Sylvia's Journal

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.