Helsinki

Day 1

The city on first encounter hits one like a Rothko painting on black velvet that collided into a Where’s Waldo picture. This starts with the train station.  The evening that we arrived from Turku we were focused on getting to our hotel and only gave the Central Train Station’s interior a passing, “Wow”, but outside, standing on the edge of a wide boulevard waiting for the traffic light to change I turned around and caught the full view of the Central Train Station’s exterior – a powerful wallop of design in rock and copper glowing ghostly green in the moonlight while cars and taxis whipped past us their red taillight trails morphing into neon signs advertising everything from umbrellas to chocolate in store windows. We forgot about trying to cross the street and pulled our luggage back from the curb so that we could just stare at the train station’s four stone lamp-holding giants while the lights and noises of downtown Helsinki on a Friday night surrounded us.

We took the long way to get to the hotel dragging our heavy bags while looking around us in wonder until finally Paul left Kaitlin and me at a street corner to go scouting about on his own. He soon found it, another Omena, on a nearby street unmarked on both our maps. This first experience of trying to find something in Helsinki proved to be the rule – you will find what you are looking for but Google and the guidebook and the city map will all tell you something different and the street names and numbers are arbitrary.

The Helsinki Omena was both creepier and more reassuring than Turku’s.  Now that we knew the system worked the lack of human contact was actually just what we wanted to help us wrap a bit of a protective cocoon between ourselves and the strangeness of the city.  But it was creepy that a man loitered around waiting for us to open the door so that he could slip in behind us while some stray girls were just standing in the halls. The hotel chain has placed multiple barriers to illegal activity but I was never convinced that it wasn’t the perfect venue for human trafficking. I don’t know if the company has come to the US yet but I rather hope it doesn’t.

The room itself was nicer than in Turku. The bathroom module was a bright red lacquer with a high-end shower head and good beds. Most importantly, this hotel room’s TV was not bolted to the ceiling above where I would be sleeping. We slept like stones.

Walking out of the hotel in the morning was much like walking to it the night before – what was this city we found ourselves in?  A big thrill for me was the architecture. Not just the showcase pieces like the train station but the regular eight story apartment buildings lining the streets. Many of them were built in an art deco style similar to what one can find in Chicago or LA if one knows where to look but with a slightly more Eastern air and commonplace rather than being rare treasures. Each building was of a different design and color than its neighbors but they were visually held together by all being close to the same size. This similarity of ‘weight’ while other details are wildly different was mirrored in other aspects of the city too, a recurring theme as we wandered around the city.

The first place we went to was the Post Office which turned out to be attached to a museum with a very good gift shop. We didn’t go to the museum but I got stuck in the gift shop looking at a book on Christmas in Finland while Paul, who was hungry to the point of being crabby, and Kaitlin went to find something to eat. Croissant eaten they came back to find me looking at the same book mesmerized by its images of Arctic black nights turned blue by so much moonlight reflecting off of the snow as the perfect, quintessentially real Santa Claus rode a sleigh pulled by reindeer through a pine forest. Finally they managed to break the book’s spell and we left the Post Office to see the rest of the city.

The next great building we came to turned out to be the History Museum. We turned to the guidebook which warned us that the collection consisted mainly of wooden spoons.  This dampened our enthusiasm somewhat but it was such a cool building though we thought we would walk around it and have a look inside even if we didn’t go through the exhibits.  And we were so glad we did! – first because when we crossed the street and rounded the corner to come up the museum’s front stairs we were greeted by a very friendly, charismatic stone bear that just about begged you to take pictures of it and second because once we were inside we found out that the ceiling was painted with scenes from the Kalevala by artist Gallen Kallela – Paul’s favorite Finnish artist.

From the National Museum we went back across the street to see Finlandia Hall which was designed by architect Alvar Aalto.  We couldn’t get in, only walked around some of us liking the structure very much others, thinking it looked rather like a 1950s concrete bowling hall.

Finlandia Hall was next to a footpath leading down to the shore under large birch trees still in their full autumn gold.  As we walked further the path came close to the shore so that we were walking through a woods that sometimes changed into tall marsh grasses.  This ended at the rail yards. Not a silly three or four track bit of a dirty rail yard but a great wide sooty expanse of track after track after track coming together in the far distance at the Central Train Station. I looked around and saw a pedestrian bridge some ways away further down the shore that crossed over the rails. To get to the pedestrian bridge we needed to walk up a hill inhabited by large wooden houses painted in pastel shade of pink, blue and green with white gingerbread trim. The house yards were full of huge birch trees and the houses sat very prettily under them the pink ones turning a soft orange from the light reflecting off of the autumn leaves. When we got to the top of the bridge we heard the first of several soundscapes that we would stumble upon during our stay in Helsinki. It never occurred to me that sound would be one of the best parts of the city but several times it was the sounds as much as the view that grabbed me. This time we heard the call of marsh birds mixing with the soft shhh of passenger trains pulling into the station while freight trains pulled out with a loud clank clanking. A delicate shirring noise from a distance highway under-laid the rest.

Reluctantly we left Sibelius Park knowing we had a large day ahead of us yet. Back through the rows of apartment buildings to the Temppeliaukion kirkko, a church built into a boulder. Oddly we could only get in for 15 minutes every hour so we passed the time waiting for the door to open by looking at some wooden spoons in a nearby gift shop. Worth the wait though, the Temppeliaukion kirkko was beautiful inside.

After the Temppeliaukion kirkko we were very hungry, especially me who had foregone breakfast to stay at the Post Office and look at pictures of Santa Claus.  We stopped at the first Kebab place we could find and chowed down on gyros and fries until we were stuffed.

Our plan was to spend the rest of the afternoon at Kiasma, Helsinki’s Museum of Modern Art but when we went there to pay our money the ticket lady ‘reminded’ us that today was a special day and the museum would close in one hour so we decided to go to the
Ateneum Art Museum instead. There I found a floor of art similar to what we found in Turku which suited me just fine. I love the Finnish landscape painting school.

It was dark when we left the museum. We walked up and down the Esplanade stopping in various places: a noodle shop called ‘Wrong’, and a hopeful trip to the Ice Bar but it was closed due to melting shelves.  After the Ice Bar disappointment we found a glassed in Victorian greenhouse-style building that housed a bar, cafe, and restaurant called the Kappeli. It struck us as very Parisian, the way American’s fantasize about Paris, with a heavy glass chandelier poised over a large circular velvet ottoman with tables scattered around the rest of the space. The chandelier tossed light sparkles out to the glass walls which tossed them back to the glasses and silverware on the tables.  We got an excellent piece of chocolate cake and coffee and sat spellbound floating in our magic bubble of dancing light while Helsinki’s night-life passed by outside the glass walls.

Day 2

The day started with us packing our stuff and dragging it to the train station lockers to lock it up in plenty of time before the Omena hotel’s entry code stopped working since the plan was to spend the day in the city and take a night train to Oulu at 10:30 pm. This gave us time to oogle the interior of the station more properly which we did while eating muffins from one of the station’s bakery stalls.

Breakfast and luggage taken care of we headed out of the Central Train Station in the opposite direction of the day before. This let us see more blocks of cool art deco style apartment buildings and a massive Lutheran Church set on top of a tall flight of stairs. I got sent up to check it out but oddly the interior seemed quite miss-able so we continued on.  Next we came to an impressive red brick and copper Russian Orthodox church sitting on a hill. We took some pictures and then stood there for awhile perplexed about if we should go in or not. It was a Sunday morning so respect said No, but then the service hadn’t started yet and it looked like other tourists were going in with no one minding. We compromised by stopping at the foyer. Even though our timing meant that we weren’t comfortable getting very close to the beautiful interior it did allow us to see the church alive with people coming to the service dressed all in black, almost all the women’s heads covered, and the priest standing near the alter in a long golden robe talking to an old man. We stepped back outside just as the bells started ringing. This was our second Helsinki soundscape. Three or four sets of bells were being rung at once from different towers around the church some pitched higher, some lower, and rung with a certain amount of deliberation just shy of  music.  Again the birds and traffic added their sounds. Car doors from the church parking lot slammed shut and women’s heels made a sharp click clicking sound as they walked up the steps into the building. The sky was gray with a slight wind pulling orange leaves off of the trees.  The leaves seemed to intensify all the noise around them as they floated silently to the ground.

When the bells stopped ringing we realized that we were still hungry.  We went back to the Esplanade and found a busy cafe with huge pastries, fancy cakes, and pretty waitresses. We got a slice of ligdonberry cake to share, 2 espressos and a hot chocolate for Kaitlin. Kaitlin reported the hot chocolate to be divine but we weren’t really paying attention since we were so focused on the cake.

We had now killed enough time to go to Stockmanns which opened at 12:00 on a Sunday. The Stockmann department store is Helsinki’s Harrods or Saks Fifth Avenue.  Of course it’s not as grand as those department store queens but we were curious to see it anyway. But the door didn’t open. Paul checked his watch which now said five past 12:00. Then Kaitlin checked her cell phone and its clock said that it was only 11:00 and we remembered that this was the day daylight savings time was scheduled to kick in.  Luckily there was no train-catching calamity or anything – just a sudden extra hour to fill. The one place we hadn’t gotten to the day before that I was interested in was the Hietaniemi cemetery.  Hietaniemi was in the opposite direction from the rest of the day’s plan and was a bit far to go so we dithered about if we wanted to go or not. Then, when we started walking we got turned around and weren’t sure we were going the right way.  Just as I was ready to call it quits Paul insisted that we at least go to a line of trees off in the distance.  I’m glad we did because once we got to it the Helsinki cemetery turned out to be a trip highlight.

The Hietaniemi cemetery was made up of squares outlined with concrete walls roughly eight inches wide by eight inches high.  The gravestones were inside these concrete outlines, the trees outside of them.  The cemetery was quite old and many of the tress were very large so that one was walking in both a forest and a graveyard. Hietaniemi was also very large so that when we were in the midst of it the dark forms of heavy tombstones looming under great trees in a November northern-sky half-light was all one could see in every direction.   There was a constant sound of bird’s singing and much wildlife – small soft gold and gray birds and super cute squirrels with dark tufted ears and Kaitlin reported seeing a very large rabbit appearing and disappearing down a row of stones.  The tombstones were wildly different from one another.  Some were simple gray pillars of stone,  others polished black obelisks sharp-edged and grim, some were delicate carvings of angels or modern sculptures of flying geese, some had gold writing in swooping cursive, some told the name and dates of the deceased with little fanfare – but all stood inside of the concrete outlines under tall trees inside of the same bubble of birdsong and these things were enough to tie the place together into a huge peaceful and extraordinarily beautiful living art project dedicated to death.

By the time we finally left we were again concerned that maybe we wouldn’t have enough time to do the modern art museum justice before it closed.  We were also hungry.  The guidebook had recommended Stockmann’s cafeteria as a good place for lunch so we went back there thinking it would be quick and cheap. Only it was not quick because then we were in Stockmann where we had a good time wandering through several floors and buying our main trip souvenir – a bright red coffee cup with gold trim and a pale blue bird in a white circle, and, when we finally made it to the cafeteria floor, not cheap.  So we took our coveted red cup and went back outside to the Esplanade in search of a quick bite before dashing to the art museum.  Here we got caught in one of those trip eddies where everyone suddenly has different opinions and nothing seems quite right.  This cafe was too expensive, that one was too busy, no we didn’t want to just go to MacDonalds… finally we randomly ducked into a place where Kaitlin got a quiche and a salad and Paul and I got reindeer meat paninis.  The paninis were awful. Wretched awful gross and yucky. I opted for Kaitlin’s salad while Paul somehow got through his saying he didn’t mind so terribly much and we wrapped the second one up to take with us.

From lunch to Kiasma Museum of Modern Art with its fancy building and good reputation.  For all the good press I was disappointed in the Kiasma.  I didn’t think it even came close to my bar for a great modern art museum and building which is the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City.  The Kiasma building overshadowed its collection and didn’t provide enough good display areas so that artwork was being hung in tight uncomfortable corners. I was also lukewarm to the collection itself which was heavily slanted toward the art-exists-to-expose-the-misery-of-human-existence school of thought.

So we finished walking through the museum sooner than we thought we would and threw out the second reindeer panini.  Our train didn’t leave until 10:30 – what to do? Go back to the cemetery! By the time we got to it the low-slung Finnish sun had slipped under the horizon and a deepening grayness was settling over the city.  Now the cemetery was full of candles burning in front of the graves. Not in front of every gravestone but here and there spookily dotting the landscape. We wandered around as transfixed as before although more cautious not to lose each other in the late evening maze of trees and stone.  At some point one of us remembered – it was Halloween night.

When it got just too dark we went back to the Esplanade to kill the rest of the time before we needed to catch our train at the Victorian glass cafe and pub we had visited the night before.  We bought Kaitlin a hot chocolate to have by herself while Paul and I went to the bar side to have some wine.  When it was time we gathered ourselves back up and headed for the Central Train Station, unlocked our luggage and sat waiting until our train came the day’s time change making the 10:30 connection seem much later.