latvia

Tuesday, June 11

We have a refrigerator, microwave and hot water kettle in our room.   Since Ardith’s ankle was still sore, Jim went in search of a grocery store to buy juice, pastry and yogurt. He looked on an internet map and found one about 5 blocks away.  When he got to that location, he saw that the store was out of business.  After wandering the streets for 20 minutes, he found one that was just over 2 blocks from our hotel.  Along the way, he saw a sign that expressed his thoughts.

He did find a block of low rise residential buildings that seemed like a pleasant place to live. Everything else in the core of the city is 4 or more stories,

 

 There were about 30 brands of yogurt to choose from.  Ardith was happy with his choice.

We decided to walk to see two churches that are fairly near our hotel.  Ardith’s ankle had improved since first thing, so she put on an ace ankle brace and started out.  This is quite a sophisticated city with stylish people, high end shops, and lots of people traffic.  Ardith enjoyed window shopping while Jim focused on the buildings that are so different than most in the US.

 

  

We also saw a lot of fun art / architecture:

The first church we visited was the Lutheran Cathedral (Tuomiokirkko).  It is considered the unofficial symbol of the city. It is a large white building that is in the central Senate Square.  It was completed in 1852 but has recently been refurbished.  It is a very simple building inside.

 There are 3 large statues in the building.  Being long-time Lutherans, we knew who Luther and Melanchthon were, but knew nothing about the third one.  The internet told us that Mikael Agricola was the founder of Protestantism in Finland.  Like Luther being important to Germans for standardizing written German, Agricola did the same for Finnish.  He translated the New Testament into Finnish and put together prayer books and hymnals.  Jim’s picture of his statue blurred, but here are the other two:

 Ardith lit a candle for her sister Barbara, who is recovering from surgery.  We don’t usually light candles in American Lutheran churches, but the funds for these candles will be going toward a mission project.

While walking through the cathedral, an older Italian tourist told Ardith, “Even if you don’t believe, when you hear the sounds, something stirs in you.”  The acoustics seem great. The building is actively used for worship and actually has a congregation.

The cathedral dominates Senate Square which also contains the executive office building for the government, the main building of Helsinki and a commercial building.

The second church we visited was the Uspenski Cathedral which is a classical onion-domed Russian church near the market square. It serves Finland’s small Orthodox minority and is the largest Orthodox church in Western Europe.  It has 5 domes that are topped with 22-carat gold, and is filled with ornate icons.

We noticed that the Lutherans were doing better in candle sales than the Orthodox.

Near the Uspenski Cathedral is a place where a couple pledges their eternal love to each other by affixing a lock to bridge and tossing the key in the water.  This has spread to several cities.  Several of the locks were engraved or heart shaped.  A few were combination locks.  Did someone not get the concept?

Ardith’s ankle was bothering her more and she asked to go back to our room.  We had to walk through a maritime area.  

That inspired the idea of taking a boat ride. Ardith could rest her ankle while Jim clicked his shutter.  There were at least 3 tour boat operators at the dock.  We chose the one that was leaving in 5 minutes. Not many others chose that one – there were only 10 people on board other than the crew.

Jim's warped mind told him this vessel had different restrooms for Americans vs. Europeans:

The trip took an hour and a half.  The multi-lingual pre-recorded narration told the story of the founding of Helsinki by a Swedish king who wanted a town to rival the Hanseatic League's Tallin in 1550.  He forced all the residents of 3 villages to move.  Fortifications were built and destroyed several times over the years.  The photo below shows remnants of the 18^th century fort built by 8,000 workers to defend a town of 3,000.

There is a narrow opening that forms the best channel into the city.  In older times, defenders often put iron chains across the gap to keep enemies away.

There are lots of small buildings along the waterfront.  Most of these are saunas. The narration claims there are 2,000,000 of them in the country.  Its population is 5.4 million.

 Every time we passed under a low bridge, the girl that took our ticket, sold snacks and helped the captain with other chores came to the upper deck to warn people to stay down.  The only “people” that needed to get down was me.  I was sit/standing on a tied-down stack of floats.  That gave me height and stability.  The girl and I developed a joking repartee.  

 About 2/3rds of the way through the trip, Jim’s camera had a message displayed in the viewfinder “Lens error – shut down the camera”, but the camera wouldn’t shut down – it just kept moving the lens a bit.  He took out the batteries and put them back twice with the same result.  The second time, he dropped 2 of the batteries on the metal deck.  He went down below where Ardith had a place to sit with her leg propped up.  She said “I heard your batteries – what’s the problem”.  He borrowed her camera until we got back to our room.  He kept the batteries out and replaced them an hour or so later and the camera fixed itself. Phew!!

An irony was seeing a Mississippi River style paddle boat plying the harbor.

We went back to our room, grabbed a very good bite to eat at the kebab place across the street, and slept or wrote/photo edited.