Sylvia's Journal

On Friday we left early after having left the house as spic&span as when we found it. We drove the 200 km back to Helsinki airport and left the car, as agreed upon, at a Park&Fly parking lot. A shuttle dropped us off at the railway station next to the airport so we could take the commuter train into the city. 

The railway station was just as inscrutable as the language. There was an elevator and an escalator that took us into a deep underground cave with very few signs on where to go next. Our phone GPS was not working well that deep underground, so we followed a pathway that did indeed take us to a platform. A train to Helsinki pulled up just as we arrived. We had no time to figure out the ticketing arrangement and hopped on the train hoping we could play the dumb tourist and pay a conductor. He (or she) never showed up and we had an unintentional free ride. As if to punish us for that transgression, Axel left his phone on his seat, which we only discovered 15 minutes after we alighted from the train. Panic!

We were already standing in line at the lost-and-found department, with very little hope of ever finding the phone, when we decided to call his phone in a last effort to find it. Lo and behold someone answered and responded to me in perfect English, a wonder all by itself. It was the cleaning lady who had found it and told me to come back to platform 1 and not to hurry. I put a 5-euro bill in her hand which she refused, but I insisted anyways and thanked her for being so honest. An iPhone is a tempting find. We were lucky she found it and not someone else who wanted an iPhone, even an old model.

A Nigerian taxi driver delivered us to a hotel that was only 15 minutes away by foot but he made it appear to be a long distance and charged accordingly. At first, we trusted him and then we didn’t when he offered to take us to the airport the next morning for nearly twice the advertised charge.

Helsinki was, in some ways, a disappointment. The weather was so-so, including some rain, the city was full of tourists, masses of people surrounding us, something we are not used to. For our first dinner we took a ferry to a restaurant on an island with fortifications and barracks to fend off attacks from the Russians or Swedes or both. On our way back I had another licorice ice cream knowing that my opportunities for such a treat were soon to disappear.

We visited some of the sites recommended by my Finnish colleague, including the wonderful Design Museum which showed the many iconic Finnish designs that are so familiar such as the three-legged Alvar Aalto bent-wood stool that you can buy as an original (250 USD) or as a China-made copy (12 USD), the orange Fiskars scissors, Marimekko, Iitala glass and Arabia ceramics.  We visited the underground Rock Church and ended with a last meal that included salmon and shrimp.

The next morning, we tested ourselves to make sure we went home COVID free.  As we left the hotel at 4:30AM to catch our 7 AM flight to Amsterdam we practically tripped over some very drunk people on the sidewalk who had not known how to stop partying. It was a sad last image we held of Finland.

Everyday, when deciding not to explore the country side, we drive into Turku with the intent to visit the large Turku Art Museum. And each time we get distracted by other things and end up not visiting the museum. In the morning we opted for a long walk along the river. Halfway through we found a lovely café and in Finland it is always time for coffee. The weather is cooler now, which is fine with us. There is dew on the fields as the nights (already) seem to get cooler. A strong wind was blowing enormous cloud masses overhead, in the direction of Russia.

We took a tiny ferry across the Aura river and started walking back towards the center of town on the other side, debating where we would stop for lunch and possibly dinner.The first distraction was the café at the Waino Aaltonen Museum where open faced salmon and egg sandwiches and the traditional savory pastry from Karelia seduced us us to sit down and abandon our search for a lunch place. Bonus, a wonderful exhibit by Antti Laitinen.

Afterwards we continued in the direction of the Art Museum and checked out some dinner places – we do seem to go from meal to meal here. With some options in mind we crossed back to the other side of the river and made our way to the central market place where the farmers were closing their stalls, offering their leftover wares at discounted prices. We dropped the idea of eating out and bought the last liters of peas (things are sold here by the liter) from a gentleman with raven black hair (unusual here) and blue eyes (not unusual here). In Holland when you see this combination of hair and eye color people always refer back to the Spanish Armada that was defeated in 1588 and the survivors that made it back to land. Did some make their way to Finland?

We bought strawberries that we cannot get enough of and Axel added some blueberries (thinking of Sal and her summer in Maine) but these were no local blueberries, having been shipped all the way from Portugal as the small letters on the sign said. They are not even close to the ones he had in mind (soft, large and tasteless, definitely not wild).

Next to the market place is a large shopping mall, not so visible from the outside but occupying several city blocks, including floors underground. Like malls in Toronto, it makes sense to bring the shopping indoors in a climate that has long and cold winters.

Axel the textile artist, wanted to see the Marimekko store and look at its unusual and colorful printed fabrics. We had noticed that people don’t dress in colorful ways here. We asked the woman in charge of the (very colorful) fabric department why people dressed in such muted colors. Her answer: “We Finns are shy and don’t like to stand out. But once you go inside their house you see many colors.” She told us the history of Marimekko and showed how the names of the designers and the year of the design are all printed on the fabric’s edges. They still carry the iconic daisy design that put Marimekko on the map in the 70s. A whole generation of new designers continues to put out new designs. If you have deep pockets you can mix and match fabrics with dinnerware that tells a story about yearning for the outdoors and green spaces and growing things.

Axel kept eyeing a particular bolt with the brightest colors that, according to the saleslady, was about summer fruit. We bought the last meters from the bolt and I offered it to Axel as his birthday present.

This took care of the money allotted to dinner out and we descended to the supermarket where we bought hamburger and licorice ice-cream and then headed home, a 18 km drive that we can now do easily without GPS.

Back, inspired by the art we did see, Axel drew one of the many pine trees by our house.

It was only a week ago that we arrived in Finland. It seems eons ago. We have explored Turku, did the archipelago trail, ate salmon, peas, baby potatoes and strawberries every day, and drank liters of coffee. tried out the local gin from Nagu island as we sat on the balcony of our home, on a warm night with our We enjoyed gin tonics, overlooking a large field of some very green grain (barley? Rye?). We also learned a few Finnish words thanks to Google’s translation app that you can even point at the inscrutable long words on a label or sign post (like to find out if we can park legally).

We learned a bit about the Baltic Sea trade centuries ago and watched the Fins, of any age, enjoy their very short summer. We encountered only a few bugs (and all those in one single place), experienced a heat wave (Lapland’s temperatures were 20 degrees (F) above the usual 66 degrees at this time of the year) and we had nonstop blue skies and temperatures in the upper 70s/lower 80s. Warmer and bug freer than we had expected.

We had some idea that we would be doing a walking tour of the city but it was hot and Axel’s back is hurting, and we spent an hour at a hypermarket to find replacements for the Nespresso coffee we used up (and then of course had a cup of coffee). By the time we were done it was lunch time and we found the perfect place overlooking the river Aura and watching the Sunday boat traffic go by while munching on fried baby potatoes, and a particular kind of Finnish rye bread that accompanied our trout salad and steak tartare. By the time we were done with that the afternoon was halfway done – how time flies when you are having a good time. We strolled down river, watched a street hockey tournament in a blow-up arena, had licorice ice cream and decided it was too hot for the city and headed for a beach where we watched more Fins enjoy the cool waters in between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic Sea.

Back home we had yet another salmon and potato meal. On Monday we visited Fiskars (yes, of the iconic orange shears). We had coffee (of course) at a lovely place by the small brook that transects the town and learned that the owner is from North Carolina, lived in Saint Petersburg, somewhere along the way met his French wife and, when the pandemic started, escaped the city and settled in Fiskars. We had intended to visit the museum that showed the origins of the orange shears (ploughs), but we got sidetracked by a wonderful set of art exhibits that included the results of a competition to make a small house no bigger than 30 square meters (some were even smaller). It said you could spend the night in one of them but we didn’t bother to find out how that worked.

We had another fabulous lunch, visited the shops with their very Scandinavian designs, resisted the urge the buy stuff, and then drove through endless deep woods over backroads to Hanko. This is the place from where many Finns emigrated to the US. Hanko, like all of Finland, has a very twisted history when it comes to its relationships with Sweden and Russia. Apparently the Crimean war played a role but we could not figure out how. The place is known for its large villas that were built by wealthy Russian industrialists, not quite as massive as the cottages in Newport but grandiose Victorian wooden buildings nevertheless. At some point the Fins were driven out of the place and a garrison with 30,000 Russian troops moved in and left the town in shambles after they, in their turn, left.

The drive home was long, two hours, and we realized we should have arranged lodgings in one of these towns before going to Helsinki on Friday (a 200 km ride). Once again we found the roads empty and we could drive at the maximum speed all the time. We had been warned by our hosts that there are cameras everywhere that catch you when you go over the speed limit. Conveniently, big signs with a picture of a camera warn you (and Waze also tells you where they are). We stick to the allowable speed limits religiously (more so than we do at home). Driving west and northwest we had to deal with a very bright sun blinding us all the way home at the late hour of 10:30PM.

Turku hosts an annual medieval festival with 100s of people in period costume enacting various activities that presumably took place when Turku was an active trade port on the Baltic Sea. It was yet again a very hot day and I felt sorry for the actors in their outfits that looked a better fit for lower temperatures. Yet they were all very good natured and patiently explaining to people what they were doing. After seeing very few people during our first week in Finland we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of 180 thousand people who had all flocked to this highly anticipated annual event.

We have been eating seafood pretty much all the time, but when Axel saw the wild boar (or was it a pig?) on a spit, he couldn’t resist. The meat was served on a birchwood shingle. I continued with fish and got a birchwood plate with tiny small fry with garlic sauce. While we were eating the bishop came by (he looked very much like Sinterklaas) and the costumed people ran towards him and fell to their knees to receive his blessings.

We tried juniper and birch beer (no alcohol) and then the real artisanal beer that was brewed in a trough filled with hay, juniper branches and other naturals that worked as a filter. Because real beer was served the area was enclosed and a guard make sure no one escaped before their paper cup with beer was emptied. Some of the costumed people drank their beer from wooden tankards or horns.

All around the central square professional actors and volunteers in their period costumes demonstrated various artisanal occupations. There was a place for the children with traditional kids games and then there were the usual craft booths selling the kinds of things one sees at any craft fair in the US: woodcraft, leathers, jewelry, textiles, etc. The only thing we would probably not find at a fair back home would be the Minsk convent booth with its ornate carved boxes and combs. That’s when you realize that we are very far east.

After a bad night in our hot hut on the island the night before, the slow stroll along the booths-filled streets of Turku, and a quick tour through the museum with its remains of the old medieval town of Turku, had exhausted me. We plopped down at the banks of the Aura river at the Art café for a restorative cuppa.

For dinner Axel made open faced salmon sandwiches on a particular kind on the ubiquitous rye bread that a Finnish colleague of mine had recommended. For dessert I had made a rhubarb-strawberry compote. For the first time in days I collapsed while the sun was still fairly high on its downward arc (8:30PM). This meant that I woke up with the sun at 4 AM.

We are at the halfway point of our trip to Finland.