Day One
In the morning we packed our bags which seemed to be irrationally heavier than usual and headed downstairs to the Hotelli Turisti breakfast buffet room. The buffet was a repeat of the day before: wheat or rye bread with slices of salami, mild cheese, cucumbers, pickles, and red peppers to put on it also a hot grain porridge slowly bubbling in a large black pot, milk, juice, coffee, tea, and a bowl of mini-muffins. The room was almost silent as we and the other hotel guests ate while avoiding eye contact. After breakfast we grabbed our luggage and walked across the street to the train station where we caught a bus which took us on a tree-lined road for about an hour before dropping us off at another train station where we caught the train for the longer ride to Tampere.
I like giving over the better part of the day to a train ride, staring out the window giving myself time to sink into doing nothing. Most of the land from Oulu to Tampere was covered in marshy tree-farmed forest. Under the November-half-light the woods looked mute and numb. Long straight ditches were dug at regular intervals to drain the trees. As the train sped past them the ditches, which went out into the forest farther than the eye could see, looked like muddy lines a child of giants had scratched onto forest floor with a giant stick. Occasionally a dirt logging road was cut into the forest. I would have loved to go on a long walk down one of these logging roads that stretched out into a dwindling line through the endless masses of spindly birch and pine not because the woods were beautiful but because they seemed like a part of a half-remembered dream.
We got to Tampere at 3:00 and took our luggage directly to the Omena hotel but were surprised when our code didn’t work. After a little while one of us remembered that the code doesn’t activate until 4:00 so we headed to a MacDonalds down the block to wait out the time gap. Paul and Kaitlin got some fries and we sat with our bags taking up three table’s worth of space while surreptitiously watching the bored teenagers of Tampere while away an afternoon.
At 4:00 the code worked and we went up to room 511. Paul had been unable to get the same room for the three nights we would be in Tampere so we would only be staying in this room until the morning at which point we would have to cart all our stuff down to the train station lockers until 4:00 when we could get into another room in the same hotel. This seemed like a silly plan until we figured out that the continuous loud clanking noise was a broken part of the heating/cooling system and would be part of the room’s experience as long as we were in it. We did some minimal unpacking and Paul and Kaitlin stretched out on their beds while I read what the guidebook had to say about Tampere aloud to them raising my voice over the heater’s clanks. When I got to the part where the guidebook talked about Tampere having a Kauppahalli (indoor marketplace) that closed at 6:00 we leaped into action to get ourselves out the door in time to get ourselves a fast dinner before it closed making sure that each of us had a copy of the hotel code before we closed the hotel room door behind us.
Tampere is the main industrial center of Finland. Now it is most famous for its Nokia headquarters but the region got it’s start when a man named Finlayson opened a textile mill along the large river that runs through the city. Finlayson was a Scottsman and the factory he designed looks like it could be in his native Glasgow. Other factories then copied this design so that when one stands on the bridge in the city’s center the surrounding view has an oddly Scottish feel to it. This Scottish-ness doesn’t extend to the bridge itself however which we needed to cross to reach the Kauppahalli. The main bridge has four large copper statues of naked men each doing some odd thing. I’m not sure why the Nordic countries have so many copper statues of naked men doing inadvisable activities like black smithing or sword fighting but it does seem to be a phenomena.
We got to the Kauppahalli before too many shops were shut down and bought ourselves cabbage rolls and pastries for dinner which we took back to the hotel to eat. After dinner Paul and I decided to check out the night life leaving Kaitlin to her Facebook and Youtube on the hotel’s wifi.
We wandered around for awhile until a pub looked good then walked in to have a beer. The place was mostly empty with a few large muted TV screens showing soccer matches. We ordered two Karhus and had a long conversation about U.S. politics while all around us, like the tide slowly creeping inland, the place began to fill up with football-hungry men. By the time we looked up the place was so full that I offered a chair to a man stuck near our table in a standing-room only situation. The TV sound was turned on and all eyes became riveted on the screen’s football match. We ordered another beer and some fries and settled in. During halftime we talked to the man we’d invited to sit with us. He was from Somalia. He was fairly unhappy with being an immigrant in Finland because of the climate and their hurdles to citizenship. He was excited that we were from America because his friend had just won the Somali greencard lottery to get to go to the US and was planning on emigrating to Ohio. He wanted to know if it got cold in Ohio too but at this point in our conversation it looked like the game was about to resume and a round of frenetic cheering drowned out our answer. We said good-bye and left to give the people who cared much more about the game our seats and went back to the hotel where we all three got ready for bed the clank clanking of the heating system rattling on.
Day Two
In the morning we had a quick and rather horrid breakfast at a cafe associated with the Omena chain then packed up our stuff and locked it in a train station locker. We were done with the clanking room and ready to explore Tampere. Our plan was to check out the craft shops at the Finlayson center, the library which was mentioned in the guidebook for its architecture, and Tampere’s art museums.
Finlayson was a wash. Either the craft shops weren’t open to the public or we were there too early or something but we wandered around the complex in a state of confusion seeing very little. Finally we gave up and went to the library. The Tampere Metso Library was designed by the brothers Raili and Reima Pietilä to look like a quail. It doesn’t but its pretty impressive anyway. We walked around it and went in for a bit but didn’t stay long.
The old Finlayson textile factory now a shopping mall and collection of artist's studios.
After a quick lunch at the Kauppahalli we went in search of the Sara Hilden Art Museum. We followed the map to an amusement park. We looked at the map and looked at the roller coasters and ferris wheel silent and shut down for the season and looked back down at the map. Kaitlin pointed to a sign with a painter’s palette on it and we followed the arrow around some more rides and a closed hot dog stand to a building which did turn out to be a contemporary art museum in the middle of an amusement park. We went in and were treated to a fantastic collection of contemporary art.
We were art-elated when we regrouped at the museum’s front a few hours later. There was still time to see the Heikka Art Museum which we had been interested in if we had the stamina which we decided we did. The Heikka Museum is the art collection of a wealthy goldsmith featuring random, fine furniture, paintings and metal works from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s. It was a good collection if a bit haphazard and I was happy that many of the paintings were more examples of Finnish landscape paintings.
Again we gathered at the museum’s front having a nice chat with the museum attendant on the way out. We were headed for Punjab Kebab on the recommendation that it was Tampere’s favorite kebab shop. It turned out to be our favorite kebab place too. We were happy to sit with full plates talking about our favorite pieces in both museums.
Back to the train station to get our luggage and return to the Omena to get into our new room. Travel tip – if you ever find yourself needing an Omena room in Tampere try to get room 630. It was a large corner room with no clanking and an unusual view – all factory-industrial with one Orthodox church’s onion dome rising up through the smokestack smoke. I went to sleep that night mentally re-walking through the museums we’d walked through during the day.
Hotel room view. Onion dome is cropped out.
Day Three
The next morning there was no packing up to do! Paul was scheduled to give a talk meet at the Tampere University after breakfast giving Kaitlin and I another day to ourselves. We all had breakfast at the Kauppahalli then he told us good-bye and we began our quest to find some real Finnish woods to walk through.
We had thought that to see woods around Tampere we needed to catch a ferry to a nearby island. We found the ferry dock but the place seemed shut down and the only passerby I got up the courage to ask about it turned out to be Canadian who was so very sorry but he didn’t know. After some minutes of consternation I decided to stop in a nearby shop and ask a salesclerk. As we approached the shop the Canadian bounded out of the door at us, “Come in, come in, the lady in here knows all about it and she’ll help you!” So we went in. The saleslady, whose enthusiasm was much more moderate, explained that the ferry shuts down after September 1st but that there was a large wooded area within easy walking distance and showed us where on our map. I thanked her and thanked the Canadian who was still standing there beaming.
The saleslady was right, the wooded park was large enough to feel like we were really out of Tampere and very lovely. Kaitlin and I spent several hours wandering around the trails. At one point we came to a stone tower with a cafe at its base. We stopped for coffee and hot chocolate. At the counter I saw yet another row of sugared doughnuts. What was it with Finland and doughnuts? I’d been seeing an abundance of them ever since we crossed the border. I’m not much of a doughnut eater but finally decided I’d just have to try one. They were cardamom doughnuts! Warm and soft and spicy and we thought we’d get another one. Then we thought we would get a some more for breakfast the next day. Those were the last doughnuts of our trip although I’ve been searching ever since. They seem to stop making them at the border and perhaps they don’t taste as amazing if they aren’t eaten in a warm cafe looking out at a deep pine forest but I’m pretty sure I’d be happy eating them anywhere.
By the time we left the woods it was well past lunchtime and we followed our stomachs back to Punjab Kebab. We ate until we were full and took the rest back to the hotel where we watched odd shows on TV until Paul came back from the University. When he did return he was in good spirits. He settled down in front of the TV too and ate our kebab leftovers for his dinner. Kaitlin and I just skipped dinner for the night as a Punjab Kebab meal has a lot of calories.
Around 8:00 I had a yen to go out and try a nearby nightclub that we had walked by several times over the past two days. Paul agreed to go and I amused myself (and others) by getting dressed in the current fashion of tights, a mini-skirt borrowed from Kaitlin, knee high boots, and a sweater. It was an outfit much more appropriate for someone younger but I was just too tired of the usual trip outfits. Cafe Europa was a very nice pub and Paul and I mentioned several times to each other how cool it would be if something like it existed in Austin. The walls and ceiling were dark blue, red, and green. Most of the walls were covered with random pictures in heavy gilt frames. Seating was old comfortable stuffed couches in similar shades of red blue and green as the walls with low tables in front of them for drinks. Even though it was only 8:00 the place was full of hip young things, the women all wearing copies of my outfit, and we had to wait a bit to get a couch to ourselves. There was live music but not so loud that we needed to shout to hear each other. We only stayed for a couple of hours before returning to the hotel to turn in early.
