Helsinki

This past weekend we went to Helsinki, Finland. We got there late and arrived at our hotel about 11pm. We actually stayed at an apartment which was great. Saturday we got up and hit the pavement to try to see as much as possible. If only the weather and the toddler had been more cooperative.

As you can see in the photo, our first stop was actually a playground. The playgrounds in Helsinki are not too different from the playgrounds in Oslo. It was cold - below freezing - so I think that was making Katherine grumpy. Luckily this playground was at the base of the first site we were going to see so Sam played with Katherine on the playground while I went in and then we switched. It worked well and we did this arrangement at 3 different churches all before lunch. Thank goodness for playgrounds.
Our first stop was the Temppeliaukio Church. It was built in 1969 by being blasted out of solid rock and then capped with a copper-and-skylight dome. The copper ribbon coil on the inside of the roof is 13 miles long. Under the church is an air-raid shelter for 6,000 people. It is a Lutheran church and they have frequent concerts there. I bet the acoustics are pretty amazing.

We walked through town viewing all of the buildings with interesting architecture. That is something the Fins are known for. The train station was built in the Art Deco style and was nice. This is the tower of the station.
Across from the station was a "Texas" restaurant. We found that funny. They served burgers and Mexican food.

We actually saw a surprising number of Mexican restaurants and actually ended up eating in one. That was not our plan but Katherine was very frustrated and there were not that many restaurants that looked child friendly in the area we were at that time. It was actually pretty good. The Senate Square has a Senate building and a large Lutheran Cathedral built by Carl Engel after the original square was devastated in fire in 1808. That was when the Russians ruled Finland so the Czar sent him to revive the square with a neo-classical style. The Cathedral is huge and set up on a hill so it is even more impressive.


Our third church was the Uspenski Cathedral, the biggest Russian Orthodox church in Western Europe.
Having been to Russia twice I was excited to visit this cathedral. It was pretty typical of Russian Orthodox churches with a lot of icons inside but it was not as impressive as the churches that I visited in Moscow and St Petersburg. It had the typical "onion dome" on top.

Since Helsinki had been ruled by Russia for awhile, I was hoping that there would be more Russian influence, but with the exception of this church it felt pretty much like Oslo.

We went in Stockmans which is the largest department store in Europe. We normally don't shop too much while in other countries but we actually went in thinking we might buy some long underwear since it was so cold. It was so expensive that we decided to deal with the cold. While there we saw some interesting pairs of Crocs. I have never owned a pair though many swear by them. I always thought of them as summer shoes, kind of like flip flops. But in Finland they sell Croc boots and Crocs that are lined with warm fuzzy fur. We thought it was pretty funny.

The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art was open late so we went there when everything else was closed. I was actually surprised by how much I liked it. Honestly, I get kind of sick of museums that all look the same. The building itself was very interesting architecturally. There were lots of interesting curves and lighting.

The exhibits were also interesting. In the one below an artist collected water samples from different places along the Seine River in France. She made slides of them and then did watercolors of what she saw. She noted the changing pollution as she moved down the river. The beer bottles in front of the paintings were all made from water from the Seine River and all of their labels have pictures or sketches of the river. Another exhibit that I did not get any pictures of was photos of and drawings by trees in the wind. In the set of photos a light was attached to a limb and then a camera shot a picture at a very slow shutter speed so you had a trail of light that showed what the wind did. In the paintings the artist attached a pencil to the tree limb and then held the paper so that the wind "drew" on the paper. It was so interesting and creative. A different kind of art. Not really what I would hang on my wall but very creative.

In the next picture it looks like there is some construction. That was actually another art exhibit. It was called social art. A guy walked into a busy sidewalk with the metal box and took out the cones, tape and chair and sat there reading the paper noting people's reaction. Weird.

This last one was interesting. It is a globe with the outline of the continents being raised. The globe rotated and as it did, the raised outline plucked metal pieces similar to that in a music box. It did not really play a tune but again, an interesting piece.

As I said, it was very cold on Saturday. I am not sure the exact temperature but it was below freezing. We were bundled up. Katherine had on tights, pants and a snowsuit on the bottom, long underwear, turtleneck, sweater and a heavy coat on top. Poor thing reminded us of the kid in A Christmas Story when she would walk and fall over, unable to get back up.

Sunday was warmer but still cold. We were bundled up but not miserable and we were actually outside most of the day. We took a 15 minute ferry to Suomenlinna, an island guarding Helsinki's harbor. It was fortified by Sweden (when they governed the area). We ate a great Finnish lunch, took a tour of the area and went in some museums.



Of course we also played on a playground and even ran into a man from our hometown whose kids attend the school where I graduated. He has been in Helsinki for 18 months on business. What a small world. He took us to his favorite coffee shop to kill an hour before it was time to head back to the airport.