Unlike No Other Place: Finland (Helsinki, Part 2)

So in the last post I recounted what Helsinki had to offer to me on Thursday while I was there, continuing on with this theme I will share my favourite places in Helsinki from the activities I did on Friday and Sunday.

Friday in Helsinki – Suomenlinna

Suomenlinna is an island located just off the coast from Helsinki – it’s sea fortress dates back to the 1700s when Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden. However although its construction began during the Swedish rule, there are guns that face west on the ramparts at Kustaanmeikka (an area on the island), which demonstrate the period of Russian rule (in the 19^th Century).

The island and sea fortress is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (since 1991) as its preservation will allow future generations to see the European military architecture of the 1700s.

The island is quite small, so it is easy to explore on foot. I didn’t visit all areas of the island, but I did of course visit one of the main parts of the fortress. It was actually a scary experience. I was by myself, so this clearly did not help ease my fear. I walked through the fortress and decided to wander through the old archways and see if I could find anything. It was a bad mistake – it was dark and cold, and no one was around. Suddenly I heard some eerie noises, and at the moment decided to walk quickly out and into the open space. I decided soon afterwards that it was haunted, and better to be visited in a group instead of alone. I can’t imagine what it must be like at night…

Since I was at Suomenlinna in the morning, I decided to have my breakfast here. Now I had read that traditionally Finns usually have coffee and a sweet bun (usually a cinnamon bun) for breakfast. Keeping up with trying to embrace living like a Finn, I decided to have the same – and to be honest I was gladly obliging since I love coffee and anything sweet, so for me this was actually an ideal breakfast. Unfortunately the café didn’t have any cinnamon buns, so I chose something else, which I was later informed, consisted of butter and sugar in a bun. I thought to myself that I was being incredibly unhealthy and was willing myself to have a heart attack in the future from too much butter consumption – yet, regardless it was a very tasty bun and didn’t seem to overpowering with butter and sugar, there was a sort of calculated balance. The coffee was amazing though. Usually I don’t like to drink coffee just black, it has to have at least milk, and quite often I’ll take it with a teaspoon of sugar; but the coffee here in Finland was really nice and I didn’t need to take it with milk or sugar in order to enjoy it. (Lappish coffee was even better – but more will be said about this in the next post).

 

Suvilahti Cultural Centre

Probably one of my favourite places in Helsinki – it used to be an industrial area with the Suvilahti power plant generating gas and electricity for Helsinki for much of the 20^th Century, but now it is a cultural haven. What I loved most about the cultural centre is that it has kept the remains of the power plant, so to any unknown walking they would still assume this is in fact an industrial area.

Among the cultural events, they host open-air music concerts in the summer and circus performances. In fact, in 2013, Finland’s biggest circus school, Circus Helsinki, made Suvilahti their new home and area of practicing their performances.

 

The cultural centre is big on creating culture and arts, and most of all to get the youth involved. They even provided a wall whereby people could use it for their graffiti art (instead of on the streets):

Hakaniemen Kauppahalli

This is an old market hall not far from the Kallio district (definitely worth a visit, the coolest vintage, antique, local designer, and record stores can be found in this area) – but back to the market hall… When I mean market hall, I mean that it is a market hall of food. As soon as you walk through the arched doors you are immediately thrown face-to-face with local produce. Walking around (I walked in a clockwise direction), I first walked through the meat area; there were so many different cuts and types of meat, I saw some that I was completely unfamiliar with. It was incredible, if you are a lover of meat or wanted some fresh produce to make dinner, then this was definitely the place to come. The only problem I had was that I hate the smell of raw meat, and there was a LOT of raw meat so the smell was quite strong. However if you keep walking around, you’ll begin to move away from meat and towards the seafood area. Again, like with meat, if you are a seafood lover and wanted to make lunch/dinner, this is an ideal place to stock up on ingredients. Keep walking and you’ll soon leave behind the fish and arrive at the baked goods section. All the lovely breads and pastries, this is definitely a nicer smell than the raw meat and seafood. Continuing on, you’ll find yourself moving away from the fresh produce and come to preserved jams and other goodies, like chocolate! The chocolate they had looked incredible, but the price tag was quite high, and while they did look like amazing chocolates, I really couldn’t bear to part my money for a piece (and besides, their chocolate in the supermarkets are by Karl Fazer, still amazingly delicious). The market hall offered many areas to sit and eat, whether it be cafes or bakeries, so if you’re lazy and don’t cook, you could still get a taste of Finnish local produce.
I loved this market hall, and I think if I come back here (which I definitely will be trying my best to come back to Finland soon), then I would definitely get all my local produce here to make an awesome meal and feel good for supporting the Finnish local industry :) 

Sunday in Helsinki – Design Museum

I went to the Design Museum especially because I had read about their current exhibition: “Don’t Shoot the Messenger: The Expanding Field of Graphic Design”. As I had mentioned before in my last post, since I am particularly interested in topics like this due to studying Communication & Media Studies, I have a massive interest in the arts/culture and media industry.

While the Design Museum has a permanent exhibition on Finnish design over the decades – which I must say was incredibly interesting – my heart was beating towards the upstairs exhibition about graphic design.

My expectations I had of the exhibition were completely wrong, they were exceeded as the exhibition was much better than I had anticipated. There were designs by a range of artists from all over the world. There was one about the importance of poster art – it was stating how in today’s society there is an argument that with technology there is now no need for poster artwork and prints, but the artist disagrees. I do too. Especially since I have been part of the poster group for Hulen in Bergen, I can see there is a huge importance still for posters. People who are overcome by technology take for granted the importance of these artworks, but the thing is, if a person is walking down a street and there are posters placed on the wall, they will still catch your attention, regardless of whether you find out about upcoming events through social media. Back home, whenever I walk the streets in the city, I come across posters and I always stop to look at them, because sometimes there are events we miss seeing via digital media because we are too busy using it for other things, like socialising.
I found a pattern emerge with the exhibition – while I had originally thought with the title “The Expanding Field of Graphic Design”, the attention would be placed on digital graphic designing as we know it today, I was completely wrong – what I found was majority of the exhibits were graphic designers fighting against the digital age, all stating the importance of graphic design as a substance, an artwork that should still remain in the real world, not being swallowed up and overtaken by online media. All around the floor were many texts which asked questions about the importance of graphic design, and they helped not only make the exhibition an even more enjoyable experience, but it also provoked me to think more about my perception of graphic design.
While I loved all the artists’ works, there was one part of the exhibition I completely fell in love with. It was on the importance of books, not e-books, but the hardcover books that people have seemed to forget about with moving their lifestyles completely online. They had showcased loads of different books with placing the importance of their cover designs. There were long quotes placed around the rooms suggesting this – how we often sometimes will pick up a book just by being lured to the cover. While the saying goes “don’t judge a book by its cover”, the fact remains that the cover of a book is incredibly important. The cover of a book will reflect the story that’s within, or it’s a piece of the writer giving the reader slight glimpses into their unknown minds. The covers of a book are important, they speak so many words without us even realising it, and sadly people just often take it for granted. However, all book-lovers understand the gloriousness that not only comes with an amazing read, but the attractiveness of a book cover which we look at again and again and can evoke so much. Sometimes it can be completely simple, and provide no clues to what the novel is about, but that makes it even more alluring, because it holds secrets inside that you just have to discover.
All in all, I really appreciated the exhibition, and the team at Design Museum presented it in such an effective way that made the whole experience for me very thought-provoking, and I’m sure it did to many of the other visits, who I observed seemed glued to the various artworks.

 

Yrjönkatu Swimming Hall

I ended my weekend in Finland in completely bliss and harmony - AND in a traditional Finnish way, by going to one of the swimming halls to sit in saunas and swim in pools NAKED.

First things first, about the swimming hall: the Yrjönkatu swimming hall is absolutely beautiful, it was built in the 1920s and it features an interior of Roman archways and tiled floors. The colours of the archways are white and the walls are a beige colour, making the crystal clear blue of the swimming pool stand out. The pool really dominates your attention, especially if you’re on the second floor above. As you look over from the second floor, all you can see is the pool. It practically begs for attention, and you simply can’t look at it and not want to dip your toes in and submerge yourself for at least a quick swim. Apart from the swimming pool, there are also three saunas: one is electric, one is steam and the last is wood – which I was told was a proper traditional Finnish sauna. (I can’t remember if I went in the steam or the wood sauna, I would like to believe it was the wood sauna, but my feeling is that it was the steam one – which doesn’t matter, at least it is better than the electric one).

The rules of these swimming halls are simple: men and women have separate hours (they do not swim together), you must shower before going in the sauna/pool, and you can choose whether you want to swim naked or not (it wasn’t until recently that this changed, I think sometime in the 2000s, before it was compulsory to swim naked, but now they allow the options of bathers if you wish – but where’s the fun in that?).

Now the day before I was going to the swimming hall I had no doubts about getting my kit off to go in the sauna and pool, however on the actual day when I was standing there in my cabin, the decision to go bare was not as simple as I had thought. I lacked courage, and it took me three trips to my cabin to finally wear my birthday suit. These were how many attempts happened: 1) I arrived, looked over the balcony to see who and how many were actually naked, there seemed to be only older ladies which made me think perhaps it was only the traditional Finnish women who still swim naked, so I went in my cabin and put my bathers on; 2) walked out (you get giving bathrobes by the way, so you are not walking around naked, only when in the saunas, showers and pool), saw there were more people in the pool and walking around with their tops off but bather bottoms on, so I went back to my cabin and took my bikini top off; 3) thinking I was ready to finally relax, walked into the shower room where the sauna was and saw EVERYONE was naked, all ages groups and there were many my age, alas I walked back my cabin took off my bottoms and hence finally had the courage to be completely bare. I thought to myself I would have stood out more for wearing my bathers than not wearing anything at all.

The whole experience was rather enjoyable actually, and completely relaxing. I went to the saunas first and sat there for a while warming my body up. Satisfied I had enough heat, I walked down the pool and swam some laps. There is something really so liberating at swimming naked, it feels so natural that you start to begin whether the inventions of bathers were really a good idea and that surely our human bodies were designed to be nude in the water. When you swim naked, you truly understand how constricting bathers are against actual swimming, I swear the material must hold you back because when I was swimming my breaststroke laps, I felt like I was gliding through the water (although I probably didn’t look this way, more like a struggling marine animal who can’t swim properly). As I started to feel like I had done enough laps, I headed back up to the sauna for my last sweat session. I was in there longer this time, and oh boy did I really sweat. It happened so suddenly, I felt a few drops coming off my back then it all of sudden felt like rainfall was coming off my body! Clearly my body obviously needed a desperate detox, and I felt I probably haven’t been treating it with the best of love while I’ve been away – which is often the case when you are away from the comfort of home. Afterwards, feeling like I really shouldn’t sweat any longer or I could faint, I sat in the seat and tables situated around the balcony and ordered a refreshing drink. It was called “tuorepuristettu mehu” and was made up of apple, ginger and celery, and it was meant to be detoxifying. It was really refreshing and tasty, but it went away too quickly – definitely needed a bigger glass!

(NB: see more about the swimming halls in the upcoming post)

No Sunday Brunch??

The only thing I found strange about Finland was that there were no cafes or restaurants open on a Sunday (except for a select few scattered around). What made me found it even weirder was because the shopping malls were still open – I could understand if the shops were closed then perhaps cafes/restaurants would be closed too.

It was very bizarre, and I wondered whether there is a tradition on a Sunday for Finnish people to stay home and cook?

Regardless of this, I could still easily live in Finland though, and I would just make an amazing Sunday brunch and dinner at home after buying all my produce from the market hall. I think my ideal Sunday would be a morning walk along this beautiful park (on a street called Merisatamanranta), then make a mouth-watering brunch, followed by a visit to the swimming halls in the afternoon, then dinner and a movie or book on a comfy couch. Aw simply bliss! I’ll somehow have to try create a similar day back home in Perth I think.

I have only the best memories of Finland, there was not one bad thing about the place, and I will truly miss it deeply in my heart.

Things are looking up - and I don't just mean the hills!

I've been in Bergen five days now, and things are starting to get better, finally.

My current worries are about money because I know for sure how much rent is but not electricity which is annoying as I can't budget specifically yet, so hopefully will find out a rough price of how much my living is going to cost by the end of this month.

I know I do have enough money for my rent, food and social activities for Bergen, but I desperately want to see more of Norway and Scandinavia while I'm here too. Last time I was in the UK when I was 18, I had all the plans to find work, get some money behind me and go travelling to the other places in Europe I didn't get a chance to see while on the Europe Contiki tour, but it never happened. I sort of got stuck in a rut of just living in the town I guess. I don't want that to happen again, in fact I'm going to make sure that I won't let it happen again.

I'm not going to say the places I'm hoping to visit because I don't want to jinx myself, so you'll just have to wait and see with my blog post ;)

I've met more of my housemates, and the ones I have so far met have been incredibly friendly and helpful which makes me feel a lot better. One of the girls here, Sida Chanette, who is from Oslo, came here last year and didn't know anyone so she understands how I must be feeling , and she has offered to show me around later this week which is great :) Things are starting to look better and on the up.

Speaking of upwards, there are so many hills here! I don't need to worry about going to the gym or putting on weight here because there is so much walking and many hills! My legs have been getting so tired, but the pain is getting less by the day, so I guess they are getting used to it - mind you it would be nice to have a bath with muscle relaxing salts though! Just have to push through the pain. However I love the fact that everything is walking distance here, sure it takes a little time - well maybe not for Norwegians, they walk so fast! I blame my little legs - but it's free transport and great for my health. I am getting used to the rain too. The guidebooks didn't lie, it does rain here CONSTANTLY. It has been raining everyday since I have arrived here, except for the very first day, but it does stop every now and again. I hate getting wet, especially my feet, but I am getting used to it, however I am dreading to think what it's going to be like come the winter season if this is their summer! Plus in the UK, contrary to what everyone assumes, it doesn't rain all the time, in fact every time I have been the weather has been lovely, especially in winter, I have found it dry but very cold, which I would actually prefer than to the rain! Still I won't let it get me down, and I refuse to become a new member of the SAD group (seasonal affect disorder). It definitely rains more here, which I had expected, but a part of me was hoping it wasn't as much as everyone had said.

Anyways, I have done more tourist stuff and explored more of the town. I absolutely love the Torget Fish Market and Bryggen, they are my favourite places in Bergen so far. I love Torget because it's nice seeing all the different stalls they have to offer, not just of seafood but also the moose sausage, proper Norwegian knitwear, troll and viking ornaments - it's really cool but very wet and I'm sure if you stayed there long enough you would start to smell fishy! The reason I love Bryggen is probably because it is the prettiest part of town, I think when the books say that Bergen is supposedly the prettiest place in Norway it is because of this area. It just looks so inviting and homely, and again they have some really unique shops there too. I haven't yet brought any souvenirs, I will save those purchases until towards the end of my stay.

I visited the Bergen Maritime Museum, which was interesting in regards to immigration, it had a huge exhibition on the Norwegian-America line and I found out about how many Norwegians were emigrating to New York prior to the 60s (as Norway was among the poorest countries in Europe until they found oil in the 1960s). New York has loads of Irish decent, but has loads of Norwegian decent too - I didn't realise until now how much of a connection Norway had with America due to the immigration. They didn't have too much stuff on Vikings, apparently the Cultural History Museum does so will have to check that one out.

BUT! In regards to Vikings, I did get to see more history about it at the Bryggen Museum - I saw some of the different boats that were made, and then they also had lots on the medieval era so I found out more about their lifestyle. They used to eat porridge for breakfast! I thought that was pretty cool, it never occurred to me how long people have been eating porridge for throughout history. While also at the Bryggen Museum they had a massive exhibition on shoes! How weird? In fact it was really interesting because back in the day Bergen used to be a huge producer for shoes, and they had original shoes from the medieval period which were made from leather - I had no idea they had such class back then! They had style too - it showed how the style of the shoes changed from closed shoes to sandals when they were still made out of leather. Unfortunately, Bergen no longer produces shoes for the world market or for themselves really. However there is a designer who is still making old-style boots, but sadly they are made out of seal fur! I definitely couldn't walk around in seal fur boots :( Seals are like dogs of the sea, and I love dogs.

From Bryggen I then got to meet real-life seals at the Bergen Aquarium. The seals and penguins were my favourite part of the aquarium, they are just so entertaining. The seals were really talented, but they were actually Californian seals and trained for the aquarium, but they were still awesome to watch nonetheless. They had some cool stuff in the aquarium though, for example they had a tropical exhibit which had loads of snakes and lizards, they also had a spider exhibit (they were MASSIVE! If I saw them I would actually be so scared, even though I have gotten over my fear of spiders, I think seeing these would bring that fear back), and they had monkeys! I don't know what type of monkeys but they must live near the water because they were put with the turtles. They seemed really freaked out though, they were looking every where with shocked eyes... or maybe that's just how their eyes looked.

That's it so far for now. I still have another two more free days before I start my orientation for university on Thursday, I'm really excited for that to start, I absolutely can't wait to meet more of the international students. I'm not forgetting about the Norwegians though! I've actually signed up for a program called "BergenBuddies" which doesn't start until 26th August I think, and basically they sign you up with a local Norwegian student who has similar interests to you and they are 'forced' to be your friend for 6 weeks and show you around (they actually aren't forced, they are all volunteers who do it, so they must want international friends). I'm looking forward to that too :)

I think I'll do some more tourist stuff tomorrow, like visiting the top of Mount Fløyen and Mount Ulriken, and definitely think if I go past the Torget Fish market again (which we know I probably will), I might treat myself to some of the seafood they have to offer. I haven't tried any of their local fish yet, but I can't wait to taste it! (And I think I need it too because I've been eating quite poorly my first week here, haven't yet organised myself properly in regards to what meals to have for dinner that provide all the right nutrients - I have been lacking in protein at the moment :| ).

Thanks to everyone who has been reading my adventures so far, hope you're enjoying them!